title: Geo-religious literacy, orthodoxy, and plurality in Russia
abstract: Understanding and engaging Russia requires not only cross-cultural but also geopolitical religious literacy—or “geo-religious literacy.” Indeed, religious geopolitics has created and sustained Russia’s unitary state. For nearly 1,000 years, rulers claimed power from God—or in opposition to God during the atheist Soviet times—while governing the multi-confessional, ethnically diverse, and culturally distinct peoples of Eurasia. The state needed compelling national ideas and unifying institutions 