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Russia

Also Known As Russian
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Russian Orthodox Christianity, adopted from Byzantium in 988 under Vladimir of Kiev, remains the dominant tradition and is closely tied to Russian national identity, its liturgy historically conducted in Church Slavonic rather than the modern Russian language. Seven decades of Soviet state atheism suppressed organized religion, closing or destroying churches, monasteries and mosques, and the post-1991 revival of Orthodoxy has been accompanied by a close, and at times contested, relationship between the church and the Russian state. Russia's substantial Muslim population, concentrated in regions including Tatarstan and the North Caucasus, and its Buddhist communities in Buryatia and Kalmykia add significant diversity beyond the Orthodox majority. Nineteenth and early twentieth century Russia also produced significant esoteric and mystical currents, including the Theosophy of the Russian-born Helena Blavatsky and the Sophiology of religious philosophers such as Vladimir Solovyov.

Facts
Law and State
Establishment Status
Privileged Never Established 3
No church is established, but the 1997 Law on Freedom of Conscience formally privileges Orthodox Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Judaism as Russia's four traditional religions, while imposing significant registration and missionary restrictions on other groups.
State Funding MechanismSourced to the subject's own account
Russia funds religious organizations chiefly by returning property rather than by paying salaries directly. Federal Law 327-FZ, signed by President Dmitry Medvedev on 30 November 2010, set a declarative procedure for transferring federal, regional or municipal property of religious purpose, mostly buildings nationalized under Soviet rule, into the free ownership or free use of religious organizations, with committees created to settle disputed claims. Between 1995 and 2010 alone, before the law even took effect, about 1,100 religious buildings had already been transferred, roughly ten percent of the religious monuments recorded in 1995, and the pace accelerated once the law formalized the process. The great majority of transfers benefit the Russian Orthodox Church. 4
Apostasy or Blasphemy Law
Russia criminalizes insult to religious feelings under Article 148 of the Criminal Code, amended in 2013 in response to the Pussy Riot cathedral protest. Part 1 punishes public actions expressing obvious disrespect for society and committed with the purpose of insulting the religious feelings of believers with a fine of up to 300,000 rubles, mandatory labor, or up to one year's imprisonment. Part 2 sets a harsher tier for the same conduct committed in a place specially designated for worship, with a fine of up to 500,000 rubles or up to three years' imprisonment. Russia has no apostasy statute. Between the law's enactment in 2013 and 2020, Human Rights Watch counted only 32 convictions from the arrests it produced, with courts favoring fines, suspended sentences and compulsory medical treatment over imprisonment, so enforcement has been real but comparatively restrained next to the statute's maximum penalties; USCIRF has separately tracked its use against minority faiths, including Jehovah's Witnesses and Muslim groups already facing extremism prosecutions on other grounds. 5
Registration or Recognition Regime
The Federal Law No. 125-FZ of 26 September 1997, "On Freedom of Conscience and on Religious Associations," distinguishes a lesser "religious group" (which may worship without registering but cannot own property, hold a bank account or invite foreign clergy) from a fully registered "religious organization," which the Ministry of Justice will register only once a group has documented a continuous local presence in Russia of at least 15 years, or affiliated with an already-registered centralized religious organization. The 2016 "Yarovaya law" package added restrictions on missionary activity, requiring it to be conducted only by a registered organization's own members in its own registered premises. 3
Ban or Official Watchlist
On 20 April 2017 the Supreme Court of Russia ruled the Jehovah's Witnesses Administrative Center an extremist organization under the country's anti-extremism law, ordered it and its approximately 395 registered local congregations liquidated, and directed their property seized by the state; the ruling survived appeal later that year. Continued involvement with the organization or its activities inside Russia became a criminal offense, and members have since been prosecuted and imprisoned under it. 3
Concordat BasisSourced to the subject's own account
Russia has no concordat with the Holy See. Its church-state relationship runs through domestic statute instead, chiefly the Federal Law on Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations, signed by President Boris Yeltsin on 26 September 1997, whose preamble recognizes a special role for Orthodoxy in Russia's history and names Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism and other faiths as an integral part of the historical heritage of Russia's peoples. The law tightened registration requirements for newer and foreign religious groups while leaving the Russian Orthodox Church's position effectively unmatched by any other body, a domestic analog to a concordat rather than a treaty with Rome. 6
Government
Capital
Moscow 2
Government Type
semi-presidential federation 2
Sovereignty Status
Sovereign UN member state 2
Established Year
1991 2
25 December 1991 (from the Soviet Union; Russian SFSR renamed Russian Federation); notable earlier dates: 1157 (Principality of Vladimir-Suzdal created); 16 January 1547 (Tsardom of Muscovy established); 22 October 1721 (Russian Empire proclaimed); 30 December 1922 (Soviet Union established)
Status
Legal Status
The 1997 Law on Freedom of Conscience formally privileges Orthodox Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Judaism as Russia's four traditional religions while imposing significant registration and missionary restrictions on other groups. 3
Demographics
Religious Composition
About 70-75% identify as Russian Orthodox (regular practice markedly lower); Muslim minority near 10% (chiefly Tatar, Bashkir and North Caucasian peoples); Buddhist minority among Kalmyks, Buryats and Tuvans (Pew Research Center, Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020). 1
Geography
Latitude
60 degrees north 2
Approximate reference point, rounded to one decimal place; a country's extent has no single center, so this coordinate is conventional, not a survey measurement.
Longitude
100 degrees east 2
Approximate reference point, rounded to one decimal place; a country's extent has no single center, so this coordinate is conventional, not a survey measurement.
Location
Location of Russia Afghanistan Albania Algeria Angola Argentina Armenia Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Benin Bhutan Bolivia Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana Brazil Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burundi Cabo Verde Cambodia Cameroon Canada Chile China Colombia Costa Rica Croatia Cuba Cyprus Czech Republic Democratic Republic of the Congo Denmark Dominican Republic Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Estonia Eswatini Ethiopia Federated States of Micronesia Fiji Finland France French Polynesia Gabon Georgia Germany Ghana Greece Guam Guatemala Haiti Honduras Hong Kong Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Iran Iraq Ireland Israel Italy Ivory Coast Jamaica Japan Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Kuwait Laos Latvia Lebanon Libya Lithuania Madagascar Malawi Malaysia Mali Malta Mauritius Mexico Moldova Mongolia Morocco Mozambique Myanmar Namibia Nepal Netherlands New Zealand Nigeria North Macedonia Norway Oman Pakistan Palestine Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Philippines Poland Portugal Puerto Rico Qatar Romania Russia Rwanda Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Samoa Saudi Arabia Senegal Serbia Sierra Leone Singapore Slovakia Slovenia Solomon Islands South Africa South Korea South Sudan Spain Sri Lanka Sudan Suriname Sweden Switzerland Syria Taiwan Tanzania Thailand Tonga Trinidad and Tobago Tunisia Turkey Uganda Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom United States Uruguay Uzbekistan Vanuatu Vatican City Venezuela Vietnam Yemen Zambia Zimbabwe
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Religion and History in Russia

