Humanity’s economic choices have always reflected its deepest convictions, often expressed through religious cults that have shaped the destiny of civilizations. The authors compare three systems—the cult of death in ancient Egypt, the economic pragmatism of early Christianity, and the contemporary death economy of Russia—to illustrate different ways in which societies allocate their resources, favoring either investment in death or support for life.
The pyramids of Egypt: how the dead ruined the living
The Old Kingdom (2686-2181 BC) embodied the paradox of Egypt: architectural immortality achieved at the cost of earthly stability. The Great Pyramid of Giza, tomb of Pharaoh Cheops, required 2.3 million stone blocks and 40,000 workers over two decades, with this gigantic construction costing between 20 and 30% of ancient Egypt’s GDP.
The construction of burial sites is, of course, a highly sophisticated Keynesian measure, as it ensured employment and promoted technical innovation. But the missed opportunities were enormous: resources were diverted from the development of irrigation, the construction of granaries, and military expansion, which prevented the diversification of the economy, unlike Mesopotamia, which focused on trade. As long as the Nile floods ensured Egypt’s harvests, the situation remained stable, but around 2200 BC, a period of drought began and the lack of resources – invested in death – accelerated the collapse of the economy. “The pyramids were both a spiritual triumph and an economic time bomb. Like modern oil states, ancient Egypt identified its identity with a single unstable branch of river agriculture,” according to Amira Khalil, an archaeologist at Cairo University.
The economic revolution of Christianity: investing in the living
Jesus Christ’s call – “Let the dead bury their dead” (Luke IX, 60) – was also economic. The early Christians reallocated resources intended for funerals to the common good: they fed the poor, bought slaves and cared for victims of the plague. In the beginning, Christianity was much more advantageous than paganism in economic terms, as it reduced funeral expenses to a minimum.
In the 3rd century AD, Christian communities in Rome ran soup kitchens and hospitals financed by donations from all social classes. Religious services were held in homes rather than temples, as Christ had taught (“For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them,” Matthew 18:20), which reduced overhead costs, while the rapid development of trade helped spread Christianity. This “economy of solidarity,” as historian Peter Brown calls it, prioritized social capital.
During the Antonine Plague (165-180 AD), Christian communities attracted new converts by demonstrating the stability and appeal of their economic model, which did not exist in the stratified model of Egypt. After Christianity was legalized under Constantine (313 AD), corruption gradually set in—medieval indulgences, lavish churches—but the foundations of ethics were preserved. “Christianity offered a better return on investment,” says economist Jan Morris. “Communities prospered by investing in schools rather than sarcophagi.”
Of course, excesses began later, but the adaptability of early Christianity proved its strength from urban Rome to rural provinces and, unlike the Nile-dependent Egyptian economy, it took advantage of globalization, reinforcing economic stability through diverse religious practices and the rejection of a costly cult of death.
Transport of the colossus of Djehutihotep. Drawing based on a bas-relief from el-Bersheh, published by Sir John Gardner Wilkinson in A Popular Account of the Ancient Egyptians, 1854 // Public domain
The death economy under Putin
The term “death economy” (smertonomika) proposed by Vladislav Inozemtsev aptly describes Russia’s military economy, where the death of citizens in war finances economic growth. The families of contract soldiers receive $150,000 per soldier killed in action, which exceeds the average lifetime salary in most regions of Russia; by 2024, the army and factories in the military-industrial complex are expected to have “eaten up” nearly one in three rubles spent by the Treasury (29.5%), and the liquid assets of the National Prosperity Fund have fallen from $100 billion in 2022 to $38 billion in 2024. Inflation (estimated at over 20%) and interest rates (well above the Central Bank’s key rate, set at 21%) are stifling the civilian sector and redirecting investment priorities toward war and the manufacture of lethal weapons, making the Russian economy similar to the distorted resource allocation model of ancient Egypt, which emphasized funding the cult of death.
The Kremlin prioritizes funding the war, i.e., death, over measures to improve citizens’ well-being, using massive propaganda to mask the coercion to participate in hostilities, thereby creating a fictitious “spiritual consensus,” as was conceived and implemented in ancient Egypt.
