Resurrection of the Russian Orthodox Church:

Narrative of Analysis of the Russian

∗
National Myth

Emily Belle Damm, Mississippi State University

Skye Cooley, Mississippi State University

Objective. The following research is a qualitative and narrative analysis aimed at understanding
Russia’s recent emphasis on the importance of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) to discover
the narrative frameworks on national myth put forth by authoritarian regimes help maintain state
legitimacy. Methods. The researchers utilized the M3S open-source intelligence platform at Texas
A&M University to analyze the news coverage events on the state-controlled broadcast media
Rossiya24 from November 30, 2014 to November 30, 2015. Results. The researchers found four
narrative components utilized as part of the national myth discourse: the reconciliation of the ROC
and the Russian state, ROC as the unifier of all Slavic people, ROC and Russian moral authority,
and ROC and the Russian citizen. Conclusion. This case study on national legitimacy demonstrates
opportunities for communication scholarship to offer points of impact for policymakers.

The release of the December 2015 Russian National Security Strategy showed a notable
shift by the regime toward a spiritual and moral agenda as part of the national security
focus. The document called for a revision of “traditional Russian spiritual and moral
values” (Putin, 2015), which would directly involve the strengthening of the Russian
Orthodox Church (ROC) in relation to the Russian state. The call for this “traditional”
Russian and spiritual focus came at a time of severe economic decline for Putin’s managed
democracy; one in which Western powers have increasingly spread influence in former
Soviet areas of operations. The move also comes at a time of many high-profile international
events involving Russia (conflict in Ukraine, economic sanctions over the annexation of
Crimea, nuclear power talks with Armenia, expansion of the Eurasian Economic Union, and
revolutions across the Middle East with former Russian allies). The relationship between
the contraction of the Russian economy, economic stability long serving as a legitimizing
force for the Putin regime, and the pivot by the Russian regime to “traditional” spirituality
recalls former Tsarist ideologies of “Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationality.”
This article outlines how state legitimacy is created with discourse involving various
narrative components building toward a national myth. Democratic governments receive
legitimacy through discourse that is culminated in elections from candidate debates and
an apparent dialogue with citizens through the media and other platforms. Since author-
itarian regimes lack a true election component that is reflective of civic discourse, they
manufacture this discourse between citizens and government by utilizing the media as a
tool to disseminate information. To maintain or create legitimacy, authoritarian regimes

∗
Direct correspondence to Emily Damm, Mississippi State University, 701 Cypress Drive, Starkville,
MS 39759 emilybelledamm@gmail.com; Skye Cooley, Mississippi State University, 155 Cherokee Drive,
Starkville, MS 39759 skye.c.cooley@gmail.com.
SOCIAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY, Volume 98, Number 3, September 2017

C 2017 by the Southwestern Social Science Association
DOI: 10.1111/ssqu.12429
Resurrection of the Russian Orthodox Church 943
utilize media to construct narrative frameworks that build a national myth, and sense of
national identity. Monitoring the construction of, alterations to, and dissemination of these
messages is critical for intelligence services and shows the power of communication as a
discipline of study. These constructed narrative frameworks on the national myth serve to
legitimize the regime, and provide points of narrative contact for foreign actors looking to
further bolster, or undermine, the authoritative regime.
Putin’s managed democracy has long been legitimized by narrative discourse on the
Russian economy (Cooley and Stokes, 2017). However, recent failures to the economy
have damaged the foundation of Putin’s legitimacy and left the regime scrambling to find
new ways to legitimize its rule. This research shows one of the ways in which the Putin
regime is drawing on Russian historic and religious roots to create a discourse legitimizing
the state. Namely, Putin’s regime is constructing the framework for a new national myth
centered upon its ties to ROC and church traditions. Utilizing M3S, an open-source
intelligence program, researchers were able to examine the way in which the regime is
shifting discourse to create this new national myth. Though not a comprehensive list of
all the possible ways in which the regime is trying to drive discourse of legitimacy among
its population (military expansion and strength, challenges to the West, historical ties to
Asia, etc.), the construction of legitimacy discourse on the ROC provides a case study for
communication scholarship to be applied to an evolving episode of regime maintenance
that serves to underscore the value of communication to national security. Communication
studies, such as this, show how outside actors can interact with newly constructed discourse
to positively impact or harm the legitimacy of a foreign nation with its own population.
This research represents an attempt to understand the increased call for spiritual and
moral values by the Russian government, as a component of national security, with an
examination of narratives put forth in state-controlled media. The researchers argue that
the narratives put forth by the state concerning spirituality are centered on a national myth
that resurrects the ROC’s relation to the state and represent an effort to relegitimize Putin’s
managed democracy in a discourse unrelated to economic issues.
The primary theoretical gap filled by this study is through the adaptation of Fisher’s
(1984) narrative paradigm and relating the paradigm to the various components of legit-
imization of national myth. This study adds to the literature on national myth creation by
applying the framework of narrative analysis to state-controlled broadcast television news
in the non-Western nation of Russia during times of economic hardships and international
sanctions.
For this article, researchers analyze the way in which the “managed democracy” of the
Russian Federation constructs public narratives concerning the ROC through state-owned
news media in order to legitimize the regime; walking a fine line between news and
propaganda in the new, post-Soviet, Russia. Specifically, this study draws from Fisher’s
(1984) narrative paradigm to examine the state-constructed public narratives in promotion
of a new national myth legitimizing managed democracy.

