Russian Patriotic Anti-Globalism: Fighting the New World Order, the Mark of the Beast (666) and the coming Global Apocalypse *

Catherine J. Danks, Department of History, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK

* Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the ‘Nationalist Myths and the Modern Media’ conference at Chatham House, London 22-23 October 2003, and at the Global Studies Association conference at Brandeis University, USA 23-26 April 2004.

Introduction

Since the demise of soviet socialism and the disintegration of the USSR, Russia has become open to global economic, cultural, social and technical forces on an unprecedented scale. The collapse of the soviet state and economy meant that in the 1990s the new Russian Federation experienced both instability and vulnerability in the face of globalisation. For Russia’s economic liberals such as Yegor Gaidar, Yeltsin’s economics minister or Andrei Illarionov, Putin’s former economic adviser, a neo-liberal economic agenda and democratisation presents Russians with the best way forward. However, the New Left and Greens, fundamentalists within the Russian Orthodox Church (Russkaia Pravoslavnaia Tserkov, hereafter RPTs) and other champions of Russian Patriotism such as Eurasianists, oppose the post-soviet political elite’s adoption of a westernising agenda. These orientations form the core of Russia’s anti-globalisation thinkers and activists, including the leftist alter-globalists and the patriotic anti-globalists. For Russia’s alter-globalists globalisation is driven by the imperatives of global capitalism, but an alternative globalisation is possible. In contrast for Russian anti-globalists globalisation is a clash of civilisations, with the West pitted against Russia. Moreover, for RPTs fundamentalists, globalisation is driven by a Masonic-Jewish conspiracy to destroy Russia and ‘666’, the mark of the beast, is literally embedded in the bar codes that are so essential to globalisation. This paper introduces Russian anti-globalisation and then focuses on the Eurasianist and fundamentalist RPTs anti-globalism.

Background

The political and economic context

In 1992 President Yeltsin set out to open Russia to the world in order to remove the communist legacy and to modernise as quickly as possible. Yeltsin had been elected as Russian president with the campaign slogan ‘Russia First!’ linking marketisation and democratisation with the promotion of Russia’s interests. Following Gorbachev’s lead Yeltsin stressed Russia’s ‘western identity’ linking this western identity with reform just as Gorbachev had linked the USSR’s presence in the ‘Common European Home’ with Reconstruction. The new foreign minister Andrei Kozyrev pursued an Atlanticist approach to foreign affairs, which meant that Russia’s new allies were the USSR’s erstwhile capitalist foes the USA, Japan and Western Europe. Kozyrev was soon dubbed the ‘Minister for Foreign Affairs in Russia’ and Atlanticism was reviled by Yeltsin’s opponents as the abandonment of Russian national interests. Prime Minister Gaidar, following the neo-liberal prescription of the IMF representative Jeffrey Sachs, initiated a programme of economic shock therapy, which rapidly led to the pauperisation of the mass of the Russian people.

Globalisation and anti-globalisation in Russia

The term globalisation (globalizatsiia) is not well known or understood by the Russian public. A survey on 'Globalization and its Opponents' conducted by the Russian Public Opinion Foundation in June 2007, found that only forty-four per cent of respondents had heard of globalisation. Of these twenty per cent (that is nine per cent of those surveyed) has a positive opinion of globalisation, eighteen per cent (or eight per cent of those surveyed) viewed globalisation negatively and the rest were either indifferent or undecided (ibid.). Three per cent of those surveyed believed that globalisation was politically and economically harmful to Russia. Two per cent believed that globalisation endangered Russia’s culture and that ‘they impose on us a way of life in which money is everything, which is alien to us,’, ‘our country is more spiritually advanced, and we would lose our identity,’ and finally that ‘the trash culture of the West will dominate our culture.’ (ibid.) Although only a minority of Russians have heard of the term ‘globalisation’, other surveys conducted by the Public Opinion Foundation on issues as varied as Russia’s relations with other states and the impact of economic change, do reveal generalised concerns about the country’s westernising agenda in the 1990s. The fact that anti-globalisation does not appear to be a mass concern in Russia and that anti-globalisation demonstrations are poorly attended, is more a reflection of the low level of development of civil society in general than a lack of concern about the impact of globalisation.

