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Strange and tragic sets of circumstances caused Russia to endure debilitating communism for three quarters of a century. The (short) explanation is that Orthodox Christianity has weaknesses which let through dominating, authoritarian systems. This is part of the reason former Coptic (Eastern Orthodox) Egypt capitulated to Islam. Sections of the former Eastern Orthodox countries in Europe and Anatolia remain Islam after the Muslim invasion which ended by the eighth century (by the fifteenth in Anatolia), but others were able to reclaim their Christian heritage. Orthodox Ethiopia was also temporarily blind-sided by Islam in the 16th century.
Russian culture has given us excellence. The highly disciplined Kirov (now Mariinsky) ballet formed Russia's great dancers Pavlova, Nureyev and Najinsky. The Russian-American icon, Baryshnikov also came from the Kirov discipline. Western music was influenced by Russian composers such as Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky and Scriabin. Painters Kandinsky and Chagall became leaders in Western art once they left Russia. The uniquely Russian art movement Constructivism had some influence in early twentieth century European art. Socialist realism, which grew out of Russian Socialism, found followers in Western Europe. There are too many notable writers to mention, but even popular Western culture is indebted to Boris Pasternak who's novel gave us Dr. Zhivago.
Peter the Great, and later Catherine the Great, tried to culturally unify the sprawling Russian and adjacent lands into an empire, with Christianity at its helm. This again was a manifestation of the empire-enabling Orthodox church's influence. But these rulers also tried to connect Russia with Western culture, avoiding the Far Eastern Chinese and Japanese civilizations, and the slightly closer Islam in the Orient. But eventually, the empire's unmanageable size along with its Orthodox Church's susceptibility to authoritarian regimes (see above) resulted with its capitulation to communism, which really was another form of imperialism. And this was far more authoritarian than anything Russia had seen before, and perhaps far more in line with Islam which the Christian rulers had been assiduously avoiding.
Fortunately, however indecisively, contemporary Communist-free Russia is reforming the cultural, national and religious importance of the Church after decades of state imposed secularism under communism. But, the Church and its believers had never given up on Christianity, and religious ceremonies performed behind hidden doors resumed in the open after the fall of communism, as if uninterrupted by decades of pogroms.
Now France is trying to recreate a little of this Russia in Paris. A Russian Orthodox Church is being built near the Eiffel Tower, close to the Seine on the Quai Branly, steps away from the Esplanade des Invalides (which houses Napoleon Bonaparte tomb), and across the river from the modernist architecture of Palais de Chaillot.
It is not clear why France is building this Russian church besides such recognizable French landmarks, whose round domes are incongruous amidst the elongated spirals of France's Catholic cathedrals and churches. And it goes against France's laïcité laws.
Is it nostalgia for religion? It is safer to bring an alien Christianity from an alien country, as a form of cultural curiosity, rather than to revive the Catholic Church. Or do the French think that Russian church architecture has enough Islamic sensibilities - those onion domes look like the tops of mosques - that it is permissible to erect them in the middle of Paris? But, Russia's Orthodox domes came before Islam. They originated in Byzantine Constantinople, and were elaborations on Roman domes before them. Muslims simply appropriated these domes (without adding any elaborations) from Eastern Christian architecture.
France has been busy building mosques (and even "super" mosques) all over the country for the past few decades, in open contradiction to the laïcité laws established to weaken the Catholic Church. But laïcité applies only to oppressive, racist, exclusive Christianity. This Russian architecture gets the green light because it doesn't look much different, at least to the amateur French eye, from the mosques mushrooming all over the French landscape.
We are seeing, right under our eyes, a once solidly Christian land turning into an Islam sympathizer. Whether the full conversion into a Muslim state will be slow and unconscious, or painful and violent through armed conquest by Muslim armies, is for history to decide. Or, French Catholics will rise and defend their land and religion, setting an example, as they once did, for the rest of us.
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[1] I originally read this story at Gallia Watch, who has a more optimistic outlook.