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The latest opus of the chief persecutor of Orthodox culture, obviously fulfilling a political order and readily printed by Nezavisimaia gazeta (22 July 2003) [also on Portal-credo.ru, 3 July 2003], is so remarkable that, truth to tell, you do not know what it has more of, conscious ideological and political card sharping or the poverty of liberal thought that already has been made too clear. The fancier of litigation and leader of one of the marginal "leftist defense" groupings constructs his entire maximally shaky system of arguments on forgeries--whether consciously or unconsciously is another question.
Let's begin with the fact that the "high degree of frenzy" in public consciousness in connection with the advisory letter of the Ministry of Education is a most genuine fantasy, since the real frenzy of consciousness pertains mainly to the basement that is widely known in closed circles in which the tiny Ponomarev party is located and some other heavily moss covered dissident intrigues. All the other "waves" are the fruit of a well organized PR campaign and the product of notorious information technology.
The overwhelming majority of simple people, regardless of their confessional and national affiliation, who are directly affected by this accept with complete sympathy the idea of the Ministry of Education for the voluntary introduction of the "Fundamentals of Orthodox Culture" culturological class in regional and school curricula. We know of the numerous advertised protests of marginal politicians of the pseudo-right wing and bureaucrats who were previously unknown and have now been dismissed from the governmental apparat and are living in the world of the personal fantasies of intriguing dissidents, but we know nothing, say, of protests from parents of those children for whom it is proposed to teach this course. A quite positive portrayal of the situation in a provincial city where, on an experimental basis, this course has been taught was provided, for example, on the sensational program "Freedom of speech with Savik Shuster," devoted to this problem and broadcast on NTV in November of last year. (One cannot suspect Shuster and others working at NTV of sympathy for Orthodoxy! Incidentally, the former director of NTV, B. Jordan, was removed from his position soon after this program was broadcast. It would be interesting to know why.)
Ikhlov has committed a clear forgery by frightening the reader with a "totalitarian restoration" in connection with the "clericalization of the schools and gradual transformation of Orthodoxy with a national accent into some kind of state ideology" (which incidentally is not close; one needs only to read the annual message of the president to the Federal Assembly). During the era of soviet totalitarianism the Orthodox church was really the most persecuted, giving to the world thousands and thousands of martyrs and the state ideology of militant atheism was directly and fully opposed to Orthodoxy. To accuse Orthodox Russia as if it naturally engenders soviet communist totalitarianism out of itself and even produced the sins of theomachistic bolshevism, equating them at the highest level, is the favorite approach of liberal demagogues from Yanov, Paramonov, and Lezov to Ikhlov, Ponomarev, and Yakunin.
But this is not by any means the main thing. Ikhlov constructs an "iron" scheme which on close examination turns out to be filled with the same liberal tripe. He says that the formation of a Russian national state identity is now going on. There are two main models on the basis of which such an identity could be formed, the so-called "I-model," that is, a monoethnic and monoconfessional state, consolidated on a confessional and ethnic basis (the model is Israel) and the so-called "A-model," that is, a state consolidated on a secular, civilized, "civil cosmpolitan" basis (the model is USA). Here one can only throw up one's hands. Our liberal fantasizer, who has undertaken in the usual way to instruct the Russian people, has seemingly not noticed and does not wish to know either real history or contemporary reality. First, what will we do, for example, with Byzantium, whose model was borrowed by Russia, with its imperial variegation of diverse peoples and nationalities, having developed harmoniously under the leadership of the hellenic imperial ethnos and the dominance of the Orthodox faith? To which of the two types artificially distinguished by Ikhlov does this phenomenon pertain? Second, what does one do, for example, with the whole of the new Europe that has emerged as a group of national states united by a common western Christian cultural civilization type? What is this Europe: a mononational and monoconfessional Israel (although even Israel is not exactly so; Ikhlov is disingenuous in not noting the current acute Arab Muslim problem) or a secular, cosmopolitan America (in which, incidentally, an extremely specific puritan messianism was created that was by no means "secular" in the modern sense)? What does Ikhlov intend to do with, and how does he not notice, the constitutions of modern Greece and Norway, where in black and white there stands the point about a state religion (Orthodoxy and Lutheranism, respectively) or the civil, legal practice of Germany, where two state confessions (Catholicism and Lutheranism) are distinguished from a number of other religions as "corporations of public law"? What does our liberal intend to do with the experience of Great Britain, where the queen is formally, according to the constitution, the head of the Anglican church (although Great Britain is by no means an intolerant country)? How can all of this diversity be made to fit the procrustean bed of monoconfessional "ethnocracy" or secular, cosmopolitan American democracy (where, incidentally, in contrast to modern Russia, there are chaplains, that is military priests, in the army)? At the same time it is necessary to remember that in the draft of the constitution of united Europe the state confessional policy is left to the purview of the national governments. With the least confrontation with reality the artificial scheme engendered in the kitchen gatherings of the liberally educated spiritual underground crashes like a house of cards.
