never been there

Good! We now have an "Abrahamic Religions" space for those impolite questions, and I have a very impolite question:

What's with the political culture in some, but not all, former eastern block countries? The blame usually goes either to the Turks, or the Commies/Russians. The ethnic excuse is not mentioned in polite conversation, except that it's usually Slavs that I hear blame it on Slavic culture.

But Poland, despite their time under Russian occupation, for all the angst and trauma, still appears to have a modern outlook.

Russia, Ukraine (most of) and Byelorus (I think) weren't occupied by the Ottoman Empire, but are as screwed up politically as it gets. For comparison, Greece was, and still has a bad hangover from this, but it's increasingly just a matter of a few irredentists becoming politically irrelevant.

The ethnic answer doesn't quite work, because the Slovenes are Slavs, yet shook off the 20th century like water off a duck's back.

Could it be the Russian Orthodox Church and its satellites? I won't include Greek Orthodoxy, since it's a separate church in most areas, and certainly not via Kiev or Moscow.

In Western Europe, comparisons are routinely made between Protestant and Catholic countries, with France as honorary Protestants. Much psychobabble and serious analysis can be found on the subject. I just can't find a point of entry to writings on the Orthodox/RC-Protestant comparison, if there are any.

What was the pattern of churchly authority in Orthodox countries? Is it similar to the historic role of the RC church in the west, or were there important differences? The Russian gov't of today certainly likes to keep them happy.

And if I am totally out to lunch, please don't get angry, just explain where I went wrong.

MollyMac

This sounds like a potentially interesting question except I'm not quite sure what it is you're asking. The blame for what? What ethnic excuse? What do Slavs blame on Slavic culture? And what is your evidence for Poland's modern outlook?

Toto

Why do you regard all the other Orthodox churches as satellites of the Russians? They are more likely to look to the Greek Orthodox Church theologically.

I think that modernization is a function of exposure to the enlightnement thinking in western European ideas, and/or American ideas, which is a function of income and history. The Greeks have the most exposure, and are following the western European model of an established church that has low attendance and low influence.

The Ottoman Empire governed through religious divisions. The Orthodox Churches in all of the former Ottoman Empire are closely identified with nationalism. In the case of the Serbs, this has led to a particularly unhealthy form of nationalism.

Countries from the former Czarist empire are just screwed up for their own reasons.

never been there

Most frequently, genocide in former Yugoslavia, but more generally a tendency to look for scapegoats rather than solutions, or an inability to form a political culture that runs itself the way we're used to in NA or W.Europe. From the Poles I've met, or the news from Poland, the political culture looks for problems, and solutions, within the people themselves. I'm sorry I don't have specific incidents or situations, my question is more of a summing up of 10 years' impressions.

I remember my old thesis supervisor fretting that his native Hungary wouldn't be able to make democracy work because it never had a democratic period the way Czechoslovakia or Poland had. But pragmatism does seem to be prevailing there, for all of the challenges they've faced.

AHA! That might be something! It could indeed make quite a difference if the Orthodox Church was never unitary as the RC Church was. Western Europe did spend quite a lot of energy fighting over who got to name bishops, the pope or the king. That at least gives me an angle for further reading. Was there always independence of national churches?

I don't know how the hierarchy of national churches works, except for having heard the odd dust-up between the Ukranian and Russian churches (big surprise) and some kind of links between the Serbian and Russian churches. Anyhow, I think I've now got a point of entry into the history of the Eastern Church, and will see what I glean along the way.

There always could be coincidence playing a role, I agree.

Thanks Toto and MollyMac for your thoughts on this subject.

alek0

I don't think it is justified to blame only Serbs for genocide in Yugoslavia. All parties involved have commited crimes.

Toto

The Serbs were victims of genocide during World War II (committed by Croatian Catholics, including Catholic priests.) When Croatia withdrew from Yugoslavia, effectively breaking the country up, it was with the Pope's and Catholic Germany's encouragement, and their first president, Franjo Tudjman, was a holocaust denyer.

