Russia. A History

By contrast, the picture in the cultural sphere was much brighter, for the relative affluence of the Putin era proved a tremendous boon for creativity in the arts. The resurgence was particularly apparent in cinema, with the production of prize-winning films that earned international renown. Nikita Mikhalkov’s The Twelve (2007), based on the famous

Twelve Angry Men,

adapted the plot to show a Chechen youth who had allegedly murdered his Russian stepfather: the jury overcame ethnic stereotypes to declare the youth ‘not guilty’. Aleksandr Sokurov directed Russian Ark (2003), an innovative (if dizzying) film about the entire history of Imperial Russia, staged with 867 actors and produced in a single, uninterrupted shooting of 96 minutes, with the Hermitage as its backdrop. Contemporary Russian art, repressed in the Soviet era and ignored in the perestroika era and immediate post-Soviet years, suddenly came into favour after the turn of the twenty-first century. Ilya Kabakov’s 1981 painting

La Chambre de luxe (1981) sold for 4.1 million dollars, and in 1998 the Tretiakov Art Museum displayed contemporary art in its first exhibition on twentieth-century Russian art. Buoyed by this demand, much of it coming from the wealthy ‘new Russians’, Sotheby’s opened a Moscow branch in May 2007, and Christie’s also made plans to enter the new lucrative Russian market. Literature also produced some popular but sophisticated best-selling novels, such as Viktor Pelevin’s The Sacred Book of the Werewolf

(2005) and Vladimir Sorokin’s dystopian novel A Day in the Life of an Oprichnik (2006).

The Putin era also witnessed a revival of religion, especially the Orthodox Church. The resurgence of Orthodoxy had begun during the perestroika and Yeltsin eras, but accelerated under Putin. The president himself, who unabashedly and (to all appearances) sincerely identified with Orthodoxy, emphasized his ties to the Church from the very outset, with a procession to the Cathedral of Annunciation immediately after his inauguration in May 2000. In subsequent years he reaffirmed those ties to the Church, with quasi-pilgrimages to hallowed sites and public expression of respect for the Church, its leaders, and the faith.

The public, especially ethnic Russians, also displayed a growing identification with the Church. Whereas 24 per cent of the population self-described themselves as Orthodox in 1990, that quotient reached 62 per cent in 2005 and 73 per cent in 2008. Some observers, however, regarded such professions of piety to be more rhetorical than real; church attendance remained extremely low and only 2 per cent knew all of the Ten Commandments. Nonetheless, the popular affirmation of belief stimulated the recovery of institutional Orthodoxy, the number of registered parishes growing from 8,729 in 1999 to more than 12,214 parishes in 2006. After the death of Patriarch Aleksii II, closely associated with the Putin government, on 5 December 2008, the Church elected Kirill I and conducted the enthronement ceremony on 1 February 2009. The new patriarch brought a more liberal reputation to the office, especially in theological and liturgical issues, even in the contentious question of ecumenical ties (perhaps heralding better relations with the Vatican). Kirill was also quick to express a commitment to social issues: ‘Our Christian duty is to care for the suffering, for the orphaned, the poor, the disabled, the elderly, the prisoners, and the homeless. We can help all of these to regain hope. The voice of the Church should reinforce the voice of the weak and those deprived of power, so that they may find fitting justice.’