But Ikhlov's main forgery pertains, it seems, to Russia. "Russia is a substantially more complex and qualitatively different system from Israel," he proclaims, "and the secular, civilized approach of the North American type is more fitting for it. This is why the liberal founders of contemporary Russian statehood tried to import the civil cosmopolitan schema of USA." Here one can only admire the impudence with which Ikhlov in the usual style of his type tries to present the matter as if Russia is only "new," and liberal, and as if the thousand-year tradition of Russian Orthodox imperial statehood does not exist at all, and the only dilemma for us, without an alternative, is the harsh choice between a future monoethnic national state (which for postimperial Russia means a sea of blood) and a "secular cosmopolitan" North American model. At the same time, on one hand he affirms, it would seem, quite accurate things. Thus, it is quite accurate that the "civilized" approach was always historically the basis of the Russian national identity. (The cat knows whose meat it ate.) At the same time the very weak attempts of the Ministry of Education to form this identity again, after decades of liberal, bolshevik chaos and failure, by turning to the Russian historical tradition suddenly is represented as a turn to the "tribal" principle ("blood and soil plus the faith of the fathers"). At times it seems to me that the liberal fog that fills the heads of these pitiable people is like a drug intoxication that makes them think it is logical that they can, with confidence, drive a car in this condition. And they are fighting to have an influence on state policy.
The time has finally come to state a few words aloud, which the Ikhlovs have tried fiercely to drive from popular memory. What was the foundation of the above mentioned civilized approach to state construction and of what it is now fashionable to call the "framework" of identity in the Russian historical tradition? What united all of these numerous subjects who were so diverse in their ethnic and religious confessional affiliation? What did the great empire stand on (and by no means not just from the time of Alexander III)? What kept this growing organism from falling apart like a constant nightmare hanging over European and Asiatic disputes, revolutions and struggle of small political ambitions? At the base of this unique phenomenon that went by the name "Russia," as should be well known to any normal school child who has studied history not from the Soros textbooks, lay two simple things: loyalty of all subjects of the empire to the Orthodox tsar (acknowledgement of his authority over them) and the state-forming role of the Russian ethnos that made the greatest sacrifices for the sake of imperial construction. (Take the human losses in all of the numerous defensive wars that Russia waged or the burdens of serfdom that did not extend at all to, for example, the Jewish population of the empire.) While the Russians themselves (both the leading strata of society and the simple people) understood their own ethnos not in a narrowly "tribal" sense at all. In principle a Russian was anyone who accepted Russian values, based obviously on Orthodoxy. The statement of one Tatar from a tribune of the monarchist congress some time in the middle 90s of our twentieth century was very typical: "I am a Tatar, my wife is Ukrainian, our children are Russian." (I imagine the venemous laugh of the habitues of the dissident kitchen.) Yes sir, there it is, the genuinely imperial consciousness in the traditional sense, which for centuries was well known and understood by great Russia, a consciousness, alas, that is inaccessible to the liberal brains of the Ikhlovs!
