All comparisons hobble, says a German proverb. With that caveat, let's try a limping analogy.
Imagine a former Gestapo officer had been elected Chancellor of West Germany in 1949. Imagine he had revived the tune, though not the lyrics, of the "Horst Wessel Lied," National Socialism's belligerent hymn. Imagine he had slipped in the name of God and made it the national anthem. The entire world would have been in an uproar.
Yet something similar has just happened in Russia.
The president, Vladimir V. Putin, is a former KGB lieutenant-colonel. With the stroke of a pen, he turned the old Soviet anthem into a new Russian one -- albeit with new lyrics.
The second stanza ends with the words, "Native land protected by God." These are strange words to a tune that until recently glorified the first state whose ideological objective was the elimination of religion.
In the 1920s and 1930s it had virtually all of the Russian Orthodox clergy and many of its believers shot or exiled to gulags.
Before the 1917 Russian revolution there were more than 50,000 churches; of these all but 500 were destroyed or closed by the Soviets between 1917 and 1939.
The Soviet regime made Jewish worship almost impossible, persecuting Catholics, Protestant and Muslims alike.
Of course, believers in Russia might aver that the words, "Native land protected by God," reflect a historical truth. After seven decades of persecution and subversion, the Orthodox Church is now the most resurgent of all Christian denominations in Eastern Europe, if we leave aside, for the sake of an argument, the admirable faithfulness of the Polish Catholics.
The Church is arguably the single most powerful force in Russia -- and perhaps the richest. The golden domes of its sanctuaries glistening in restored splendor in the wintry sky over Moscow attest to Orthodoxy's rejuvenated lofty status.
It was one of the most astonishing accomplishments of former President Boris Yeltsin to have transformed Russia, at least outwardly, once again into a "holy country," as the new anthem's first line claims.
Faster than any other post-Communist nation, Russia has rebuilt churches on a massive scale. The most remarkable of all is the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow. This enormous steel structure was built in the 19th century to commemorate Russia's victory over Napoleon.
It took several days to blow it up on Stalin's order in 1931. Now it has reclaimed its place in Moscow's skyline.
Orthodoxy's might is such these days that it evidently can even do without too many allies in the faith community.
It jealously protects its turf against potential competitors.
The travails of as honorable an institution as the Salvation Army in Moscow are doubtless also due to a kind of ecclesiastical protectionism exercised by the nation's traditional church.
"Native land protected by God" -- these words fly well with patriarchs and peasants. And they make good reading in the United States whose national anthem ends with an affirmation that makes secular humanists squirm: "And this be our motto: 'In God we trust.'"
But does Putin mean it? He says his mother had him baptized when he was a child. He claims to be a practicing Orthodox Christian now. And who is to say an old KGB colonel couldn't come to faith?
So what about the melody sung by God's enemies before their fall? Well, one must make allowances for a certain post-Communist lack of delicacy. After all, the tunes of some glorious hymns sung in western churches had their origins in Europe's taverns. Even the ungodly have a knack for creating stirring songs.
Just in case Putin is having us on, though, let's remind him of the Second Commandment: "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain" (Exodus 20:7).
What does this mean? Among other things that we must not "lie or deceive," according to Luther's Small Catechism.
As Orthodox Russia is preparing for its Christmas on January 7, Putin might do well to consider how the anthem of another nation rates God's wrath.
"O Lord our God arise, scatter our enemies and make them fall. Confound their politics, frustrate their knavish tricks. On thee our hopes we fix. God save us all."
Who sings that? The British, when they get as far as the second stanza of "God save the Queen." (Copyright, United Press International, posted 3 January 2001)
The history of the conflict between students and the rector of St. Petersburg Ecclesiastical Academy, which began in the spring of this year, could have a tragic development.
But before telling readers about what has happened (although a detailed and, in my view, extremely emotional description of the latest events has been posted on the Internet magazine Sobornost) I would like to note the following.
The soviet experience has taught us to view with suspicion any kind of stories about "I am being followed," "my telephone is bugged," etc. As a rule, such tales were evoked by the exhaustion of the story teller. But there were absolutely true cases connected with monitoring of mail by agents of KGB, shadowing, and placement of listening devices. So it is impossible completely to deny the possibility of intentional "overhearing" of some conversations by third parties and to ascribe it to a "persecution complex."
