Russian Nuclear Orthodoxy: Religion, Politics, and Strategy (Stanford University Press, 2019) by Dmitry Adamsky, a professor at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya university in Israel, is a penetrating analysis of the growing influence of the Russian Orthodox Church in Russia's nuclear world—both in the military and the scientific communities. This excellent scholarly work is well-researched and extensively documented. It shows how the Russian Orthodox Church has penetrated and integrated itself into the Russian Armed Forces and even some of the closed nuclear cities—to the point where priests bless new nuclear missiles. Indeed, to some extent, Russian Orthodox priests have taken over the role formerly held by political officers during the Communist period: They keep an eye on the spiritual purity of the troops, glorify the military, and ensure the reliability of the soldiers during combat.
In some ways, the priests even go beyond the old Soviet military kommissars, reassuring recruits that there is nothing immoral about following orders to launch nuclear missiles and protect the sacred motherland. (Ironically, some nuclear weapons research and development sites were built on holy land confiscated by revolutionary Russia from the church.)
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