Survey data on religiosity among Russian students shows that self-identifying as religious does not imply either belief in the details of Orthodoxy or participation in religious services. Attempts to make Russian Orthodoxy the basis of a new Russian state may be influencing public statements of affiliation, but not of behavior. Interest in Russians' religiosity as a social phenomenon of public life in Russia is prompted by the fact that the political elite are attempting to embed religion in the structure of state ideology. There are reportedly even attempts to make religion the ideological base of modernization.