Literature Review

Rhetoric and the Legitimacy of State Authority

No government, except for the most abusive and tyrannical of regimes, can survive long
without securing and maintaining the consent of its citizens to be governed. Whether a
representative republic, direct democracy, or absolute monarchy, all governments must re-
spond to the interests of their populace or risk rebellion and/or replacement. The legitimacy
944 Social Science Quarterly
on which any government (beyond the purely tyrannical) stands is dependent on the per-
ception of the populace; this legitimation of authority is, in turn, based largely on rhetoric
(Heisey and Trebing, 1986). Kluver (1997) claims that governments can draw legitimacy
from factors of history and economics and that, ultimately, legitimacy is contingent upon
cultural concepts of authority that must be articulated back to citizens from their leaders.
Political legitimacy exists in a culturally specific framework of national myth that substan-
tiates the perceived convergence of legal and moral authority to rule a nation. Legitimacy
is the extent to which the populace views the leader as deserving of that authority and in
line with the culturally specific framework of the national myth (Kluver, 1997). There are
distinctions between internal and external legitimacy; the latter being perceived by external
nations or international bodies, the former concerning itself with the communicative trans-
actions between leaders and citizens within a nation. Kluver claims that internal legitimacy
is a rhetorical negotiation of various forms of political discourse where leaders put forth
certain claims that are accepted or rejected by the population (1997). These rhetorical
claims rely on culture, history, and economics to create a unifying national myth. It is not
necessary for national myths to be true in order to legitimize leaders; they simply need
to create a compelling motivation for collective action. National myths are a fundamental
part of the modern nation-state because it is seen as a rational human achievement that
merits legitimacy. Furthermore, nationalism is propelled forward by myth (Smith, 1991)
and such myth is more easily propagated to the populace in the current era of modern
media.

The Russian Regime’s Control of the Media

The Russian state has consolidated control over media. This allows the state to have a
direct role in crafting narratives for the population. Schenk (2012) noted that the Russian
state has a history of heavy-handed involvement in creating public messages through media
outlets as part of Putin’s “vertical of power” project. Most Russians use the television as their
primary source of news and media broadcasts, in particular, have been guarded closely by
the state (Schenk, 2012). The control of television broadcasts by the Russian state is used
to form a single, controlled, information space for citizens (Simmons, 2005). Since 2005,
the Russian state has taken further measures to tighten control on media by strengthening
media laws against messages deemed capable of causing social strife (CPJ, 2007) and
consolidated virtually all print and broadcast outlets through government subsidies or
ownership by regime loyalists (Schenk, 2012). As a result, according to Oates (2007), all
national television channels are under the direct, or indirect, control of the state. Most
newspapers in the country present narratives that reflect the views of the Putin regime
(Oates, 2007). Such vast control of the media gives the state the ability to reach virtually
every Russian citizen with its created narratives.
Several researchers have focused on the power of broadcast and print news in increasing
public awareness, impacting decision making, and crafting public rhetoric in Western
societies (Wang and Gantz, 2007; Lee et al., 2013; Oksan and Ekim, 2013). However, far
fewer have focused on the types of narratives created in Russian media. The narratives are
not created to obfuscate issues or events. Rather, the state controls the narratives in order
to focus public processing of events and information provided by outside sources.
Through its crafted narratives, Russia’s state-controlled media is able to offer counter-
worldviews to those presented by Western media to Russian citizens. Scholars have shown
Russian media capable of providing ideological positions through narratives on the ethnic
identity of self and other (Levintova, 2010), or issues like drug-use (Lilja, 2013) and
Resurrection of the Russian Orthodox Church 945
homosexuality (Persson, 2015) that provide justifications to the populace for actions taken
by the Russian state. Homosexuality in particular was presented as directly connected to the
West and its claimed agenda to corrupt Russian values in place of Western ones (Persson,
2015).
Persson’s (2015) piece is specifically important because it demonstrates that the Russian
regime does not simply use censorship to deny issues exist, or that certain political events
have taken place. Globalized media and the access provided by the Internet significantly
handicap the ability to prevent audiences from information exposure. What the Russian
regime does in place of outright censorship is to maximize its visibility and reinforce certain
frames of interpretation (Persson, 2015). Similar findings by Hutchings and Szosteck (2015)
relating to Russian actions in Crimea and eastern Ukraine demonstrate that, rather than
denying the events, the Russian state controls media in order to craft and control the
narratives surrounding issues (Hutchings and Szosteck, 2015).
The Russian government has recognized the pervasive power of information access and
perverted it. What becomes truth is less about presenting facts (or even hiding them), and
becomes much more about establishing and controlling the dominant narratives that take
place through all the controlled media channels. Thus, in order for the regime to maintain
legitimacy, it must use the media to both acknowledge the failures of the economy and
establish a national myth through the promotion of other dominant narratives.