This introduction is not made casually.
Students of the second year of the St. Petersburg Ecclesiastical Academy claim that they found a "bug" in their room under a bedside table, a listening device. The discovery of the bug was completely accidental. The guys supposedly heard their own conversation on a short wave receiver. They reported what had happened to the dean of the academy, Archpriest Georgy Telpis. The bug itself was not turned over to the administration, although there is a photograph of it.
According to the students, the listening device was placed on Saturday, 11 December, during all-night vigil. At that time all students were at the service and two assistants to the dean (monastic priests who had been sent from Moscow, Damian Zaletov and Ignaty Tarasov, against whose ordination the students had protested in the spring by pronouncing a canonical "unworthy" ) made a tour of the living quarters and spent a long time in several rooms.
The allegation is so horrible that it cannot but evoke serious investigation on the part of church leadership. If the students have slandered their leadership and under church oath admit it, then they and all those who support them (if, of course, such exist) should be subjected to serious church penalties.
But if the accusation of placing listening devices in living quarters is confirmed, then this would not be a merely "internal church conflict." An act of placing a bug without the approval of the procurator can be considered a criminal act and must not be dismissed with a statement that, after all, "it is sinful to seek judgment from outsiders."
A listening device that operates on short wave and the apparatus connected to it are rather expensive things. They cost at least 400 to 500 US dollars. So a person has to be rich to get them. At present the students are persuaded that a system of shadowing and reporting has been established in the Petersburg ecclesiastical schools, which is inconsistent with the spirit of the church of Christ.
The rector of the academy thinks that there is a broad-based conspiracy directed from Moscow with the goal of removing him from his office.
Both versions have equal right to exist. A special commission, with accountability personally to the patriarch and Holy Synod of RPTs, should decide which of them is true and which is not. (tr. by PDS, posted 2 January 2001)
SUICIDE ATTEMPT IN ST. PETERSBURG ECCLESIASTICAL SCHOOLS
by Boris Polikarpov
Sobornost, 18 December
2000
On the night of 16-17 December in the St. Petersburg ecclesiastical schools there occurred an event which is incompatible with Christian conscience and exceeds human understanding. One of the students, a member of the fourth year of the Choir Directors' Department, S.A. (due to ethical considerations we are not revealing his name), tried to end his life by suicide. Fortunately, the young man lived, although he managed to sever his tendons. The physicians of "First Aid," who came on call, reported loss of blood from a multitude of stab wounds on the arms.
In the unanimous opinion of the students, the issue is not the "psychological instability" of S.A., and a tale about an "unhappy love" doesn't make it here. A good person, calm and quiet, S.A. fell into this fatal depression for reasons having nothing to do with his inner character. The very atmosphere is murderous, which has developed in the ecclesiastical academy as the result of the style of leadership and "training methods" of the rector, Bishop Konstantin Gorianov of Tikhvin, with the support and approval of Metropolitan Vladimir Kotliarov of St. Petersburg.
Literally on the eve of the tragic incident, students of the second year of the academy found in their room under a nightstand a "bug," a listening device. The discovery of the bug was completely accidental. Seminarians in the next room heard on a short wave receiver the conversation of their comrades and then their own speech as well. The dean of the academy, Archpriest Georgy Telpis, was informed about the incident, although it was obvious that the dean had not participated in this vile affair.
Judging by everything, the listening device was placed on Saturday, 11 December, at the time of all-night vigil. At that time all students were at the service, and two assistants of the dean, who had been sent from Moscow, monastic priest Damian Zaletov and the infamous "Father Unworthy," monastic priest Ignaty Tarasov, made a tour of the living quarters and spent a long time in some rooms.
That the placing of a bug should have had the consent of the rector is pretty obvious. It is on these people, Damian and Ignaty, that the rector has placed his bets in the "reforms" that he is conducting in the St. Petersburg ecclesiastical schools. It is they who are the academic workers who are closest to the rector and who coordinate all of their actions directly with him.