Let Ikhlov read the brilliant works on this topic of the great Russian thinkers I. Ilin, L. Tikhomirov, I. Solonevich, K. Leontiev, and finally the holy prelate Filaret Drozdov. But evidently he has not read anything besides the worn out, carefully preserved files of perestroika's "Ogonek" and "Novoe vremia" (the current one, not to be confused with the Suvorov one). A subject could be whatever he wished but the tsar, according to the laws of the Russian empire, could not be other than Orthodox. Is this really a "tribal" or more a secular cosmopolitan principle? After all Ikhlov knows all this, he cannot not know it, when he talks about a "civilized" approach, but with the stubbornness of a maniac hiding from the light of historical truth, and he throws several centuries of Russian history into the trash.
But the most interesting thing begins next. Here the political card sharping and the strong outstanding poverty of liberal thought achieves its maximum. Thus the spiritual, ideological, and political bases of Russian civilization, for understandable reasons, are taken from the brackets. We begin talking immediately about the causes of the revolution of 1917-1918 that destroyed this civilization. It turns out that these causes were not in the activity of terrorists and revolutionary conspirators, with the connivance and the direct approval and support of the so-called liberal society that undermined the state and the whole Russian civilization, but in the policy of the state itself in which approximately from the end of the 1880s the "tribal" principle began dominating over the "civilized" (the burden of the great Russian sovereign Alexander III) and also (listen carefully!) in the "separatism of south Russian cossackdom." It is not clear what the issue is here. A guess occurs to me that Ikhlov knows what was before the 1880s so badly, because he mainly studied Ogonek and learned at night from "Radio Liberty," that he prefers not to have anything to do with it. Of all Russian history he has mastered well only "Black Hundreds," and that, if one speaks the truth, on the basis of a standard liberal falsehood, that does not bother to become acquainted, if not with historical sources, then at least with "The Red Wheel" and "Two Hundred Years Together" by A.I. Solzhenitsyn, where he gives in detail, using these very sources, a more or less adequate account of the causes of the revolution.
Having so casually cast away a thousand years of Russian history, Ikhlov pulls out of his head and his hatred for historic Russia a virtual apology for bolshevism. "It managed to revive the imperial civilization only by advancing a militantly cosmopolitan ideological project," he writes, although he recognizes the fact of the genocide of the Russian nation (it is not clear what he has in mind under "south Russian subethnicity") on the part of the bolsheviks and "suppression of the national and religious autonomy of the Russian empire-forming ethnos." Then it is unclear, if bolsheviks suppressed that which constituted the basis of imperial unity (we will not speak about the monarchy; everyone knows the tragic fate of the royal family) then what did they build? Did they revive the empire or create something completely different and directly contradictory? The answers are obvious, and generally known.
The white threads that hold together Ikhlov's corrupt proofs are too visible. The example of this article shows clearly what "understanding people" saw clearly long ago: our liberals have never been interested in the truth. The main thing that Ikhlov strives for is to prove a clear lie, namely that the letter from the Ministry of Education and Borodina's textbook supposedly "actualize medieval myths" which in Ikhlov's opinion signify first of all the "tribal principle" and hatred for aliens. This is why he and his fellow thinkers try so much at any cost to silence and distort the imperial contents of "Russianness" which was mentioned above and which for the course of centuries was the basis of the national state ideology of Russia.
The unbalanced offspring of postmodernism wish to the death to forget about great Russia and replace historical reality with virtual fantasies of ideologized consciousness and to pass over from the liberal bolshevik revolution and communist totalitarianism directly to a "politically correct" rewriting of history and a total denial of any higher values. At the same time the proviso of the pitiful victim of "political correctness" is typical: he speaks about the "infernal horror" into which he and his fellow thinkers were plunged by the very timid attempt of Minister Filippov to restore historical continuity in Russian education.