Russia is majority Orthodox Christian, around 70 to 75 percent identifying with the Russian Orthodox Church per most estimates including Pew Research's Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020, though regular practice is markedly lower, alongside a substantial Muslim minority of roughly 10 percent concentrated among Tatar, Bashkir and North Caucasian peoples including Chechens and Dagestanis, and smaller Buddhist populations among Kalmyks, Buryats and Tuvans, the only traditionally Buddhist peoples in Europe.

Kievan Rus adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire under Prince Vladimir in 988 CE, a foundational event Russian national memory treats as the baptism of Russia, and the Russian Orthodox Church became closely bound to state power through the Muscovite and later imperial periods, with the tsar recognized as the church's supreme protector after Peter the Great abolished the patriarchate in 1721.

The Soviet period after 1917 pursued state atheism aggressively, destroying or repurposing the great majority of churches, mosques and synagogues, executing or imprisoning large numbers of clergy, and suppressing religious education, a persecution relaxed only significantly during and after the Second World War and largely reversed following the Soviet Union's 1991 collapse, when the Orthodox Church rapidly rebuilt its institutional presence and public standing.

The Russian Orthodox Church and the Ukraine War

The Russian Orthodox Church, led by Patriarch Kirill, has closely aligned itself with President Vladimir Putin's government since the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, with Kirill publicly endorsing the war in religious and civilizational terms and describing it as a defense of a shared Orthodox Russian world, a stance that has deepened an already sharp split within global Orthodoxy following the 2019 recognition by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople of an independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church, a move the Moscow Patriarchate condemned and responded to by severing communion with Constantinople.

Millions of Ukrainian parishes that had remained under Moscow's canonical authority have shifted allegiance toward the newly independent Ukrainian church or the historically separate Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church since the war began, and Ukraine's government has pursued legislation to restrict the Moscow-linked church's property and legal status domestically, framing it as a national security matter given the church's ties to Russia.

Within Russia itself, the 1997 Law on Freedom of Conscience formally privileges Orthodox Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Judaism as the country's four traditional religions while imposing significant registration and missionary restrictions on smaller Protestant, evangelical and new religious movements, a framework the US State Department's International Religious Freedom Report has repeatedly criticized as restrictive of religious minorities.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

Ainu, Cultures

Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, historically Ainu territory, are administered by Russia.

