Upcoming Events
Lucy Ash | Russia’s Church from Pagans to Putin
Cambridge Literary Festival
In her provocative and prize-shortlisted book The Baton and the Cross, Lucy Ash reveals how, under Vladimir Putin, religion has been stripped of its spiritual content and repurposed as a weapon of state control.
Tracing more than a millennium of the Russian Orthodox Church’s astonishing survival skills – from tsarist rule and Soviet atheism to the chaos of the 1990s – Lucy Ash shows how the Church has once again moved to the right hand of power, sanctifying Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Combining historical research with vivid, on-the-ground reportage, she explores how Orthodox clerics preach a dangerous ideology of supremacy, dragging Russia towards a new Middle Ages. Join Lucy as she exposes the underbelly of politics, state security and big money, and their unholy alliance with Orthodoxy in the dystopia of twenty-first-century Russia.
Chaired by author and Master of Trinity Hall, Mary Hockaday.
Venue: Old Divinity School
Friday 24th April 2026
6:00pm–7:00pm