Symphonia

The re-Christianization of Russia makes decadence an enemy, at home and abroad.

In the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union, communism left a vacuum of values, which was briefly traded for nihilistic experiments with Western style capitalism under the rule of Boris Yeltsin. During the rise of Vladimir Putin however, and especially since he resumed the presidency in 2012, Russia has turned decidedly towards a conservative ideology anchored within the Russian orthodox church. The president has called this doctrine of traditional family values a ”bulwark against the West’s so-called tolerance – genderless and infertile”. The religious-conservative ideology has revoked the normative theory of symphonia, a Byzantine concept of the state (empire) and church as complimentary forces.

These types of nightclubs, these types of people, these images might invoke what many in the West assume to be the norms of contemporary Russia. However, they are increasingly becoming a rarity. This nightclub in Gatchina, a town on the road between St. Petersburg and Pskov, represents remnants of another Russia, a post Soviet experiment, which still is alive.