«В начале было Слово…», а в конце будет число? Православие и антицифровой протест в России: с 1990-х до коронавируса

Мир России: Социология, этнология. 2021. Т. 30. № 2. С. 146–166.

Knorre B. K., Murashova A.

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 fi rst protests against the use of barcodes and taxpayer identifi cation numbers (VATIN – value added tax identifi cation 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.

Keywords: консерватизм, защита персональных данных, цифровизация, фундаментализм, Православие, Русская православная церковь, COVID-19

Publication based on the results of: The impact of crisis on the development of the nonprofit sector and citizen self-organization in Russia: New realities and prospects (2021)