Legitimizing “Managed Democracy” Through Economic Strength

Following World War II, Russia has been an important actor in international affairs.
Despite the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia under Vladimir Putin is a nation whose political
interests and actions carry significant weight (Danspeckgruber et al., 2006; Markowitz,
2000; Öksüz, 2009). President Putin has structured the new Russian Federation under
the moniker of “managed democracy,” presenting a state-controlled alternative to versions
of more liberal democracy seen in the West (Fournier, 2015; Krastev and Holmes, 2012;
Petrov and McFaul, 2005). Putin’s more authoritative leanings have been exacerbating by
Western policies, seen from the Russian perspective, aimed toward Westernizing areas of
former Soviet influence. A prevailing sense of distrust between Russia and the West has led
to a barrage of potential conflicts and mounting tensions arising from differing political
alliances and views on the global world order. Conflicts in Libya, Syria, Ukraine, and Iraq,
and resultant migration crises, have led to stark differences in the worldview expressed by
Russia and that of the West in both policy and in media.
These differences have occurred, in part, because of the globalization of Russia and
the resurgence of its economy over the last two decades. Russian citizens have Western
exposure through broadcast and social media as well as increased, and more open, travel
and trade, necessarily exposing a new generation of Russians to democratic ideals and
Western practices. Justifying the existence of a more authoritarian type government to
that of European counterparts became important to the survival of the Russian regime,
and the economy provided a means to accomplish that task. While Putin’s regime did
not necessarily create the economic recoveries that took place following the collapse of the
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the regime was able to capitalize on the correlation
between increased authoritarianism and economic growth. As noted by McFaul and Weiss,
the regime created a narrative of powerful simplicity:
Since 2000, under Putin, order has returned, the economy has flourished, and the average
Russian is living better than ever before. As political freedom has decreased, economic
946 Social Science Quarterly
growth has increased. Putin may have rolled back democratic gains, the story goes, but
these were necessary sacrifices on the altar of stability and growth. (2008:68)
Thus, the legitimacy of Putin’s regime, from the early 2000s onward, rested centrally on
the propagated myth that economic vitality relied on a managed form of democracy, which
presented itself increasingly in contrast to that of the West. Fournier (2015) suggests that
principles of managed democracy reveal an underlying fear that Western influence would
lead to a Russian population desirous of democratic self-rule (Fournier, 2015). As Russians
became increasingly adoptive of democratic ideals, rather than attempt to limit exposure
to the West, or change fundamentally how the state operates, the Russian regime opted
for narrative control. According to Machalek (2008), central to the argument for Putin’s
authoritative style of leadership is to confine the discussion of democracy to one of fairness
toward economic success (Machalek, 2008). Rather than a discussion of democracy being
about abstract freedoms or political values, the scope of what democracy is, or should
be, is altered to a conversation on one’s own ability to attain economic freedom within
the system. As noted in research by Cooley and Stokes (2017), upon which this research
builds, economic viability became the cornerstone narrative justifying and legitimizing
the Russian regime (Cooley and Stokes, 2017). The popularity of Putin and the survival
of his regime in the face of Western democratic influences have relied on the ability to
bring tangible economic gains home for Russian citizens (Machalek, 2008) and to control
the conversation on what a democracy should be doing for its citizens. Russia’s national
myth under Putin has its cornerstones in economic strength and poverty reduction for
the masses: “Our goals are absolutely clear. High living standards in the country, lives that
are safe, free and comfortable, a mature democracy and . most importantly, I’ll repeat, a
substantial increase in society’s well-being” (RFE/RL, 2004). Cooley and Stokes (2017)
note the Russian state provided citizens with a national myth justifying limited political
freedoms by narrowing the available narratives on democracy to that of fairness, economic
strength, and a sense of national pride (Cooley and Stokes, 2017).

