Annotation of the results obtained in 2022
In the final year of the project, the research group continued empirical study of the moral experience of participants in military conflicts of the 2nd half of the 20th – early. 21st centuries and summarized theoretical findings over the entire period. These findings were presented in the monograph "The Ethics of War in the Countries of Orthodox Culture" (scientific editor P. Bojanic. St. Petersburg: Vladimir Dal, 2022). In continuation of the study of the key concepts of Orthodox ethics (“force”, “violence”, “victory”, etc.), the categories “enemy” / “opponent” were analyzed while their interpretations by leading representatives of Orthodox philosophical thought and European philosophers were compared. The discourse of military conflict is shown to require the conceptualization of the enemy in such a way as to justify the use of force and allow for the possibility of opponent’s destruction. Anthropological framework of the project entailed focusing on habitus, which was understood as a set of fixed predispositions, mental attitudes, perception schemes and moral orientations embedded in certain social roles. Based on this premise, the research team continued to explore specific categories of participants in military conflicts. For this, an extensive source base was studied, including ego-documents, dealing with the Soviet-Finnish War (1939-1940), the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945), the Vietnam War (1965-1974), the war in Afghanistan (1979-1989). ), military operations in the Chechen Republic of the Russian Federation (1994-1996; 1999-2009), military conflicts in former Yugoslavia (1991-2009) and Syria (since 2015). According to the work plan in 2022, the research team analyzed three categories of habituses: civilians involved in hostilities, military servicemen (traditional combatants), non-traditional combatants. In the first category, the research team analyzed habituses of nurses, priests, and war refugees. In the second category, among habituses of combatants, the research team analyzed soldiers (including the UAV operator as a non-classical combatant) and commanders (officers, military leaders). From the intermediate category, the habitus of prisoners, PMC fighters and partisans (including modern “cyber guerrillas” and “hacktivists”) were studied. The latter were explored separately because they are either removed from active hostilities or not recognized as full-fledged combatants. This greatly affects their moral orientations and attitudes to military operations. Civilian individuals who were involved in hostilities. As part of the study of the moral experience of the first category, an analysis was made of the moral experience of nurses who participated in military conflicts in Afghanistan and Chechnya. The imperative of mercy had a great influence on the understanding of the mission of nurses, as it substantiates their special role in the war: not only to provide medical care, but to support spiritually and morally the combatant troops. Unlike previous periods of history, with an institution of military chaplaincy still present, during the years of the Second World War the moral experience of the priest was determined by his individual choice of action in organized violence or military hostilities (partisan movement, collaboration with occupying authorities etc.). A significant role in the moral assessment and moral choice was played by the higher clergy, who, despite the previous repressions against the Orthodox Church in the USSR, took the side of the Soviet state, condemned the collaborators, actively participated in the financial and ideological support of the Soviet army. The re-emergence of the military chaplaincy in the post-Soviet period has created new opportunities for building a connection between "Orthodox" and "Russian/Russian" identities, as well as between Christian dogma and the "lived religion" of people who find themselves in a situation of organized collective violence. A state of uncertainty has been found to be characteristic of the experience of refugees (fleeing from war) in most of the military conflicts we studied: uncertainty about finding a new place is coupled with a fear of not being able to return. At the same time, the refugees’ experience of the war demonstrates a significant shift in the traditional dichotomy "friends and foes", which was especially traumatic for the refugees of the Chechen wars, where it was extremely difficult to draw this line. Their lived experience prompted the refugees to rethink their values and adapt to new forms of bahavior, which in some cases led to the formation of a religious attitude to the world. Commanders and soldiers. Continuing the historical excursus into the origins of Orthodox Christianity in a military environment, in 2022 the research team analyzed Byzantine military treatises. The organization of religious life in the troops was shown to play an important role for the imperial military administration. In regard to confessional diversity in the armed forces of the Eastern Roman Empire in the 5th-7th centuries. the measures aimed at achieving uniformity in the army ranks were studied, as they corresponded to the universalist aspirations of the emperors. In the further analysis, three archetypes of the commander were identified to demonstrate the variety of ways in which the subordinates and the commanders can develop their relationships. The ego-documents of military leaders show that, although the main ethical principle - saving the lives of military personnel - is shared by late-Soviet and post-Soviet military commanders, the implementation of this principle could have a divergent, even