The «Russian World» as A Historiosophical Concept and Its Connection with Russian Religiosity

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the content of the historiosophical concept of «Russian world», establishing the origins of the religious meanings assimilated to it and its key components such as «Russian idea» and «Holy Rus'». The study primarily focuses on the assessment given to the concept by His Holiness Kirill Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus' in his public speeches, for whom the «Russian world» is not that other, as a unity of sacred things of peoples of historical Rus', a single space of common spiritual and cultural values shaped by the influence of Christian faith and Orthodox tradition. The author seeks to show that main semantic pivot of the «Russian world» cultural narrative undoubtedly has a religious content which, at the same time, stems from the archaic features of the Russian idea of sanctity as a spiritual force that strives to expand. The concept of the «Russian world» is directly linked to the idea of Holy Rus', which is its spiritual ideal, its main sacred object. That is why the idea of Holy Rus', not being a socio-political phenomenon, prototypes a different reality, the reality of a holy kingdom, expected and approximated kingdom, the reality of the Church seen as the Kingdom of God, which came in power (Mk. 9, 1). In this sense, the historiosophical dimension of the «Russian world» idea stems from the sense of Christian responsibility which the Russian people is aware of in one way or another: understands this responsibility before God, history and other peoples, in the face of which the Russian people testify their allegiance to the Savior and His Church.