John Garrard is professor of Russian studies at the University of Arizona. Carol Garrard is an independent scholar. Together they are the authors of three books including Russian Orthodoxy Resurgent.

Whoever will occupy the “throne” that Aleksy II’s death has vacated will set his personal stamp upon the Patriarchate, but there is little doubt that the union of Russian Orthodoxy and Russian patriotism which Aleksy initiated will continue.  This relationship has been successful beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.  Consider but one small example of Aleksy’s remarkable achievements vís a vís the Russian military and its need to staff isolated listening posts in the Far North.

Russia still has universal conscription for young men, all of whom are eligible—including those who wish to become monks.  The Russian military also had a problem staffing the isolated and forbidding radar listening posts in the Far North.  These posts are located within what used to be monasteries, but had over time been outfitted with the infrastructure of the Soviet military.  No one in the Russian military has spoken on the record about the problem of morale at these posts, but it is easy to imagine that young men, without anything else to do but listen for up to ten hours a day in the frozen north would turn to making home made vodka on their off hours.

Faced with the dual problem of conscripted novices and staffing issues at these listening posts, the Patriarch orchestrated an innovative, and mutually beneficial, solution with the military. The program which was made public for the first time on August 19, 2005 allows young men looking to become monks to simultaneously fulfill their duties to the Fatherland.

Aleksy celebrated the Orthodox “Feast of the Transfiguration,” one of twelve great feasts of the religious calendar, at the Valaam Monastery on Lake Ladoga.  Channel One TV covered the celebration because this was also the occasion of the re-opening of the Valaam Monastery of the Holy Transfiguration of the Saviour after a full fifteen years of restoration.

After that celebration of pomp and circumstance, Aleksy went to the other side of the island, and here he laid the foundation stone of what would be a brand new chapel—the chapel of St. George the Triumphant, patron saint of all warriors.  It would be the chapel for a unique unit in the Russian army, the 66th Separate Radar Company.  As the Channel One presenter said, “It is the only one of its type in the country.  It has just 18 servicemen, comprising five officers and 13 novices from the monastery on conscript service.”

To mark just how satisfactory a solution this was to both the Russian defense establishment and the Russian Orthodox Church, no less a person than Sergy Ivanov, then Minister of Defense, accompanied the Patriarch at the ceremony.  Afterwards, Minister Ivanov spoke approvingly, “Conditions of service here have been designed, firstly, not to detract from the purpose of this military unit.  And secondly, to combine it with spiritual needs.  I think this is entirely proper and natural.  And it brings the main result, in that all is in good order with both service and discipline and law and order.  Splendid.”

Aleksy congratulated the soldier novices on the Feast of the Transfiguration, blessed the officers’ wives and children, and wished for clear skies to always be, “like today, over the company as it defends our airspace.”  Thus, the army and the church worked together to solve the problem of how a young man could fulfill his spiritual longing to become a monk without shirking his duty as a conscript.  To the Russian army, used to well nigh perpetual drunkenness at these isolated posts, the solution must have seemed miraculous.  The presenter on Channel One mentioned in passing that the agreement between the monastery and the Ministry of Defense has been in place since 1995, so for ten years the monastery has sent its 18 year old novices over to the other side of the island to fulfill their military obligations.

Given that it took ten years for the military to publicize this entirely successful operation, we can be sure that other agreements between the Russian Orthodox Church and the military are also in place. No doubt, the impact of The Patriarch’s vision for the Church will continue to be felt for many decades.