Vladimir Putin is a Christian, naturally
A look at a dictator’s “faith”
Religion, of course, is just politics by another name. And both are mostly men behaving badly. Consider that great Christian, Vladimir Putin.
The dictator is Russian Orthodox, as his church adores him. I went to look up Putin’s use of Christianity, leading up to the invasion of Ukraine, while I wonder—how did the teachings of Jesus end up here?
Putin was born in 1952, while Stalin lived.
The Soviet Union was militantly atheist, following Karl Marx’s idea: “Religion is the opium of the people.” But the atheist government collapsed in 1991, and religion returned, because it works too damn good.
Putin later claimed his mother, Maria, was a Russian Othodox Christian. In “secret,” he says, she took him as an infant to a cathedral in Leningrad, and had him baptized. A helpful story when he came to prominence in a Russia that was lurching back toward Russian Orthodoxy.
He says he converted in 1993. In a biography, Fiona Hill and Clifford G. Gaddy add: “Embracing the Orthodox Church became very popular in KGB circles in the 1990s.”
