Russian Nuclear Orthodoxy: Religion, Politics, and Strategy by Dmitry Adamsky (review)

Dmitry Adamsky's Russian Nuclear Orthodoxy: Religion, Politics, and Strategy offers an astute view into the relationship between the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) and Russia's nuclear arsenal. Adamsky, a political scientist, opens new dimensions concerning the study of the ROC and the Russian state in this book, which investigates "the unprecedented role that the Orthodox faith has played in Russian identity, politics, and national security and focuses on the bond that has emerged between the Kremlin, the ROC, and the nuclear weapons community" (3). Adamsky terms the results of this association "Russian Nuclear Orthodoxy."

Throughout the book, Adamsky provides a history of how the ROC"utilized the nuclear community as a tool to enhance its social and political influence" (3). His research into the symbiotic relationship between the ROC and the country's nuclear community provides new insights into just one of the myriad ways that the ROC aims to shape the direction of state policy in the current moment.

Adamsky divides his book into three sections that roughly correspond to the three decades of the post-Soviet period. He asserts that each of these decades represents a different phase in the process of development of the ROC's involvement with Russia's nuclear weapons program. He begins with what he calls the "Genesis Decade," the first post-Soviet decade. Adamsky notes that, in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was a grassroots development of interest and engagement with Orthodoxy within the nuclear weapons community. In this decade, he stresses, the Church had to act cautiously so as not to appear overly aggressive in its attempts to influence the Russian military. Next, he speaks of the "Conversion Decade," when religion began to play a much greater role in the political life of the country, coinciding with Vladimir Putin's first decade leading the country. He notes that it is during this period that many of the senior officials became believers, or at least became more amenable to the prospect of the ROC taking a larger role in the life of the nuclear program. The expansion of religion in the nuclear corps reflects a larger trend within Russia during that time: "[As] Russian ruling elite began seeing in Orthodoxy a 'critical ingredient in the formation of a cohesive national identity,' the adoption of Orthodox symbols and narratives gradually began on a national level" (87). In the book's last section, Adamsky writes of the "Operationalization Decade," in which Russia's nuclear weapons are once again seen as a major guarantor of national security and Russian Orthodoxy has become a major facet of state attempts to define Russian national identity: "Closer relations between the state and the Church resulted in the ROC's greatest ever engagement in domestic and foreign policy" (176).

Adamsky structures his work with repeating chapter titles within each of the three sections, specifically "State–Church Relations," "Faith–Nuclear Nexus," and "Strategic Mythmaking." These repeating chapters allow the reader to understand the most important thematic elements of the ROC's work to influence the Russian nuclear community and, ultimately, foreign and domestic politics. Adamsky provides a thorough look at various ways that the ROC influences those within Russia's nuclear weapons apparatus, such as through the creation of catechism courses among military personnel and clerical blessings of nuclear weapons. In doing so, Adamsky fills his book with sensational and curious details concerning how the ROC has attempted to infiltrate and cooperate with the nuclear apparatus.

This repeating structure helps readers to understand the changes over time that have occurred in the relationship between the Russian military and the ROC. At times, however, the book reads as a sort of exacting catalog of the different ways that religion is present in the various institutions and elements that constitute the Russian nuclear weapons apparatus. This is useful for learning granular information, but it often leads to a rather halting narrative that makes it more difficult to fully ascertain Adamsky's larger arguments...