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"Without Christianity, without the Orthodox faith and culture which sprang from it, Russia would have hardly existed as a state," Vladimir Putin said during a visit to the Solovetsky monastery, on the Solovki Islands, part of Russia's northern White Sea archipelago.

Patriarch Alexei II, leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, accompanied Putin to the monastery.

In what observers have described as a carefully timed vacation, the president has visited Orthodox churches and monasteries in northern Russia as his country marks the 10th anniversary of the attempted coup, which was launched in August 1991 against Mikhail Gorbachev.

The coup attempt—although unsuccessful—started a chain of events that led to Gorbachev's downfall, the break-up of the Soviet Union, and the rise of Boris Yeltsin as president of an independent Russian Federation.

The wisdom of the coup is now the subject of heated debate in Moscow. Many of those directly involved— including Gorbachev, democracy campaigners, and those who plotted the coup—have made statements in recent days about the events.

Moscow commentators have criticized the failure of Putin to make any direct comment about the anniversary. However, his visit to the Solovetsky is seen as highly significant.

The first Soviet labor camp was founded there in 1923 after the monastery was closed at the time of the Russian revolution. During Stalin's rule, many thousands of people, including many clergy, were shot or died at the camp. The monastery was re-opened in 1991.

Georgy Satarov, who heads the "INDEM" political think-tank, said Putin's visit to the Solovki Islands was intended to send a "coded message."

"The interpretation of the coup is still something that divides the Russian people, and Putin strongly dislikes publicizing his views on such divisive matters. He has given himself the task of unifying Russians, not dividing them," said Satarov, a former Yeltsin aide. "It is not accidental that he went to the Solovki Islands on Monday nor that he went with the patriarch."

Prominent historian Dmitri Furman wrote in Rodina magazine that "Putin is gradually distancing himself from the revolutionary past while establishing [himself] as a 'normal,' traditional Russian power."

From this perspective, Putin's Solovki visit served this purpose by simultaneously commemorating the victims of the Soviet regime while stressing the continuity of Russian history.

In his remarks at the monastery, Putin also appeared to distance himself from the "exclusivist" interpretation of Orthodox Christianity often propagated by Russian nationalists.

"If God saved all nations, that means that all are equal before God," he said, referring to a famous statement by Metropolitan Hilarion, a famous 11th-century bishop of Kiev.

This "simple truth," Putin continued, became the basis of Russian statehood "making it possible to build a strong and centralized multi-ethnic state" and a "unique Eurasian civilization."

"Besides glorifying the Russian people, besides cultivating the national dignity and national pride, our spiritual teachers … taught us to respect other nations," he said. He stressed that ancient Orthodox teaching was free of chauvinism or any ideology of nations chosen by God.

"It would not hurt to remember this today. These are exactly the moral values which should form the backbone of domestic and foreign policy," he said.

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August (Web-only) 2001, Vol. 45