Nikolai Karpitsky. The Messianic Idea of Russia. Article Two. Is Russia’s Greatness More Important Than One’s Own Religion and the Lives of Fellow Believers?

Source: PostPravda.info 12.06.2026.
URL: https://postpravda.info/en/stories/freedom-of-speech-en/the-messianic-idea-of-russia/

 

It would seem that supporting a war of conquest accompanied by war crimes is incompatible with religious conscience. How can a religious person remain indifferent when the residents of a neighboring country – including fellow believers – are denied the right to live? Before the war, Russian Orthodox Christians, Protestants, Muslims, and Krishnaites communicated with their fellow believers in Ukraine, recognizing a shared identity. Yet when faced with the choice between supporting a war against a neighboring people and preserving fellowship with their Ukrainian co-believers, most of them chose the war. Is it possible to change their minds? How did it happen that the messianic idea of Russia became more important to them not only than the lives of their fellow believers, but even than their own religion?

If support for the war were merely connected to ignorance or misunderstanding resulting from exposure to Russian propaganda, they could perhaps be persuaded otherwise by the testimony of fellow believers and friends from Ukraine whom they had trusted before the war. However, this is not simply a matter of misconceptions, but of embracing a new goal-setting in defiance of their previous religious experience and relationships with fellow believers. This new goal-setting is accompanied by a particular type of collective emotional experience – a quasi-religious experience.

The Goal-Setting of Social Institutions

Why is Russia unable to abandon military expansion? This is connected to its goal-setting, namely the messianic idea of gathering lands. Goal-setting is an orientation toward a goal or mission that gives meaning to existence.

There are two types of goal-setting in social institutions:

The goal-setting of some institutions is expressed through supporting the internal life of a community, communication among its members, and the satisfaction of their needs. Examples include hobby clubs or regional associations, whose existence is justified simply by maintaining a shared space for communication and mutual support.

The goal-setting of other institutions lies in something external to the internal life of the community. For example, a political party has meaning only insofar as it implements a particular political program. If this task is not fulfilled, the party loses its reason for existence, even if its members still enjoy meeting and socializing with one another.

A similar distinction can also be observed at the level of states. Some states are oriented toward internal development, the welfare of the population, and peaceful coexistence with their neighbors. Others structure their existence around a particular mission. Such states are prepared to wage aggressive wars, even when doing so is destructive to themselves.

Every religion exists in two dimensions: in the inner lives of people as a spiritual tradition, and in external public life as a religious social institution. However, as a social institution, religion differs from secular institutions precisely in the nature of its goal-setting.

The goal-setting of secular institutions exists within the social sphere. They address specific political, economic, or cultural tasks and help organize public life. The goal-setting of religious institutions is oriented toward a higher realm – that is, toward transcendent being beyond everyday life. Their ultimate purpose is connected with human salvation, liberation from suffering, or overcoming the meaninglessness of existence through turning toward a higher reality.

Because of this, under normal conditions religion and secular society can coexist without interfering with one another, since they pursue different aims in social life and in relation to transcendent being.

The Messianic Idea of Russia Distorts Religious Goal-Setting

Under conditions of dictatorship, the Russian authorities demand complete loyalty from social institutions, including religious ones, as well as support for the war against Ukraine. In these circumstances, religious organizations face a choice: either adopt a neutral position, thereby risking marginalization and repression, or adapt themselves to the demands of the authorities. However, such adaptation requires altering religious goal-setting in such a way that the goal of religious salvation comes to be viewed as secondary to a supposedly higher objective – the fulfillment of Russia’s historical mission.

As a result, an ideology emerges that is religious in form but political in its goal-setting, and which can be classified neither as a religion nor as a secular worldview. At its core lies a fusion of religious practice with political messianism, allowing it to be characterized as a quasi-religion.

As early as the fifteenth century, during the confrontation between the Principality of Moscow and Novgorod, the messianic idea of the “gathering of lands” began to take shape. Initially, it received Orthodox religious justification through the concept of “Moscow as the Third Rome.” Later, during the Soviet period, it was reinterpreted within the framework of atheistic communist ideology while retaining its expansionist character. The current situation demonstrates that support for this messianic idea is not unique to the Orthodox Church, since it is shared by representatives of many different confessions, including Protestants, Muslims, and Krishnaites.

The Russian Quasi-Religion

Most Russians are convinced that they live in the most peace-loving country in the world – one that has never attacked anyone, but has only repeatedly been subjected to external aggression. In other words, they regard all wars fought by Russia as defensive, while the expansion of Russian territory resulting from these wars is interpreted as the liberation of other peoples and their voluntary reunification with Russia. Put differently, Russians perceive aggressive wars as the just restoration of world order. Only by becoming part of Russia, in their view, do other peoples acquire the true meaning of their existence.

In order to justify war within a religious context, it is necessary to portray the enemy not merely as a political rival, but as the embodiment of absolute evil and an enemy of God. As a result, the surrounding world comes to be perceived as a kingdom of evil opposed by Russia. The West is portrayed as the incarnation of evil forces seeking to destroy traditional values, religion, and the “Russian world.” Consequently, the idea of human salvation is replaced by the idea of struggle against Western civilization.

