Fundamentals of Religious Cultures and Secular Ethics

Over the last decade, the Russian Federation has turned sharply away from the secular foundations of its 1993 constitution and moved toward the model of a confessional state — a model that strikingly resembles the state-sponsored hierarchy of religions in the nineteenth-century Russian Empire. Increasingly, the Russian state actively cooperates with certain favored religious organizations, labeled “traditional,” to achieve its social and political goals.