This chapter is not about the nature of Russian faith or Russian spirituality or the ‘Russian soul’, nor even about the place of religion in Russian culture. The aim is much narrower. We are not concerned with belief, but with identity (in a sense, with beliefs about beliefs, or at least with declarations about beliefs). Nor are we even concerned with the ‘actual’ role of religion in Russian national identity, but merely with the roles which have been ascribed to it, with its representations, whether explicit in ideology and thought and propaganda, or implicit in other forms of cultural production. We start with a broad survey over the course of a millennium, before looking more closely at some of the ways in which the issue is reflected in specific materials.

OVERVIEW: BELIEFS ABOUT BELIEFS

Towards the end of the tenth century – the conventional date is 988 – Prince Vladimir Sviatoslavich of Kiev ‘officially’ converted his people, the Rus (Russia was originally a Latin word meaning the Land of the Rus) to Christianity.