The Civilization Still "Forming": Five Centuries of Moscow's Failed Project

Patriarch Kirill of Moscow's recent declaration that Russia is "forming a special civilization" proved far more revealing than it might initially appear. When the religious leader of a state whose imperial ideology spans five centuries announces that its civilization is merely "forming," it demands serious analysis. This statement inadvertently exposes a fundamental problem of Moscow's statehood: the inability to create an original civilizational project after five hundred years of declaring one.

Point of Departure: The Birth of Imperial Pretension

The Moscow civilizational project has a clear birth date—the early sixteenth century, when the monk Philotheus formulated the doctrine of "Moscow as the Third Rome." This was not merely a religious concept but Moscow's first imperial narrative, an attempt to legitimize the pretensions of a provincial principality, recently freed from Mongol vassalage, to the role of Byzantine Empire's successor.

Before this moment, Moscow had no civilizational project whatsoever. It was one of many Rus principalities, a tributary of the Golden Horde, a successful collector of tribute for the khans. This very intermediary function—collecting and transferring others' resources—became the foundation of Moscow's rise. But intermediation does not create civilization; it creates only a system of extraction.

Philotheus's doctrine was meant to fill this ideological void. Byzantium had fallen (1453), Rome had "fallen away" into heresy—therefore, Moscow becomes the sole bearer of true Christianity, the "Third Rome." The institutionalization of this project occurred in 1589 with the creation of the Moscow Patriarchate. From that moment to today, 435 years have passed. From the formulation of the doctrine itself—approximately 515 years.

Five centuries of imperial pretension. And the civilization is "still forming."

Theoretical Framework: Comprador Systems and the Simulation of Civilization

Understanding this paradox requires turning to world-systems theory and the concept of comprador elites. From its inception, the Moscow state functioned as an intermediary system—first between the Horde and Rus lands, later between Europe and Asia, between modernization and tradition, between West and East.

A comprador elite, by definition, does not create its own cultural product—it exists through control over the transit of others' resources and ideas. This creates a specific identity problem: the system cannot legitimize itself through originality, since its function consists precisely in resale, control, and appropriation.

The "Third Rome" doctrine became an attempt to create ideological legitimacy for a system that by its nature could not possess it. Moscow did not inherit Byzantine law, administrative practices, or cultural traditions—it inherited only symbolism. This was simulation of continuity without actual transfer of institutional knowledge.

Five Centuries of Appropriation: What Moscow Did Not Create

Consider the five-hundred-year trajectory of Moscow's "civilizational project" through the prism of what it did NOT create:

16th-17th centuries: Proclaiming Byzantine succession without borrowing Byzantine institutions. Moscow took the double-headed eagle and the title of "tsar," but did not adopt Byzantine law, urban autonomy, or intellectual tradition. Instead, the oprichnina system was built—a regime of terror and total control without Byzantine analogs.

18th century: Peter I's westernization proved not a development of native tradition but another act of borrowing. Peter did not adapt Western institutions to local conditions—he imposed them by force, creating a façade of Europeanness while preserving despotic essence. Tellingly, after Peter came reaction, because the imported model lacked internal legitimacy.

19th century: Slavophilism as an attempt to formulate a "special path" turned into romanticization of an imaginary "commune" and "sobornost" that never had institutional embodiment. When modernization time came, it became clear that the "special path" was merely rhetoric masking an authoritarian model of resource extraction.

20th century: The Bolshevik project as an attempt to create a universalist ideology again proved to be borrowing (Marxism) adapted to forced modernization needs. The Soviet Union created an industrial base but did not create a self-reproducing economy or viable institutions.

The common denominator of all these periods—absence of original institutional creation. The system constantly borrowed external forms (Byzantine, European, Marxist) but could not create its own content.

The Economics of "Spirituality": Temples as Compensation

Patriarch Kirill's formula about combining "advanced science and developed economy" with "deep faith" masks a fundamental economic reality: investment in church infrastructure amid degradation of human development institutions.

During 2010-2020, over 5,000 Orthodox churches were built in Russia. During the same period, the number of hospitals decreased by 30%, schools by 25%. This disproportion is not accidental. Church construction performs specific functions in the comprador system:

Economic function: Construction projects with opaque financing and tax privileges serve as mechanisms for redistribution and capital legalization. Church property is not taxed, financial flows are unaccountable—an ideal scheme for a system built on rent.

Political function: Church infrastructure creates a parallel network of territorial control. This is especially important in a system where civil institutions are weak or absent. The parish becomes a locus not of faith but of control.

Ideological function: Visible "spirituality" compensates for absence of real achievements. When there is nothing to boast about in education, medicine, or science—there remains boasting about "deep faith" and the number of domes.

Kirill's contrast with Western Europe, where church buildings are repurposed due to secularization, only underscores the difference between societies where religion became a private matter after the Enlightenment and a system where the church remains an instrument of state control. This is not a sign of "spirituality" but of political model archaism.

