The Byzantine Heritage in Russian Security Culture

As the name of this blog and previous publications on it might have already given away, I'm interested in Russia. I'm reading pretty much everything on it I can get my hand on, but I'm especially attentive to and intrigued by its intelligence services and its intelligence / security culture.

In the beginning I spent most of my time on finding out the "what", the "who", and the "when". But as the years progressed and I began to get a better understandings of these aspects, I began to turn my attention to learning about the "why" - why Russia was acting the way it was, why Russia took steps and actions that it did, and so on.

And in all honesty, I struggled with that. Despite excellent resources out there that thoroughly analyzed and explained Soviet and Russian thinking (obligatory reference to the great talk given by Marti J. Kari a few years back), a lot of the time Russian behavior puzzled me.

Looking at it through my social and cultural context, my political experiences, and my experiences with different European security apparatuses, a lot of the time I was puzzled by the decisions taken by Moscow.

I'm not solely talking about current ones, where I might not be in possession of all necessary details because they aren't publicly known at the moment, but also historic ones.

This continuous experience of bewilderment led me to take a step back and reassess my understanding of modern Russia, or Russia (including the Soviet Union) in general. I understood that I had significant knowledge gaps when it came to Russian history before the end of the Tsarist rule in the early 20th century.

The more I read, the more it appeared to me that Russian behaviors may appear "Western" on the surface, but its actual political traditions did not arise from - for example - the European Renaissance or Reformation; rather, they seem to originate in Byzantium.

To be clear: I'm not saying that modern Russia is a carbon copy of Byzantium, far from it. But I would argue that Byzantium remains a key driver of Russian (strategic) security and intelligence culture. In the following post I want to explore how I came to this conclusion and talk about how Byzantine "intelligence traditions" influenced Russian statecraft across the ages, from the adoption of Orthodoxy in Kievan Rus' to the still remaining Checkist ethos in Putin's Russia.

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Before I start: My apologies to historians and enthusiast of European history of the Middle Age(s). I tried my best to stay factually accurate in my writing, but I'm definitely not a subject matter expert on this historical period. I have almost certainly simplified some aspects.

The Eastern Roman Empire - which is the Byzantine Empire - was, by its own self-conception, the continuation of the Roman Empire. It was Christian Rome relocated to Constantinople. Throughout its existence, Byzantium developed a highly sophisticated intelligence and security culture that formed the core of its political system. In fact, the state was profoundly shaped by an almost paranoid fixation on security.

This stemmed from constant threats and wars on all frontiers. Indeed, Byzantines saw warfare as a normal state of affairs as a brief aberration, given that they saw themselves as a beleaguered Christian state fighting the "forces of darkness".

As the historian Edward Luttwak observes, after costly failures in open warfare, the Byzantines had to perfect the arts of espionage, deception, and diplomacy as much - if not more - as the "traditional" art of war. They ..

.. turned the very multiplicity of enemies to an advantage, employing diplomacy, deception, payoffs, and religious conversion to induce them to fight one another instead of fighting the empire

Security was the paramount objective of the Byzantine state. Both the empire's governing philosophy held that all action as well as all infrastructure of the government should serve "the smooth operation of the state machine, of the empire by the grace of God".

I read someone saying that the Byzantine state was, in effect, a "counterintelligence state", obsessively concerned with real or perceived enemies within and without. Which, in practice, meant that governance geared towards, or was even centered around, surveillance, control, and preservation of the regime (and the Orthodox faith that underpinned it), rather than any modern notion of welfare of the subject under government rule.

The most prominent example for this was the inherited and expanded Roman courier network (the so-called "cursus publicus"), which the Byzantine authorities turned into an empire-wide intelligence apparatus.

The couriers powering this network (called "agentes in rebus", "general agents") not only transported mail and other goods, but also spied on provincial governors, other travelers, and relayed reports of military threats, local tendencies towards sedition, or perceived conspiracies.

Religion too was weaponized for state security. Byzantium pioneered what could be referred to as "spiritual security", the use of Orthodoxy as a unifying ideological and diplomatic tool. Church and state were paired as one - the emperor was both secular autocrat and guardian of the faith, a system later referred to as "Caesaropapism".

The Orthodox Church's infrastructure too provided networks of information (through its clergy, monasteries, and missions) and, additionally, avenues of influence abroad.

