Vade Retro Satanas: Why Orthodox Russia Has Just Outlawed Satanism

On May 7, 2000, Vladimir Putin took the oath of office as Russia’s first democratically elected transfer of power. In his inaugural address, the new leader declared that he was taking on a “sacred duty” to restore the Russian Orthodox faith and preserve the nation’s unity.  After Patriarch Alexei II pronounced a solemn blessing, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church offered a personal prayer and presented Putin with the icons of the Christ the Saviour, St Alexander Nevsky, and St Nicholas. The Patriarch humbly beseeched Putin ‘to remember about the great responsibility of the leader to his people, history and God’.[1]

The Victory Day parade on May 9 through Red Square has become one of the holiest holy days of the Putin administration. The parade is a commemoration of the capitulation of Nazi Germany to the Red Army on 9 May 1945. It serves as a space for solemnity and reflection in the general commemoration of the 27 million Soviets (14 million of them Russians) who died in what is called the Great Patriotic War – World War II. The parade is also a celebration of Russian military power, with thousands of soldiers delivering the traditional Ura! cheer. 

In 2015, the Victory Day parade was fundamentally different from past military marches. When the Defence Minister, Sergei Shoigu, was being driven to Red Square under the gate of the Spasskaya Tower, his car stopped at Spasskaya Tower and he made the sign of the cross.[2] The Spasskaya Tower, also translated as The Saviour’s Tower, is the main tower on the eastern wall of the Moscow Kremlin, overlooking Red Square. Shoigu, one of the highest officials in the military command, was showing his reverence for the Russian Orthodox Church, a public display that would have been unthinkable during the days of the USSR[3].  According to Mark Galeotti, one of the world’s leading experts on modern Russia,

 This televised moment was a striking example of his political nous, at once aligning him with the Russian Orthodox Church and also the country’s history and traditions. Back in tsarist times, after all, it had been established practiced to stop, bare-headed, and show reference to the icon mounted above the gate. Even tsars would do so, and the legend was that when Napoleon arrogantly rode through the gate in 1812, after his armies had seized the city, a sudden wind below his hat from his head.[4]

On 24 March 2024, Russian TV Channel 1 ran footage of the Russian President attending a church service to honour the memory of the victims of the Islamic terrorist attack on a concert hall in a Moscow suburb. Putin was seen on television lighting a candle, making a sign of the cross with his fingers, and bowing. As noted by journalist Rebekah Koffler,

The TV screen was flanked by the identical images of ‘Savior the Miraculous’. Below the screen was a large, state-width sign ornate with golden crosses and church cupolas on the green background and the Savior icons. And the stage resembled an iconostasis (‘icon stand’ in Greek), a wooden and metal partition with doors that holds tiers of stylized gilded icons and separates the sanctuary from the nave in Russian Orthodox Churches. It symbolizes the boundary between God and Heaven (The Holy) and humans (The worldly).[5]

Curiously, one of Putin’s heroes and his main intellectual influence is Ivan Ilyin. He was a Russian lawyer, political philosopher and a member of the White Movement during the Russian Civil War. The Whites were conservative forces who opposed the Bolsheviks, or the Reds, during the Russian Civil War. According to Mark Fulmer, a U.S. geopolitical analyst and the founder of Real Geopolitics, 

Because Putin sees the Bolsheviks and the Red Army as the precursors of the Communist regime that destroyed the nation, he has a strong ideological affinity with the White Army resistance. Putin views the White Army as true patriots who fought for the vision of a united Russia that is one and indivisible.[6]

In 1918, Ilyin was thrice arrested by Cheka – the Bolshevik secret police known for its brutality and sadistic behaviour. In 1922, he was arrested once again.[7] Ilyin was eventually exiled from the country. He first settled in Berlin, where he started teaching at the Russian Scientific Institute founded by Russian émigrés to study Russia’s spiritual and material culture. The Institute encouraged higher education among young people of Russian Descent in Germany. 