Commenting on the activity of the "leftist defenders," one of the writers for the internet resource "Credo.ru" (which is by no means distinguished by a special love for RPTsMP) could not restrain himself from calling the demand of Ikhlov, Ponomarev, and company to verify with the help of judicial expertise the reliability of the gospel story about the commitment by Jews of the Lord Jesus Christ for execution a farce. It is most interesting that the "leftist defenders" hardly understand how comical they are in their self-exposing demand!
And so, we draw conclusions. Ikhlov is engaged in an clear forgery (or using the favorite expression of the father of church democracy Innokenty Pavlov, "pulling the wool over their eyes"), accusing the Ministry of Education of attempts "to squeeze Russian civilization into the narrow bounds of ethnonational statehood," thereby undermining the universalist bases of the Russian state. In reality we are talking directly about an attempt to return to the historical and spiritual bases of the universal imperial statehood of Russia, that is, to our sacred Orthodox faith as a universal religion of salvation and to the key state-forming role of the Russian ethnos. Historically this never had anything in common with tribal limitation and narrowly understood nationalism. As regards the religious and universal fate of Jewry (the question that understandably most of all bothers Ikhlov and company), it is on this question that he directly reveals himself as a most radical and restricted nationalist, being unable to rise to a consciousness of the universal and worldwide historical role of Jewry as the people of God, the people of the covenant, into which the great prophets, the Mother of God, and apostles were born, and in which the Lord was incarnated, and, as a true Jew, a Jew in the highest sense of the word, to come to an recognition of Jesus Christ as the only and genuine Messiah.
Vladimir Petrovich Semenko is a senior scientific associate of the Institute of Religious and Social Research and a member of the policy council fo the Union of Orthodox Citizens. (tr. by PDS, posted 17 August 2003)
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The "Jewish World" public organization filed suit in the Moscow Arbitration Court against directors of the "Moskva" trade complex, the "Ognivo" advertising agency, and the "Ekstra M" newspaper. The issue is an advertisement in which a religious Jew is depicted and the inscription says "The 'Moskva' Center works on Saturdays." A regular session of the court was held at which representatives of the defendants did not appear. Despite this, the judge declared that "the substance of the case will be reviewed in the absence of the defendants" and the next session was scheduled for 4 September.
The story began back at the end of April when the Moscow bureau for human rights and the "Jewish World" organization filed a law suit against the leadership of the "Moskva" trade market complex, the "Ekstra M" newspaper, and the "Ognivo" advertising agency in connection with "distribution of an advertisement disparaging the business reputation of Jewish organizations and the honor and dignity of all Jews who observe the traditions." The suit was filed almost immediately after there appeared on the streets of the capital and in the metro advertisements of "Moskva" in which a believing Jew in a traditional head covering with a computer in his hands was depicted. The text on the posters reads "The 'Moskva' Center works on Saturdays." "This advertisement quite obviously and explicitly calls buyers, and Jews in the first place, to make their purchases specifically on Saturday," the head of the "Jewish World" association, Semen Avgustovich, thinks. "Whereas in Jewish culture Saturday is not simply a day of rest but a special day having sacred meaning. On this day all forms of work, making purchases, and carrying money on one's self are prohibited. In a word, the 'Moskva' ad is unethical and offends the religious feelings of Jews."
"You understand that in our country for a long time and persistently Jews were taught not to observe their traditions and schools and synagogues were closed. And just as soon as things are a bit better we again get slapped down," says Alexander Brod, the director of the Moscow bureau on human rights.
The plaintiffs appeal to article 8 ("Unethical advertising") of the law "On advertising." An advertisement is recognized as unethical if "it contains visual information that violates generally accepted standards of humaneness and morality by means of the use of offensive words, comparisons, images pertaining to nationality or religious or other convictions of physical persons or it defames religious symbols."
