A Study Of The Relationship Between Politics And Religion In Contemporary Russia

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, a fundamental change has taken place in the Russian society: political collapse, economic recession and ideological vacuum. Under this special historical background, the Russian government leaders had to ask for the regions help to ease social contradictions, and formulated favorable religious policies. As the traditional religion, Eastern Orthodoxy started to revive rapidly and became a social force to be reckoned with, influencing the country’s politics, economics and cultures.Contemporary Russian politico-religious relationship reflects the religious social status and function, also an important factor of states politics. Based on amount of historical documents and datum, this paper uses Marxist materialism theory to study the contemporary Russian politico-religious relationship, in order to get to know social and political situations, other related factors including economics, cultures, social moralities etc.This paper consists of four parts:Chapter one: review the politico-religious relationship before collapse of the Soviet Union.This part describes evolution of the politico-religious relationship during this period, introduces religious policies which were made by successive state leaders under different historical backgrounds.Chapter two: the politico-religious relationship after the collapse of the Soviet Union.This is the main part of the paper, which introduces the different religious policies of Yeltsin, Putin, Medvedev, and analyzes the role of their religious policies that enhance the political situation of Russian religions, especially the Eastern Orthodoxy. In the end, this part describes the effect of building the new politico-religious relationship.Chapter three: significance of the contemporary politico-religious relationship for Russia.With the new politico-religious relationship, revive of the Eastern Orthodoxy has important significance to maintain national stability, cultivate moral rules, inherit cultures.The conclusion summaries that contemporary Russian politico-religious relationship is very steady, the two sides being continue to maintain the stable condition. But the author also points out that with encouraging revive of Eastern Orthodoxy,the Russian authorities should pay more attention to correctly deal with relations between Eastern Orthodoxy and other religions, avoid large Russian nationalism and precaution against the heresy organization.