Alter-globalism

The alter-globalists or advocates of alternative globalisation are mostly from the New Left, including Trotskyites, Social Democrats, Democratic Socialists and Greens. Their basic impulses are internationalist and they work with fellow activists across state, national, religious and cultural boundaries. Russian Alter-globalists therefore participate in the World Social Forum and the European Social Forum and support the slogan ‘Another world is possible’. Alter-globalists are pro-democracy, anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist, in favour of a fairer division of the world’s resources and are sceptical of the role of organisations such as the G8, International Monetary Fund and World Trade Organisation. Boris Kagarlitsky (1997), one of Russia’s leading alter-globalists organised a Russian Social Forum in August 2005 in Moscow and a second Russian Social Forum in St. Petersburg in July 2006 at the same time as the G8 was meeting in the city. Kagarlitsky was a founder of the Party of Labour and is an adviser to the chair of the Independent Trade Unions of Russia and a regular contributor to The Moscow Times and the Eurasian Home and Znet websites. In 2006 Kagarlitsky produced a report on corruption in Russia’s political parties that led to his sacking as the director of the Moscow think tank the Institute of Globalisation and Social Movements (IPROG) by its founder Mikhail Delyagin, who is also the head of policy planning for the patriotic Rodina [Homeland] party. Aleksandr Buzgalin (2002, 2003, 2004) is another leading Alter-globalist and co-organiser of the Russian Social Forum (Buzgalin, 2006). He is an economics professor at Moscow State University and founder of the Alter-globalist 'Alternatives' [Alternativy] movement.

Anti-globalism

Anti-globalism is based upon a ‘Patriotic’ commitment to Russia and its advocates believe in the predatory intent of other countries and cultures but especially of the West, towards Russia. At the beginning of the 1990s the term Red-Brown was coined in Russia to describe the strange alliance of Stalinists, communists, nationalists, Eurasianists and fascists who share many political beliefs. Eurasianism for example, is championed by both Gennady Zyuganov’s Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) and Aleksandr Dugin’s neo-fascist Eurasian Party (Ingram, 2001). Such groups and parties describe themselves as patriots standing for a strong Russia against western capitalist and civilisational predation; unsurprisingly they reject internationalism and cosmopolitanism. Russian anti-globalism owes a great deal to the soviet era discourse’s anti-capitalism, anti-westernism and anti-Americanism, with its concerns about the USSR’s (Russia’s) vulnerability in the face of the anti-soviet economic and military onslaught. Such ideas were, for example, expressed by Zyuganov (2002) in his Globalization and the Future of Humankind.

The publication in 1996 of Samuel Huntington’s The Clash of Civilisations and the Remaking of World Order was interpreted by Russian patriots as evidence that the USA saw itself as engaged in a clash of civilisations with Russia. Huntington’s ideas also fitted well with the civilisational approach to history that became popular in Russia in the 1990s and is used by anti-globalists including the historian Sergei Kara-Murza (2002), the novelist and publisher Aleksandr Prokhanov and Russian Orthodox fundamentalists such as the late Metropolitan Ioann of St. Petersburg and Lagoda and Metropolitan Kirill, the head of the Foreign Relations Department of the Moscow Patriarchate. A typical Russian anti-globalist protestor is likely to be a pensioner holding a portrait of Stalin, an Orthodox Christian who believes in the truth of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and their important warning for today, or a young skin head clutching a hammer and a sickle. For example, Anti-war demonstrations organised by anti-globalists in March 2003, were small and attended mostly by members of the National Bolshevik movement, who sport shaven heads and nationalist symbols, and a few pensioners (Titova, 2003, 5).

Eurasianism

Eurasianism from Berdyaev to Gumilev

Eurasianism was originally developed after the Bolshevik revolution by Russian exiles as an alternative ideology to Bolshevism, and as a way of challenging the dichotomy in Russian C19th thinking between Westernisers and Slavophiles. The leading Eurasianist thinkers - Prince Nikolai Trubetskoi, George Florovsky and Pyotr Savitsky - published their Iskhod k vostoku [Exodus to the East] in Sofia in 1921. During the Reconstruction period (1985-91) all nationalities within the USSR took the opportunity of the somewhat freer atmosphere to investigate their histories and cultures. Eurasianism, which was already well known amongst intellectuals was revived and brought to a wider audience. In 1989 Sergei Zalygin (1913-2000) a ‘village prose’ writer and editor of the influential journal Novy Mir [New World] reprinted an article by the Eurasianist philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev (1874-1948). Berdyaev (1947) argued that material development with its need for a market, private property and scientific technical progress was a universal value and necessary for Russia. Nonetheless he described the struggle between Russia and the West as one of the ‘spirit’ versus ‘machine’ Berdyaev contrasted western materialism with Russian spirituality and believed in Russia’s uniqueness (samobytnost’).