Challenges to the National Myth of Economic Strength and Managed Democracy

New economic realities have challenged the legitimacy of the Putin regime by calling into
question the established national myth of economic strength through managed democracy.
The Russian economic woes of the past 18 months are largely products of the economic
sanctions put in place by Western nations in response to developments in Crimea and
Ukraine (Cooper, 2014; Ericson and Zeager, 2015; Kalotay, 2014), the dramatic drop in
the price of oil (Cooper, 2014; Cunningham, 2015), and the sharp decline in tax revenues
(Johnson, 2015). The Russian economy is “contracting at the fastest pace since the depths
of the 2008–08 global financial crisis” (Johnson, 2015).
The effects have been dramatic on the value of the Russian ruble. Russian citizens have
seen their purchasing power cut sharply, threatening the viability of an already weak middle
class, and severely undercutting domestic construction and housing markets (Marson
and Kolyandr, 2014; Recknagel, 2014). Putin’s fundamental economic positioning of the
legitimacy of managed democracy resting in observable economic success has been seriously
damaged by Western sanctions and the drop in oil prices. The sanctions themselves are
in fact intended to damage the national myth Putin himself created, putting his entire
regime in jeopardy of failure (BBC, 2014; Rutland, 2014). The Russian population has
quickly woken up to the fact that significant future economic growth is unlikely in the
face of such pressures, as sanctions typically have the largest negative impacts on ordinary
Resurrection of the Russian Orthodox Church 947
citizens (Rutland, 2014). Having utilized the increased economic well-being of its citizenry
as a central pillar of its national myth to legitimize itself and justify the restriction of
public freedoms and political participation, the Russian regime now finds itself forced to
explain the reality of significant economic decline to maintain its own legitimacy. In short,
renegotiation of the Putin regime’s legitimacy requires a national myth put forth by the
regime beyond that of economic strength.

Acknowledging Economic Failures and Resurrecting the Russian Orthodox Church

Cooley and Stokes (2017) demonstrated that the Russian regime used state-owned media
to explain the economic decline by establishing a narrative framework of resilience. The
framework acknowledges that a global economic crisis exists, but assigns blame for the
economic crisis to the United States, European Union, and intentional policies by the West
to keep Russia marginalized. The framework portrays Russia as a nation of strong people
with enough resources and proactive thinkers to overcome the economic obstacles and
create a new global economic order (Cooley and Stokes, 2017). This narrative framework
of resilience bought the Russian regime time to either recover economic strength (and
preserve the legitimizing national myth of managed democracy tied to economic strength)
or to craft a new national myth to relegitimize the state. Compounded by a citizenry that
has pro-democratic values and that is being lured by Western propaganda efforts, the bleak
reality of Russia’s economic outlook has forced the Putin regime to focus on relegitimizing
itself with a new national myth. Russian fears of a mass movement of its citizens clamoring
for democratic change have been intensified by Western interventions in other areas. As
Chairman of the Constitutional Court, Valery Zhorkin, wrote in 2012, “[t]he West went
after Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein and Gaddafi. They are all dead. The West
will dispatch al-Assad, they will come for us . . . . The West is promoting a malicious
pro-democracy mass movement in Russia to have a pretext to intervene and destroy our
nation” (Felgenhauer, 2012).
Since “relying on repression alone is too costly as a means of sustaining authoritarian
rule,” most regimes have a legitimation strategy built upon ideology, foundational myth,
personalism, international engagement, procedural mechanisms, and performance (Ger-
man Institute of Global and Area Studies, 2015). The Asymmetric Operations Working
Group (2015) claims that Russia has employed two primary methods to achieve its goal of
repelling Western influence in its sphere of interests and to maintain its legitimacy. First,
it has international engagement by pouring money into upgrading its military to stave off
Western intervention and expansion in Russian areas of influence. Second, it has exerted
soft power methods through cultural education, science, and technology, and use of the
ROC. This soft power method involves the creation of a new Russian national myth and
is a major component of maintaining Russia’s status as the political and cultural center of
gravity in the region (Asymmetric Operations Working Group, 2015). As noted by Zakem,
Saunders, and Antoun (2015), the ROC provides the Russian state an outlet to strategically
influence Russian citizens and compatriots in neighboring states in all spheres of public
life, including social institutions, charity, science, and the military. The ROC can also serve
as a strategic messaging tool to advocate conservative values in direct contrast with Western
“ultra-liberal values” (Zakem, Saunders, and Antoun, 2015).
The authors specifically examine the recent efforts of the Russian state to create a
new national myth legitimizing managed democracy in addition to state actions revealed
through narratives linking the Putin regime to the ROC. In order to create this legitimizing
948 Social Science Quarterly
myth, the state has had to resurrect the ROC from its post-USSR marginalization to a
centralized position in the lives of the Russian populace.
The critical nature of legitimizing this new national myth is evident in the 2015 Russian
National Security Strategy, which states: “the foundation of the common Russian identity of
the Russian Federation’s peoples is the historically evolved system of unified spiritual-moral
and cultural-historical values, as well as the distinctive cultures of the Russian Federation’s
multinational people as an inalienable part of Russian culture” (2015). Putin’s regime needs
the ROC to give moral support to the government’s political decisions and to create a new
national myth that both legitimizes the state and protects its interests. The regime must
utilize the ROC to reinforce “the spiritual unity of the multinational population of the
Russian Federation and the international image of Russia as a country with a very rich,
traditional, and dynamically developing contemporary culture, by creating a system of
spiritual and patriotic education for Russian citizens” (Putin, 2013).

