Glorification of saints in the Eastern Orthodox Church differs from Roman Catholic tradition in both theology and practice. The Glorification of saints is considered to be an act of God, not a declaration of the hierarchy. The official recognition of saints grows from the consensus of the church.
When an individual who has been sanctified by the grace of the Holy Spirit falls asleep in the Lord, God may or may not choose to glorify the individual through the manifestation of miracles. If so, the devotion to the saint will normally grow from the "grass roots" level. Eventually, miracles will have grown to such a degree that a formal Service of Glorification will be scheduled. A Glorification may be performed by any Bishop within his Diocese. Often there will be a formal investigation to be sure that the individual is Orthodox in their faith, has led a life worthy of emulation, and that the reports of miracles attributed to their intercessions are verifiable. The Glorification service does not "make" the individual a saint; rather, the Church is simply making a formal acknowledgement of what God has already manifested.
Martyrs need no formal Glorification; the witness of their self-sacrifice is sufficient.

PDS Russia Religion News July 2009

...72.6% of those questioned called themselves Orthodox and only 7.3% considered themselves atheists. Adherence to other branches of Christianity, including Catholicism, is claimed by only 1.2% and to Islam, Buddhism, and Judaism, 6.3% of the participants in the investigation.

However, not everything is pleasing for RPTs if one looks at the answers to the underlying questions. It turns out that only 42% of the Orthodox unconditionally believe in God. The remainder either doubt his existence or acknowledge some higher power. Twelve percent of Orthodox children have not been baptized. Only 3% attend church every week or more often, while 55% attend several times a year, primarily on special holidays, and 12% never attend. The average length of time in prayer is 8 minutes, while the church prescribes that prayer may not last less than 20 minutes. "It is remarkable that, despite awareness of and approval of religious norms, such as fasting, prayer, and confession, people do not intend to observe them, while still considering themselves Orthodox," says Natalia Zorkaia of the Levada Center. Thus, 73% of Orthodox never fast and 77% of those questioned eat meat even on Good Friday, knowing its impermissibility.

"And this sin," the Patriarch said, "God will not leave unavenged."

They also said he looked like a "kavkazets," a man from the Caucasus." In some Russians' minds, "kavkazets" is a negative word that conjures up a longstanding negative picture of a foreign and unwanted figure in Russians' midst [...]

Xenophobia has a long history in Moscow with economic crises exacerbating the situation...

This kind of generalizations regarding negative words and "long histories" are not something I really understand. What I can say is that this "kavkazets" xenophobia was much less obvious in the Soviet times - if you could call it particularly discernible at all. For what I experienced, it was relatively safe to live in Moscow for Caucasians, even Africans or anyone else. The Caucasians were often considered as cheerful, friendly fellas; there were plenty of jokes about them - but who would say they were mean?

My point is not to idealize the Soviet national relations - even if I would recommend to consider them as remarkably carefree. The rapid post-Soviet transformations to ultra-individualist, xenophobic, neo-feudal predator societies make me wonder of some intelligent designs or biased selections prepared ready for the communist collapse, seriously. It is not only "oppressed" post-communist churches that got free passes to the status of national symbols. And whatever you think of "Pravda" or "Izvestiya" (not that I ever read them more than a few articles), the uniform dumbing down of media was another development that stroke me.

I will take liberty to quote from an email from a Russian friend (with a bit of emphasis of mine). He got into Kafkian trouble with former business partners and the legal system. It was certainly much simpler to stay out of serious trouble under the repressive Soviet regime.

...the difference is that previously if you do not say anything wrong against the communist system than nobody touch you. Now, I think about 50% of men in Russia serves in some security structures, their salaries are not too small but surely not enough to buy mercedes, houses, etc. So there are many organized groups who earn their money by threatening normal people and business. If you look in our Russian news almost every week there is information that milice attack this or that relatively large business, arrested offices, confiscated documents, computers, goods, together with the owners. After that the business is destroyed and it taken by some person affiliated with these "security" structures. All these process is actually organized from Kremlin, so now we cannot go to any " nachal'nik" like it was in Soviet time and ask to stop violence. This organized criminal groups has their roots exactly in Kremlin, it closes its eyes on these things as long as Milice and FSB (the analog of KGB) suppress political opposition. The only thing which is possible to do in this situation is to find another analogous criminal group, pay them and let them agree with the first group....

If all this free sway of "security" and xenophobia can be predictably good to control the huge country "comfortably", wouldn't central forces choose to encourage that? There must have been a method behind "waking up" that Russian xenophobic nature so badly.