The leading Eurasianist thinker in the USSR was Lev Gumilev (2002) who argued that history is not as Marxists would argue the history of class struggles, but rather the history of nations, which he termed ethnoses. Gumilev argued that it was possible for two or more nations to unite to form a super-ethnos, and that 500 years ago the Eastern Slavs (Russian, Ukrainians and Belarussians), Mongols and Tatars had fused to form a super-ethnos. A thousand years before that a Teutonic and Latin super-ethnos had formed in Western Europe and that since then it had presented a constant threat to the Slav-Tatar-Mongol super-ethnos. In contrast to the idea that Russia had saved Europe and Christendom from the Mongol hordes, Gumilev argued that it was the military prowess of the Mongols that had saved the Eastern Slavs from the predation of the West. Gumilev’s concept of ethnos is not defined in racial terms but rather in terms of the link between the ethnos and its ancestral lands. This gives rise to the concept of a parasite ethnos, an ethnos that has lost its ancestral land and survives as a parasite on another ethnos – in Russia that means the Jews. According to Gumilev there are also parasite states, which lack their own dynamism and survive by living off the resources and culture of another ethos - the USA is a parasite state.

Eurasianism and anti-globalism

Reconstruction saw the development of a range of new political groupings and organisations that challenged the hegemony of the CPSU. At this time the CPSU was also beginning to fragment and Gennady Zyuganov, who would head the new Russian Communist Party at its foundation in 1990, and other Russian Communists began to elaborate a Russian-oriented form of communism. From 1988 the CPSU had already begun to publish a wide range of non-communist Russian thinkers, including the works of Lev Gumilev. This seems a strange partnership, as Gumilev was vehemently anti-Marxist and believed that Bolshevism was totally alien to Russians. For Gumilev Marxism and Bolshevism embodied alien Western and Jewish values, and so could bring nothing but harm to Russia. In Eurasianism the communists found ideas that stress the differences between Russian and European civilisation, are sceptical of capitalism and depict Russia as a unique historical and cultural fusion of Slav and Turkic, Russian Orthodox and Islamic elements. Eurasianism can also be used to justify the need for Russia to have a powerful state and the belief that Russia must unite Eurasia’s different ethnicities to counter globalisation.

Since the early 1990s Eurasianism and its attendant anti-globalism have become the dominant discourse of opposition politics in Russia. Other political parties espousing these ideas include Zhirinovsky’s Liberal Democratic Party of the Russian Federation, the Russian – All-Popular Union, the Russian Party and the National Republic Party. Eurasianism also forms the ideological underpinning of the anti-globalism social movement called the Patriotic Youth Organisation headed by Mikhail Kuznetsov whose supporters wear hammer and sickle armbands. In 2001 the philosopher Alexander Dugin who is also on the editorial board of the newspaper Zavtra, founded the Eurasia All-Russia Social-Political Movement with the express aim of countering American globalisation with Eurasianism. Talgat Tadjuddin, the Supreme Mufti of Russia and the European Countries of the CIS and chair of the Central Muslim Spiritual Board, the board’s leaders and the majority of its members have also joined the Eurasia movement ( Eurasia Information-Analytical Portal).

The development of the Eurasian, ‘Patriotic’, media

The alliance of Russia’s Red-Brown forces is symbolised in the development and content of the ‘Patriotic’ media, that publishes writers, publicists, and thinkers who reflect the broad range of political tendencies, but who share Eurasianism and anti-globalism amongst their portfolio of beliefs. Even before the demise of the USSR Zyuganov worked closely with the Eurasianist Aleksandr Prokhanov, the editor of the Russian Nationalist weekly Den’ [Day]. When Den’ was banned in 1993 it was renamed Zavtra [Tomorrow] and began devoting a regular page to Eurasianism, providing a forum for ethnic Russians and Muslims. Zavtra now carries a diet of anti-globalism, anti-western and anti-Semitic articles. Vladimir Bondarenko the first deputy editor of Zavtra is a monarchist. Zavtra is the most popular of the national-patriotic newspapers and supported Zyuganov in his failed bid for the presidency in 2000. Prokhanov is also editor-in-chief of the KPRF newspaper Sovietskaia Rossiia [Soviet Russia], which carries a very similar diet of views to Zavtra. Molodaia Gvardiia [The Young Guard] the monthly literary and socio-political journal of the Union of Russian writers sports hammers and sickles, pictures of Russian historic heroes such as Aleksandr Donskoi, pictures of Stalin and the Tsars, and articles by the Metropolitan Ioann and Gennady Zyuganov have appeared in the same issue. Similarly, the typical offerings in the weekly newspaper Russkii Vestnik [Russian Herald] edited by A. A. Senin for the International Fund of Slavic writing and culture are articles about the RPTs, pictures of the tsars, saints, heroic Russian military figures, and a regular column by the Cossack colonel A. A. Naimov. Russkii Vestnik in keeping with the Eurasian acceptance of Islam also publishes articles by Muslims such as Farid Salman the deputy chair of the Central Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Russia. In contrast religions which are deemed alien to Russia such as Catholicism, are a targeted for attack. For example, Russkii Vestnik’s No. 7 issue in 2002 carried a special edition on anti-Catholicism, which included an article entitled ’Catholicism the enemy of Orthodox Russia’ (Russkii Vestnik no.7 2002: 4) and another entitled ‘The thousand-year Catholic expansion’ (ibid: 6).

