The Second Christianization of Rus was shown last week on the state owned TV channel Rossia-1. The title speaks for itself: the years after the fall of the Soviet Union are portrayed as the time of the great religious revival in Russia, i.e., the return of Russian Orthodox faith. Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, talks throughout the film about the significance of the Eastern Orthodox Church for the building of Russia's new spiritual identity.

Before the vote, gay rights activists attempted to hold a "kissing rally" outside the State Duma, located across the street from Red Square in central Moscow, but they were attacked by hundreds of Orthodox Christian activists and members of pro-Kremlin youth groups. The mostly burly young men with closely cropped hair pelted them with eggs while shouting obscenities and homophobic slurs.

The arrest and conviction of Pussy Riot on charges of hooliganism fits into a broader context of Russian cultural history and political structure. Pussy Riot's conviction is yet another example of the collaboration between church and state typical of Russian history, aimed to increase Putin's power. (snip)

This is not the first time that the Russian Orthodox Church has partnered up with various Russian forms of government. The ROC was the official religious authority during the rule of the Romanov dynasty, it cooperated with the KGB under Communist rule, and it is following that well-established Soviet script once again in the interest of the Putin regime. In the very beginning of the 20th century, the ROC excommunicated another literary titan, Lev Tolstoy. In addition to writing fiction, Tolstoy engaged in philosophical writing on the very fundamental structures of state and organized religion. For his beliefs, he was excommunicated, but not prosecuted, in 1901.

In both instances, the state either stayed out of the matter or supported the creative thinker. This has not been the case with Pussy Riot.

By pressing for the charges to be presented before the state authorities over an unconventional prayer of “Virgin Mary,Put Putin Away,” we are witnessing an unprecedented level of collaboration between the ROC and the Putin regime for the purposes of political prosecution.

I wrote the other day about how vigilante groups in Russia were luring gay teens via Russian social media sites, then kidnapping and torturing them. One such teen, profiled in our piece, may now be dead, according to Russian human rights activists. He was a young Uzbek waiter, and I’ve found additional photos, and a video, online of his abduction.

Russian Neo Nazis have been advised by a top-ranking supremacist to create fake profiles on a popular Russian social network, VK.com, and lure in gay male teenagers in order to torture and humiliate them for being gay.

Adelgeim, a former religious dissident who had been imprisoned under Soviet rule, had in recent years in his blog and newspaper articles been hugely critical of the powerful leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church.

For a religious figure he had been unusually vocal in his support for Pussy Riot, two of whose members are serving two year prison camp terms for an illegal performance in a Moscow church.

In 2012 he spoke up against the jailing of Pussy Riot members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, Katarina Samutsevich, 30, and Maria Alyokhina, 24, who were arrested after staging a controversial musical performance at Moscow's Christ the Saviour Cathedral.

The feminist punk band famously performed an anti-Kremlin "punk prayer", calling for the Lord to oust President Vladimir Putin.

The stunt outraged Russia's conservative religious society. However Adelgeim was among the hundreds of prominent Russians who signed a letter imploring to Orthodox Patriarch Kirill to pardon the women.

On January 11, unidentified assailants shot at Akhmednabiev three times but missed. He had received death threats in May 2012 and immediately reported them to police. Law enforcement authorities did not effectively investigate either the threats or the subsequent shooting. Akhmednabiev’s lawyer, Abdurashid Sheikhov, told Caucasian Knot that the murder would not have occurred if not for the “negligence of the entire law enforcement system.”

The Soviet Union was the first state to have, as an ideological objective, the elimination of religion and its replacement with universal atheism. The communist regime confiscated religious property, ridiculed religion, harassed believers, and propagated atheism in schools. The confiscation of religious assets was often based on accusations of illegal accumulation of wealth.