At the same time, Ilyin remained in close contact with Russia’s White Movement organisations. Indeed, he remained a strong opponent of communism for all of his life, believing that the Bolsheviks were demonised people who had destroyed historical Russia. ‘By its very nature, socialism is envious, totalitarian, and involves terrorism; and communism differs from it only in that it manifests these features openly, shamelessly, and ferociously’, Ilyin wrote shortly before his death.[8]

In January 1933, when the Nazis came to power, Ilyin received a visit from the Gestapo, followed by several arrests and searches. In April 1934, he finally lost his academic job and tried to earn a living as a part-time teacher, but was once again summoned by the Gestapo after his writings were deemed unacceptable for promoting Christian morality.[9] Realising that it was too dangerous to remain in Nazi Germany, Ilyin emigrated to Switzerland in 1938, where he was able to settle in Switzerland thanks to the efforts and financial support of the Russian composer Sergey Rachmaninoff.[10]

Ilyin was a brilliant Christian intellectual who believed that ‘Russia can be restored only by serving faithfully and substantively, which must be felt and understood as serving the Cause of God on Earth. We must be guided by religiously meaningful patriotism and religiously inspired nationalism’.[11] ‘True nationalism’, he wrote, ‘opens a person’s eyes to the national identity of peoples: it teaches one not to despise other peoples, but to honour their spiritual achievements and their national feeling, because they too have received the gifts of God, and they put them to use in their own way , according to their ability’.[12]

Ilyin loved the Russian people and despised the Soviet regime. He considered the brutal dictator Joseph Stalin ‘an enemy of Russia and the Russian people’.[13] ‘Whoever loves Russia must wish it freedom; first of all, freedom for Russia itself, its national independence and freedom; then freedom for Russia as the unity of Russians and all other national cultures; and, finally, freedom for Russian people, freedom for all of us; freedom of faith, freedom in the search for truth, creativity, labor, and the possession of property’, he wrote.[14] According to Maxim Semenov, a Russian journalist, 

Ilyin was a nationalist but felt no aggression or hatred towards other nations. Christianity was very important for him … While he was a strong supporter of Russian nationalism, Ilyin was also open to dialogue. He favored freedom and criticized the Bolsheviks for establishing a dictatorship … Ilyin’s only mistake was the sincere how that Western democracies could save Russia from communism. That they would not identify Russia with communism and would not want Russia to be humiliated and dismembered. But history turned out to be different.[15]

In his most popular book, On Resistance to Evil By Force (1925), Ilyin mounts a strong defence of the Orthodox faith and its tradition of opposition to evil. He wrote: ‘It is the aggressiveness of evil and the need for it to pour out into external actions that make a counteroffensive necessary’.[16] As such, Ilyin argued that the evil Bolsheviks who were burning down churches and executing priests should be fought against by those who are the righteous contenders for God and nation: ‘Let your sword be a prayer, and your prayer a sword’, he stated.[17] According to Fulmer, 

Ilyin’s philosophical and theological views on resistance to evil made a considerable impact on Putin’s worldview because he closely identified with Ilyin’s Russian orthodoxy and patriotism. Therefore, his spiritual convictions could be defined in terms o being an Orthodox patriot resistance fight who compares himself to Ivan Ilyin. Whereas Ilyin was fighting the atheistic Bolsheviks, Putin sees himself as hold off the forces of an evil and morally decadent western empire.[18]

Ivan Ilyin died in Switzerland in 1954 and never had a chance to return to his beloved country. In 2005, his remains were returned to Russia, where he was reburied at the Donsky Monastery cemetery. Vladimir Putin installed a tombstone at his own personal expense. 

Throughout his presidency, Putin has often cited Ilyin as his favourite political philosopher and says he regularly reads his academic works. ‘Ivan Ilyin is not only one of the most brilliant Russian thinkers whose works have been extensively reprinted, but also, in fact, the only Russian philosopher who wrote about the post-Soviet system. That is why he is so relevant for the current government,’ stated a source in the Putin administration.[19]

The fact that the Russian President so often cites Ilyin in his speeches underlies the role that he assigns to this political philosopher. A senior official commented: ‘The demand for his ideas in today’s Russia is so strong that sometimes there is a feeling that Ivan Ilyin is our contemporary’.[20] Indeed, Putin believes that Ilyin’s political philosophy is a means of linking Russia to its pre-revolutionary past.[21]

Another anti-Communist patriot whom Putin often expresses his admiration is Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the celebrated Soviet dissident who helped raise global awareness of political repression in the former Soviet Union, especially the Gulag prison system. 