"If they would call us up and say that they will not renew this advertisement, and that they apologize, then we would not begin going to court," Semen Avgustovich said. "We do not demand that they immediately take down the billboards; we understand quite well that they cost more than a kopeck."
The plaintiffs know clearly what they are trying to do. "We are creating an important precedent," Avgustovich thinks. "The national sphere is very intimate. One should not touch it. There is mass of other areas where one can be witty, but not in this one."
However the defendants are in a complete muddle. We called the "Moskva" trade market complex at noon. Sweet girls, pleasant music. "Excuse me, nobody can answer your questions." Finally the attorney Rufat Gurshumov came to the telephone.
"Why did the defendants not appear in court?"
"The plaintiffs did not take the time to learn either the exact name or the exact addresses of the trade center," Rufat Gurshumov told Izvestiia. "It is necessary to show in the suit against whom it is being made. Nothing has been filed against us. Perhaps it was not us they had in mind."
But with the advertising agency it is quite a detective story. At the "Jewish World" organization they said that the "Ognivo" agency was involved in creating this advertisement. But there is no information about it in any telephone directory. In addition, when the court sent a schedule to "Ognivo" the letter was returned with a note "address incorrectly indicated." We found the agency that deals with the "Moskva" advertising campaign on the Internet. "One of our recent jobs was the advertisement for the 'Moskva' trade market complex in the metro and on the Third Ring," the creative director of the "SOREC-media" advertising agency, Grigory Fedorov, said in one interview in December of last year. However at "SOREC-media" they say that they do not have anything to do with "Moskva."
"I do not know much about this; I have not seen any documents. The 'Moskva' leadership is not connected with us in this matter," said Denis Zotov, an employee of the department for work with clients of the "SOREC-media" agency. "We do not have anything to do with what is represented there since we dealt only with the placement."
The plaintiffs now are ready to reach a peaceful settlement. "It would be possible to completely remove the Jew from the poster and simply write "'Moskva' works on Saturdays and Sundays." Then the emphasis would be changed and Jews would not be so offended," Avgustovich says.
* * * * *
What do you do on Saturday?
Viktor Shenderovich, writer: "I am a bad Jew. I do not observe Sabbath. But if I did observe it, then my broadcasts would not go on air; I would use tapes on Saturdays. But the poster they are talking about is unquestionably offensive to believers' feelings. The Orthodox Jew depicted in the ad is happy to be able to violate God's commandments. This is a direct insult.
Berl Lazar, chief rabbi of Russia: "I spend a part of the Sabbath in the synagogue. And a part with family and guests. But as regards the poster, it undoubtedly offends the feelings of believing people and is incorrect. Those who make advertisements should take the religious feelings of citizens into account."
Igor Irteniev, poet: "I am not a believing Jew and thus I do not have any special activities on Saturday. But one should not go to court over a poster. There is nothing offensive for a normal person in it. We are still a secular state. I do not see anything offensive in these posters. (tr. by PDS, posted 16 August 2003)
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Minister of Education Vladimir Filippov signed a special order.
At the end of last year a letter was sent by the Ministry of Education to the regions laying out the method for teaching the "Fundamentals of Orthodox Culture" courses in schools. This evoked a stormy discussion in the country. Many wrote about this to "Komsomolka" [Komsomolskaia pravda]. We received hundreds of letters from readers, and priests, teachers, and workers of the ministry participated in the editorial round table. The conclusion from the discussion: such a course is needed. But of a voluntary nature so that children will attend it on the basis of desire, their own and their parents.
Recently this provision was confirmed by the order of Minister of Education Vladimir Filippov. From the beginning of the new school year religious organizations may teach children the fundamentals of religion in schools. But after classes. Children will be able to attend such supplementary classes if their parents or legal guardians write a corresponding statement to the administration of the educational institution. Religious organizations themselves must coordinate their course with the offices of local administration from the start.
