Aggressors may use religious rhetoric and institutions to provide ideological justification for expansion. The seizure of territories is presented not as an act of armed aggression but as a sacred mission to protect co-religionists, restore canonical justice, or fulfill a divine destiny. Using such narratives allows the colonizer to morally justify the invasion in the eyes of its own society, mobilize it to support the conflict, and disguise political absorption as spiritual unification.
The government of the Tsardom of Muscovy used religious identity and the concept of protecting co-religionists as ideological cover for military expansion: historian Michael Khodarkovsky states that the diplomatic apparatus positioned the tsar as a "universal Christian ruler who 'upheld the true Christian faith'"[1], while invasions were motivated by a "divine obligation to rescue Orthodox Christians from infidel captivity"[1]; as a result, as historian Michael Khodarkovsky summarizes, in the advance into new territories "Moscow's military and political interests could no longer be separated from the ideological and theological rhetoric of expansion"[1], because of which the North Caucasus "became a religious frontier"[2].
The seizure of a neighboring state's territories was presented to the population of the Tsardom of Muscovy not as an act of political or military expansion, but as a sacred mission of protecting brothers in faith. This myth outlived the centuries: as late as 1990 Solzhenitsyn reproduced it verbatim – "The return of these lands to Russia was then perceived by everyone as REUNIFICATION"[3].
The imperial historical myth was directly based on religious manipulation: expansion was justified by the concept of religious unity. The author constructed an ideologeme in order "to give the Muscovite tsar the motivation to continue the struggle with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth for the liberation from Catholic rule of the remaining part of the 'single Orthodox people'"[4].
The annexation of the metropolitanate was disguised as the protection of co-religionists: the reform was carried out "relying on the Orthodox movement against the Turkish conquerors"[5], and "Golitsyn's main project concerning Ukraine… became the reform of the Ukrainian Orthodox church, or rather – the subordination of the Kyiv metropolitanate to the Moscow patriarch"[5][6].
The diplomatic entrenchment of spiritual expansion: Moscow secured the inclusion in the treaty of an article on the position of the Orthodox in the Commonwealth – the 1686 treaty ordered the Polish side "to inflict no oppression and no coercion toward the Roman faith or the Union"[7] – and arrogated to itself the role of protector of Orthodoxy on Polish lands, relying on the Kyiv metropolitanate already subordinated to Moscow. The treaty also secured an ecclesiastical lever: the Orthodox eparchies in the Commonwealth "according to their spiritual rank and custom, are to receive blessing and ordination from the Metropolitan of Kyiv; and this shall harm none of them in the favor of His Royal Majesty"[8] - while the Kyiv metropolitanate was already subordinated to Moscow.
The anathema against Mazepa was proclaimed by the tsar's direct order - "be pleased to have him, for such a deed of his, publicly cursed in the cathedral church..."[6]. Part of the Ukrainian clergy refused to accept the rite: a former Lokhvytsia archpriest said during the proclamation of the anathema, "Our Mazepa is holy and will be in heaven, and your sovereign will not"[6]. The Ecumenical Patriarchate never recognized it: "the anathema was laid on Ivan Mazepa for political reasons and had no theological or canonical justification"[9].
The use of the church as an instrument of punishment: the anathema was proclaimed by the tsar's direct order - "be pleased to have him, for such a deed of his, publicly cursed in the cathedral church..."[6]. No theological grounding was supplied for it, and part of the Ukrainian clergy refused to accept the rite: a former Lokhvytsia archpriest said during the proclamation of the anathema, "Our Mazepa is holy and will be in heaven, and your sovereign will not"[6].
The occupation administration of the Russian Empire used religious pretexts for expansion: historian Michael Khodarkovsky cites a memorandum by Governor-General P. S. Potemkin, who in 1784 declared that under the pretext of returning the highlanders to the faith and sending priests to them, the empire would be able to shed "the light of divine bliss among all the peoples scattered in the mountains"[2].
The ideological justification of a war of conquest by religion and Pan-Slavism: per Dostoevsky, "by Russia's insistence and blood the Slavs have already been liberated… the Turkish empire no longer exists and… the Balkan peninsula is free and lives a new life"[10] – the war was given the status of a sacred mission of liberating co-religionists.