Byzantine diplomats thus spread Christian alliances by converting foreign rulers or peoples, that way often winning new allies without the necessity of fighting anyone - by using holy relics and ecclesiastical authority as a form of "soft power".

This tight interweaving of piety and politics resulted in the Byzantine rulers in Constantinople adopting a mindset of being constantly on guard against infidels and heretics as well as more "earthly" foes at the same time. Preserving the "one true faith" was seen as synonymous with preserving the empire.

In later centuries, Russian rulers would adopt this very same view, that protecting "Holy Russia" both spiritually and physically justified extensive surveillance, repression, and violence against their own subjects.

(If you want to dive into this subject deeper, diplomacy.edu has an overview of the Byzantine political and security system, the site "Discourses on Minerva" takes a look at contemporary lessons to be taken from Byzantine historiography, and there's a great lengthy analysis of the security problems Byzantium faced by The Society for Medieval Military History.)

A Byzantine Legacy, Inherited

The transfer of this specific security ethos to Russia began with Kievan Rus' conversion to Eastern Orthodox Christianity in 988. Prince Vladimir's baptism and marriage alliance with Byzantium and the following increased religious and cultural ties "planted the seeds" (for lack of a better wording) of Byzantine political culture in the inherently Slavic lands.

Russian chroniclers of the time came to view Constantinople ("Tsargrad" in Russia) as the front of civilization, considering an entity of great significance. After the fall of Byzantium to the Ottomans in 1453, the mantle of Orthodox leadership passed to Moscow. A transition explicitly articulated in the doctrine of Moscow as the so-called "Third Rome":

Zosima, the metropolitan (spiritual head) of the Russian Orthodox Church, thought Ivan the Great to be the new Emperor Constantine. In his transcription of the traditional “Tale of the White Cowl,” “Povest’ o Belom Klobuke” (late fifteenth century), the archbishop of Novgorod, Gennadius, declared Russia the “Third Rome” (after “Second Rome” Constantinople), and this theme was elaborated upon by Filofei of Pskov in 1523. In the Skazanie o Kniaz’iakh Vladimirskikh (c. 1530; tale of the princes of Vladimir), the ancestry of Ivan the Terrible was actually traced back to the Roman emperor Augustus. Ivan’s coronation was in keeping with the emerging belief in Russia as the new center of Orthodoxy, ruled by the new emperor of a Third Rome, the czar.

This wasn't just a spiritual claim, Russian rulers had also taken more practical measures to ensure a (more or less) legitimate link to the legacy of Byzantium. Grand Duke (later Tsar) Ivan III married Sophia Palaiologina in 1472, who herself was the niece of the last Byzantine emperor. He also adopted the imperial emblem of Byzantium (which symbolized the united spiritual and temporal power of the state), the double-headed eagle, as Russia's coat of arms.

And, more importantly for this post, Ivan III also imported Byzantine court rituals and titles, asserting that Muscovy was the legitimate heir of the Eastern Roman Empire. This process continued, and maybe even reached full expression, under his grandson Ivan IV - better known as "the Terrible".

At Ivan IV's coronation as the first "Tsar of All Rus" in 1547, elaborate Byzantine rituals were employed to signal his elevation from mere prince to a sacred autocrat:

The coronation of Ivan IV, known as Ivan the Terrible, as czar of Russia on January 16, 1547, marked a pivotal shift in the political landscape of the country. This event established the term "czar," a Russian adaptation of the Byzantine title for emperor, signifying Ivan's elevation from the previous title of grand prince. Historically, the grand princes of Moscow had ruled over various principalities, but Ivan's coronation symbolized a unified imperial authority that aligned with emerging beliefs about Moscow as the "Third Rome," a center of Eastern Orthodoxy. The ceremony was influenced by Byzantine rituals and aimed to solidify Ivan's divine right to rule, intertwining state power with religious legitimacy.

(If you are interested in reading up on this in more detail, I took this excerpt from an EBSCO article that I can recommend.)

Among other things, the metropolitan anointed Ivan with holy oil and crowned him with the so-called "Monomakh's Cap", purportedly a Byzantine crown - which signified a symbolic transferring of authority from Constantinople to Moscow.

By ceremonially intertwining state power with religious legitimacy, the Tsar's (alleged) divine right to rule in continuity with the Christian emperors of old was communicated publicly. Once again we're seeing a combination, an intertwining of state and religion.