The essence of the "reforms" of Bishop Konstantin and his purposes and methods have become quite clear from yet another recent event of academic life.
Students of the first year, who were loaded down with work assignments beyond measure which had negative effects upon their studies, "dared" to report their burdens to the academic administration. Instead of attempting to ease their heavy burden, the aforementioned monastic priest Damian came to the class for a conversation and cynically reminded the students that here they were being fed four times a day and "considerately" put to bed, so that they should receive all the work of any magnitude "with thankfulness."
In general Damian himself stressed that, according to the gospel, he ought not "to cast pearls before swine." Those who were sitting in front of him and who were called swine were offended and made a report to the rector complaining about the words and actions of the monastic priest. The report was signed by 21 men.
Instead of an investigation of the case, the students were placed before the terrible eyes of the "authorized troika." They were summoned to classrooms, where before them stood the rector, their caretaker Arkhimandrite Nikon Lysenko, and Fr Damian. With genuine outrage the rector proclaimed to the students that they did not have any right to complain about the actions and words of the dean's assistant. The students were subjected to unprecedented pressure to force them to renounce the report and to get them to sign explanations condemning their action. The cynicism of the situation was exacerbated by the fact that all this happened at meal time, and any who signed a self-denunciation could go to the dining room.
All the "actions" of the administration of the rector are a consequence of the events of the spring and summer, when the canonical protest of students against the installation of a scoundrel was declared by Bishop Konstantin and Metropolitan Vladimir to be "seminarian hooliganism" and a "planned provocation," aimed at changing the church leadership of St. Petersburg. Without the least hint of an investigation of the incident, ten students were expelled and others were subjected to pressure to get them to slander students and teachers who had not participated in the conflict and to denounce themselves. Teachers who disagreed with the actions and position of the rector were dismissed or had their teaching load cut, punishing them financially. In order to strengthen the training work, the monastic priest Damian was sent from the Moscow academy, who had been completely incompetent as a teacher, and along with this almost immediately he declared that the St. Petersburg academy was an abscess on the body of RPTs and he had been sent to remove it.
Long conversations in condescending tones were used to break the psyche of the student and to make him a compliant toy in the hands of such "pastors" as Konstantin, Damian, and Ignaty. Demeaning human dignity in the guise of Christian words has become recently the basic "training" device in the academy.
Students are "confidentially" recruited, calling them to denounce their comrades and teachers. At the same time the administration is ready to close its eyes to certain "petty sins" of their coworkers. The total control over the conduct, actions, and thoughts of the students and the presence alongside them of "privileged" informers have all created an atmosphere of suspicion and disease in the ecclesiastical schools.
Students are nervous, have been broken personally, and have lost their wills and initiative. The goal of such a system is to make out of them not pastors who are able to care for Christians but obedient slaves who fulfill the will of the hierarchy. The quite extraordinary case of the placing of the "bug" in the dormitory and the immediately following attempt at suicide are clear proofs of the unhealthy atmosphere which is the consequence of the leadership of Bishop Konstantin.
In all likelihood, the same system of total control and shadowing and pressure upon human personalities which already is "successfully" working in the Moscow academy and Tobolsk seminary is being instigated in Petersburg. In Tobolsk there occurred a carefully concealed case of attempted suicide by students when they learned that letters they received were being opened.
All the events of the year 2000 occurring at the St. Petersburg school are links in a single chain which shows the totalitarian methods of Bishop Konstantin and his Napoleonic ambitions. But now, after the student's suicide attempt, it has become obvious that the consequence of the rector's activity have become socially dangerous to the extent that they immediately threaten students' lives. the incident in the academy has not been properly assessed by Metropolitan Vladimir and the Holy Synod. The case has been treated on the principle that "where there's no reaction, there's no problem."