Solzhenitsyn passed away on 3 August 2008. He was a great admirer of Putin’s policies, commending the Russian leader for “resurrecting Orthodox Russia”. In today’s Russia, Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago, a history and memoir of life in Stalin’s prison camp, is mandatory reading to every child in every public school across Russia. The Russian government has placed the anti-communist book in the high-school history teaching list for all Russian students to read. 

In this context of renewed faith in Orthodox values and morality, one may find easier to understand why the Russian Orthodox Church and conservative lawmakers in Russia have called for years for evil practices such as Satanism to be outlawed within Russia. In January this year, for instance, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, manifested his strong support for calls to ban Satanic practices and rituals on the Russian territory.    

In April, the Duma (Russia’s Parliament) hosted a roundtable on ‘Combating Satanic Practices and Rituals’ that threaten the nation’s cultural values and religious traditions. ‘Why do we want to restrict the rights of Satanists? Because they pose a serious threat to our country, said Vyacheslav Leontiyev, a senior member of the Duma’s anti-Satanism working group.[22]

According to Andre Kartapolov, a senior MP who heads the Russian Parliament’s Defence Committee, he has received many complaints from concerned citizens about the increasing numbers of “Satanic sex orgies” in Moscow and other Russian cities, adding that the encroachment on Russia’s traditional conservative values threatens “the collapse of our civilisation”.[23]

As a result, in July this year, the Russian Supreme Court, following a joint lawsuit from the Prosecutor General’s Office and Ministry of Justice, declared the practice of Satanism unconstitutional as it poses a serious threat to public morality as well as the well-being of the nation. The Prosecutor General’s Office said in an official statement:

Today, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation granted the lawsuit filed by the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation, Igor Krasnov, recognizing the International Movement of Satanists as extremist and banning its activities on the territory of Russia. Its participants publicly call for extremism, as well as for the destruction damage and desecration of Orthodox churches, chapels, memorial crosses etc. … Along with ritual murders, participants also commit other crimes, including against minors.[24]

As a result of the Court’s landmark decision, Satanic organisations such as the U.S.-based ‘Satanic Temple’ are now banned from the country as ‘undesirable organisations, blasphemous of traditional religion’.[25]

Instead of supporting the important decision that particularly protects innocent children from Satanic practices and rituals, all the “conservative” mainstream Western media could think about is how such a ban on Satanism could affect the fans of heavy metal music.[26] And not only that, but these media outlets deliberately misled their readers by claiming that the Supreme Court had outlawed “the non-existing” Satanist movement.[27]

The information is obviously false and misleading because well-organised Satanic organisations such as The Satanic Temple exist in full operation, especially in the United States. About ten years ago, their members held a Satanic milk bath protest in support of Planned Parenthood, the world’s leading abortion provider.[28] In the same year, Satanists also raised cash to support the Democrats’ abortion-on-demand policy.[29]

The killing of unborn children is a sacrament to the Satanists, who openly admit they are practising child sacrifice through abortion as a religious ritual.[30] The Satanic Temple has now opened several abortion clinics across the United States.[31] In 2020, its members reinstated their official position that the killing of unborn babies through abortion is a “Satanic ritual” that should be protected under U.S. religious freedom laws.[32]

The ban of Satanism by the Russian Supreme Court is seen as part of a wider move to combat ideologies against traditional spiritual and moral values.[33] In November 2023, the Court had declared the constitutional invalidity of LGBTQ+ propaganda that indoctrinates children, as well as practices like “gender reassignment” surgeries and therapies for children, although Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin, made sure to clarify that homosexual relations between consenting adults are not forbidden.[34]

Putin often condemns Western nations for dramatically departing from traditional Christian values and morality – for effectively becoming the world’s leading advocates of abortion-on-demand and sexual immorality. In some of his speeches, he accuses the Western elites of practising a form of Satanism where the lives of “the little ones” are sacrificed, leading these “little ones to stumble.” In a remarkable 30 September 2022 speech, Putin declared:

