The Myth of Moscow, Third Rome: What It Seeks to “Do”
How to Do Things with Myths - A Performative Theory of Myths and How We Got There - Ivan Strenski
Ivan Strenski [+]
University of California Riverside (retired)
Author of 15 books and more than 100 academic articles on religion and political issues
like gift, sacrifice, freedom of religion/religious freedom, religious nationalism, French
Catholic integralism, post-revolutionary French Jewry, divine right of kings, Ivan Strenski
is Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Religious Studies at the University of California,
Riverside. His most recent books are Muslims, Islams, and Occidental Anxieties:
Conversations about Islamophobia (2022), a history of the study of religion from the
Renaissance to the present-day, Understanding Theories of Religion (2014) and Why Politics Can’t Be Freed from Religion: Radical Interrogations of Religion, Power and Politics (2009), Arabic translation (2016).
Description
Since the mid-19 th century, Russian nationalism rests, in part, on what the presumably ancient myth of Moscow, Third Rome “does” to insure the legitimacy of Russia’s claims to leadership of Christendom. The myth implies that Muscovy assumes a political pre-eminence for all time from Constantinople after its fall to the Ottomans in 1453. Historical data, however, defeat all the main arguments in this mythological origin-story of modern Russia.