And while the creation of the "Oprichnina" (the Tsarist secret police / terror police) has more than one cause, such as for example the defection of Prince Andrey Kurbsky to the Lithuanians can rather easily be understood as an attempt to enforce absolute internal security and purge "traitors" in a quasi-religious manner serving as another example of a blend of sacral authority and more "traditional" state violence.

The "Oprichniki", according to some sources, swore a quasi-religious oath of almost monastic devotion to Ivan:

I swear to be true to the Lord, Grand Prince, and his realm, to the young Grand Princes, and to the Grand Princess, and not to maintain silence about any evil that I may know or have heard or may hear which is being contemplated against the Tsar, his realms, the young princes or the Tsaritsa. I swear also not to eat or drink with the zemshchina, and not to have anything in common with them. On this I kiss the cross.

And while the "Third Section" of the Tsar's chancellery and its successor, the Okhrana, weren't the same terror organization the Oprichniki, these organizations shared the same core mandate and the same, shall we say, "cloak-and-dagger approaches" than both them and their Byzantine forefathers. But this continuity in tradecraft isn't the only historically legacy from Byzantium that was continued during Tsarist times.

Throughout the Tsarist era, Orthodoxy, autocracy, and national unity remained the ideological tripod of Russian rule. The Russian Orthodox effectively became a department of the state - first after the Patriarchate of Moscow and all Rus was established in 1589, but even more so after it was entirely subordinated to the Tsar and replaced by the Most Holy Synod in 1721.

This symbolic and practical fusion of state and church was far stronger than anything in Catholic Western Europe. To quote "Intelligence Elsewhere" once more:

The tsars saw themselves .. as the successors of the Byzantine emperors, and as the representatives of God upon Earth, .. wielding both the sword and the censer.

This was the time when the aforementioned system of Caesaropapism took root in the Russian area of influence, leading to a culture in which questioning any aspect of the state was akin to heresy.

Because this, for obvious reason, was quite useful for the rulers, they - together with clerical authorities - cultivated the idea of Russia's "holy mission" to, first and foremost, shield Eastern Christendom from infidels and heretics and later on to aim for the establishment of a pan-slavic brotherhood under the rule of the Tsars.

Such ideas have emotional staying power. As late as the 19th century, conservative thinkers like Konstantin Leontiev proudly urged a return to "Byzantism", by which he meant a polity combining an all-powerful monarch with a devout Orthodox society, to resist "Western liberal decay".

This demonstrates that there is at least some level of consciousness of a Byzantine inheritance in Russia. The Russian historian J.A. Kulakovsky wrote:

Our Russian past is bound up with the Byzantine Empire

Even some Slavophile intellectuals who rejected the Westernization attempts by rulers such as Peter the Great held up Byzantium as a model of true Russian identity, explicitly contrasting with the (predominantly Catholic or Protestant) West.

While not all scholars, obviously, fully agree, there were undeniably elements from Byzantium that were kept, both practical and spiritual. The fact that the latter was kept after the Russian revolution started in 1917 is rather humorous in a way.

Religious history, implemented atheistic-ally

There's a certain irony in the fact that the fiercely atheist Soviet regime ended up perpetuating key elements of the old Byzantine security culture, albeit by trying to cloaking it in Marxist-Leninist garb. The Communists might have discarded Orthodoxy, but they did not discard the concept of an absolutist state guided by an (according to them) infallible ideology - nor did they put away the concept of an all-pervasive security service to enforce it.

The authors of "Intelligence Elsewhere Spies and Espionage Outside The Anglosphere" note that Bolshevik Russia created a kind of "secular theocracy", with the Communist Party as priesthood and the secret police (from the Cheka to the KGB) as the "holy office and temple guard".

Similarly, the Soviet analyst John Dziak explicitly likened the Soviet Union's security obsession to the Byzantine model, saying that "all societal institutions [were] constructed for the aim of security".

Even the underlying ideology had a messianic, quasi-religious character. The Communist belief in the exclusive truth of their "Marxist Gospel" was akin to the religious "messianism" of Moscow as Third Rome. in both cases, a universalist doctrine justified the repression of dissent - the party line was infallible scripture, dissidents (aka modern-day heretics) were to be rooted out by the inquisitors (aka the Cheka and its iterations).