Do we really want in our schools, from elementary school, for children to be imposed perversions that lead to their degradation and destruction? That they are taught that in addition to a man and a woman there are other genders and they are offered some operations for gender change? Do we really want this for our country, for our children? All this is unacceptable to us, we have our own different future. Such denial of a human being, the rejection of traditional faith and values, and the suppression of freedom appear to me as a form of religion of perversion, pure Satanism.[35]

According to Dr Paul Coyer, a U.S. foreign policy expert with degrees from Yale University (MA) and the London School of Economics and Political Science (MA/PhD), Putin is broadly perceived amongst his people as ‘the champion of a Russian nation beset by a hostile West determined to reshape Russia in its own image’.[36] He explains that Putin is broadly recognised by the Russian people as the leader who revived the Orthodox faith, with over 20,000 churches built from 2000 onwards. As Dr Coyer also points out, 

Around 25,000 Russian Orthodox churches have been built or rebuilt since the early 1990’s, the vast majority of which have been built during Putin’s rule and largely due to his backing and that of his close circle of supporters. Additionally, the Church has been given rights that have vastly increased its role in public life, including the right to teach religion in Russia’s public schools and the right to review any legislation before the Russian Duma.[37]

Putin often draws attention during his public speeches to the fact that the Western elites have moved their nations far away from traditional Christian moral values and principles that have founded and sustained Western Civilisation.  In a remarkable speech delivered in 2013, Putin declared:

We see that many Euro-Atlantic countries [i.e., the West] have taken the way where they deny or reject their own roots, including their Christian roots which form the basis of Western civilization. In these countries, the moral basis and any traditional identity are being denied – national, religious, cultural and even gender identities are being denied or relativized. 

There politics treats a family with many children as equal to a homosexual partnership; faith in God is equal to faith in Satan. The excesses and exaggerations of political correctness in these [Western] countries indeed lead to a serious consideration for the legitimisation of parties that promote the propaganda of paedophilia. 

The people in many European States are actually ashamed of their religious affiliations and are indeed frightened to speak about them. Christian Holidays and celebrations are abolished for “neutrality” renamed, as if one were ashamed of those Christian holidays. With this method one hides away the deeper moral value of these celebrations. And these countries try to force this model onto other countries, globally. 

I am deeply convinced that this is a direct way to the degradation and primitivization of culture. This leads to deeper demographic and moral crisis in the West. What can be a better evidence for the moral crisis of a society [in the West] than the loss of reproductive function? And today nearly all “developed” Western countries cannot survive reproductively, not even with the help of migrants. 

Without the moral values that are rooted in Christian and other world religions, without rules and moral values which have formed and been developed over millennia, people will inevitably lose their human dignity, become brutes. And we think it is right and natural to defend and preserve these moral Christian values.[38]

Ten years later, on 21 February 2023, while delivering his State of the Nation address, the Russian leader denounced the “stupidity” of the Western elites in deliberately waging a “culture war” against Christianity. Putin commented:  

Their main target is, of course, the younger generation and our younger generation. And here, once again, they lie constantly. They distort historical facts, constantly attacking our culture, the Russian Orthodox Church and other traditional religious organizations in the country. Look at what they do to their own people: the destruction of the notion of family, culture and national identity. Perversion, child abuse, and even paedophilia are declared the norm – the norm of their way of life. 

I would like to say to you: Look at the Holy Scripture, the sacred books of all the other religions of the world. It’s all said there – including the fact that marriage is the union of a man and a woman. But even these sacred texts are now being revised. As it has become known, the Church of England, for example, plans to consider the idea of a gender-neutral God. What can I say? May God forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.[39]

Putin believes that Russia’s greatest strength lies in its Orthodox traditions, untouched by the “progressive” trends in Europe and North America.[40] According to him, ‘Russia holds to the true European values at a time when the nations to its west have abandoned them. Its Orthodox faith is the genuine form of Christianity, just as its social conservatism is simply a refusal to cater to degenerate fads and post-modern moral subjectivism’.[41]

Of course, the ruling Western elites are, in their vast majority, woke globalists who demonstrate increasingly authoritarian inclinations and Christophobic feelings. And this precisely so at the very moment that Russia decidedly embarked on a new phase of proud restoration of its rich Orthodox heritage. Arguably, a Western leader could carry on an intellectual debate with his Soviet Marxist counterpart, but it seems impossible for the present ‘woke’ elites of the West to do so with a Russian Orthodox-nationalist counterparty. 