However the issue is not now simply the fate of students but their health and life and, in the final analysis, the life and health of the Russian church so long as such leaders as Bishop Konstantin can mistreat with impunity the oldest theological institution of Russia. The questions raised by the problem of the St. Petersburg academy should go beyond internal church matters and become the problem of all society and they demand a public resolution. (tr. by PDS, posted 2 January 2001)
by Alexander Tiakhta
NG-religii, 27 December 2000
The process of the separation of church from the state in the new decade is beginning over again practically from scratch. The most difficult stage of the dialogue is in progress. In all likelihood, it faces a return to the experience of March 1917, that is, to the time when there began the creation of relations of the "church of the majority" with the secular state. The determination of the political and legal space within which the church interacts with the state requires the efforts of social philosophers and only thereafter those of attorneys and students of religion. The direction of this dialogue on the part of RPTs has been determined: to recognize its components within the parameters of public law. As writers in NG-religii this past year have already stated, this means that there should be a complete inventory of legal norms and the delimitation of the authority of civil and church courts (see article by Sergei Chapnin, NGR #22, 29 November 2000).
Who will provide the intellectual dialogue on the part of RPTs in the coming years? Metropolitan Kirill and his associates, the Church-Academic Center of Sergei Kravts with the immediate support of the patriarch, and the synodal department of Metropolitan Mefody of Voronezh and Lipetsk with the participation of a group of historians from the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences headed by Olga Vasileva. It is possible there also will be participation by a group of clergy from the Belorussian exarchate of Metropolitan Filaret. As far as one can judge, RPTs does not have other resources at its disposal.
Who will do this on the part of the state is still unclear. The so-called "order for preparing a doctrine of state-church relations" given to RAGS of the administration of the president was done prematurely and, apparently, somewhat irrelevantly since the state still had not clarified for itself the framework of such a doctrine.
Today we are working from a clean slate: it is not known whether the Russian state will recognize RPTs as the "church of the majority" and what kind of legal consequences would follow from such a recognition (or nonrecognition). This requires the efforts not of students of religion but of social philosophers who are oriented toward the particular issues, such as Mikhail Ilin, Aleksei Salmin, Oksana Gaman-Golutvina, and Andronik Migranian. It is rather difficult to assemble a group of specialists today who, on one hand, would not be liberal atheists, and on the other would not indulge in extreme piety in the guise of white cowls.
In the new decade will a comprehensive agreement between state and church be signed? The answer is clear: yes, inasmuch as for both state and RPTs this is an important moment in reaching intelligible political and legal subjectivity in their relations with each other.
With regard to the secular state the "church of the majority" has, in essence, no choice inasmuch as it will not manage in the new century to maintain direct paternalistic support on the part of the state. Even under Boris Yeltsin this support was not the state's intention to develop a "symphony of authorities," but a consequence of the temporary feeling of guilt, apart from the law, for bolshevik persecutions. Thus only two paths are possible: either an agreement or "complete separation" in accordance with the constitution. The so-called "new social contract" that ideologues of the Putin administration propose to conclude with each major social group and component should, in the case of the church, take the form of a document.
What are the prospects for the law on freedom of conscience that was adopted after a four-year struggle (1993-1997)? Everybody remembers as well that this law contains a number of thoroughly vulnerable standards which would begin to crumble upon the first review in the Constitutional Court. These standards have survived only because of political expediency which the state imposed. But now the state has different perspectives. Obviously even RPTs, positioning itself as a "corporation of public law," in essence has laid the foundation for a new law. As jurists have properly emphasized, the singling out in the law's preamble of "traditional" religions is a very bad basis, in the legal sense, for any kind of positive prospects. The preamble stands in contradiction to other articles of the very same law. And this means that the law will be reviewed in the new decade.
Will a single state agency for interaction with religious organizations ("Ministry for affairs of religions") be created? The logic of this issue is this: Orthodoxy and Islam in Russia are too substantial as political factors to entrust them, as is done in many countries, with a Ministry of Culture. At the same time, can such a situation be maintained for long where, as in our country, the Ministry of Internal Affairs deals with new religions, the Federal Security Service and Council of Security deal with Islam, and the administration of the president deals with Orthodoxy? This scheme may operate for a long time yet, but it, of course, is temporary. A better resolution was proposed in NG by Alexander Shchipkov: instead of a cumbersome ministry create the office of a plenipotentiary representative of the president for religious affairs with a small, but powerful expert apparatus.