The shared beliefs of the Eurasianist-Patriotic anti-globalists

Russia’s anti-globalists believe that globalisation is profoundly anti-Russian and that globalisation is being used by foreign countries to dominate and ultimately destroy Russia. The anti-globalists’ shared beliefs can be summarised under four main headings.

First, globalisation is not a spontaneous process but the deliberate strategy of the world’s financial and economic elite to achieve world domination. Neo-liberalism and the post-communist New World Order’s institutions such as the WTO, World Bank, G7, the IMF and NATO, and transnational corporations seek to weaken the nation state and take over their prerogatives in the interests of this elite. The Eurasianist philosopher and professor of political science at Moscow State University Aleksandr Panarin (1998, 2002) for example describes globalisation as an elite-driven phenomenon, and as a transnational exclusive club and talks about ‘the dictatorship of globalism’ (Panarin 2002: 63)

Secondly, the financial-economic elite directing globalisation lack a national and cultural identity and need to destroy nation states and cultures to achieve their ends. The financial-economic elite already dominates Western Europe and the USA. The New World Order is part of America’s attempt to destroy national cultures in its pursuit of homogeneity. America pollutes other countries culturally and environmentally. Russian civilisation is uniquely placed because of its affinity with other Eurasian cultures and religions to unite the Eurasian civilisations against the West in general and the USA in particular.

Thirdly, the financial-economic elite is characterised by its secretive behaviour and has new technologies, including the mass communication technologies, and vast financial resources at its disposal. Aleksandr Zinoviev (2000a) for example warns of a new totalitarianism and that globalisation might lead to the establishment of a world government (globalism) which would seek complete control over everybody whilst Panarin (2002:111-119) talks of the, ‘American totalitarian complex’

Finally, Russia has been under attack by forces working on behalf of the economic-financial elite for centuries, but remains the only obstacle to their world domination. The historian Igor Froianov for example argues that both the Bolshevik Revolution and the collapse of the USSR were part of a sustained war against Russia. According to Froianov the 1917 October Revolution was not only due to the intrigues of ‘Jewish conspiracies’ but even of an undefined ‘overwhelming Evil’ whose main task is to destroy ‘the spiritual and loved-by God Russian nation’ (Sodman, 2002). Froianov is anti-Lenin but praises Stalin for recreating the powerful Russian state (derzhavnost’). Froianov also describes Gorbachev’s Reconstruction as a preparatory step for the manipulation of Russia by external forces, and that the period of the so-called ‘democratic reforms’ was the second edition of the October Revolution 1917, the resolution of the revolution against Russia (Froianov: 2002d, 195). For Froianov, Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin both acted on behalf of the elite driving globalisation against the interests of Russia.

The Russian Orthodox Church (RPTs)

Patriarch Alexii II and Metropolitan Kirill

In 988 Prince Vladimir of Kiev was baptised a Christian and from then on there was a symbiotic relationship between the Russian state and Orthodoxy. Before the Bolshevik revolution the Russian monarchy was the protector of the RPTs and in 2000 the RPTs canonised the last Tsar Nikolai II and his family. Since becoming Patriarch of Moscow and All-Russia in 1990, Alexii II has single-mindedly sought to resurrect the RPTs’s close relationship with the state and to ally himself first with Yeltsin and then Putin. In 1997 this approach secured a new federal law ‘On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations’ which protected Russia’s ‘traditional religions’ (RPTs, Islam, Buddhism and Judaism) against other ‘alien’ religions and sects such as the American Protestant missionaries who arrived with the end of soviet socialism. Under Alexii the RPTs has sought good relations with Russia’s other ‘traditional' religions, is anti-Marxist, but is also sceptical about capitalism, consumerism and materialism. The RPTs while seeking Yeltsin’s support in the 1990s also made common cause with the KPRF to challenge Yeltsin’s westernism and any manifestation of a lack of patritotism on his part.

Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad (born Vladimir Gundyaev in 1946) is a close ally of Alexii II and chairs the Department for External Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate. Since 1989 Kirill has been active in the RPTs’s ecumenical activities, but both Alexii and Kirill have opposed the ‘encroachment’ of Roman Catholicism into Russia. In the statement entitled ‘Foundations of the Russian Orthodox Church’ issued in August 2000, Alexii and Kirill explain that globalisation will inevitably lead to the kingdom of the anti-Christ and that the RPTs’s role is to defend Russia’s national and religious identity. The document states that:

‘Spiritual and cultural expansion aimed at the total unification [of humanity] should be opposed by the joint efforts of Church, state, civil society, and international organisations with a view to promoting a truly equitable and mutually enriching exchange of information and cultural values, combined with efforts to protect the identity of nations and other human conditions.’ (RPTS, 2000)

Alexii and Kirill therefore oppose the homogenisation of religions and cultures in the face of the forces of globalisation and believe that the RPTs has a leading role in defending Russia.