Under Stalin, for example, the entire country lived in constant fear of internal dissenters or foreign spies, in the same way Byzantium constantly feared conspirators and barbarians. The "Great Terror" had a grim echo of Byzantine palace purges, gruesomely multiplied in scale by modern totalitarian power.

A similar sort of continuity was the cult of surveillance. The Cheka (and its successors, the OGPU, NKVD, KGB, ..) became one of the most extensive intelligence networks in history, penetrating every village and every factory with informants. This was a scenario akin to the Byzantine ideal of "spies in every layer of society".

The similarities did not end with the practical aspects. The Soviet security organs saw their mission (at least in their official communication, I have my doubts that most, if even many, Checkists approached their tasks the same way) in almost mystical terms: protecting the revolution and the Motherland from subversion by hostile forces abroad and within. Which is, once more, similar to the Byzantine sense of a sacred imperial mission under siege.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the similarities to Byzantium became more overt again. There was no need to cloak the religious aspects in the worldly rhetoric of Marxist politics anymore.

The Russian Orthodox Church experienced a dramatic revival, and it forged an even closer alliance with the security services. Tellingly, in 2002 a chapel was consecrated inside the Lubyanka headquarters of one of the successor organizations to the KGB, the FSB. Patriarch Alexei II, on this occasion, exchanged gifts with the FSB Director during this ceremony, something that was hailed by security officials as a "truly emblematic event".

Despite the rather bitter history of KGB persecution of the Orthodox Church, both sides united against new perceived threats to Russia's spiritual and national security. That doesn't mean that the penetration of the Orthodox Church by the security services (Patriarch Kirill, for example, has been recruited by the KGB in the 1970s) has been decreased. Many bishops and other church bureaucrats continue to maintain close ties to the FSB.

This cooperation / voluntary penetration of the Orthodox Church by the security services lead to the concept of "dukhovnaya bezopasnost" ("spiritual security") entering Russia's national security lexicon, denoting the protection of the nation's moral and religious entity from - you guessed it - subversive foreign influences, first and foremost "Western liberalism".

The Church acts as a soft power arm of the state, rallying public support for foreign policy adventures and painting them in a quasi-religious light (e.g. defending Orthodox brethren in Ukraine or Syria). And the calls by both the Kremlin and the Church to protect the "Russkiy mir" ("Russian world") and its "orthodox values" carry an unmistakable echo of a "Third Rome mindset", merely updated for the 21st century.

In effect, what has been "ideological subversion" during the existence of the Soviet Union has now returned to heretics and infidels. Different name, but the state's role as defender of ideology continues. It's just that the Chekists are now named differently and wear a cross.

On top of the resurgence of Orthodoxy and the continuity of the paranoia and repression of the state security services, there's another deeply Byzantine aspect of modern Russia - the Kremlin's internal power struggles. I'm not the only one who sees a certain connection:

Putin is intelligent in a cunning, Byzantine way and is very adept at manipulating others. Loyalty is the most important element in the relationship between Putin and his close subordinates, but fear and uncertainty are also powerful tools that Putin uses to manipulate the rival political groups or clans that make up what is called the “power vertical.” As the clans struggle among themselves for influence within the power vertical, Putin stays above the fray. He represents only himself; he is not the head of a political party or a movement. He is the ultimate arbiter and decider—the only politician who matters.

Putin himself, by extending his presidency and reshuffling his elites, has explicitly tried to curb succession intrigues that could destabilize his rule.

Add to that the more popular than ever use of "active methods" - disinformation, subversion, deceiving adversaries, .. - and you end up with a security culture that would have been readily appreciated by Byzantine strategists. Which makes sense, given how many similarities there are.

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There's more to it though ..

It's important to me to clearly point out that modern Russia is most definitely not solely a product of its Byzantine past, and there have been countless other influences on its security and intelligence culture.

The most significant non-Byzantine legacy came from the Mongol Empire, two centuries of what Russians often refer to as the "Mongol yoke". The Mongols ruled through harsh methods, and the Muscovite grand princes - who served as tribute collectors for the Mongol Khans, learned to wield total control over their populace and to brook no dissent.

When Muscovy gained independence, it had inherited from "the Horde" a highly autocratic style of rule. While I read that some theorists downplay the Mongol impact relative to that of Byzantium, it would be, in my eyes, wrong to leave it out - especially since it would very much be possible that the adapted autocratic ruling style even clashed with the Byzantine one. In Byzantium, church and aristocracy could at times check imperial excesses, whereas in Muscovy the Tsar stood virtually unchallenged - like a Khan.

