I have mentioned here a number of times and used a number of times the term ethnic nationalist which seemed to not be well liked by mirhond.
I have also used the concept that Russia foreign policy is really composed of four legs 1) the military, 2) the security services, 3) the oligarchs and 4) the Russian mafia and related gangs.
This weekend I had an opportunity of meeting a number of French think tank guys working in Strasbourg (who had a number of years in both Russia and the Ukraine and were fluent in Russian) that opened my eyes to an overriding layer that sits on top of the four groups.
Namely the Russian Orthodox Church which they claim has far more influence/input that many in the West fully understand especially if one understands the relationship between the Church and Stalin in the dark days as Germany raced towards Moscow---there was an alliance recreated that allowed the Church to grow and actually survive nicely all the years under so called Communist control.
Then today this comes up in a Foreign Policy article that goes in the same direction that the think tank guys were talking about--namely the influence of the Church on Putin and the Russian population in general--they even indicated that one must do a thorough review of the Church and it's relationship to the Soviet Communist Party and how it actually grew in power during those times when the West felt it had been oppressed.
"The Russian Orthodox Church thus comes increasingly to the fore as a symbol and bastion of these traditional values and all that they mean for the new imperialism. Russian Orthodoxy was never an especially evangelical faith, concentrating on survival and purity over expansion, and much the same could be said of Putin's worldview. In Putin's previous presidency, the church was supportive, but just one of many of his allies. Now, though, from the pulpit to television news programs, the church is one of the most consistent and visible supporters of Putin's state-building project. When interviewed on the subject of Crimea, Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, one of Putin's cassocked cheerleaders, asserted that the church has long believed that "the Russian people are a divided nation on its historical territory, which has the right to be reunited in a single public body."
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/article...ia_geopolitics
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