Russian Orthodox fundamentalism

Fundamentalists within the RPTs go further than Patriarch Alexii’s conservative-nationalist condemnation of globalisation. The fundamentalists are anti-modernisation and anti-western, and use ‘liberal’ and ‘western’ as synonyms for the Jewish-Masonic conspiracy, which they believe is using globalisation to destroy Russia, in order to take over the world. The fundamentalists have an idealised concept of the pre-revolutionary Russian Orthodox monarchy, which they view as the stronghold of Orthodoxy's fight against the Jewish-Masonic conspiracy. Metropolitan Ioann (1927-1995) was the inspiration for the growth in fundamentalism within the RPTs in the 1990s. Fundamentalists inspired by Ioann and led by Ioann's former aide Konstantin Dushenov , began campaigning in 1995 for the canonisation of Grigory Rasputin and Ivan the Terrible (Zolotov, 2003). They describe Rasputin as an orthodox priest sent by God to protect the Imperial Family and the Orthodox Church against the Jewish-Masonic plot that was intent of destroying both them and Russia. In reality Rasputin’s killer was Prince Feliks Yusupov a monarchist who acted with the knowledge of Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich.

Father Ioann and Orthodox Anti-Globalism

‘Within the Church there flourishes a powerful anti-globalist movement based upon the ideas of Orthodox fundamentalism. Moreover the lower one goes in the Church hierarchy, the farther from the control of the Patriarchate, the more radical the movement becomes.’ (Verkhovsky, 2001). In his The Battle for Russia Ioann declared that,

‘Today, as never before, we need to understand that everything happening today to our country is but an episode in this centuries-old battle for Russia, a spiritual organism holding in her depths the life-giving secret of a way of life guided by higher religious conscience and illuminated by faith.’ (The Orthodox Anti-Globalist Resource Center web site)

Globalisation is just the latest round in the centuries long battle to destroy Russia. For the fundamentalists the pre-Revolutionary Orthodox monarchy was destroyed as part of the conspiracy against Russia led by Jews and Masons. Ioann for example obliquely argued that the anti-semitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion have been authenticated by developments since their publication. He wrote,

‘the 'Protocols' may or may not be authentic, but the eighty years which have passed since their appearance gives us ample material for reflection, for world history, as if submitting to the will of an unseen dictator, has followed the plan laid forth in the 'Protocols' ' pages to a surprising degree. And this time the common fate of Mankind has not passed Russia by. Judge for yourself.’ (ibid.)

Needless to say the Russian fundamentalists vehemently oppose the Orthodox Church’s heretical ecumenical activities. On his St. Petersburg TV programme Kolokol [The Bell] Father Masiuk condemned the current practice of accepting Jewish members of Russia’s political and economic elite into the Orthodox Church. He also denounced Vladimir Kotlyarov, Ioann’s successor as Metropolitan, ‘who is a Jew and naturally a proponent of the most liberal ‘ecumenical’ views.’ (Masiuk, 2003).

For Ioann the end of the USSR brought Russia into the hostile ‘New World Order’. In his The March of the Destroyers he wrote,

‘All it took was the lifting of the 'iron curtain' for Russian man to get a taste of the 'fruits of civilisation'; the limitless cynicism and shamelessness of the much-praised 'free world' are now evident to anyone with even a shred of moral sense. On the ruins of once-Christian nations the hideous Tower of Babel of the 'New World Order' is being erected, with the help of innumerable trans-national banks, funds, committees, summit meetings and organisations. Russia has long been a thorn in the side of its builders.’ (Ioann op cit.)

The anti-Russian forces of Western Christian heretics, Jews and Masons are still intent on destroying Russia by foisting liberalism and atheism upon them. International capitalism and organisations are now part of the plot to destroy Russia. Masiuk describes globalisation as resting on three pedestals financial economic, informational and mental globalisation. That the 'creators of the New World Order have to unify the consciousness of man' and that ‘globalization won’t be realizable until the human spirit is unified’ (Masiuk, 2003).

Individual Identity Numbers (INN) and the anti-Christ

The rise of the ‘New World Order’ is of concern to all members of the RPTs, but in the late 1990s fundamentalists within the Greek and Russian Orthodox Churches identified portents of a looming apocalypse. The alarm was first raised by Greek Orthodox churchmen such as Archimandrite Nektarios who in 1997 asked why the numbers 666, the number of the beast, the seal of the anti-Christ and herald of the apocalypse, were included in the security strips in the new Schengen zone passports (Tikhon, 2000). It then transpired that the numbers 666 are found throughout the world in all magnetic security strips on items such as credit cards and the bar codes (UEA-UPC) on retail goods (see Appendix One). In response to the Biblical prohibition in Revelations 13:16-18 against buying and selling the mark of the beast, fundamentalists within the RPTs declared that Russians should not use credit cards or buy any item with a bar code.