Be that as it may, the fact is that the Russian Supreme Court’s decision to declare the unconstitutionality of Satanism, following a joint lawsuit from the Prosecutor General’s Office and the Ministry of Justice, should be interpreted as part of a wider movement within the Russian government to combat anti-Christian destructive ideologies that attempt against traditional spiritual and moral values of the Russian people. 

And yet, instead of applauding the Court ruling, the woke Western elites criticise it and express ridiculous apprehensions about any alleged consequence of such a decision for the fans of heavy metal. Meanwhile, the culture of death keeps gaining space in the decadent post-Christian West, where its ungodly elites seem happily satisfied that Satanists can now open abortion clinics in the name of religious freedom to kill babies, using hard-fought constitutional protections against us.

In the woke post-Christian West, we are all being forced by the ruling classes to express Russophobic sentiments. And yet, like so many American patriots, many people in Orthodox Russia believe in their nation’s uniqueness and sense of destiny. These Russians believe that, risen from the ashes of a dark communist past, their country is destined by Divine Providence for the advancement of the Orthodox faith, particularly across Eurasia.[42] Because Putin knows exactly what his patriotic people expect of him, he is now keen on creating a leader’s image deeply steeped in rich Orthodox tradition, history, and mythology, often associated with the uniqueness of the “Russian soul” – spiritual endurance, persevering patience, belief in miracles, and material sacrifice.[43]

Augusto Zimmermann is the Foundation Dean and Professor of Law at Alphacrucis University College. He also served as Associate Dean at Murdoch University School of Law and as a Commissioner with the Law Reform Commission of Western Australia.

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References:

1 Rebekah Koffler, ‘Is Russia’s Putin a devout Christian or has he weaponized religion to advance his personal ambitions?’, Fox News, 27 March 2024, at https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/is-russias-putin-devout-christian-has-he-weaponized-religion-advance-personal-ambitions

2 Mark Fulmer, The Proxy War in Ukraine: A Geopolitical Strategy of the Global Elites (Liberty Hill Publishing, 2024) 101.

3 I bid.

4 Mark Galeotti, Putin’s Wars: From Chechnya to Ukraine (Osprey Publishing, 2022) 155.

5 Rebekah Koffler, ‘Is Russia’s Putin a devout Christian or has he weaponized religion to advance his personal ambitions?’, Fox News, 27 March 2024, at https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/is-russias-putin-devout-christian-has-he-weaponized-religion-advance-personal-ambitions

6 Mark Fulmer, The Proxy War in Ukraine: A Geopolitical Strategy of the Global Elites (Liberty Hill Publishing, 2024) 124.

7 Maxim Semenov, ‘Anti-Communist, Russian nationalist, enemy of Hitler: Who was ‘Putin’s favorite philosopher’, RT, 2 May 2024, at https://www.rt.com/russia/596661-ivan-ilyin-russian-philosopher/

8 Ibid.

9 Ibid.

10 Ibid.

11 Ibid.

12 Ibid.

13 Ibid.

14 Ibid.

15 Ibid.

16 Ivan Ilyin, On Resistance to Evil by Force (transl. K. Bernois, Taxiarch Press, 2018) 153.

17 Ibid.

18 Mark Fulmer, The Proxy War in Ukraine: A Geopolitical Strategy of the Global Elites (Liberty Hill Publishing, 2024) 125.