What is the essence of this course? Its main, fundamental direction is to divorce the state from the church. The church must make its own self-identification within the sphere of society and get out of the sphere of power and the state. This is a very complex drift. For the Russian church it is an event of historic order since it touches upon the deep foundations of eastern Christianity and the Byzantine experience. On one hand this is a legal problem and the subject for a rather drawn-out dialogue about how canon law and the standards of the ecumenical councils that are binding for every Christian comport with the standards of civil law. On the other hand, it is a political question inasmuch as there are mutual expectations. The church counts on "cooperative work" with the state on very many points, as was stated in the social doctrine adopted at the bishops' council in 2000. The state, unquestionably, counts on the claims of the church to be an institution that legitimizes moral and social values, which it expresses in concrete policies and social work.
The complexity of the drift is evident in the issue of so-called "social ministry." The authority of the secular state expects that the church will be, in the first place, a partner of the state in social policy, operating in many ways implicitly on western models of the social work of Christian organizations. Meanwhile so-called "social work" is a question of ecclesiology. Diakoniia, that is, social ministry, has a sacramental meaning. It signifies that the social activity of the church cannot achieve a greater reach without a theological foundation. The answer of the church to this and a number of other questions cannot be merely formal and consist only in political declarations by church primates.
The second direction is an economic one. It is very difficult to imagine that the church, as a powerful economic factor in the contemporary state, will be able to defend the idea that all of the means of church budgets are contributions. And as contributions they are in some sphere of a different economy. Generally speaking, this "different economy" can be legitimate only if there is a legal establishment of the boundaries of the church as a corporation of public law. It is clear that within certain limits the specification of the use of money within the church will be recognized by the state. The issue is not the donation boxes in the church but, for example, the coordination of the sphere of business in which the church participates or the share of the state in financing the reconstruction of churches and monasteries, etc.
Book publishing, tourism (pilgrimages), film production, and, it seems, the manufacture of specifically liturgical items do not raise questions. But what about processing of diamonds? Or production of jewelry? Or, for example, construction of modern hotel complexes and office centers? We note that the bottling of water from springs that is done in several dioceses (the most famous is "Sacred Spring") has not evoked in society any disturbances while the manufacture of gold jewelry is firmly associated with criminal activity. In any case an important part of state-church relations is the new mechanism of investment in grand projects.
This raises the so-called "property problem." The president authorized the conducting of an inventory of this sphere by a governmental commission headed by Andrei Sebentsov. Its results are very important, but they did not eliminate the main problem, the problem of ownership. The church would like to get ownership of land and buildings. Would this be possible without the church providing political support for the introduction of private ownership of land in general? That's a rather tricky issue.
The church is a part of the space of Russian civil society and this is the main problem of the new decade from the point of view of state-church relations.
Now let's try to imagine which will happen in the church itself in response to the challenges of the second postsoviet decade. First, substantial changes in the higher church administration. The issue is not the canonical bases of authority in the church but about the system of church administration. The present system of synodal departments should be completely reviewed. The Department on Social Ministry, created at the time for distribution of humanitarian aid from western Christians, is practically nonexistent and cannot deal with the development of social work and diakoniia at the new stage.
Without its own political and legal center the patriarchate cannot conduct dialogue with the state on matters of principle. It is difficult to predict what forms the reform of synodal structures will take, inasmuch as this depends on just who will conduct it. One thing is certain; the present system of church administration is a vestige of the soviet period when the patriarchate minimized its functions in the conditions of the "epoch of survival." A most typical example of "sovietism" is the Department of External Church Relations. Today the combination of the functions of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the political and legal administration in a single department is completely anachronistic. The patriarchate must do away with the old foundations of support and create new ones.
Second, in the new decade, without doubt, the question of creating a nationwide lay movement will again arise. In the first half of the 90s this attempt ended in failure because it united only extreme rightist circles on the basis of an ideology of antimodernism. Now different times have arrived and the issue should not be about a political movement but a social one and perhaps even a "voluntaristic" one.