All resources--texts, audio and video products--used in the class must have identification with a full official name of the religious organization.
What's more, religious organizations that have "the right of legal entity on the condition of their annual reregistration accompanied by the issuance of a temporary certificate of state registration: (this is primarily various new religious movements and varieties of sects) will not be able to teach their class. (tr. by PDS, posted 16 August 2003)
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On 7 August 1999 the Minister of Public and Professional Education Vladimir Filippov signed an order creating a coordinating council for cooperation of his department with the Moscow patriarchate of RPTs.
On 22 October 2002 the minister of education signed an order providing for introducing a class of "Orthodox Culture" into the school curriculum. In the opinion of experts the contents of the course described in the order duplicated the curricula of ecclesiastical schools. The public spoke out sharply against its inclusion in the required curriculum of secular schools.
On 13 February 2003 the minister signed a new order defining the status of the subject; it could be taught in a voluntary group or as an elective subject.
On 9 June 2003 two more orders came out, one concerning the formation under the ministry of a working group for developing a curriculum for an "Orthodox Culture" course and the other on holding a competition for creating a "Religions of Russia" textbook (the ministry also plans to introduce this subject into school curricula on a voluntary basis). The documents permitting the teaching of the fundamentals of religion, as distinct from Orthodoxy, within the framework of the school curriculum have still not been published by the ministry. (tr. by PDS, posted 16 August 2003)
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From the beginning of the new academic year teaching of religion will begin in the schools. Although the corresponding order of Minister of Education Vladimir Filippov permits teaching religion only outside of the school schedule, representatives of confessional associations are concerned that the initiative of the ministry will evoke a surge of inter-ethnic conflicts.
"In the order we are talking only about how religious organizations will be able to use school premises for their classes," explains the chief specialist of the Department of Humanities Education of the ministry, Liubov Garmash. "Such classes have to be conducted outside the class day, in the second half of the afternoon or on weekends, and they may not in any way conflict with the school schedule."
To study religion children will have to have permission from parents and representatives of confessions will be able to set up classes in religion on school grounds only after receiving permission from the director of the school. Organizers of "Sunday classes" will be required to present academic literature with the official name of a religious organization (for example, the Moscow patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox church) and a certificate of annual registration of the organization with the Ministry of Justice. "If a satanist, for example, comes to a school and wants to teach children," Mrs. Garmash says, "then we will be able to cut off the sectarians with the requirement of registration documents."
The document evoked conflicting reactions among representatives of various religious confessions. In the opinion of the vice chairman of the Department of External Church Relations of the Moscow patriarchate, Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, "it is remarkable that Orthodox organizations will have the right to conduct classes in the 'Law of God' in ordinary schools and not only in ethnic and religious ones."
However this admission of Orthodox organizations into the schools frightens representatives of other confessions. According to the chairman of the Council of Muftis of Russia, Ravil Gainutdin, practice has shown that the right of teaching religious subjects is given primarily to Orthodox priests. "If the decision about which subject will be taught is put under the control of the director of the school, he will be able to admit the priest to the school and refuse the mufti, claiming that there are few Muslims in his school. It is necessary to take into account that the director of the school can turn out to be a chauvinist." Representatives of Jewish organizations also fear nationalism in the schools. The director of the Department of Public Relations of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia, Borukh Gorin, thinks that the initiative of the Ministry of Education is premature: "Religious ignorance predominates in the majority of regions of Russia. In such a situation it is easy to 'dish out' to children tendentious doctrine. And then, by permitting the teaching of religious subjects in the schools, even if in the form of circles or voluntary groups, we divide up the children according to confessional affiliation. Jews will go to the rabbi, Muslims to the mufti, and Russians to the father. Such 'inequality' will again lead to conflicts. Children really have the right to receive religious teaching, but the school grounds are not the best place for this. Classes in religion are more logically conducted in special schools or summer camps." (tr. by PDS, posted 16 August 2003)
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