Russia’s militarization only reinforces its dependence on resource exports, making its deadly economy similar to Egypt’s mono-agricultural economy, which, as has been proven, depended on the whims of nature and the flooding of the Nile.
Sanctions are increasingly exposing the vulnerabilities of this type of economy, as Russia’s dependence on fossil fuel exports (more than 14% of GDP) clashes with a civilized world moving toward decarbonization. “The Putin regime is reviving the Soviet scenario of militarized growth,” says Olena Yurchenko of the Kiev School of Economics. “It will collapse when coercion replaces consent.”
Death rituals as a theater of powerlessness
A separate issue is show business, which has become a veritable death industry in Russia, with hundreds of billions of rubles spent on producing empty speeches, presentations, and propaganda TV shows that serve to stir up war fever and crush human capital to conform to ill-chosen social development priorities. The love of ostentation and extreme forms of social exhibitionism are perfectly reflected in Russian celebrations and parades.
According to Michel Foucault, the parade is a form of disciplinary spectacle in which organized bodies demonstrate the illusion of control. In Russia, the parade is a ritual of impotence rather than a demonstration of strength, where technology and marching have become icons of the national lie. The pharaohs built pyramids instead of irrigation systems, and in Russia, militant marches thrive at the expense of public services. As a result, the entire moribund economy functions in a surprisingly harmonious concert, combining military-style propaganda, which has been raining down on the masses for 25 years, with the redirection of export revenues and a significant share of GDP toward the financing of military operations, hybrid wars, and arms production, which directly links the Kremlin’s think tank and the Kalashnikov automaton, forming a gigantic industry of value destruction, whose share of GDP reaches the level of military spending in the former USSR.
In a society where drones and bulletproof vests are bought with volunteers’ money, and where Red Square is cleaned until it shines like a mirror, the parade has become a substitute for results. In developed countries, military parades have long been reduced to the role of municipal celebrations. In Russia, the opposite is true: the parade is necessary as a fresh injection of myth. The “second army of the world,” which has made enormous sacrifices, is waging an offensive in Ukraine, and that is why the Armata tank, which stalled during the 2015 parade, is and remains both a national myth and a triumph.
The Russian cult of appearance is a form that claims to be the essence itself, an aesthetic that hides emptiness and theft, dressing up a powerless economy of death in ceremonial uniforms. Slavoj Žižek would probably say that appearance is generated by power that deifies violence.
The path of the Church: from solidarity to the sacralization of hierarchy
Early Christianity, which spread along the trade routes of the Roman Empire, showed remarkable economic flexibility, building communities based on mutual aid and sustainability, but the Eastern branch of Christianity followed a very different path. In Russia, Orthodoxy quickly went from being a force for social growth to a mechanism for stabilizing power, emphasizing the Byzantine tradition of the union of church and throne. The economic aspect of Christian ethics was distorted for the purpose of sacralizing the state, suffering became a virtue, and poverty a form of obedience. This privatization of religious capital transformed Orthodoxy into an ideology of submission, in which religion serves not the parish but the state cult of power.
While in the West Christianity was integrated into the creation of universities, hospitals, and scholarships, in the East it became an integral part of the infrastructure of fear and submission. This is how a particular configuration of power and faith emerged, in which the current Russian Orthodox Church does not reform society but ritualizes its stagnation, legitimizing violence as a sacred phenomenon and death as a mission.
The transition from a Christian economy of life to the integration of the Church into the infrastructure of discipline and death paved the way for the economy of death—and this is where the “biopolitical” role of the Church in contemporary Russia begins, its transformation into one of the main disciplinary mechanisms, with the meaning of Michel Foucault. The subjugation of the Church to the state had existed since the time of Ivan the Terrible, but under Putin, the link between Church and state has reached new heights: the Church serves as a piece of architecture for controlling people’s bodies and conscience, replacing faith with the instruments of power. While early Christianity was invested in life, in schools, and in hospitals, the Russian Orthodox Church is invested in the glorification of death and suffering. In Foucault’s logic, this is a form of biopower that controls the body as an object of sacrifice.