opposite, implications: from suspending military operations to enforcing brutal extermination of the opposing forces. In their memoirs, the commanding generals pay special attention to strategic planning. In the late Soviet and post-Soviet period, the idea of military brotherhood united military commanders and soldiers. This brotherhood sometimes included not only military personnel, but was extrapolated to their relatives, and combined both corporate and ethical-religious values. Further, the formation of the soldiers' personal moral experience of war was studied on the basis of interviews - both conducted by the research team and already published. Respondents repeatedly switched from the register of moral horror of violence to the register of instrumentality of violence. The second strategy to accommodate morally horrors of war and violence was to grant the positive value to military experience and to frame it as a necessary step in socialization. The majority of respondents resolved the conflict of values in favor of the greater good, for the sake of which a necessary evil is being committed. In the analysis of the moral experience of UAV operators, it was revealed that, despite being protected from direct physical threat, UAV operators face similar moral injuries caused by their use of violence as other military personnel. In the study of the moral experience of Soviet and Russian prisoners of war, it was shown that, it was important to preserve honor in captivity, as well as to discover one's own meaning beyond mere survival. With regard to such specific participants in military conflicts as partisans, it was shown that immediately after the Second World War their moral experience was presented in the context of the norms of the class and national liberation struggle, however, as personal documents and testimonies were published, the moral decisions proved to be motivated by retribution. Finally, when analyzing the experience of representatives of private military companies, despite the legal and political peculiarities faced by PMC employees, their moral experience of violence is similar to that of soldiers and officers in the regular army. The research findings for 2022, were made public in 5 scientific articles published in journals indexed by the RSCI and included in the HAC list, in 8 scientific articles published in journals indexed by Scopus / WoS, including 3 articles in journals in Q1 and 1 article in Q2, and also 1 review in a journal indexed in WoS. In addition, 12 conference papers were published in conference proceedings, indexed in the RSCI, and a final collective monograph. The members of the team made 29 presentations at scientific Russian and international conferences, collected materials in scientific centers, archives and libraries, and delivered all anticipated outcomes.

 

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Annotation of the results obtained in 2020
The project aiming at analyzing moral agency, moral choice, and moral dilemmas in relation to war, in its first stage, focused on contemporary ethical and socio-philosophical approaches. These approaches, in their majority, interpret violence as absolute moral evil, which evidently impedes any moral justification of violence and makes any efforts to elaborate the ethics of war for the modern state highly problematic and rather hypocritical. However, it is equally evident that from individuals’ perspective, the use of violence and participation in war are often a morally viable and ethically justifiable choice. The project looked at moral experience and moral dilemmas of UCAV operators, chaplains and “regimental priests”, refugees, partisans, and byzantine solders of foreign origin. The ethical justification of choosing violence can rely on the ideas of just war in contemporary liberal democracies, but for Russia, Belarus and other countries of Orthodox cultural heritage, in different periods of their history, other ethical justifications were prevalent. Among these justifications, the following should be named: patriotic duty (defending Fatherland/Motherland), the idea of “Christ-loving” warriors and host, personal loyalty to the military commanders and leaders. Another prominent view presents war as providing an opportunity for demonstrating personal valor and virtues while overcoming hardships, that is, as an opportunity for a sort of ascetic experience and Christian discipline. Thus, the project showed that there existed a number of discourses, which regarded violence and war in their relation to and connection with the transcendent rather than in the context of “flat” secular temporality. Further, while analyzing the writings of I. Bryanchaninov, L. Tolstoy, I Ilyin, it was shown that the experience of war thematized human mortality in a way different from the ways finality of life is perceived and experienced in peaceful periods. Because in war, the actions are aimed at destroying life, in other words, murder becomes the goal of activities, the awareness and moral significance of our own and others’ mortality requires major reconsideration of value orientations and calls for the ultimate or transcendent frames of justification. Therefore, with the view to elucidate the ethical justification of choosing violence, the project turned to analyzing ethico-religious frames for deliberation and value orientation. The project, thus, focused further on defining religious culture and on exploring the specific features of religious culture in the countries selected for the empirical research. It is argued that religious culture is distinct from major religion of a country. The notion of culture refers to a complex of traditions, practices, symbolizations, and