The Moralist International : Russia in the Global Culture Wars

__The Moralist International__ analyzes the role of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian state in the global culture wars over gender and reproductive rights and religious freedom. It shows how the Russian Orthodox Church in the past thirty years first acquired knowledge about the dynamics, issues, and strategies of Right- Wing Christian groups; how the Moscow Patriarchate has shaped its traditionalist agenda accordingly; and how the close alliance between church and state has turned Russia into a norm entrepreneur for international moral conservativism. Including detailed case studies of the World Congress of Families, anti-abortion activism, and the global homeschooling movement, the book identifies the key factors, causes, and actors of this process. Kristina Stoeckl and Dmitry Uzlaner then develop the concept of conservative aggiornamento to describe Russian traditionalism as the result of conservative religious modernization and the globalization of Christian social conservatism. __The Moralist International__ continues a line of research on the globalization of the culture wars that challenges the widespread perception that it is only progressive actors who use the international human rights regime to achieve their goals by demonstrating that conservative actors do the same. The book offers a new, original perspective that firmly embeds the conservative turn of post-Soviet Russia in the transnational dynamics of the global culture wars. The Moralist International __is available from the publisher on an open-access basis.__ Explains the dynamics and mechanisms behind the backlash against sex and gender based human rights in eastern Europe and the Orthodox world Contents 5 Preface 7 Introduction 11 Part I Learning the Culture Wars 25 CHAPTER 1 Religion: Conservative Aggiornamento and the Globalization of the Culture Wars 25 CHAPTER 2 History: The Sources of Russia’s Traditional-Values Conservatism 39 CHAPTER 3 Intellectual Roots: The Shared Legacy of Pitirim Sorokin 60 CHAPTER 4 Context: The Rise of Traditional-Values Conservatism inside Russia 76 Part II Doing the Culture Wars 95 CHAPTER 5 Ambitions: The Russian Orthodox Church and Its Transnational Conservative Alliances 95 CHAPTER 6 Networks: Civil Society and the Rise of the Russian Christian Right 113 CHAPTER 7 Strategies: The Russian Orthodox Anti-Abortion Discourse in a Transnational Context 136 CHAPTER 8 Leadership: Russian Traditional-Values Conservatism and State Diplomacy 146 Epilogue 163 Acknowledgments 167 Bibliography 169 Index 203 "Explains the dynamics and mechanisms behind the backlash against sex and gender based human rights in eastern Europe and the Orthodox world and shows how Russia came to assume a leadership role in the global culture wars"-- Provided by publisher