Crafting Ethics: The Dilemma of Almsgiving in Russian Orthodox Churches (Report‪)‬

B egging appeared more openly in all urban settings of European Russia soon after the dismantlement of the Soviet regime. The post-Soviet transformations also encouraged a particularly vivid revival of Russian Orthodoxy. Old churches reopened; new ones were erected. The surroundings of the Orthodox churches are nowadays typical places for begging. Church almsgiving has become one of the most ordinary expressions of Orthodox compassion in post-Soviet Russia. It is also a node of intense questions and tensions. The role of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) as a provider of social relief raises issues such as the interplay between religion and nationalism, the unequal position of different religious institutions in contemporary Russia, and diverging notions of charity, as Caldwell (2010) demonstrates. By focusing on almsgiving, I propose to look at this charitable practice as an arena constantly animated by ethical issues. In the eyes of Orthodox priests, the everyday dealings with often uncivil and smelly beggars are a trivial and charmless part of church life. But they are also, as those priests claim, the source of a vibrant ethical dilemma to which they are compelled to respond creatively: how to express Christian compassion and to refuse, at the same time, to support an unfit way of life? Through the concept of ethics, I examine how pragmatic solutions are crafted on an everyday basis and how frail equilibriums are reached that do not rule out uncertainty, hesitation, or contingency. This article is an exploration of the dynamics of the ethics of almsgiving. The priests themselves draw on several, sometimes contradictory, layers of the past that they emphasize and combine in individually and collectively meaningful ways: traditional notions of spontaneous uncontrolled almsgiving become colored by late 19th century ideas of modern target-oriented charity, and by 20th century Soviet notions of work. The historicity of these ethics not only informs my interpretation, it also serves as a resource consciously and selectively mobilized by the priests themselves. This diachronic aspect is intertwined with a synchronic aspect: the immediacy of practice, concrete ethical decisions, and interactions reveal how complex the priests' attitudes toward practical responses are. While priests usually approve of giving monetary handouts to passive beggars such as silent elderly women, they try to sanction younger ones who seem to be able-bodied, even though the priests usually refrain from expelling the latter totally. They have crafted ethics of simultaneous sanction and compassion that make it possible, at the same time, to "punish" the able-bodied beggars for their "bad" ways of life and to respond to their demand in the spirit of traditional Orthodox charity. In doing so, not only do the priests realize themselves as ethical persons, but they assume a responsibility toward beggars and society, what I call the society-centered nature of ethics.