This source names Russia directly: "against the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR), monastery founder Samuel Greene Jr., and a monastery monk, over sexual abuse Wright alleged occurred at Christ of the Hills Monastery..."

This source names Russia directly: "The Wikipedia article on Buddhism in Russia, stating that as of a 2025 survey by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM), approximately 1.4 million people, about 1.0 percent of Russia's..."

Source Buddhism in Russia

This source names Russia directly: "John Snelling's Buddhism in Russia, The Story of Agvan Dorzhiev, Lhasa's Emissary to the Tsar, published by Element Books in 1993, is the only book length biography of Dorzhiev in English, the..."

This source names Russia directly: "Laura Engelstein is a historian of Russia, and this Cornell University Press book is her academic study of the Skoptsy, a Russian religious sect whose members practised ritual castration in..."

This source names Russia directly: "Texas, a monastery affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR) from 1991 until ROCOR severed ties amid the allegations in 1999."

Russian Orthodox Christianity, adopted from Byzantium in 988, remains the dominant tradition.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center

This source names Russia directly: "Church of Scientology Moscow v. Russia, application no."

Source Church of Scientology Moscow v. Russia, application no. 18147/02European Court of Human Rights

The Soviet Union enforced state atheism at home and across the bloc; its dissolution in 1991 ended the confrontation.

Source Religion and the Cold WarDianne Kirby (editor)

This source names Russia directly: "sites in the Ottoman Empire and over Russia's self-presentation as protector of Ottoman Orthodox Christians."

Source Crimea: The Last CrusadeOrlando Figes

Nicholas I claimed a protectorate over some twelve million Orthodox subjects of the sultan and framed the war as a defence of the faith.

Source Crimea: The Last CrusadeOrlando Figes

This source names Russia directly: "Crews's For Prophet and Tsar, Islam and Empire in Russia and Central Asia, published by Harvard University Press in 2006, is a scholarly history arguing that the Russian imperial state, rather than..."

This source names Russia directly: "Mennonite immigrants from Russia brought Turkey Red winter wheat and a plain communal faith to central Kansas in the 1870s."

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors

This source names Russia directly: "purges and was not republished in Russia until after 1990, a history that affects its availability and transmission but not the authority of the fieldwork itself."

This source names Russia directly: "relief to Mennonites in southern Russia, present-day Ukraine."

Source Mennonite Central Committee (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Russia directly: "relief to Mennonites in southern Russia (present-day Ukraine), holding its first official meeting on 27 September 1920 in Chicago."

Source Mennonite Central Committee (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Russia directly: "A young woman from Saransk in Russia who came to attention in 2004 for saying she could see inside a living body and read the condition of the organs."

Source Testing NatashaRay Hyman

This source names Russia directly: "National Library of Russia, cited here as an institutional record, is the library's own account of its founding in 1795 and its custody of the Firkovich manuscript collection, which includes the..."

Source National Library of Russia (institutional record)the holders' own account

This source names Russia directly: "The National Library of Russia in St Petersburg is the custodian institution holding the Leningrad Codex, catalogued as Firkovich B 19A, the oldest complete manuscript of the Hebrew Bible, dated by..."

This source names Russia directly: "is a scholarly academic study of Russian Rodnoverie, the modern Slavic neopagan revival movement, examining its varied and sometimes internally conflicting relationships to Russian nationalism and..."

This source names Russia directly: "persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia, community-edited."

The empire was proclaimed in 1721 and ruled from Saint Petersburg until the revolutions of 1917.

Source The Orthodox ChurchTimothy Ware (Kallistos Ware)

This source names Russia directly: "John Garrard and Carol Garrard's Russian Orthodoxy Resurgent: Faith and Power in the New Russia, Princeton University Press, 2008, is an academic study of the Russian Orthodox Church's institutional..."

Source Russian Orthodoxy Resurgent: Faith and Power in the New RussiaJohn Garrard and Carol Garrard

This source names Russia directly: "Russia's Lost Reformation: Peasants, Millennialism, and Radical Sects in Southern Russia and Ukraine, 1830-1917, Sergei Zhuk's 2004 study from the Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Johns Hopkins..."

This source names Russia directly: "on Slavic Native Faith (Rodnovery) in Russia, citing the Sreda research service's 2012 Arena (Atlas of Religions and Nationalities) survey finding 1.7 million people identifying as Pagan or..."

The Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow was dynamited in 1931, and the millennium of the baptism of Rus was celebrated publicly there in 1988.

Source The Orthodox ChurchTimothy Ware (Kallistos Ware)

This source names Russia directly: "Rights, on 7 June 2022, ruled that Russia's 2017 nationwide ban on Jehovah's Witnesses and the 2009 dissolution of its Taganrog local organization violated Articles 9, 10 and 11 of the European..."