In religion, movement toward a higher transcendent principle may be accompanied by spiritual struggle against dark otherworldly forces that hinder human salvation. In a quasi-religion, however, the image of these dark forces is projected onto Western civilization as a whole. Ukraine is viewed as an apostate that has fallen away from Russia and sided with evil, and therefore must either be brought back by force or destroyed. For this reason, Russian believers not only refuse to listen to their Ukrainian fellow believers, but recoil from them with religious horror, as though they were people who had crossed over to the side of demonic forces.

As religion is gradually displaced by quasi-religion, inner religious experiences are replaced by experiences resembling psychological dependency. They can be compared to addiction: a person experiences euphoria from participation in a “great mission,” but when confronted with the truth and moments of mental clarity, they undergo something akin to withdrawal symptoms. This, in turn, provokes aggression toward anyone attempting to convey truthful information to them. As a result, they once again return to listening to propagandists in order to regain the euphoric state.

On the basis of this quasi-religious experience, adherents of different religions develop a new shared identity with all those who recognize Russia’s mission as the highest value, while excluding their Ukrainian fellow believers from this community. The round table discussion “World Religions Against the Ideology of Nazism and Fascism in the 21st Century,” held in the building of the State Duma of the Russian Federation on March 29, 2022, clearly demonstrated how representatives of different confessions unite around a dualistic perception of the world based on the opposition between “us” and “them,” good and absolute evil. Through their speeches at the round table, they effectively proclaimed a new quasi-religion in relation to which their traditional religious differences were regarded as secondary. Since these speeches did not provoke any significant critical reaction from their followers, it can be concluded that this quasi-religion has become one of the most important social factors shaping religious consciousness in Russia – a factor that cannot be ignored.

 

Nikolai Karpitsky. Russia’s Messianic Idea. Article One. The Baltic States Under Threat

Source: PostPravda.info 26.05.2026.
URL: https://postpravda.info/en/stories/freedom-of-speech-en/baltic-states-under-threat/

 

Are the Baltic states threatened by a Russian invasion? The Kremlin leader may well decide that a window of opportunity has opened precisely now. The Russian army has experience fighting a modern war. In the event of an attack on the Baltic states, it would take at least several months for European armies and the military-industrial complex to adapt to the modern type of warfare. U.S. President Donald Trump is demonstrating his unwillingness to come to the aid of Europeans. But are there real preconditions for such an invasion? Western intelligence services still do not see signs of preparations for it, and a number of political and economic arguments can be made against such a scenario. However, there is another argument that is often overlooked – Russia’s messianic goal-setting, which is what brought a man like Putin to power.

Could Russia attack the Baltic states before the war in Ukraine ends?

There are strong arguments as to why Russia cannot start a new war right now. First, from a military standpoint, it is not yet ready for a new war. Second, Russia is already bogged down in the war against Ukraine and therefore cannot divert forces to a new conflict. Third, attacking other countries would worsen Russia’s already difficult economic situation and intensify public dissatisfaction.

In response to the first argument, it can be noted that preparation for war is an endless process, because as an army is modernized, it simultaneously becomes obsolete. The situation is constantly changing, and if wars only began when armies were fully prepared, no country would ever be able to start one. History teaches that wars begin not when armies are ready, but when political conditions have matured. The Russian army was also unprepared for this new type of warfare when it invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Armies adapt during the course of war itself, and through this process they become stronger than even the most powerful peacetime armies. Therefore, at present the Russian and Ukrainian armies are among the strongest in the world, despite the fact that by formal indicators they may lag behind NATO armies.

In response to the second argument, one can cite examples of countries at war launching new military campaigns even in times of crisis. At the end of August 1941, while Hitler was carrying out the operation to encircle Kyiv and destroy the Soviet Southwestern Front, the Soviet Union launched a new large-scale military campaign at the very moment of this military catastrophe – it invaded Iran and occupied its northern part.

Finally, there is a more recent example. In August 2024, the position of the Ukrainian army in Donbas was critical. The Russian army was advancing toward Pokrovsk, and no one knew whether it could be stopped or whether the front would collapse. At that time, drones still did not play the role they do today, and there was a catastrophic shortage of soldiers. It was precisely at this moment that the Ukrainian army launched a successful offensive in the Kursk region, even though such an offensive required Ukraine to redeploy forces from Donbas. The Russian command did not expect this, because it operated according to military logic: after all, opening a new front is disadvantageous precisely for the side with fewer resources. Even any gamer who plays computer strategy games knows this.

In such cases, political considerations outweigh military ones. Especially since an attack on one or several Baltic states also has its own military logic behind it: if the Ukrainian section of the front has become practically impregnable, why not strike at a vulnerable sector? Even if the blitzkrieg of “Tallinn in three days” fails, a ceasefire in the Baltics could be traded for an end to military aid to Ukraine.

The third argument is connected to the mistaken belief that actions can always be explained rationally by taking into account factors such as benefit and external circumstances. In reality, both people and states very often act contrary to their own interests, and the motivations behind their actions can vary widely, ranging from rational to irrational.