Research Question

Defining the Scope of the Research Question

This research is an exploratory piece aimed at understanding the Russian state’s recent
emphasis on the importance of the ROC as part of a new national myth legitimizing
the Russian state and its actions. The Russian Federation’s involvement in Ukraine, the
Crimea, and Syria, and the increased tensions between Russia and the West have seemingly
motivated the Russian state to solidify efforts toward forging a new national myth for
security purposes. The authors evaluate the increased relevance of the relationship between
the Russian state and ROC through the prism of creating a national myth. The release
of the Russian National Security Document in December 2015 clearly demonstrated
the progressively purposeful partnership between the Russian state and ROC. The Russian
National Security Document also showed that, in order to avert threats to national security,
the Russian Federation is focusing efforts on strengthening the internal unity of Russian
society. The document refers to the importance of a Russian spiritual revival, which serves
as a potential platform for Russia’s national (and international) identity (Putin, 2015).
Given the challenges to the legitimacy of the Russian regime’s managed democracy as
correlated to economic growth and fairness, the challenges from the West to undermine
Russian state resilience, the need to coherently explain Russian actions in its spheres of
influence, and a stated strategy from the Russian regime to ensure security through the
promotion of spiritual and patriotic education, the article addresses the following question:
How has Russian state-controlled broadcast media used narratives concerning the Russian
Orthodox Church to legitimize a new national myth to the Russian people?
Through this analysis, researchers hope to give insight into the new Russian national
myth so that readers may better understand future actions of the Russian state.

Methodology

Narrative Analysis

To answer the research question, a qualitative analysis of public narratives put forth by
Russian state-owned broadcast media was conducted using the M3S broadcast and web
Resurrection of the Russian Orthodox Church 949
monitoring system at Texas A&M University. The M3S technologies allow for the analysis
of foreign-based language media, allowing researchers to evaluate full foreign language news
broadcast and new media websites in the original context with validated English-language
translations. The M3S has been used for multiple projects related to U.S. national security,
evaluating actions by state and nonstate actors.
Public narratives are those stories elaborated by and circulating among social institutions
that are larger than the individual. Public narratives are those narratives created and put
forward by various institutions such as the media, governmental structures, religious bodies,
and educational institutions (Somers and Gibson, 1994). Public narratives include those
put forth by the media, such as newspapers and news broadcasts. Public narratives in
news rely on authoritarian sources as a key component of the rhetoric. These authoritarian
sources are claim makers seeking to solidify support for their views on societal issues from
various stakeholders (i.e., citizens), including the public at large (Lilja, 2013). Authoritarian
regimes with vast control of the media, such as Russia, have tremendous power in crafting
public narratives. Guided by the work by Fisher (1987) on narratives, this study employs
the categorical content approach of narrative analysis, which examines various aesthetic or
linguistic components of the narrative units that are analyzed (Lieblich et al., 1998). These
public narratives, put forth by the state, come together to form the larger national myth.
As this study was exploratory in nature on attempts by the state to create a new national
myth, researchers focused only on the state-controlled broadcasts related to the ROC, rather
than attempting to pull data from oppositional media and other web sources on a topic that
may have not been a central focus of state-controlled media. Based on the findings put forth
in this piece, the authors recommend a follow-up study highlighting the counternarrative
put forward by other Russian news sources (particularly those in opposition to the state).
As Lieblich et al. (1998) explain, there are four steps to the categorical content approach
of narrative analysis: (1) selecting the subtext, (2) defining the content categories, (3)
organizing the content into the categories, and (4) making conclusions from the findings.

Selecting the Subtext

Using the M3S broadcast database (BMS), researchers pulled a year of archived con-
tent (November 1, 2014 to November 1, 2015) on the Russian broadcast news channel
Rossiya24 containing the keywords “Orthodox Church” (n = 622). This time frame was
chosen simply because of the directive of the project as a pilot to a larger study demanded
immediate start; the archive was examined to its fullest extent upon the start of the project.
Furthermore, the announcement of a Pan-Orthodox council was made in March 2014,
which was an indicator of the shifting importance of the ROC’s role. Also during this time
frame, Russia and the ROC celebrated the 1,000-year anniversary of St. Vladimir the Great
with a commemorate statue, various festivities, and commemorative church celebrations.
The keywords “Orthodox Church” were decided upon after attempting various other terms
such as: “ROC,” “Russian Orthodox,” “Orthodox,” and “Church.” The limitations of the
system storage capacity meant that less specific terms like “Orthodox” and “Church” pro-
duced too many results to allow the system to go back the course of an entire year, as the
system storage capacity is set at 1,000 returned results. The keywords “Orthodox Church”
yielded a complete year of data and were specific enough as to rule out mere incidental
mentions in a news story on another topic. Researchers then used a pivot function on
the M3S system to display the most frequently associated terms to that of the keywords
“Orthodox Church” to terms associated with the Russian state. This was done in order
950 Social Science Quarterly
to ensure there was a clear link to the news story and the Russian government. The pivot
function revealed “Putin” as the term most frequently associated with “Orthodox Church”
(n = 291, 47 percent of all stories) that was also related to the state. Researchers then
examined every news story containing the keywords “Orthodox Church” pivoted around
the term “Putin” (n = 291). The distribution of the stories by month can be seen below.

