In Search of the "Russian Idea": A View from Inside the Russian Orthodox Church

Almost two decades have passed since the era of glasnost and perestroika, when religion in Russia was allowed to escape the "ghetto" to which it had been confined in the Soviet Union. Until the mid-1980s, officially permitted religion existed under harsh state control. Churches were open, but far from all of them. Only 44 of the approximately 1,000 churches in Moscow had remained open; in Leningrad, only ten, and in the regional (oblastnykh) centers typically from one to three (although some had no churches at all). Monasteries practically did not exist.