For some, material gain is the primary motivation, which makes it possible to predict the behavior of politicians such as Donald Trump. For others, it is a messianic idea that influences the decisions of Vladimir Putin.

Why Are Some States Peaceful While Others Are Aggressive?

Why do some states coexist peacefully with their neighbors, while others constantly wage wars? Does this depend on the political situation, the history of the people, or something else? The same can be observed among individuals. There are aggressive people who will inevitably attack someone as soon as the opportunity arises, and there are kind, peaceful people who would never behave that way. The difference between them is rooted in their differing attitudes toward life, which define both the meaning of their lives and their identities as individuals. In a similar way, the character of a state is determined by the mission that, in the eyes of its inhabitants, gives meaning to its existence.

Like people, states can be either peaceful or aggressive. In relation to some, we are confident that they would not attack weaker neighbors even if they knew they could do so with impunity. But there are also states ready to unleash war even if they themselves would suffer enormous losses as a result. The priority value of peaceful states is the life and well-being of their citizens. Their mission lies in development and in ensuring the prosperity of their own country. Aggressive states, however, see their mission in something external to the everyday lives of their citizens and therefore are willing to sacrifice those citizens’ lives.

For example, under the Shah’s Iran cooperated with Israel for pragmatic reasons, whereas the Islamic Republic of Iran seeks to destroy the Jewish state and is willing to make sacrifices for that goal. In this case, the destruction of another country takes priority over the prosperity of one’s own.

What Is Goal-Setting?

A mission is a goal that gives meaning to existence. That is, it is not just any goal, but one determined through a free choice of values. This choice, which defines both the meaning of a person’s life and the mission of a state, will be referred to here as “goal-setting.”

The loss of goal-setting leads to disillusionment with the meaning of existence. For example, the goal-setting of the Soviet Union was the construction of a global communist system. This supreme mission was considered more important than the well-being of citizens and served as justification for countless sacrifices of human lives. Mass disillusionment with this mission led to the collapse of the entire Soviet system.

Russia’s Imperial Mission

The process of transforming the Principality of Moscow into Russia began in the fifteenth century with the annexation of the Novgorod Republic, which led to the destruction of one of the East Slavic peoples with its own language, culture, and social traditions. This was justified by the mission of the “gathering of lands,” around which a centralized state took shape, constantly expanding its borders through military conquest.

Later, Russia’s wars of expansion led to the physical destruction of a whole series of other peoples. Renouncing this mission would have meant losing the very meaning of Russia’s existence, and therefore any sacrifice could be justified in its name. The brutal oppression of its own subjects contributed to making them willing to fight and die for this mission, while the Russian authorities ruthlessly expended human lives in every war.

However, we know that people can change. Could Russia have changed by abandoning its goal-setting? I believe this was possible, although extremely difficult to achieve. Such an attempt was made after the victory of the democratic revolution in Russia in August 1991. Masses of people supported the democratic movement in the hope of building a new Russia as a peaceful and civilized country. However, it very quickly became clear that if Russia lost its imperial mission, nothing would remain capable of holding together all the territories that had been forcibly incorporated into it. The centrifugal forces within the country frightened not only the authorities but also ordinary Russians, for it is precisely they who are the main bearers of the messianic consciousness on which politicians parasitize.

During the First Chechen War of 1994–1996, the majority of Russians supported peace and an end to the fighting in the Caucasus. Any normal person intuitively senses the unnaturalness of war, and at that moment Russians were psychologically unprepared to justify the suffering and death caused by it. However, opposition to the war did not amount to a rejection of the Russian messianic idea. Gradually, fear of the country’s collapse – which was associated with chaos and a threat to personal survival – outweighed fear of war, and by 1999 Russians were already massively supporting a new war in Chechnya.

The reason for the mass support of Vladimir Putin and all the aggressive wars he unleashed is that, for many Russians, he became the embodiment of the mission of the “gathering of lands.” It is telling that many of those who had opposed him before 2014 switched to supporting him after the occupation of Crimea. Today they may express dissatisfaction with the war in Ukraine, but this dissatisfaction is not caused by the criminal nature of the war; rather, it stems from the belief that the war has not been successful enough. Therefore, many of them would support military intervention in the Baltic states as long as there remained hope for its success.

So, Will Russia Attack the Baltic States?

A new war in Europe depends not so much on objective factors as on the subjective perceptions of one man – Vladimir Putin – who himself does not know how he will act. However, Russia’s very goal-setting, which he seeks to embody, implies that military expansion cannot stop with Ukraine alone.

So is a new war inevitable? Imagine that you have let a kleptomaniac or a sexual predator into your house. You believe that committing a crime there would not be beneficial for him, and to be completely sure, you even make certain that no opportunity presents itself. But you overlook the main thing: he will inevitably commit a crime when, according to his own subjective perceptions, he considers it possible – perceptions that you cannot rationally calculate.

Historically, it so happened that the deviant behavior of one man – Vladimir Putin – coincided with a deviant historical phenomenon: Russia’s goal-setting. Therefore, he will inevitably start a new war against one or several European countries as soon as, according to his own subjective perceptions, he decides that a window of opportunity has opened.