The fundamentalist campaign then escalated into a direct confrontation with the Russian government. Throughout the 1990s the Russian government had been under pressure from the IMF to reform its tax laws and to improve its rate of tax collection. As part of its reforms the government proposed that each person would have their own Individual Identity Number (INN) contained on a magnetic strip. In the autumn 1999 the fundamentalists began to organise petitions against the introduction of INNs, which in addition to including the feared 666, also they believed marked an attempt by government to substitute a number for an individual’s Orthodox Christian name. The homepage of the social movement ‘For the Right to Live without INN’ web page shows dehumanised zombie-like people with bar codes stamped on their heads (see Appendix Two). A further concern was that the INNs entail the computer registration of all Russian citizens, which the fundamentalists believe would result in Russians being included on the world registration system controlled by the anti-Russian forces of evil: World Jewry, Free Masons, the West and the New World Order. In March 2000 the Holy Synod fearing a rift within the Church took a compromise position, which recognised that the INNs did contain the numbers 666 but that they were not the seal of the anti-Christ (see Holy Synod, 2000), they also called upon the authorities to develop an alternative system for monitoring tax payments for those who did not want an INN.

The issue of the INN stood on a major fault line within the RPTs. On one side stood Alexii II, Metropolitan Kirill and their allies who believe that compromise between believers and the state could and should be reached on this issue. On the other the fundamentalists, many of whom are to be found in the monasteries, who believe that the INN had to be defeated in order to avert the apocalypse. Some priests refused to buy bar-coded bottles of communion wine, parishioners threatened to boycott parish priests who accepted an INN and one per-cent of Russians refused to have an INN. The Moscow Patriarchate, Tax Ministry, State Duma and presidential administration were bombarded with anti-INN petitions, and Alexii II and the Holy Synod were warned that they would be considered traitors to Orthodoxy if they accepted the INN (Zolotov, 2001a). The RPTs was becoming increasingly polarised, and anti-INN campaigners within the RPTs made common cause with Russian Nationalist, Eurasianists and anti-Globalists. For example on 23rd January 2001 the State Duma held consultations on the theme ‘Globalization and personal codes as an issue of the worldview choice of a contemporary human being’ (see Appendix Three)

The Final Document adopted by the Theological Commission (an advisory body to the Holy Synod) meeting in February 2001 rejected the belief that the bar codes and INN had an apocalyptic significance and condemned the anti-INN campaigners. However, Patriarch Alexii II’s pastoral message read in all Russian Orthodox churches on 11 March, while condemning the anti-INN movement as threatening to undermine church unity, did not condemn it as heretical. Alexii II asserted that the decision to accept or reject an INN was a matter of a citizen’s free will and not a doctrinal matter. Gennady Bukayev, the Minister of Taxes and Charges stated in January 2001 that INNs were compulsory for businessmen and organisations, but that ordinary individuals would not be required to adopt them. By the beginning of 2003, one per cent of Russians had refused an INN, as only an estimated two to four per cent of the population are regular churchgoers this suggests that a significant proportion of practicing Russian Orthodox believers have participated in the boycott (Zolotov, 2000b). By giving Russians a choice about INNs the fundamentalists and anti-globalists have been outmanoeuvred on this issue and the website of the ‘Social Movement for the Right to exist without INN’ has been removed from the web, however anti-globalism remains a powerful force within the RPTs.

The Fundamentalist Orthodox media

The fundamentalist, anti-Globalist leaders of the anti-INN campaign use both the print media and, despite their concerns about computers, the world-wide web to disseminate their views. Archimandrite Tikhon (born Georgy Shevkunov in 1958) the initiator of the anti-INN campaign and rumoured to be President Putin’s confessor, is the Father Superior of Moscow’s Sretensky’s Monastery, which has one of the largest Orthodox publishing houses in Russia (Pravda, 2003). Tikhon is also on the editorial board of the magazine Russkii Dom [Russian House] (Cherepov, 2000). Tikhon works closely with Konstantin Dushenov, the Editor-in-Chief of Rus Pravoslavnaia [Orthodox Rus] a religious supplement to the Communist newspaper Sovetskaia Rossiia. There are several Orthodox anti-globalisation web sites including the ‘Orthodox Anti-Globalist Resource Centre’, Stoianie za Istinu [The Stopping Place for Truth], which has a section on globalisation and the Russkaia Liniia [Russian Line] website maintained by the Orthodox Information Agency of St. Petersburg. Russkaia Liniia whose editor-in-chief is Sergei Grigoryev, provides a platform for Dushenov’s ‘Society of Devotees to the Memory of Metropolitan Ioann’, and a range of Eurasian and patriotic activists and thinkers. For example Russikaia Liniia carries the materials of a conference on ‘The Global Problems of World History’ held at the Moscow Social Sciences Academy in January 2002, which discussed various aspects of globalisation and the ‘Zionist factor’. The conference brought together an international gathering of anti-globalisation, chauvinist, fascist and anti-Semitic thinkers such as David Duke the former Ku Klux Klan leader, Boris Milosevic (brother of Slobodan) the former Yugoslav ambassador to Moscow and the soviet-era dissident, mathematician and philosopher Alexander Zinoviev (Zinoviev, 2002) were unable to attend but submitted papers (Sodman, 2002, 1). Similarly absent was Igor Froianov (2002a) who in July 2002 was ousted as head of the History Department of St Petersburg State University amid allegations of anti-semitism.