Third, it should be understood that these and other necessary changes will be delayed, of course, not merely because of the inertia of the clergy. Practically all the possible forms of social existence for the church in conditions of the contemporary secular state conflict with the sacral understanding of society that is deeply rooted in Orthodoxy. This conflict could have been overcome by the Russian church at the beginning of the century soon after the local council of 1917-1918. But historic circumstances interrupted this process. Thus in the coming decade there must be enormous intellectual efforts to establish the existence of the church within the contemporary state. (tr. by PDS, posted 2 January 2001)
SCORES of religious groups in Russia face being outlawed after the expiration of a deadline that critics say is an excuse to crack down on dissent.
Certain Protestant, Catholic and Muslim congregations, as well as Scientologists and Salvation Army volunteers, may be barred from preaching under a 1997 law that requires them to "re-register" with the authorities, which came into force yesterday. The law gives the security forces wide powers to act against groups that have failed to navigate the red tape.
Backed by the Kremlin, it is widely seen as tailor-made for the Russian Orthodox Church, which has made no secret of its wish to stamp out recruitment by rival faiths.
It comes as a blow to American missionaries, whom officials have accused of plotting to take over vast tracts of the country. A recent survey by the Oxford-based Keston Institute, which monitors religious freedom in the former Soviet bloc, found that in parts of Siberia barely half the religious organisations required to re-register have done so.
In Khabarovsk, in the far east, up to 20 Protestant groups had failed to produce the right paperwork, and in Kursk, south of Moscow, several Baptist churches had renounced legal status rather than conform to the new law.
Five regions reported higher rates of re-registration and it remains to be seen how zealously officials will use the law to hound non-Orthodox believers. Moscow's courts have denied the Salvation Army permits to work in the city, claiming the word "army" indicates it is a military operation.
"They said we are a militarised organisation bent on the violent overthrow of the Government," Colonel Kenneth Baillie, head of the Salvation Army's Russian branch, said.
Another Salvation Army volunteer said: "We have the impression that there is not simply a lack of understanding but that they want to throw us out."
President Putin and the Orthodox Patriarch, Aleksei II, pay lip-service to the freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution and are more interested in strengthening the institutions they inherited.
A practising Orthodox Christian, Mr Putin has cultivated the Patriarch's support and encouraged the secret service to regard foreign missionaries with suspicion.
Since his rise to power, 11 American missionaries have been expelled from the autonomous republic of Bashkortostan, another has been thrown out of Volgograd and presidential representatives claim that "American Protestant preachers" want to take control of the far east. (Copyright 2000 Times Newspapers Ltd., posted 2 January 2001)
NO SALVATION FOR NEEDY IN MOSCOW
by Alice Lagnado
Scotland on Sunday, 31 December 2000
MARIA Troitsky peered closely at me, a red, wizened face, ancient crumbs sticking out of layers of woolly scarves. Homeless and freezing in a battered old coat and cotton skirt, she had come to the Salvation Army for soup and bread outside a Moscow railway station.
But these mobile soup kitchens, which give hundreds of homeless their only meal of the day in temperatures of up to minus 30 degrees Celsius, are under threat by a Moscow court which wants to close them down by the end of the month.
The court has refused to give the Salvation Army, one of the few organisations which runs soup kitchens, a permit to work in Moscow because it believes the charity is plotting to overthrow the government.
"Since we have the word army in our name, they said we are a militarised organisation bent on the violent overthrow of the government," Colonel Kenneth Baillie, head of the Salvation Army in Russia and the former Soviet Union, said.
Baillie is originally a Scot. His father, also active in the Salvation Army, was born in Paisley but moved to America as a child.
Now he runs the Army's operations in Russia and the former Soviet Union, directing 458 staff, mostly local. In the Moscow offices, 12 foreign staff work alongside over 100 Russians.
Yuri Makarov, head of the Salvation Army's social programs in Moscow, said: "There are some categories of people in Moscow, like the war veterans and the sick, who are quite well looked after by the government.
"The kind of people we work with, mainly homeless and refugees, don't have any social services and they will suffer most if the Army is closed. We look after those at the bottom of the scrap-heap - we are not criminals."
Makarov's programs include feeding hot soup to 200 homeless people each weekday, visiting prisons and helping the elderly.
"We had hoped for some understanding of our work," he said. "But we have the impression that there is not simply a lack of understanding, but that they want to throw us out."
