Orthodox Church under the new Patriarch/Edited by S. Filatov and A. Malashenko, Moscow: Carnegie Moscow Center, 2011, 416 p .

Published at the end of 2011, the book could not fail to arouse the interest of religious scholars, political scientists, sociologists, and just curious readers.

I must say that the very idea of such a book is long overdue. The three years of Patriarch Kirill's rule brought many innovations to the life of the Russian Orthodox Church. Unfortunately, they have not yet received a full understanding in the framework of academic, non-confessional religious studies. An attempt at such a comprehension, moreover, made by recognized and well-known experts.-

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From this point of view, it can only be perceived positively by experts in the field of Church problems in the scientific community. We should not forget that the modern life of the Russian Orthodox Church is extremely poorly and sparsely covered in the Russian-language scientific literature. In any case, much less than we would like and would expect. In this regard, any work that purports to analyze the political, social, and cultural sphere of the Church's activity in recent years attracts close attention.

The book contains a lot of interesting material, individual articles provide abundant information and food for thought. At the same time, the book as a whole, unfortunately, causes some confusion, as we will try to say below.

The book is a collection of nine (in fact, ten, if you count the summing up Conclusion) articles, some of which were the result of reports and debates at seminars of the Carnegie Moscow Center. Apparently, this was the real unifying factor for the compilation of the collection, since the only thing that really connects the articles with each other is their topic. This is rather a general outline of the position of the Russian Orthodox Church in the period between 1988 and 2011. Among the questions raised are the problems of religious education (Valery Ovchinnikov), the position of the Russian Orthodox Church outside the Russian Federation (Nadezhda Belyakova and Andrey Okara), the analysis of the media image of the Russian Orthodox Church (Roman Lunkin), and, finally, the description of the actual policy - the "political portrait" - of Patriarch Kirill himself (Sergey Filatov), and much more. The last of these articles is, by and large, the only one whose content fully corresponds, in fact, to the title of the collection.

Such a thematic spread would be quite natural in a scientific journal, but in a collection of articles it raises questions. Why did all these articles end up under the same cover and in this order? It would be possible, for example, to divide the collection into several thematic sections. Given the variety of articles, this would not be easy, but in any case, it would make it easier to read the texts.

At the same time, it should be noted that the level of individual texts that make up the collection is quite high. Thus, Nadezhda Belyakova's analysis of the situation of the Russian Orthodox Church in the Baltic states impresses with its thoroughness and deep knowledge of the issue. Anatoly Pchelintsev's article " The Russian Orthodox Church and the Army: Historical experience and current Problems-

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we of interaction", indeed, offers the reader wonderful examples of interaction between the army and the Church in the Russian Empire, and also raises a number of very important and relevant questions about the current legal status of religion in the armed forces. Boris Knorre's review of the forms and methods of social service of the Russian Orthodox Church paints an extremely interesting picture of the activities of church charities - a picture that is little known outside the circle of ecclesiastical believers. However, it is not entirely clear what these articles have to do with the" Church under the new Patriarch", since in them - as in all other articles in the collection - most of the materials studied relate to a much earlier period, and sometimes to other areas of research. This is quite natural: it is difficult and meaningless to talk about Orthodoxy in the Baltic States without touching on its situation in the interwar and Soviet periods. It is no less natural to touch upon the problems of Protestant movements when discussing the situation of religion in the army. However, this is not directly related to the activities of Patriarch Kirill and even to the general trends of the Russian Orthodox Church during his reign. One more thing this circumstance causes some surprise: we are talking about the juxtaposition in the collection of strictly scientific articles with journalistic essays on the problems of the Church. Again, this is by no means a question of the quality of this journalism. Abbot Peter (Meshcherinov) ' s article "Modern Church consciousness and secular ideologemes from the Communist Past" is beautifully written and raises deep questions. Moreover, like any serious reflection, it is based on the works of well-known sociologists and historians. However, it is difficult to call it a scientific study, which, of course, in no way reduces its value. The same applies to Valery Ovchinnikov's article "On Orthodox Education in Russia" and even to a certain extent to Sergey Filatov's most voluminous article opening the collection, "Patriarch Kirill - Two years of Plans, dreams and inconvenient reality". The combination of serious journalism with scrupulous scientific work is one of the first things that catches your eye when reading the Orthodox Church under the New Patriarch. This problem, again, could have been avoided if journalistic and scientific articles had been separated into separate parts of the collection. This would even make a good impression: the authors-compilers would offer us an attempt to-

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We need a comprehensive understanding of the current situation of the Russian Orthodox Church, both from scientific and secular, as well as from public and even ecclesiastical positions. But nothing like this has been done, and even on the contrary, journalism and scientific articles in the collection are interspersed with each other without any apparent logic.

