re: #330 Snarknado!

In regard to the ROC and the Bolsheviks it would be more accurate to say that among the Church elite there were people eagerly willing to collaborate, their anti-Bolshevik opponents and the masses between the two poles that would swing between them. Patriarch Tikhon and his followers were not among the willingly cooptable. As the masses understood in which direction the winds were blowing, Tikhon was relieved of his post by the same people that used to curse the Bolsheviks just a bit earlier, during the Pomestnyj Sobor.

So yeah, there was this adaptability and cooptability, but it appeared in the presence of an external threat and not without opposition. Today there is no threat and what we see is not so much the state trying to coopt the church but vice versa - the church tries to coopt the regime, to make the rules of the game.