The Army will appeal to the supreme court but red tape has prevented a hearing before today, the deadline for re-registering.
Working without a permit will leave officers open to harassment from unsympathetic city authorities, who will be empowered for example to prevent soup kitchens from working outside Moscow's railway stations.
For the thousands who ferret out rotting food from rubbish bins and suffer beatings by Moscow police, the Salvation Army is a rare beacon of hope. Maria Troitsky, who is 59 but looks 80, used to work as an accountant in a small town in Moscow's outskirts.
In 1965 her husband Anatoli, an engineer, drowned in a boating accident. A few years ago she lost her job as an accountant and was thrown out of the one room she rented.
Last July she had her passport, essential to receive benefits, stolen and a month later was run over, leaving her deaf in one ear. She has no relatives who could take her in and sleeps in the railway stations, hiding from police who try to evict homeless people. "They tell us we should be killed or set on fire," she said.
Oksana Ogultsova, 23, is a product of the Internaty, Russia's notorious children's homes. An orphan abandoned by her parents, she was evicted from the room she rented four years ago. She lives on the streets and begs in the metro. "The cops beat us up about twice a day," she said, displaying red scratches on her back.
The Salvation Army first set up operations in Russia in 1913 but was forced to leave when the NKVD, the Russian secret police, officially liquidated it together with most foreign missionaries in 1923. It returned in 1992. But due to the introduction of a new law on religion in 1997, which stipulated that all but four mainstream religions must re-register with the authorities, the Army once again faces expulsion.
In practice the law is wide open to misinterpretation and local bureaucrats, sometimes in league with the Russian Orthodox Church, regularly exploit that to harass or close down small religious groups. City councils who make the decisions are not accountable to anyone.
While the Salvation Army operates in 14 cities in European Russia, it is only in Moscow that it has experienced opposition from the authorities. The Army has spent GBP 10,000 over the last two years in legal bills to contest the city's case against it.
When the Keston Institute, which monitors religious freedoms in Eastern Europe, asked Moscow's municipal justice department why some organisations had been refused permits Vladimir Zhbankov, the assistant head of Moscow's justice department, wrote back that the law on religion "does not require the registering organ to divulge information concerning religious organisations which have and have not been re-registered."
In Russia, closed operations usually spell corruption.
The law on religion is strongly backed by the Orthodox Church, which is fighting a losing battle to keep its congregations as smaller religious groups lure away hundreds of Russians who find them more accessible. "There is strong opposition to our activities from the official Church," said Makarov, in reference to the Orthodox Church.
But despite comprehensive evidence to the contrary, church officials insist Russians enjoy full religious freedom. "All religious associations in our country enjoy the same rights; on the condition that they are not antisocial or destructive and do not destroy public morality or the physical or moral health of Russians," Viktor Malukhin, a church spokesman, said recently.
He spoke after Richard Lugar, a Republican senator, said the administration of President George W Bush will take a hard line over restrictions on religious freedom in Russia. (Copyright 2000 The Scotsman Publications Ltd. , posted 4 January 2001)
GOD completed a remarkable victory over the dinosaurs of communism last night when a new Russian national anthem, complete with words, was performed on national television for the first time since the fall of the Soviet Union.
The long-awaited lyrics, a paean to "Russia, our holy country ... protected by God", rang out across 11 time zones after the President's traditional midnight broadcast to the nation. References to Lenin and Stalin in previous versions were dropped, but, in a strategic compromise that already deserves to be called vintage Putin, the tune was that of the old Soviet anthem, unchanged since 1944.
Democratic Russia has failed to agree on an anthem since its chaotic birth nine years ago, leaving its athletes mute at medal ceremonies and its pundits bewailing the lack of a unifying national theme.
President Putin is understood to have made finalising the new anthem by New Year's Eve a priority. Last month he also pushed through the Duma's official acceptance of Russia's civilian and military flags. His reward is the appearance, at least, of finding consensus on a contentious set of issues where his predecessor had found none.