And finally . . .
For Russia’s patriotic anti-globalists Russia is engaged in a war against an enemy that seeks to destroy it as a state, a culture and an identity. No Peace Treaty is possible. This war began with the creation of the Latin-Teutonic ethnos over two thousand years ago and continues to this day. Alexander Zinoviev for example argues that globalisation goes through various stages, and although globalisation sounds like an ideologically neutral word it is in fact a new world war conducted by the Western world under American leadership. The prize is the whole planet and control of all humanity. As only Russia is powerful enough to oppose these forces, Russian patriotic anti-globalists believe that Russia must preserve its culture and promote its spiritual heritage. This means that they are culturally and socially extremely conservative; Russian identity and society should not change and so this is not an ideology of social revolt. The anti-globalists are anti-capitalist because capitalism is inimicable to Russia’s supposed collectivist culture and is the herald of foreign influence and possible domination, they therefore favour self-sufficiency and economic protectionism. Russian patriotic anti-globalists differ from most western anti-globalisation activists in their emphasis on the state. Tikhon for example believes that ' . . .the Russian state and Russian Orthodox Church was born almost simultaneously, and the Church became in essence the builder of the state. In periods of the most terrible upheavals and sedition it was the Church that saved our country and statehood, fought for the independence of Russia.' (Cherepov, 2000) The Putin presidency was welcomed by Russian anti-globalists who see him as in the tradition of strong Russian Christian leaders. They believe that in order to resist globalisation Russia needs a strong state, with a unifying state ideology and a powerful military machine, this they believe Putin is capable of delivering. It is a great irony then that the anti-globalists have engaged in a campaign of disobedience against the state through their anti-INNs activities.

References

Berdyaev, Nicolas The Russian Idea London: Centenary Press (trans: R. M. French), 1947
Buzgalin, Aleksandr ‘Russia’s Generation XXI: Pragmatism, Radicalism and Antiglobalism?’, Russian and Eurasia Review 1 (9) 8 October 2002, 9-12
Buzgalin, Aleksandr V. (ed.) Alterglobalizm: teoriya i praktika “antiglobalistskogo” dvizheniia Moscow: Editorial URSS, 2003
Buzgalin, Aleksandr and Andrei Kolganov Global’nyi kapital Moscow: Editorial URSS, 2004

Cherepov, Sergei ‘An Interview with Archimandrite Tikhon (Shevkunov)’, originally published in Russian in Profile (35), 2000. An english translation was made available on The Orthodox Anti-Globalist Resource Centre web site http://oag.ru/tikhon.html on 5 November, 2000
Combined Reports ‘Protestors Hit City’s Street Over Iraq’, St. Petersburg Times 18 February 2003, 1 & 2

Eurasianist Movement ‘Manifesto of the Eurasianist Movement’ Eurasianist Movement website

Froianov, I. Ia. ‘Globalizm i sud’by Rossii’ Doklad doktora istoricheskikh nauk, professora I Ia Froianova na Mezhdunarodnoi konferenstii po global’nym problemam vsemirnoi istorii (29-30 ianvaria 2002 goda, g. Moskva)’ Russkii Vestnik, (19-20) 2002a, 12 also available on the Russkaia Linii Orthodox information agency St Petersburg web site
Froianov, I. Ia. ‘Globalizatsiia nod znakom molota i masterka’, Sovetskaia Rossiia 6 July 2002b, 3-4
Froianov, I. Ia. ‘Arkhtektory, proraby i vol’nye kamenshchiki perestroiki’, Sovetskaia Rossiia 29 July 2002c, 3-4
Froianov, Igor Oktiabr’ semnadsatogo vzgliad iz nastoiashchego Moscow: Eksmo, 2002d

Gumilev, Lev Ot Rusi do Rossii Moscow: Airis Press, 2002

Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church ‘Respect Believers and Maintain Christian Sober-Mindedness’, March 2000, http://www.russian-orthodox-church.org.ru/
Huntington, Samuel P. The Clash of Civilisations and the Remaking of World Order New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996