This source names Russia directly: "in Paris, subtitled "Pictures of Pagan Russia in Two Parts." The publisher's own programme note quotes Stravinsky's letter to conductor Serge Koussevitzky describing the work as representing "pagan..."

This source names Russia directly: "Oak Ridge in Tennessee and shipped to Russia; the target had a half-life of 330 days, so the whole experiment ran against a clock."

This source names Russia directly: "in the surviving sources; both modern Russia and modern Ukraine trace a shared national and religious origin to this event, and both claims are named here rather than resolved in favour of either."

Source The Emergence of Rus, 750-1200Simon Franklin and Jonathan Shepard

This source names Russia directly: "judgment in Taganrog LRO and Others v. Russia, holding that Russia's broadly worded anti-extremism legislation was misapplied to prosecute Jehovah's Witnesses' peaceful religious activity, quoting..."

This source names Russia directly: "Dostoevsky's novel, serialized in The Russian Messenger from 1868 to 1869, following Prince Myshkin, a guileless epileptic returning to Russia, through his entanglement with the merchant's son..."

Source The Idiot (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Russia directly: "Crummey was a historian of Russia, and this academic book, published by University of Wisconsin Press, is a detailed history of the Vyg community, a major Old Believer settlement that formed after..."

This source names Russia directly: "in Paris, subtitled "Pictures of Pagan Russia in Two Parts." The publisher's own catalogue quotes Stravinsky describing the scenario as a solemn pagan rite in which wise elders watch a young girl..."

This source names Russia directly: "in 1991, and twenty two years before Russia banned Jehovah's Witnesses as extremist in 2017, both already recorded here, the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society revised one of its longest standing..."

This source names Russia directly: "A Russia Beyond article by Anna Kuchma reporting sociologist Nikolai Mitrokhin's unofficial estimate of the Russian Orthodox Church's total annual income in the 2000s, offered in the absence of any..."

This source names Russia directly: "Italy, Belgium, Germany, Austria and Russia, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, and historian Micheal Clodfelter's reference compilation for its noncombatant death estimate."

Source World War I Casualties (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

Contains

Namesake Of

Dubnium is named for Dubna, the Russian town of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research. The name settled a long priority dispute between the Dubna and Berkeley teams, which had run under rival names for two decades.

Moscovium is named for the Moscow region, where Dubna lies. Named in 2016 alongside tennessine, oganesson and nihonium, the four that completed the seventh row of the table.

Ruthenium is named for Ruthenia, the Latin name for Rus and so for Russia. Named by Karl Ernst Claus in 1844 after the Urals ore in which he found it. Gottfried Osann had proposed the same name a little earlier for a substance he could not confirm.

Originated Here

Born in Buryatia east of Lake Baikal, a subject of the Russian empire.

Born into a Buryat Cossack family east of Lake Baikal and educated at Kazan.

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors
Evenki, Cultures
Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors

A Sakha lawyer and ethnographer from the Yakutsk region. He was arrested and shot in 1938.

A Buryat schoolteacher who collected Buryat ritual, epic and shamanic material over thirty years.

Trained in St Petersburg, and did the Tungus fieldwork under the imperial academy.

Source Psychomental Complex of the TungusS. M. Shirokogoroff
Slavs, Cultures

Russia is the largest Slavic nation, heir to the Kyivan baptism of 988.

Sent to the Kolyma as an exiled revolutionary, he began the Chukchi fieldwork there.

Spread Events Here

The repression fell across the USSR, not only Russia; anchored to Russia, the nearest real place entity, since no separate Soviet Union entity exists in this catalog. The source's own named example, the Leningrad congregation, is in Russia proper.

Anchored to Russia, whose Adventist communities the division restored to standing; the organizing vote itself was taken at the General Conference World Congress in Indianapolis, Indiana, a detail the event's own description states plainly rather than leaving implicit in an anchor that would read as though the vote itself was taken on Soviet soil.

Source Mikhail P. Kulakov (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors
In the Other Atlases
Sources
1. Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020
Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 2025View the Source
2. The World Factbook (Central Intelligence Agency)
Central Intelligence Agency, Central Intelligence AgencyView the Source
3. International Religious Freedom Report
United States Department of State, Office of International Religious Freedom, US Department of State, 2023View the Source
4. Russian Church Property Restitution (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationView the Source
5. Human Rights Watch: Online and On All Fronts, Russia's Assault on Freedom of Expression (2017)
Human Rights WatchView the Source
6. Law on Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations, Russian Federation, 1997 (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationView the Source
The Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd edition
Oxford University Press, Oxford University Pressdemonym / adjectival formView the Source
Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)
Encyclopaedia Britannica editors, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 2024Originated Here: EvenkiView the Source
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