When the Parish stands against: Political Consequences of Closed Orthodox Churches during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Russia

The research is devoted to studying the relationship between Orthodox religiosity and political support in Russia in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic exogenous shock. As the pandemic coincided with the Orthodox Easter holiday in 2020, regional authorities decided to close religious institutions in 42 regions, while they remained open in rest 43 regions. The main argument is that such a decision could turn Orthodox religiosity, which typically acts as a factor of support for Russian authorities, into a factor of punishment. To test the hypotheses and measure the average effect of closing religious institutions, quantitative research design is used and multiple regression analysis (OLS) is performed. At the same time, taking into account the presence of two nested levels of observation (individual and regional), the models are modified by techniques from multilevel modelling and clustered standard errors. It demonstrates that among the Orthodox population from regions with closed religious institutions, support for Russian authorities decreases as their parish church membership increases. Conversely, in regions where churches remained open, support for authorities grows with the number of active parishioners. However, the punishment for closure is directed at regional leaders and not transferred to mayors, the Government, the Parliament, or the President. Overall, the study shows that under certain conditions when the religious interests of the Orthodox population are infringed, they can punish Russian authorities by reducing support, depending on the activity of regional parish life and the distribution of formal responsibility for introducing religious restrictions. The main implication of the study is the necessity to reconsider the church-state relations model in Russia by including parishioners as a separate actor in the analysis, in order to fully explain political outcomes linked with religious factors.