19 Ibid.

20 Ibid.

21 Philip Short, Putin: His Life and Times (The Bodley Head, 2022) 445.

22 ‘Russian Lawmakers Move to Ban Satanism’, The Moscow Times, 9 April 2025, at https:// www.themoscowtimes.com/2025/04/09/russian-lawmakers-move-to-ban-satanism-decry-alleged-azov-ritual-orgies-a88665

23 Ibid.

24 ‘At the request of the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation banned the activities of the International Satanist Movement’, Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation, 23 July 2025, at https://epp.genproc.gov.ru/web/gprf/mass-media/news?item=106112734

25 Paul Serran, ‘Vade Retro: Russia Bans International Satanism Movement, In Defense of Traditional Spiritual and Moral Values’, The Gateway Pundit, 23 July 2025, at https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/07/vade-retro-russia-bans-international-satanism-movement-defense/

26 ‘Fans of heavy metal could face jail Russia as Putin bans Satanists’, The Times, 27 July 2025, at https:// www.thetimes.com/world/russia-ukraine-war/article/russia-threatens-satanists-latest-crackdown-putin-b5vbx62f0. See also: ‘Heavy Metal fans could face jail in Russia as Putin bans Satanists’, The Australian, 27 July 2025, at www.theaustralian.com.au%2Fworld%2Fthe-times%2Fheavy-metal-fans-could-face-jail-in- russia-as-putin-bans-satanists/ See also: Sophie Little, ‘Heavy metal fans in Russia could face prison as Vladimir Putin bans Satanists’, GBN, 28 July 2025, at https://www.gbnews.com/news/world/heavy-metal-russia-face-prison-vladimir-putin-bans-satanists

27 ‘Russia’s top court bans nonexistent Satanist movement’, Politico, 23 July 2025, at https://www.politico.eu/article/russia-supreme-court-bans-satanist-movement-labeling-extremist/ See also: ‘Russia just banned the non-existent international Satanism movement’, Meduza, 25 July 2025, at https://meduza.io/en/feature/ 2025/07/24/the-devil-is-in-the-details

28 Jim Hoft, ‘Satanists Admit They Are Making Child Sacrifice Through Abortion an Official Ritual by the Satanic Temple’, The Gateway Pundit, 6 September 2021, at https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/09/satanists-admit-making-child-sacrifice-abortion-official-ritual-satanic-temple/

29 Ibid.

30 Ibid.

31 Paul Serran, ‘The Satanic Temple Opens its Second Satanic Abortion Clinic, Abusing Religious Freedom to Kill Babies’, The Gateway Pundit, 31 October 2024, at https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/10/satanic-temple-opens-its-second-satanic-abortion-clinic/

32 Jim Hoft, ‘Satanists Admit They Are Making Child Sacrifice Through Abortion an Official Ritual by the Satanic Temple’, The Gateway Pundit, 6 September 2021, at https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/09/satanists-admit-making-child-sacrifice-abortion-official-ritual-satanic-temple/

33 Paul Serran, ‘Vade Retro: Russia Bans International Satanism Movement, In Defense of Traditional Spiritual and Moral Values’, The Gateway Pundit, 23 July 2025, at https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/07/vade-retro-russia-bans-international-satanism-movement-defense/

34 Ibid.

35 ‘A perverted religion, outright Satanism: Putin attacks the West while praising Russian values’, Daily Mail, 30 September 2022, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxS9YIBeJbY

36 Paul Coyer, ‘(Un)Holly Alliance: Vladimir Putin, The Russian Orthodox Church And Russian Exceptionalism’, Forbes, 21 May 2015, at https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulcoyer/2015/05/21/unholy-alliance-vladimir-putin-and-the-russian-orthodox-church/

37 Ibid.

38‘The Real Putin? Epic Speech Reveals All’, Think Again Australia, 15 March 2022, at https:// www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/06/vladimir-putin-a-miracle-defender-of-christianity-or-the- most-evil-man#commentshttps://www.bitchute.com/video/zCfVP3LRT4u2/

39 ‘Putin mocks ‘gender-neutral God’ proposed by Church of England’, Daily Mail, 21 February 2023, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ib79nDamfno

40 Mark Galeotti, A Short History of Russia (Penguin Random House, 2022) 48.

41 Ibid. 179-180

42 Rebekah Koffler, ‘Is Russia’s Putin a devout Christian or has he weaponized religion to advance his personal ambitions?’, Fox News, 27 March 2024, at https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/is-russias-putin-devout-christian-has-he-weaponized-religion-advance-personal-ambitions

43 Nina Khrushcheva and Jeffrey Tayler, In Putin’s Footsteps: Searching for the Soul of an Empire Across Russia’s Eleven Time Zones (St. Martin’s Press, 2019) 8.