If you're interested in learning more about this historic influence, I can recommend this article by Robert E. Berls Jr. for the Nuclear Threat Initiative, which goes into much greater detail than this post. Despite what I said earlier, "the West" has indeed had an influence on Russia. Peter the Great's 18th-century reforms are a prime example. he created a modern regular army and secular bureaucracy partly on Swedish and German lines.

These changes professionalized Russia's military and intelligence to some degree, bringing it (at least temporarily) closer to contemporary European states. In the 19th century, the Tsarist political police (Okhrana) learned techniques from Austrian and French security services, and cooperated with them internationally. The security apparatus of the Tsar was forced to respond to new ideological threats (like socialism) with tools of the industrial age (telegraphs, intercepts, ..).

Moreover, Russia's brief flirtations with reform and openness - such as the liberalization of 1905, the Provisional Government in 1917, and the 1990s democratization - were also certainly influenced by "Western" ideas rather than Byzantine ones. In fact, those events had no precedent in Byzantium and reflect uniquely modern forces and developments.

The fact that Russia "reverted" to strongman rule under both the Bolsheviks and Putin may indeed speak to cultural inertia, but it was also contingent on choices and circumstances (such as economic collapse, external pressures, ..) rather than a metaphorical, unbroken Byzantine chain.

It's also worth noting that Russia's national identity has oscillated between embracing its unique Eurasian / Orthodox path and seeking validation as "normal" great power in the European family. This dichotomy was visible even in the 19th century (Slavophiles vs. Westernizers) and continues today. When Russia's leaders lean heavily into the Orthodox, anti-Western narrative (as Putin has, especially since the mid-2000s), they are in effect invoking the Byzantine inheritance as a source of legitimacy and purpose.

But this is a political choice. A different leader or a crisis could swing the pendulum again. Culture endures, yet it is not immutable. Culture influences how a people might act, not absolutely what they will end up doing.

However, despite all these additional factors, it seems to me that the "Byzantine ethos" - autocratic, security-obsessed, calculating - remains a powerful inspiration, influence, and undercurrent in Russian intelligence and security culture.

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As noted several times in previous paragraphs, I'm not saying that Russia is Byzantine, or that it's stuck in the Middle Ages, forever incapable of change. I'm also not saying that Byzantine is the only influence of Russian security and intelligence culture, not by far.

But when under pressure, Russia (both internally and externally) often defaults to patterns of behavior that can be traced to that heritage.

From the Tsars who saw Moscow as a "New Constantinople", to the Soviet commissars who unwittingly recreated a secular version of the Orthodox empire, to President Putin who wraps himself in Orthodox symbolism while deploying Cold War tactics - there is a visible continuity.

The Kremlin's assertive foreign policy, cloaked in nationalist and religious rhetoric, its internal crackdowns on dissent and the occasional random crackdown within the circle of power, make far more sense when viewed through the prism of Russia as (more spiritual than actual) successor rather than as an aspiring state that's more or less trying to model itself after "the West".

I would argue that it is important to research the motivations of the Kremlin more, in order to understand why modern Russian intelligence might behave differently from its Western counterparts. Because if Western analysts keep looking at it through "their" cultural lens, they are doomed to fail analytically at some point.

For example, where Western services may prioritize objective analysis and legal constraints, Russian intelligence (shaped by a tradition of palace intrigue and siege mentality) may place a premium on loyalty, secrecy, and active measures.

It explains why loyalty and clan ties are paramount within Russia's security elite (a dynamic, when ignoring Byzantium for a second, dating back to boyar factions and imperial courtiers), and why the Kremlin views information itself as something to be guarded or weaponized, much as Byzantine emperors guarded state secrets like the recipe for Greek fire.

To come to an end: The Byzantine legacy in Russian security and intelligence culture is, in my opinion, an important and under-researched aspect of Russian strategic culture. I think that in order to fully grasp Russian behavior today it pays to remember that modern Russia is, in a sense, heirs two to different empires - the Byzantine (in spirit) and the Soviet (in recent practice).

The former gives them their cultural playbook, the latter gives them their immediate operational legacy. Any effective analysis must keep both in view. And because every armchair-general analysis has to involve Sun Tzu, I'll end this post with some of his words:

"Know thy enemy and know thyself."