Meanwhile, the collection clearly claims to attempt a scientific and detached understanding of church issues. One of its editors, A. Malashenko, in his conclusion writes that in the circles of the Russian Orthodox Church "painfully perceive an objective analysis of the internal church situation, the situation around the church, considering that these problems should be written only by "ecclesiastical" authors who follow official guidelines, and best of all directly employees of church institutions." The author sees in the attempts of such research undertaken in the collection not only a high level of professionalism and objectivity, but even courage. It is not necessary to argue with the fact that some of the clergy are not always ready for a scientific discussion about the problems of the church. The high professionalism of most of the authors of the collection is also not questionable. However, as far as objectivity is concerned, questions arise here, and different approaches to how to understand "objectivity" should have been somehow addressed in the concept of the book.

This is all the more important because some confusion of genres is also found within individual articles. Some of the articles written in a completely scientific manner, involving a large number of sources and studies, clearly and deliberately deviate from the principles of scientific impartiality. I will give examples from the first article of the collection, written by S. Filatov. In the argument about who benefits from restitution, the author writes: "In many places, our polluted and disfigured urban and rural landscapes are being transformed. The eye begins to rejoice more and more often. The Russian people have a strong aesthetic sense, and it finds its satisfaction. Happy victory, gentlemen aesthetes!" (p. 51). Below, we discuss the well-known conflict between Archpriest Pavel Adelheim and Metropolitan Eusebius (Savvin)of Pskov and Velikiye Luki: "Arbitrariness and tyranny, which create a lack of responsibility and destroy a lively initiative, still remain the norm in too many dioceses. How can church life be revived under such arrangements?" (pp. 56-57). At the end of the article, we consider the interaction between the Church and state authorities: "It's hard.-

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put it as if the Russian Orthodox Church believes that the current political system will last in Russia for a long time or that it will remain in the national consciousness for a period that is worth being proud of."

In fact, the collection is so diverse that it is rather difficult to talk about any common idea or general principle that unites it-except, in fact, for the common subject - the Russian Orthodox Church.

Of course, many of Filatov's thoughts, both quoted and similar to them, are humanly acceptable. We can also agree that in certain circumstances, their open statement may require courage. But in what sense can such a text claim to be "objective"? Can we call it scientific analysis? It seems to us that only with great reservations.

Although to a much lesser extent, the same reproaches can be attributed to the articles of Alexander Verkhovsky and Roman Lunkin. At the same time, like S. Filatov's article, they include a discussion of very interesting issues, including from a scientific point of view, and they should be discussed in more detail.

A. Verkhovsky's article "Nationalism of the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church in the first decade of the XXI century" raises the topic of an expanded (or rather narrowed) interpretation of the term "nationalism" in Russian science in general and in religious studies in particular. The views of the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church are considered as one of the forms of ethno-cultural and civilizational nationalism. There is also a high-level review of the Russian Orthodox Church's contacts with secular nationalist groups and, in the author's understanding, nationalist-oriented groups within the state authorities.

Roman Lunkin's article "The Image of the Russian Orthodox Church in Secular Mass Media: between the Myth of the state Church and folklore-occult Orthodoxy" provides a really rather detailed and in-depth analysis of the ideas about the Russian Orthodox Church in the print press and on television in the last two decades. The picture created by the author is largely fair. However, it is very surprising that R. Lunkin pays relatively little attention to the coverage of the Russian Orthodox Church on the Internet, primarily in electronic publications. This is quite understandable when we talk about the media image of the Church in the 1990s. However if the focus of the collection was still the years of the pa's rule-

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If it is necessary to recognize that, in any case, for young Russians (including believers), the Internet has come out as a source of information, if not in the first, then in any case in the second place, significantly ahead of traditional newspapers and magazines. The author of the article clearly confirms this: in the list of sources he used, the Internet versions of well-known newspapers clearly prevail over print ones, but the actual Internet newspapers and news feeds (not to mention reputable blogs) completely fell out of his analysis.