Defining the Content Categories

The researchers conducted a preliminary qualitative analysis on a random sample of 15

percent (n = 46) of news stories from the full data set to identify prominent thematic
categories within the data. This was done using a random number generator. Three coders
independently analyzed the sample data and then cross-compared emerging trends and
themes identified within the data. This step was done in order to allow each researcher to
assess the content without preconceived coding categories in order to let the data speak for
themselves. The researchers compared independently identified narrative components and
identified four common narrative components to apply to the entire data set.

Organizing the Content into the Categories

The entire data set (n = 291) was then split into four subsets and divided between two
coders (each assigned two of the subsets to examine) to be analyzed for the preidentified
narrative components. Coders were also able to identify any narratives not uncovered in
the initial sampling. All data were then organized and analyzed by the coders.

Making Conclusions from the Findings

The news stories were organized by each coder for the narrative components contained;
researchers then began reassembly of the entire data set and began to make conclusions
based on the findings.

Findings

Overview of Findings/Narrative Components as Manifest in Russian Broadcast

News Stories

Researchers identified four narrative components using the ROC as part of a new national
myth discourse legitimizing the Russian state. Those four components, detailed below, are
the reconciliation of the ROC and the Russian state, ROC as the unifier of all Slavic people,
ROC and Russian moral authority, and ROC and the Russian citizen.
First, the ROC and the Russian state have reconciled all past differences and returned to
a more historically accurate relationship (n = 69). This narrative component highlights the
ROC and its historical/contemporary importance to the power of the Russian state. The
narrative helps to legitimize the centralized power of Putin in Russia’s managed democracy
by showing the ROC and government working cooperatively and recalling past Russian
leaders canonized by the church. The difficulty posed by this narrative component is in
Resurrection of the Russian Orthodox Church 951
overcoming, sometimes through revisionist history, the Soviet era of ROC dismantlement.
Anderson wrote on how this conundrum could be overcome prior to the economic collapse,
stating:
The relationship between Putin and the church leadership is rooted in a shared Soviet-
era experience and has been largely characterized by common values about Russia, the
importance of traditional values, and pride in the country’s heritage. The president is
happy to allow Orthodoxy a position of primus inter pares, so long as its leaders continue
to use that position to play a generally supportive role in society. (Anderson, 2007)
Anderson went on to note that, in a reconciled church-state relationship, “Putin is clearly
the dominant partner in this relationship. The ROC’s ideal may be symphonia, with church
and state in perfect harmony, but this is very much an asymmetric symphonia” (Anderson,
2007).
r Examples of this demonstrated reconciliation are news stories surrounding bodies
believed to be the Tsarevich Alexei and Grand Duchess Maria of the Russian Imperial
Romanov family, who were killed by revolutionary Bolsheviks. These news stories are
important because they show a stark reversal of Patriarch Aleksi II and the ROC’s
1998 refusal to participate in the reburial of the royal families in St. Petersburg,
questioning the authenticity of the remains and wanting to distance the church from
the government (Solodovnik, 2014).
r The examination of these bodies with new forensic techniques now presents a great
opportunity for the ROC and government to cooperate. The news stories show that the
ROC has requested “maximum efficiency and transparency not only of the results of
studies but all procedural stages” throughout the testing process (Rossiya24, October
17, 2015). The issue of the bodies’ authenticity is now serving as a show of compliance
and reconciliation with the state.
Second, the ROC, through the Russian state, is a historical unifier of all Slavic people
(n = 49). This narrative component highlights the ROC as a historical/contemporary link
to all Slavic peoples, specifically noting the centrality of the ROC in Russia and extending
out to other Slavic areas. This narrative helps to justify Russian state actions in former
Soviet territories and present Putin as a defender of Christendom. The news stories in this
narrative component relied on what Torbakov (2014) would call Putin’s use of revisionist
history to show citizens that the “entire history of the Russian people—from the baptism
of St. Vladimir up to the present day—is in some sense sacred” (Torbakov, 2014). News
stories highlighting Orthodox saints with shared Russian and Slavic history make up this
narrative component. The stories center Russia as the foundation of the ROC, helping to
justify Russian state actions in these areas as protecting a greater shared history, culture,
and language.
r Examples included news stories on the Russian celebration of St. Vladimir, who was
known for bringing Christianity to Russia (St. Vladimir’s history is tied closely with
Russian and Ukraine historical development and is seen by both nations as a founder).
News stories noted, “Prince Vladimir converted to Orthodoxy and then baptized all
[Russians]” (Rossiya24, July 28, 2015) and “St. Vladimir’s legacy reminds all Slavic
people to live in peace and friendship, especially Russian and Ukraine because they are
two fraternal peoples” (Rossiya24, July 28, 2015). Furthermore, news stories justified,
in part, Russian involvement in non-Russian territories as an effort to protect the