The Serbs were definitely on the losing end of the propaganda war in the breakup of Yugoslavia. But they did not handle their side well, in part because they cling to their myths of the Serbian national sacrifice that kept the Moslem Turks out of Europe in 1389. They would not compromise on Kosovo because of its religious signficance and the number of Orthodox monasteries they had built in the area. They would not accept Albanians because the Albanians are Moslem (or Catholic, like Mother Teresa.)

The whole situation is very bad. But religion has made it worse.

lpetrich

I think that it may not be Eastern Orthodoxy so much as the political culture of Tsarist Russia. I recall from somewhere that its autocracy was a side effect of some early period of disorder and strife; the Tsars had to rule with an iron hand to maintain order.

And the Church was closely entangled with the Tsarist regime.

never been there

I just got through one book by a reporter who surveyed religious leaders around the Orthodox world: Why Angels Fall by Victoria Clark (NY, St.Martin's Press, 2000).

It certainly didn't help test my original hypothesis that there's "sumpin' 'bout dem Ortodocks" as that was very much the premise of her book. She didn't look for any counterexamples or compare to non-Orthodox Eastern European countries. I'll have to search for some author with a different view.

It is an interesting enough book. As an ex-Catholic Western feminist her take on any given archbishop or monk is strongly influenced by how sexist she found him. Anyway, if it sounds interesting, look it up. I'll just summarize what I did manage to learn about particular historical patterns that might explain the politics of today.

The religious leadership of the Orthodox churches certainly sustain ethnic nationalism, which keeps those sentiments warmed up for a Milosevic to take advantage of. The way the various archbishops embody ethnicity would date back to the Ottoman empire. Since the Ottomans' Sultan was also the Caliph, they didn't take separation of church and state as a given. The churches' priority being to maintain the Muslim tolerance of Christianity, the Ottomans made each archbishop personally responsible for the docility of his flock. From this came the Archbishops' political role as head of each respective ethnicity. One of Archbishop Makarios' (of Cyprus 1950-1970something) titles was "ethnarch", to give you the picture.

To compare, in Western Europe there was no external emperor, so the kings and popes could fight it out. The people, as a consequence, had the idea of nationalism balanced by a competing universalism.

The Austro-Hungarian empire came next, organized and seeing itself as the heir to the Holy Roman Empire as a pillar of Roman Catholicism, tried to push back the boundary that had dated back to the 1054 schism between Constantinople and Rome. The Orthodox churches naturally greatly resented this, with memories of the Fourth Crusade's sack of Constantinople and other arrogance being long held in the church. This is still being played out in the battle between the Uniate and Orthodox churches in Romania and Ukraine.

So I would conclude that there is nothing particularly different about people from Orthodox countries, but the churches certainly have an axe or two to grind. The politics is explained by the churches' old strategy of encouraging their best and brightest followers to go into politics or otherwise seek power with the aid of an established network.

Growing up in Quebec, that sure sounds familiar. The Roman Catholic church anathematized the Liberal party for years until it got elected, then practically became the Liberal party in a few years, and it took a major defeat over abortion rights to break their power once and for all.

Anyway, thank you for your ideas, and I'll be sure to post if I come across anything radically interesting.

Psycho Economist

One thing about the Orthodox churches is that they seem pretty analogous to Episcopalian churches in terms of governance: every (predominantly Orthodox) nation has its own autonomous Orthodox church, with liturgy in the local language. Unlike the Episcopal churches, every Orthodox church has a sovereign Archbishop and some larger national churches with several Archbishoprics chose one to be a Patriarch.

As for why Poland has excelled relative to other former Soviet and sattelite states, my guess would be its head start, and its close ties to the west of Europe, which might have non-negligible origins in being a predominantly Catholic, not Orthodox country... I don't know. Though if I ever have time to read that book, I'll give it a try.