Geraldine Fagan

Geraldine Fagan is author of Believing in Russia – Religious Policy after Communism, due out in paperback in spring 2014. She is Moscow correspondent for Forum 18 News Service.

Russia’s spinning moral compass

Vladimir Putin’s latest political course as president – from the jailing of Pussy Riot to the law against gay ‘propaganda’ – strikes many as being one defined by the Russian Orthodox Church. But is it really so?

By Geraldine Fagan

/ 16 Nov 2013

Soviet anti-religion has returned, claim Europe's last surviving pagans

In their remote forest republic 400 miles east of the Moscow, the pagan Mari people are once again being harassed by the authorities. While the administrative lever used today is different — charges of “extremism” — their approach is more than reminiscent of the way their Soviet counterparts dealt

By Geraldine Fagan

/ 28 Jul 2010

Russia’s ambitious new Patriarch

St Fidel, Equal-to-the-Apostles might be Castro's title in the Russian Orthodox Church. The communist crusader's signature is one of two gracing a gold-embossed deed buried deep

By Geraldine Fagan

/ 12 Feb 2009