"Forming" as the Grammar of Failure

The use of the present progressive "is forming" instead of "exists" or "has formed" is a linguistic key to understanding the entire project. This is a grammatical construction of eternal incompleteness that performs several ideological functions:

Explaining current failure: If civilization is merely forming, its actual inadequacy can be justified by process incompleteness. No education? Still forming. No legal system? Forming. No institutions? Still in process.

Postponing critical evaluation: One can judge a civilizational project only post factum, when completed. Therefore, all current criticism is premature, illegitimate, hostile. Evaluation can come later—when it forms. When exactly? This is not specified.

Mobilization through incompleteness: An unfinished project requires constant sacrifices and efforts for its realization. This legitimizes authoritarian practices, repressions, absence of freedoms—everything is "temporary," everything for the great goal somewhere ahead.

This rhetoric has a long tradition in Russian political thought—from the Bolsheviks' "bright future" to the Eurasianists' "special path" and contemporary propaganda's "Russian world." The common denominator is projection of legitimacy into the future, since past and present do not provide sufficient material for legitimation.

But when a project has been "forming" for five centuries—this is no longer a process, this is a diagnosis. This is acknowledgment of the system's structural inability to create what it declares.

Structural Limitations of an Intermediary System

The fundamental problem is that a comprador system cannot create an original civilizational project by definition. Its function is control over transit, not production of the new. This applies to both economics and culture:

Economically: Russia today remains what it was under Peter I—an exporter of raw materials and importer of technologies. Five centuries of "civilizational project" have not created an innovative economy, competitive institutions, or self-reproducing development system. Resource rent remains the economic foundation, as four centuries ago.

Culturally: Appropriation of others' traditions instead of creating one's own. Moscow appropriated Kyivan heritage, Byzantine symbolism, European forms, Marxist ideology—but did not create its own institutional model that others would wish to borrow. Russian culture gave the world great literature and music but did not give political institutions or social models.

Politically: Authoritarianism as the only form of organization. Five centuries of different ideological shells—from "Third Rome" to "Russian world"—have not changed the system's essence. It has always been a power vertical based on coercion, because absence of legitimate ideology requires violence to maintain control.

The comprador elite is not interested in developing the internal market, human capital, or civil institutions—its profit depends on control over transit flows and rent. Creating a genuine civilization would require investments in people, limiting power, developing institutions—that is, self-destruction of the comprador model.

Geopolitical Implications: The Empty Empire

Kirill's statement has critical significance for understanding Russia's current aggression against Ukraine. It demonstrates that even after five centuries of the "Third Rome" project, decades of "Russian world" propaganda, and billions invested in soft power, Moscow cannot articulate a convincing civilizational narrative.

This creates strategic vulnerability: an empire without a civilizational project holds together exclusively through coercion. When military force proves insufficient—as now in Ukraine—the system reveals its internal emptiness. Not coincidentally, Russian propaganda has focused on negative identity: "not-West," "anti-LGBT," "against globalism," "denazification." Positive content simply does not exist.

For Ukraine and other post-Soviet countries, this means "Russian civilization" cannot offer an attractive alternative. It can only offer autocracy, corruption, and economic dependence under a sauce of "spirituality" and number of temples. This is precisely why Ukraine fights not simply against military aggression but against an attempt to impose a model that in five centuries has created nothing beyond mechanisms of extraction and control.

Russia's war against Ukraine is a desperate attempt to impose by force a civilizational project unable to convince voluntarily. This is acknowledgment that "soft power" failed because five centuries created nothing attractive.

The Patriarch's Unintended Honesty

When Patriarch Kirill says that Russia is "forming a special civilization," he unintentionally speaks truth. After five centuries since formulating the "Moscow as Third Rome" doctrine, after 435 years of the Moscow Patriarchate's existence as an institution meant to embody this project, the system still cannot say: "Here it is, our civilization. Here is what we have created."

This is not modesty. This is not realistic self-assessment. This is a structural limitation of a comprador system that by definition cannot create an original civilizational product. An intermediary can resell, control, appropriate, imitate—but not create.

Five centuries of Moscow's imperial project have demonstrated a fundamental pattern: a system built on rent extraction and transit control is incapable of civilizational creation. It can build temples on hospital ruins, it can proclaim "specialness" and "spirituality," it can appropriate others' history—but it cannot create its own institutions that others would wish to voluntarily adopt.

The "forming" of a special civilization thus becomes an eternal project—not because it is difficult, but because its realization would contradict the system's very nature. Moscow's elite has extracted rent from control over resources and territories for five centuries. Creating a genuine civilization would require transforming this model—investing in people instead of temples, developing institutions instead of power verticals, limiting control instead of intensifying it.

Therefore, in five hundred years, if the Moscow Patriarchate still exists, its head will again declare that Russia's special civilization is "forming." Because eternal becoming is the only way to avoid acknowledging that five centuries were spent imitating what was never actually created.