value orientations, accumulated over ages and framing the activities. It is important to highlight that unlike explicit religious codes, doctrines or precepts with direct normativity, culture shapes the context in which moral choices are made and in which the meaning of the ethical questions is articulated. These meanings and values have normative significance due to their relation with supra-individual, collective or trans-historical as well as transcendent dimensions of human life. Consequently, religious culture rather than religion per se was selected for the background of our analysis of ethical justifications of violence and war. The idea of “Christ loving” warriors and army was of special interest for the project. Through analyzing both theological treatises and press feuilletons, a number of constitutive elements of this idea were identified, including the supremacy of Orthodox sovereign, of the tsar, in deciding matters of war and peace; mythologization of the military past of the country; mystical view on military action, in which heavenly host of saints and angels battles alongside the soldiers; religious intolerance and denial of religious equality; acceptance and justification of the right to kill at war for the Orthodox Christian. While analyzing discussions of the Russian intellectuals and philosophers of the first half of the 20th century such as L. Tolstoy, I. Ilyin, S. Frank, L. Karsavin and others, it was shown that the First World War was at the center of debates and caused great controversy over its justification and its significance for the Russian people and culture. Because this war was seen as primarily the conflict of Russian and Germanic cultures, of Russian and Germanic spirituality, the traditional arguments for engaging in wars were failing. There arose a need to demonstrate the specific profile of Russian, or rather Orthodox spirituality and consequently of specifically Orthodox way of waging war. Because the notion of violence is connected with aggression in Orthodoxy, it cannot be justified in any way, yet, force can oppose violence. No preventive military action is acceptable, yet immediate military reaction to repel the enemy is approved. These ways of articulating the problems of war and reasoning about violence manifest a common logic of interpreting violence and war in the countries of Orthodox cultural heritage. This common logic is also confirmed by the analysis of the writings of P. Petrovic Njegosh who can be regarded as a founder of Serbian Orthodox philosophy. In P. Petrovic Njegosh’s view, justification of force is based on the paradoxical relation of force and violence, which are distinct, but connected (“mace and law”). The notion of defense – and any life is a force defending itself – underlies Serbian interpretation of violence and war. In addition, similar ideas were explored in the writings of Russian emigres who, however, had to reflect on the problems of patriotic violence in a different context: at a distance from the Fatherland, on the one hand, and in the context of the conflicting ideas of Fatherland caused by the revolution and civil war, on the other. Thus, it is argued that Orthodox view on war rejects any imperialism, any form of aggressive war, and any preventive war. Yet, the conceptualization of the use of violence had to be nuanced with the view of new form of violence, which emerged from the First World War, that is, revolutionary violence and civil war. Therefore, the main focus was on the just use of force, which is regulated by and aims at ending hostilities. In the course of the research in 2020, the project also focused on the practices of fostering “Christian warriorship”, Christian warrior and Christian host. These practices were explored on the basis of the writings and activities of the Orthodox “regimental priests” (chaplains) in Russian army at the turn of the 20th century. The divergence between ethical code and practical ethos of the regimental priests was identified. It can be explained by the fact that the priests in the army, particularly, during the First World War, had to deal with a number of concomitant conflicts including religious conflicts as some of the priests who adopted nationalistic ideologies opposed the chaplaincy of other confessions; conflicts over authority with the military commanders; conflicts between traditionalists and reformists within Russian Orthodox Church. While addressing the problem of building an army in a Christian empire and of fostering Orthodox military ethos, the project focused on Byzantine military history and showed that “foreign” groups, though officially integrated, remained quite aloof from the official discourses and practices. Thus, the revolts of Germanic tribes at the turn of the 5th century in Phrygia were motivated by the conflict of divergent interpretations of military ethos rather than by monetary interests or political ambitions. Germanic military leadership rested on “warlordism”, which entailed personal loyalty to the commander rather than any institutional or legal justifications, whereas imperial authorities expected the regular and hierarchically codified military subordination. In addition, many conflicts in the army of the Byzantine Empire were caused by sectarian and confessional adversities such as confessional clashes between different versions of Christianity (Arianism, Nestorianism, etc.). Russian imperial army faced similar challenges, as is shown on the basis of the analysis of official documents and personal accounts, due to the religious and ethnic conflicts in the everyday life of soldiers. Project’s findings were published in 16 papers, indexed in RSCI, and 23 conference presentations.