How relevant is this book? There are articles in it that do not pretend to introduce any supernova materials into circulation, but give a useful repetition and generalization of what has been done. So, for example, Andrey Okara in the article " The Ukrainian Orthodox Church (of the Moscow Patriarchate): between exarchate and autocephaly" does not offer the reader any significant new discoveries. However, the author shows in detail the internal discussions in the UOC-MP, which are relatively little known to readers in Russia, and this already makes the article useful and necessary. The same applies, for example, to many points in the article by Boris Knorre. For example, a full list of church social institutions, projects and initiatives, of course, was not news to people who follow the life of the modern Russian Orthodox Church, but in the context of the article it is justified.

In general, however, I must say that, despite interesting generalizations, reality is developing so rapidly that many of the authors ' conclusions, not to mention the materials they used, become outdated very quickly. This is the huge complexity of all over-current topics. The inevitable risk of rapid obsolescence is always present in the research of modern social processes. To justify the authors of the "Orthodox Church under the New Patriarch", we would like to say that the concentration of new events in the life of the Russian Orthodox Church in late 2011 and early 2012 is truly unparalleled since the election of Patriarch Kirill, and this period could not be covered by the authors. This is why the book does not include, and unfortunately could not include, the analysis of the October-November 2011 presentation of the Belt of the Virgin to Russia, much less the performance of Pussy Riot, the media scandals of spring 2012, and the initiatives of the Inter-Council Council, which caused extremely heated discussions in both church and secular circles. presences for the reorganization of church life.

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The "Pussy Riot" campaign alone has generated such a large number of responses in the print and electronic press, as well as on television, that it could well have served as a reason for an independent article.

If we talk about the general shortcomings of the collection, we can note two more important points. Apparently, the collection has not been seriously edited. This is clearly evidenced by a lot of very eloquent little things. For example, in S. Filatov's article, the same passage is repeated almost verbatim at the beginning and middle of the article (on 16 and 62 pages, respectively). The lack of general editing (and such minor details would not pass even the most superficial attention of the editor) is probably due to the lack of some uniformity in the very concept of the collection, as we discussed above. This circumstance significantly complicates both the reading of the book and its analysis.

More importantly, when the reader closes the book, he can hardly determine to whom the "Orthodox Church under the New Patriarch" was addressed. Professional religious scholars, as well as political scientists and sociologists interested in religious issues? Such collections are necessary, and very few have been published recently.

But for professional religious scholars, even in the strictly scientific articles of the new collection, there is hardly anything significantly new.

Perhaps the book is intended for, as it is commonly said, "the widest range of intelligent readers"? Such collections are also needed, and general review articles by S. Filatov or Hegumen Peter (Meshcherinov) can really interest people who are superficially familiar with church life, but are interested in it. However, they will hardly need the highly specialized analysis of B. Knorre or A. Pchelintsev.

Is the book also intended for religious studies students? The purpose is the most noble, and there are successful experiments in this genre. However, the "Orthodox Church under the new Patriarch" rather, by providing students with a huge amount of diverse information, will not so much help students understand a difficult situation, but may even confuse them in part-precisely because of the lack of a single structure, a single concept, genre mixing, etc.

The only one, in our opinion, and the most likely reader of the book, for whom it will certainly be useful, is a journalist who has general information about the life of the Russian Orthodox Church and the ability to independently extract

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information, but in need of some guidance that this collection can give him. Despite some confusion caused by the discrepancy between the quality of individual articles and the artificiality of their connection and other "structural" shortcomings, we emphasize once again that all this does not in any way negate the depth, scientific and journalistic benefits, or relevance of some of the articles included in the book. Many of the issues raised require serious analysis and were well covered in the collection: among them are the specifics of the program and policy of the new patriarch, trends in social service, disputes over the participation of the Russian Orthodox Church in the educational process, and the dynamics of the image of the Russian Orthodox Church in the mass media and in the mass consciousness.

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