The Union's stated primary aim is to "resurrect the spirit" of Russian Orthodoxy, by conducting processions with banners and icons in Moscow, other parts of Russia.

The group became famous for its use and promulgation of the phrase "Orthodoxy or Death!," and its association with violent skinhead reactionaries.

In 2009 the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, denounced this slogan and said to "beware" those who used it, calling it "dangerous, false and intrinsically contradictory":[citation needed] [I]f we hear fervent calls to battle, to division, to the salvation of Orthodoxy even to death, when we hear such slogans as, "Orthodoxy or death," we need to beware of such preachers.

Among us even today appear, from time to time, false teachers who tempt the people with the call to save Orthodoxy, to save its purity, and who repeat that dangerous, sinful, and contradictory slogan, "Orthodoxy or death."

A Moscow court later agreed in a decision denouncing the phrase as "extremist.