 

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Annotation of the results obtained in 2021
In 2021, the research focused on normative models of behavior in the course of word wars, civil wars, and other large-scale wars of the twentieth century. Firstly, we continued to elaborate on theoretical issues that, in our view, bear on methodological concerns in our project. We analyzed the conception of violence and (de)legitimation of war in the works of Russian philosophers (Ivan Ilyin, Lev Karsavin, Leo Tolstoy), European philosophers and historians (Georg Simmel, C. Schmitt, Emanuel Levinas, Jurgen Habermas, Alfred Schutz, Alf Ludtke) as well as patristic (St. Athanasius, St. Basil, St. Augustine) and later Russian and Serbian theological texts (Petar Petrovic Njegosh, Theophan the Recluse, Ignatius Bryanchaninov, John of Kronstadt) along with Serbian epic poems. In individual reflection, violence is mostly justified by relegating the responsibility for killing to insurmountable circumstances, but in Orthodox culture personal conscience is superior to the circumstances and demands other approaches. Thus, the concepts such as “a war for the faith”, “patriotic war”, “Christ-loving warriors” become instrumental in moral justification. The notion of victory was hardly elaborated in Orthodox theology, though. Victory always, although to a different degree, subjugates, excludes or eliminates the other - the enemy, therefore, it can’t be the ultimate goal of violence or war. In Orthodox ethics, paradoxically, military defeat can better ensure the preservation of faith and religious customs of the people. In this view, it is God’s providence and will that some warriors are granted victory rather than capability can explain victory. The moral experience of imminent death was analyzed from two interrelated perspectives: the fear of death and the justification of death. Fear of death at war re-constitutes authenticity of existence, which was inherent in peaceful life. Temporal regime is centered on the present as imminent but indefinite death constantly reverts to the immediate circumstances. Existentially, reflection is focused on the meaning of death rather than on the meaning of life. In reflecting on the meaning of one’s death, individuals refer to the mission of “protecting the people”, or “defending against the foes”. Enemy’s death justifies one’s own demise and makes the sacrifice meaningful. Hate, on the other hand, turns the enemy into someone who deserves death. Although killing enemies is understood as the outcome of hate, hate itself is caused by sympathy and compassion towards those who perished and suffered. Hate, thus, features in reflection when meaning of one’s own death and of enemy’s death are interdependent. Secondly, with the view to explore moral justification of violence and death, we analyzed archival documents, letters, diaries, reports, and other ego-documents of soldiers, commanders, refugees, priests, military correspondents, who participated in the Russian-Turkish war (1877-1878), the Russian-Japanese war (1904-1905), the second Balkan war (1913), the first world war (1914-1918), the Soviet-Finnish war (1939-1940), the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945), the Vietnam war (1965-1974), Afghan war (1979-1989). We investigated how the ideal of honorable death and the ethics of commemorating the fallen were operative in personal moral reflection and justification of military violence. We showed that individuals reclaimed their agency in front of imminent death with the help of these concepts. We also investigated the reflection on enemy’s death in the letters of soldiers and officers for whom enemy’s death was regarded as acceptable justification for their own perdition. In studying the available reflection on the fates of refugees, we showed that dichotomy of “us-them” (or “ours-theirs”) determined their value orientations and moral experience. This moral experience could transform into religious conversion. In the circumstances of war, the refugees encountered a complicated set of moral dilemmas which undermined conventional value hierarchies and blurred the “us-them” distinction because they could no longer discern who was on their side and who was against them. This indeterminate status and feeling of abandonment made the refugees desperate and with no support but in themselves, which often found expression in religious terms. In regard to military priesthood during the first word war (1914-1918), we showed that because chaplains in the Cossack divisions were often recruited from the same parishes as the troops, the chaplains expressed and practiced the principle of love towards one’s neighbor (to their own brothers-in-arms obviously). They preached in lines with the military propaganda and strove to support the “military spirit” in the troops. However, in those divisions where the priests were “alienated” from the troops and disregarded especially by those companies that were “infected” with socialist or Bolshevik propaganda, the chaplains resorted to the notions of “humility” and “sin”. During the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945), despite the official prohibition, the former clerics who found themselves in the Red Army attempted to resume their mission and to address the soldiers’ spiritual needs, thereby also to restore religious culture. Afghan war was pushed out from the public discussion and remained solely in the personal reflection of its veterans whose experience was stigmatized. Traumas, wounds, mental disorders of combatants were hushed up and unattended, while the war was declared meaningless because its objectives remained unachieved. The veterans of “unrecognized wars” when they returned home felt alienated from the (post-)Soviet society and excluded from political agenda. They, on the other hand, highlighted the closeness and intuitive simplicity of communication with older generation - those who survived the Great Patriotic War. The special group of military correspondents who were, in fact, civilians but chose to be involved in the military operations could have different roles. Moral habitus of the military correspondents could change under the influence of the circumstances as they were spontaneously or intentionally “socialized into war”. In the latter case, on the one hand, they could be civilian individuals who were “amateurs of war”, that is, drawn to the war for the sake of war; on the other hand, they could be invested with military duties - of the officers - such as communication, reconnaissance, liaison with the locals, etc. Thirdly, to reconstruct normative models of behavior, we investigated the influence of official ideologies and public discourses about war on personal ethical reflection. We analyzed the Russian periodicals and Russian officers’ memoirs of the Russian-Turkish war (1877-1878) to identify Orthodox military ethos. In this war, here was a common “topos”, a dominant point of view for interpreting the moral choices, which was accepted by all involved from the Russian side. The Russian-Japanese war (1904-1905), however, was a watershed event for the Russian empire because Japan could not be framed as an “enemy of the faith” and because Russian imperial army included multiple confessions despite its official Orthodoxy. We show that military ethos was influenced by two major factors: confessional complexity of the Russian army and the Japanese policies, which aimed to exploit the differences and to stoke religious separatism. For instance, Russian POWs were confessionally segregated and non-Orthodox religious cults were supported. Our comparative analysis of public discourses about war continued with the investigation of the second Balkan war (1913). This war was primarily fought among Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, and Greece, all Orthodox countries, who, thus, “lapsed into the hideous sin of fratricide”. Because this war could not be framed in religious rhetoric, the public discourse had to shift from presenting it as a religious war to explaining it in terms of imperial and national interests. We also traced the evolution of normative models of moral choice with respect to partisan fighters of the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945). We showed that pre-war official Soviet discourse presented partisans (guerillas) in the context of class struggle and national liberation movement. In the course of the war, Soviet propaganda, in its legal documents, public discourse, and popular art promoted partisans’ fight with the Nazis as collective effort of the Soviet people to restore peaceful life and to avenge the Nazi atrocities. After the war, individual moral choice and individual heroism as well as the preeminence of local identity come to the fore in the literary and cinematographic production. Research findings of the project were published as 5 articles in the journals indexed in Scopus/WoS, 4 reviews in the journals indexed in Scopus/WoS, 3 articles in the journals indexed in RSCI and acknowledged by HAC, 10 conference papers in publications (conference proceedings) indexed in RSCI. In addition, the results of the research were presented in 40 papers at 10 international and Russian conferences. In cooperation with the Center for Advanced Studies - Southeast Europe the research project’s team organized the international conference “What Unites the Countries of Orthodox Christian Culture Today?” which was held on 19-20 July, 2021. Under the auspices of Youth Convention at the Ural Federal University, we organized a roundtable “Individual moral experience and public representations of war: visualizing heroism and suffering in 20th century wars” which was held on 18 May 2021.

 

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