The new anthem's chorus reinstates religion at the centre of the Russian identity, but is also a stirring exhortation to national pride: "Be glorious, our free Fatherland! / Eternal union of fraternal peoples ... / Be glorious, our country! We are proud of you! / Our forests and fields spread / From the southern seas to the Polar North. / You are unique in the world, inimitable ..." The Soviet Union anthem hailed an "Unbreakable union of freeborn republics ... / Created in struggle by will of the people."
If there is an echo of the old in the new, this is hardly surprising. Both versions were written by the same man. Sergei Mikhalkov, 87, the father of two of Russia's best-known film directors, ranks as one of the world's most enduring but also biddable propagandists. This is his third set of words to Aleksandr Aleksandrov's haunting 1944 melody. His first, a hymn of praise to Joseph Stalin, was scrapped after the dictator's death. The Aleksandrov tune remains a favourite of Russians across the political spectrum because of its close association with victory in the Second World War and because it is easy to sing.
The same could not be said of Mikhail Glinka's Patriotic Song, composed in 1833 as part of his opera entitled A Life For The Tsar. This was President Yeltsin's choice for a post-Soviet anthem, but the Communist-dominated Duma failed to agree on lyrics for it, despite more than 500 offerings, including one from the coach of Spartak Moscow Football Club. The original words included a politically incorrect battle cry, and musical specialists said that the melody was impossible to remember.
Mr Yeltsin was adamant about abolishing Soviet symbols, making his clash with the Duma all but inevitable. Mr Putin, born since the Terror and committed to rebuilding a strong state, has proved to be more pliant. He has approved Russia's new civilian tricolour, but has enraged liberals with the Aleksandrov tune and by reinstating the Soviet red banner as the military standard. In a nod to monarchists, he has confirmed the Tsarist double-headed eagle as Russia's coat of arms.
The Communists remain the biggest single faction in the Duma. Now that they have their tune back, many of them are sure to stick to the old words. "Sing to the Motherland, home of free," Mr Mikhalkov's post-Stalin version goes. "Bulwark of peoples in brotherhood strong. / O Party of Lenin, the strength of the people, / To Communism's triumph lead us on!"
Lenin's spiritual heirs have also made their voices heard in a recent poll in which Russians named him their Man of the 20th Century. The poll, conducted this year because many Russian believe the new millennium starts today, named Stalin as runner-up. In third place was Andrei Sakharov, the nuclear physicist who became Russia's leading human rights advocate in the era of glasnost.
Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin were also-rans, despite their status in the West as brave dismantlers of Communism. Mr Putin has commanded the Russian stage for barely a year, but was voted Man of the Year for 2000 and 1999 - a clear illustration of the central paradox of Russian democracy - that to prevail, you must win over an ageing but still powerful group of voters who believe that democracy is the worst thing to have happened to their country since Operation Barbarossa.
In stark contrast to Mr Yeltsin, Mr Putin has unveiled a monument to Stalin in the Kremlin and has explicitly endorsed many of his achievements, glossing over the loss of perhaps 40million lives in his labour camps.
HOW PATRIOTISM OUTLASTS CREEDS
New Russian anthem:
words by Sergei Mikhalkov, music by Aleksandr Aleksandrov
Russia, our beloved country!
A mighty will, a great glory
Are your inheritance for all time!
Be glorious, our free Fatherland!
Eternal union of fraternal peoples,
Common wisdom given by our forebears,
Be glorious, our country! We are proud of you!
Our forests and fields spread
From the southern seas to the Polar North.
You are unique in the world, inimitable,
Native land protected by God!
Soviet anthem:
words by Sergei Mikhalkov and G.A. Registan, music by Aleksandr Aleksandrov
Sing to the Motherland, home of the free,
Bulwark of peoples in brotherhood strong.
O Party of Lenin, the strength of the people,
To Communism's triumph lead us on!
Imperial Russian anthem:
by General Alexis Lvov
Powerful and sovereign,
Reign for glory,
reign for terror to enemies,
Orthodox Tsar, God save the Tsar!
(Copyright 2001 Times Newspapers Limited, posted 12 January 2001)
If material is quoted, please give credit to the publication
from which it came.
It is not necessary to credit this Web page. If material
is transmitted electronically, please include reference to the URL, http://www.stetson.edu/~psteeves/relnews/.