freedom of Slavic people. Putin was shown stating that “the ultimate goal was not to
seize the Crimea . . . the ultimate goal was to give people the opportunity to express
952 Social Science Quarterly
their opinion on how they want to live" (Rossiya24, March 15, 2015). Patriarch Kirill
was shown encouraging all citizens to “pray fervently [for] Ukraine” (Rossiya24, June
22, 2015).
r Other examples of this narrative component are news stories showing the unification
of Slavic countries with a shared Cyrillic alphabet used in Ukraine, Belarus, Bulgaria,
Macedonia, Serbia, and Bosnia. News stories focused on the ROC celebration of St.
Cyrillic and the importance of the alphabet with the creation of a Day of Slavic Writing
and Culture. Putin and Kirill were shown celebrating the Day of Slavic Writing and
Culture, which was billed as “one of the few events that is at the same time religious
and secular” (Rossiya24, May 24, 2015).
Third, the ROC gives the Russian state moral authority in its actions (n = 46). This nar-
rative component highlights the historical relationship between the ROC and the Russian
government, giving the Russian state moral leadership and authority in dealing with other
nations and international affairs, particularly against the corrupting influences of the West.
News stories present the Russian government as a moral compass for other international
actors, highlighting the moral corruption in other states. U.S. support of abortion and gay
marriage are presented in sharp contrast to the values of Russian Orthodoxy. For example:
r News stories often portray Russia as the only country able to offer “the protection of
traditional moral strength in the world” (Rossiya24, January 25, 2015). Furthermore,
the stories claim that only Russia can “prevent the destruction moral fabric of society”
and protect “traditional values” (Rossiya24, January 25, 2015).
r Patriarch Kirill is shown claiming that immoral Western ideas are being “promoted
and even imposed” onto the Russian legislative and that Russia’s success will depend
on the ability of its citizens to stand against immoral ideas, such as gay marriage, which
are “detrimental to eternity and human civilization” (Rossiya24, January 22, 2015).
r Western sanctions are presented as a “politically motivated attempt” to use economic
pressure to change Russian policy and are “doomed to failure” because of Russia’s
inoculation against moral corruption (Rossiya24, March 17, 2015).
Fourth, the ROC, directing actions from the state, gives morality and spiritual protection
to Russian citizens (n = 47). This narrative highlights the importance of the ROC in
helping to protect the moral and spiritual well-being of Russian citizens. The significance
of this narrative component is best seen in the Russian National Security Document. The
document reveals the government’s belief that national security would be strengthened
through “the creation of a system of spiritual-moral and patriotic education of citizens,
the introduction of the principles of spiritual and moral development into the education
system and the youth and nationalities policy, and the widening of cultural educational
activity” (Putin, 2015).
The call for moral education has been ongoing: “Since the mid-1990s the Church has
waged a purposeful and unremitting campaign to make lessons in the Foundations of
Orthodox Culture a compulsory part of the curriculum of the secular education system”
(Solodovnik, 2014). Furthermore, the ROC and the state have worked to influence the
consumer habits of its citizens. The church called for an end to alcohol use and genetically
engineered food, aligning itself with the government’s goal for food security by “preventing
the uncontrolled circulation of genetically modified organisms intended for release into
the environment and products obtained through the use of such organisms or containing
them” (Putin, 2015). The ROC has even created food labels, similar to Kosher labels, that
help Russians know what food will feed their spiritual needs. Examples of this narrative
component in news stories include:
Resurrection of the Russian Orthodox Church 953
r Patriarch Kirill was shown working with the Patriarchate Council for Culture and
Inter-Religious Council Russia to develop a single historical and cultural standard
to form the basis of new textbooks on Russian in school (Rossiya24, January 25,
2015). The Moscow Christ the Savior Cathedral is shown hosting a meeting for the
publication of the Orthodox Encyclopedia to help emphasize “exclusively moral values
uniting a special role in the destiny of our country and our people” (Rossiya24, March
11, 2015). The story continues to say that the Encyclopedia is needed since the ROC
“and its temples and its priests” are under attack (Rossiya24, March 11, 2015).
r News stories showing the ROC as attempting to “raise the educational and cultural
level for Russian citizens, strengthen spiritual and moral foundations of society to
shared goals of historical knowledge, and preserve historical heritage . . . ” (Rossiya24,
January 25, 2015). Representatives from the Committee on Education are presented
as supporting this movement by claiming that in Russia, “Orthodox education [and]
statehood always go hand in hand" (Rossiya24, January 25, 2015).
r News stories claiming the ROC wants to end HIV/AIDS because it plays against
“social and moral” standards and therefore has no role in the “traditional religions” of
Russia (Rossiya24, October 23, 2015). The ROC is mentioned as having opened a
resource center to promote chastity and marriage as a weapon against HIV/AIDS.
r Other examples of state-controlled media mainstreaming orthodox values to the Rus-
sian citizen is the promotion, through news stories, of the “Orthodox Blockbuster”
film Priest-San written by Ivan Okhlobystin, a former Orthodox priest and outspo-
ken critic of homosexuality and promoter of traditional Orthodox values in Russian
society.

