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In his autobiography First Person, Vladimir Putinıs wife Lyudmila was asked to respond to the following statement: "Youıve lived with your husband for 20 years. You must know everything about him." She replied, "No, you can never know everything about a person .
Something remains secret in every person." Who is Vladimir Putin? That the question is still posed in different forms on the eve of the Russian Federation Presidentıs likely re-election is striking. After the tumultuous eight-year presidency of the hyper-expressive Boris Yeltsin, Putin remains a somewhat enigmatic figure. The tealeaf reading of Mr. Putinıs personality and political philosophy reminiscent of the work of Soviet-era "Kremlinologists" will likely continue into the Russian presidentıs second four-year term .
On February 10, the Harriman Institute hosted a discussion led by Father Leonid Kishkovsky, respected Ecumenical Officer of the Orthodox Church in America, and Nikolas Gvosdev, executive editor of The National Interest and Senior Fellow of the Nixon Center. The topic was "The Faith of a President: Exploring the Religious Profile of Vladimir Putin."
Father Kishkovsky began his remarks with personal observations from a recent visit to Moscow. Russia, he believes, is today experiencing a period of "culture wars" in its religious life similar in some respects to social and cultural conflicts in America over the last two decades. He points to two recent events to dramatize his point: the recent religious funerals of three men implicated in the August 1991 coup attempt against the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachevıs and the vandalizing of a recent art exhibit. Interestingly, both events have connections to the life and work of the late Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov .
Following the religious funerals of the three coup plotters two were Russian Orthodox, one was Jewish Sakharovıs widow Yelena Bonner publicly criticized the "irrelevance" of religious funerals in what she believes should remain a secular society. In August 2003, an art exhibit entitled "Caution: Religion" opened at Moscowıs Sakharov Museum. Among the featured artworks was a Russian Orthodox-style icon with a hole instead of a head, where visitors could put their faces and picture themselves as the Almighty .
There was also a Coca-Cola logo against the usual red background, but with Jesus' face drawn next to it and the words, "This is my blood." A sculpture was featured of a church made from vodka bottles. Four days after its opening, the exhibit was vandalized by six men. The group was detained and charged with hooliganism, but after a publicity campaign conducted by a Russian Orthodox priest, the charges were dropped. According to Kishkovsky, the vandals themselves were members of the Orthodox Church .
A Russian anti-abortion movement on a smaller scale and with more modest means than its American counterpart has begun to establish a public presence. Kishkovsky suggests that the Russian Orthodox Church has taken steps to minimize the public influence of its most extreme believers. Those who publicly assert that the U.S. and Israel are attempting to undermine Russian values if not Russia itself continue to play a role in the life of the Church. But most of the current Orthodox leadership has taken care in its public statements to stress the need for tolerance of all religious groups in Russia.
Is Vladimir Putin a practicing Orthodox Christian? Father Kishkovsky answers from personal observation. Having attended Orthodox Church services with both Yeltsin and Putin, Kishkovsky explained what he sees as the differences in the two presidentsı relationships and levels of comfort with religious observance. The Church Patriarch publicly blessed both of Yeltsinıs presidential inaugurations. While the Patriarch was present for the Putin Inaugural in 2000, the ceremony did not include a public blessing. Instead, Putin participated in a private service led by the Patriarch within the Kremlinıs walls following the official swearing-in ceremony.
But while Yeltsin often seemed to Kishkovsky unfamiliar with Church ritual, Putinıs "natural and authentic body language" in Orthodox services suggests to Father Leonid that Putin is comfortable with the physical language of Orthodox observance and experienced in its practice. Friends of Father Leonid in St. Petersburg, he noted, have spoken of Mr. Putinıs long-standing church attendance, begun well before Putin was a recognizable figure even in Russiaıs second city.
What does any of this tell us about Vladimir Putinıs political philosophy? For Kishkovsky, the limited public role of the Patriarch in Putinıs 2000 inauguration ceremony is telling. Putin has privately practiced his faith for many years. In his public statements, the President stresses Russiaıs multi-religious values.
