Rise Of The Russian Nuclear Priesthood

A review of Dmitry Adamski's book

Vladimir Putin with Patriarch Kirill in 2016

Adamsky, Dmitry. Russian Nuclear Orthodoxy: Religion, Politics, and Strategy. Stanford University Press, 2019.

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According to its author, “the most basic takeaway from this book is a need to incorporate religion into any future analysis of strategic affairs in general, in the Russian case in particular.” Dmitry Adamsky’s Russian Nuclear Orthodoxy: Religion, Politics, and Strategy chronicles “a major discontinuity from the past” in the strategic culture of the Kremlin. Starting from the late Soviet era, a “nuclear priesthood” has emerged in Russia, where “in contrast to other antinuclear Christian denominations, the ROC [Russian Orthodox Church] has promoted a ‘pronuclear’ worldview within Russian society.” For Patriarch Kirill, maintaining the Orthodox character of the Russian state and its nuclear deterrent are spiritual works to the same world-historical end.

Nuclear organizations turned to the ROC in search of political support for a greater share of resources after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Expanding to fill the void left behind by the demise of communist ideology, the ROC developed a new nuclear mythology, put priests on board submarines, consecrated space rockets, and installed itself throughout the ‘nuclear community.’ As a result, every leg of the nuclear triad has its own patron saint now, while nuclear bombers and submarines regularly carry venerated relics on board. Adamski writes that “the Russian military clergy, the nuclear priests in particular, could be seen as a reincarnation of Soviet political officers” today. Moreover, the strategic mythology propagated by this new class of priests was already implicated in Russia’s war against Ukraine when this book was published in 2019.