Conceptualized Narrative Framework of a New National Myth

Discussion and Limitations

The four narratives establish a framework that attempts to provide Russian citizens
a new national myth, merged with a spiritual identity through the ROC, legitimizing
954 Social Science Quarterly
the managed democracy of the Russian regime. The framework shows that the Russian
government, linked through history and contemporary efforts of reconciliation to the
ROC, has the ability to unite all Slavic peoples and the moral authority in its decision
making, which ultimately manifests to the benefit of all Russians. Though Russia is a
managed democracy, and thus inherently less free than other democracies, the state has a
history of centralized power guided by the moral authority of the ROC. The ROC gives the
Russian state an authority over a Russia not limited to geography, but rather (through the
ROC) a larger, inherited, culturally Slavic people. While not the neatly bound correlation
between economic growth at the expense of reduced democracy, the components of this
alternate national myth give citizens the opportunity to reinvent themselves along with the
state. Instead of a discourse of legitimacy that is wrapped up in economic outcomes and
workers’ wages, this is a messy, revisionist presentation of Russia that conjures an almost
Tsarist notion of Russian leadership with moral authority awarded from the church. What
it is to be Russian, according to this myth, has less to do with economic strength and more
to do with morality in the face of global immorality. This national myth is not new; in
fact, it is itself a resurrection of the “Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationality” philosophy of
Tsar Nicholas I.
Though Putin’s revitalization of this national myth must overcome the Soviet era, the
framework presented in this article shows a clear attempt by the regime to legitimize Russia’s
managed democracy as historically and culturally linked to the ROC. This benefits both the
church and the Russian state. The ROC benefits from the union by gaining more money,
power, and popularity (Solodvnik, 2014). The Russian government benefits by having the
ROC give moral support to its political decisions and by using the ROC to create a new
national myth that both protects the interest and justifies the actions of the state.
Whether this resurrection of the ROC will work to help legitimize the regime remains
to be seen. However, it is readily apparent that Putin is willing to engage the populace in
a discourse that plays on a cultural framework that is very much Tsarist in nature. While a
seemingly brazen legitimization tactic by Western standards, it could play well to Russian
audiences as they attempt to restructure a national identity that makes sense following
the collapse of the USSR and now face the devastating contractions to the Federation’s
economy. Perhaps reviving the ROC as a legitimizing force and recalling the Tsars of the
Russian Empire will be successful in preserving Putin’s regime. Regardless, this discourse
shows a desperate attempt by the regime to reinvent itself; the very act of which makes
evident both the economic outlook of Russia and the concerns of the regime about threats
of Westernization. Understanding this pivot of the Russian regime to reinvent both itself
and its legitimacy in the eyes of its populace offers the United States and the West valuable
information in assessing actions by the Russian state in areas such as the Middle East, Baltics,
and former Soviet space. It also reveals how it will present those actions to its citizens.
Overall, these results demonstrate how narrative analysis using the M3S platform, and
other open-source intelligence platforms, allows for the examination of conversations on
national/political identity and national myth. Such abilities allow for both conversation
points that can aid in, or disrupt, attempts by the state to legitimize itself among its pop-
ulation and are, therefore, of significant value to intelligence communities. The findings
from this study provide opportunities for other countries, like the United States, to under-
mine the Russian regime’s attempts to construct a new national myth using a framework
involving the ROC. Discussion on Soviet-era relations between church and state are no-
ticeably avoided and provided disruption points of this narrative framework’s construction
of national myth. However, points of cooperation with this framework also exist, and
finding those, and communicating those in ways that validate the Russian regime back to
Resurrection of the Russian Orthodox Church 955
its population, offer “I win, you win” strategies to international politics that would aid in
global deescalation. To erode, or bolster, a government’s legitimacy requires knowledge of
its message, identification of its deficiencies and strengths, and then the creation of carefully
crafted counter/supportive response narratives. The significance of—and action in response
to—such findings in future studies could have an immense impact on international politics
and internal governmental affairs.
There are several noteworthy limitations within this study. The first, and perhaps the
most substantial limitation, is that this study does not contribute to the development of
theory; rather, it simply utilizes narrative analysis in a case study of actions by the Russian
state. While a limitation, the novel approach used in applying new technological platforms
to narrative analysis related to alterations of national myth may be a substantial enough
contribution to overcome the theoretical limitations of this piece. Another limitation is
that many of the Russian translations included various grammatical and linguistic flaws or
lack of precision that made some of the content difficult to comprehend. Therefore, future
researchers should use improved translation technologies in order to increase the validity of
the coded data. The study was also limited in its time of execution because it was part of a
larger pilot directive for the U.S. intelligence community; it was begun at a time that might
not best represent all of the facets involved in the promotion of this new national myth.
However, researchers did utilize the maximum time frame for the data pull, going back
a full year in the media archives of the M3S. Future studies should endeavor to monitor
oppositional challenges to state-propagated national myths as well as impacts on audiences
from external actors intervening in the construction and reconstruction of national myth
discourses.

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