Kristina Stoeckl The Russian Orthodox Church's Approach to Human Rights Kristina Stoeckl - Fellow of the Austrian Program for Advanced Research and Technology (APART), Fellow of the Austrian Academy of Sciences at the University of Vienna, Department of Political Sciences (Vienna, Austria). kristina.stoeckl@eui.eu This article looks at the ways in which the Russian Orthodox Church has approached the international human rights regime from the moment of its foundation - the 1948 "Declaration of Human Rights"- until the adoption of the "Teaching on Human Dignity, Freedom and Rights" by the Bishops Council of the Russian Orthodox Church in 2008. It is argued that within this period, the attitude of the Church has changed from outright rejection to critical acceptance. The article analyzes the political background for this shift and sheds light on ambivalent dynamics inside the Moscow Patriarchate during the last two decades. Keywords: Russian Orthodox Church, religion in the USSR, human rights, religion and modernity. In this article, we analyze the Russian Orthodox Church's approach to human rights from the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 to the publication of the Fundamentals of the Russian Orthodox Church's Teaching on Human Dignity, Freedom and Rights in 2008. From our point of view, the position of the Russian Orthodox Church has shifted over the past half-century from resolute denial to critical acceptance. Today, the Moscow Patriarchate uses the concept of human rights to achieve its own goals and defends a conservative understanding of human rights in a polemic with the liberalism and individualism of the international human rights system. page 1461948 - the year of the signing of the Universal Declaration-can be considered a starting point for discussion of both convergence and disagreement between the position of the Russian Orthodox Church and the traditional concept of human rights, since it was then that international legal norm ... Read more