In the Beginning Was the Word; Will a Number Be in the End? Orthodoxy and Anti-digital Protest in Russia: From the 1990s to the Coronavirus

Abstract

This article focuses on the development of anti-digital protests among Orthodox fundamentalists and conservatives in Russia. The goal is to reveal the main trends in Russian Orthodoxy concerning the opposition to the introduction of electronic means of personal data control, and the ideas on which the respective arguments are based. We consider the period from the late 1990s to the summer of 2020, starting with the first protests against the use of barcodes and taxpayer identification numbers (VATIN  – value added tax identification number) and ending with the reaction of Orthodox movements to the digitization initiatives of the state authorities during the COVID-19 pandemic. We show that although the anti-digital protest is mainly associated with fundamentalist and the most conservative movements in Russian Orthodoxy, which are largely based on archaic or “traditional” values, the representatives of such groups in recent years have increasingly turned to the values of freedom and even to the human rights discourse that is widespread in the West. We also discover two clusters in  modern Russian Orthodoxy: one focused on the physical mediation of interaction with the transcendent, and the other on the intellectual and ethical understanding of religion. Representatives of the former cluster are not simply much less worried about the introduction of digital technologies; they even welcome the use of online technologies in religious practice.