Rituals, processions, and prayers for soldiers are no longer acts of faith, but disciplinary procedures aimed at legitimizing violence. In this sense, the Russian Orthodox Church acts as a regime of “disciplinary repression,” where the pastorate becomes a substitute for political rationality. As Herbert Marcuse wrote, in a “one-dimensional society,” false freedom masks true submission. The Church in Russia has its own parade and its own goal: to actively imitate spirituality, replacing the search for religious meaning with the acceptance of suffering.
Death as glory, or human sacrifice
Like the economy of death (which characterizes the economic system created by the Kremlin: compensation paid to the families of contract soldiers stimulates growth and justifies sacrifice), the glorification of death defines the role of the Church in sanctifying this sacrifice, which elevates death above life. Statements by Patriarch Kirill and other hierarchs presenting the war in Ukraine as a sacred struggle against the morally decayed West transform soldiers who have fallen in battle into modern martyrs, and their death in war is blessed as part of God’s plan and as the only social benefit of a Russian’s life.
The Kremlin Church has created a unique alliance: the state finances death, the Church makes death sacred.
The consequences of the glorification of death go beyond religion, because by glorifying life after death, the Russian Orthodox Church implicitly supports a social structure that sacrifices progress, innovation, and peace in the name of deadly ideals. This shows a radical departure from the ethics of life in early Christianity, which devoted its resources not to the veneration of death, but to supporting communities: feeding the hungry, caring for the most vulnerable.
Today, death is a value that shapes a nation: it is at once a lucrative business, a supreme goal, and a virtue. Ancient Egypt invested in pyramids, exhausting its economy, while the Russian Church blesses the battlefield, supporting the false development priorities chosen by the Kremlin for the people it controls. But the investments made by the pharaohs 4,000 years ago bring in up to $15 billion to the modern Egyptian economy every year through tourism, while the heroic destruction of citizens in Russia will very soon give the death economy a negative net present value (NPV).
The future of the death economy
In a context of permanent war, societies must choose: invest in infrastructure or in tanks, in hospitals or in missiles. One might think that the tombs of the pharaohs and the trenches in Ukraine would deter leaders from burning the country’s future for ghosts of the past.
But the Kremlin is not deterred and continues to fight. That is why the Russian economy, fueled by military spending and allowances for combat participation and the death of contract soldiers, will almost certainly face a crisis by 2030, if not sooner.
The Independent Russian Center for Macroeconomic Analysis and Short-Term Forecasting predicts a slowdown in growth to 1.3-1.9% due to the budget deficit (2.7 trillion rubles in 2025) and high interest rates (21%).
The Central Bank of Russia is forecasting GDP growth of 1.7% in 2025, with inflation at 7% and unemployment at 2.6%.
The IMF is forecasting stagnation in Russia (1.4% in 2025), with GDP falling by 20% by 2030 due to the effects of the war and sanctions.
The World Bank is forecasting growth of 1.6% in 2025, but the fall in oil prices below $73 per barrel, as predicted in the budget, is already worsening the deficit. However, the price per barrel is currently $64 and the trend is downward.
SberCIB, the analysis center of Russian savings bank Sberbank, forecasts growth of 2.5% per year, but warns that sanctions are hampering investment.
Professor Inozemtsev notes the stability of the “financial bubble” and expects stagnation until 2026 if no reforms are implemented.
The dean of the London School of Economics, Sergei Guriev, warns of structural fragility, with growth below 2% due to labor shortages and fictitious drivers of GDP growth. The Strategic Reserve Fund will be depleted by 2027, which will exacerbate stagflation.
And meanwhile, death and glory, under the gloomy exhortations of the popes, reinforce the fatalism of the population, but this is precisely what drives away young people, and without their support, no society has ever survived. Without peace and economic diversification, i.e., without abandoning the economy of death, a collapse like that of the USSR could occur, even if close ties with China (oh, those sweet dreams of Moscow!) may delay or mitigate the disintegration, which will certainly not happen without bloodshed this time, as was the case in 1991.
Translated from Russian by Desk Russie
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Borukh Taskin is an independent financial analyst.
A programmer and lawyer, he has worked as a consultant and served as an advisor to several Russian ministers and senior liberal officials at the federal level, who were forced to leave Russia or imprisoned on the orders of Vladimir Putin's regime because of their political beliefs.