Ingram, A. ‘Alexander Dugin: geopolitics and neo-fascism in post-Soviet Russia’, Political Geography 20 (8) November 2001, 1029-1051
Ioann, Mitropolit St. Petersburg i Ladozhskogo Bitva za Rossiiu. Pravoslavie i sosvremennost’ St. Petersburg: Press Service Metropolitan St. Petersburg and Ladoga, 1994
Ioann, Mitropolit St. Petersburg i Ladozhskogo (ed) Pravoslavnaia tserkov’ sovremennye eresi i sekty v Rossii St. Petersburg: Pravoslavnaia Rus’,2nd edn. 1995
Ioann, Mitropolit St. Petersburg i Ladozhskogo Russkii Uzel St. Petersburg: Tsarskoe Delo, 2001

Kagarlitsky, Boris et al Globalization and its Discontents. The Rise of Postmodern Socialisms London: Pluto, 1997
Kagarlitsky, Boris ‘Globalisation and Russia’, Znet website March 12, 2001
Kagarlitsky, Boris ‘Facing the Crisis’, Paper presented at the Global Crisis Seminar, Transnational Institute17-18 February 2002
Kagarlitsky, Boris ‘Roots of Anti-Americanism’, The Moscow Times 9 April 2002,
Kara-Murza, Sergei Sovetskaia tsivilizatsiia (2 volumes) Moscow: Algoritm, 2002a
Kara-Murza, Sergei Anti-sovetskii proekt Moscow: Algoritm, 2002b
Kara-Murza, Sergei Evrotsentrizm-edipov kompleks intelligentsii Moscow: Algoritm, 2002c
Kirill, Metropolitan ‘Apocalypse Looms Ahead’, Trud, 20 September 2001, available in English from Russia Weekly, CDI website
Kliuchnikov, B. ‘O globalizatsii, novom totalitarizme i Rossii’, Nash Sovremennik (5-6) 2000

Masiuk, Father Alexey “ “Kolokol” Father Alexey Masiuk discusses the New World Order and the coming Kingdom of the Antichrist”, The Orthodox Anti-Globalist Resource Center website 20 April, 2003

The Orthodox Anti-Globalist Resource Center website

Panarin, A. S. Revansh istorii: Rossiiskaia strategicheskaia initsiativa v XXI veke Moscow: Lotos, 1998
Panarin, Aleksandr Iskushenie globalizmom Moscow: Eksmo-Press, 2002
Platonov, O. A. ‘Globalizastiia i khristianstvo’, Russkaia Liniia 27 January 2002

‘Putin’s – Road to Church’, Pravda 15 January 2003
Reuters ‘Russian first’, The Guardian 2 February 2003, 17

RPTs ‘Foundations of the Russian Orthodox Church’, August 2000, downloaded from http://www.orthodox.org.ru/sd00e.htm. (No longer available)
Russkii Vestnik

Shevkunov, Tikhon ‘The Schengen Zone’, Pravoslavie ili Smert' ' [ Orthodoxy or death] The Orthodox Anti-Globalist Resource Center web site (15) 2000
Social movement For the Right to Live without INN, the movement’s web site URL was http://infolab.spb.ru/anti-inn/index.htm, but the site is no longer available.
Sodman, Mina ‘RUSSIA – Revisionists gather in Moscow’, Searchlight March 2002

Titova, Irina ‘Anti-War Protests Draw Tepid Response’, St. Petersburg Times 28 March 2003, 5
Verkhovsky, Alexander ‘September 11 and the Orthodox anti-globalism of the Moscow Patriarchate’, Johnson's Russian List 5592 (3) 11 December, 2001
Zinoviev, Aleksandr Global’nyi cheloveinik Moscow: Tsentrpoligraf, 2000a
Zinoviev, Aleksandr Zateia Moscow: Tsentrpoligraf, 2000b
Zinoviev, Aleksandr Gibel’ russkogo kommunizma Moscow: Tsentrpoligraf, 2001
Zinoviev, Aleksandr Katastroika Moscow: Eksmo, 2003
Zolotov Jr, Andrei ‘Antichrist fears sweep Russia, Unnerve Church’, The Moscow Times 21 February 2001a
Zolotov, Andrei ‘Russian Church Reassures Members Who Fear Codes Signify ‘The Beast’ ‘Christianity Today 1 March 2001b
Zolotov, Jr, Andrei ‘Orthodox Church Takes on Rasputin’, The Moscow Times 5 February, 2003
Zyuganov, Gennady Postizhenie Rossii Moscow: Mysl’, 2000
Zyuganov, Gennady Globalizatsiia i sud”ba chelovechestva Moscow: Molodaia Gvardiia, 2002