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Religion in Russia

Religion has played a very important role in the evolution of Russian culture.

The largest of the religions, Orthodox Christianity, is predominantly represented by the Russian Orthodox Church that with the efficient support from the state has effectively established itself as state religion. Its adherents are said to number over 150 million worldwide.

Russia adopted Christianity in 988, it was introduced into the state of Kievan Rus from Byzantium. Later on, in 1448, the Council of the Russian higher clergy elevated Bishop Iona that made the Russian Orthodox Church ecclesiastically independent. During the reign of Peter the First the Russian Orthodox Church experienced a vast geographic expansion partly including the United States. Still the Russian Church endured hard times through the centuries, thus saving precious religious heritage for the believers nowadays. During the Soviet years the believers belonging to multiple parishes were suppressed and scattered about Siberia and Central Asia. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, state persecution of religion came to an end in Russia. 1997 was the year of adoption of the new law on religious freedom in Russia. The newly established government has supported building new and restoration of thousands of churches and monasteries that were used as offices and warehouses during the Soviet era, among them was the St. Daniel Monastery, the current seat of the Moscow Patriarchate, the spiritual and administrative center of the Russian Orthodox Church.

One of the present day Russian traditions presupposes a newly elected president to receive the blessings of the Patriarch, the ceremony taking place in former family chapel of the Russian Tsars.

With nearly 5,000 religious associations the Russian Orthodox Church accounts for over a half of the total number registered in Russia. The second largest religious community in Russia includes numerous Muslim associations represented by parishes and mosques mostly concentrated in Bashkortostan, Tatarstan and Caucasian regions.

Among the rest of the religious communities represented in Russia are Baptists, Seventh Day Adventists, Evangelicals, Old Believers, Roman Catholics, Krishnaites, Buddhists, Judaists, and Unified Evangelical Lutherans.

There are over 50 Jewish communities in Russia with more than 10 percent living in Moscow where 4 synagogues and multiple Jewish community centers are resided.

Among the Russian governmental plans announced for the upcoming decades is to introduce teaching the fundamentals of religious culture and secular ethics in schools with the ability to choose between the local religious culture, the history and cultural background of the world's great religions, or the foundations of secular ethics.