What day-to-day influence, if any, does the Church have on Vladimir Putin? Nikolas Gvosdev noted that the president and his wife Lyudmila each have spiritual advisors. That this fact is accepted as normal in contemporary Russian life, he believes, is significant. Gvosdev agrees with Kishkovsky that Putin has acted as president to place Russian contemporary religious practice in the context of civil society. In doing so, Putin has attempted to move Russian society beyond questions of religious versus anti-religious sentiment and to blend Russian Orthodox symbolism into the nationıs identity, just as he blends Soviet and prerevolutionary Russian symbolism into Russiaıs political identity.
At the same time, Putin has publicly stressed the importance of Russiaıs multi-ethnic, multireligious character. The President has referred to Russian Orthodox Christianity as "a cultural variant of the worldıs moral and spiritual beliefs." Even if Putin has private religious convictions, church membership has not proven to be a "litmus test" or membership card for work in todayıs Russian government. Putin has not sought to recreate the "Tsar-Patriarch" ruling partnership of Russiaıs imperial past. Nor does Putin see his position as a pulpit from which to convert non-believers.
According to Gvosdev, Putin practices "civic religion." The president personally believes that, while religious belief and church attendance produce virtue, there may be many "true faiths." Still, attention and curiosity have inevitably followed the man Putin identifies as his "spiritual father." Archimandrite Tikhon Shevkunov, says Gvosdev, is a believer in "Christian economic thought," a philosophy of social and economic responsibility for the less fortunate. Shevkunov has spoken publicly of the dangers posed by Russiaıs so-called oligarchs to moral economic principal. As a solution to this and other social and economic ills, the presidentıs spiritual advisor calls for "statist reform."
Have these beliefs altered the course of Vladimir Putinıs political agenda? That is a question only the president himself can truly answer. (posted 25 February 2004)
VLADIMIR PUTIN'S FAITH
by Nikolas Gvosdev
UPI, 24 February 2004
President Vladimir Putin may be the "eminence grise" of Russian democracy, implementing a "creeping coup" designed to install a soft authoritarian regime in his country, but he also has the reputation of being a man of faith.
Is this conclusion justified, or is the Russian president simply perfecting an act learned in a KGB training seminar?
Seeing Putin in church, one observes the "normal, natural, reverent body language of an Orthodox Christian," said Reverend Leonid Kishkovsky, the ecumenical officer of the Orthodox Church in America.
Putin, Kishkovsky said, demonstrates a "profound familiarity" with church services and ritual, in marked contrast to many other post-Soviet leaders, including former President Boris N. Yeltsin, who often seemed lost and on unfamiliar ground when in church.
Indeed, the photographs of stiff Russian politicians uncomfortably gripping candles during church services led many Russians to derisively label them podsvechniki, or candlesticks. In contrast, religious leaders who have met with the Russian leader have been "impressed by the authenticity of Putin's Orthodox persona."
Kishkovsky, who recently returned from a visit to Russia, delivered comments on Putin's religious profile at a seminar hosted by the Harriman Institute at Columbia University in New York on Feb. 10. As the first overtly religious head of state since the Bolshevik revolution, Putin is helping to define the role of religion in post-Soviet Russia's public square.
Contemporary Russia is undergoing its own version of the "culture wars," Kishkovsky noted. Religion has undergone a remarkable revival in the first decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Today, the Russian Orthodox Church, as well as Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist and other Christian communities, seeks to play a more active role in society. Yet the degree to which religion is relevant to Russian society and should play an active, visible role, is highly contested.
The Russian Orthodox Church, the largest religious body in the Russian Federation, has taken the lead in forging a new public role for itself. The church is the sponsor of the annual "World Russian People's Council (Sobor)", which brings together church leaders, politicians and other civic figures into one forum to discuss the present and future of Russia. Kishkovsky, who attended as a representative of the Orthodox Church in America, noted that the entire Russian political spectrum -- from Communist Party chairman Gennady Zyuganov to Grigorii Yavlinsky, the head of the liberal-democratic Yabloko party -- was in attendance.
Putin attempts to walk a finer line. While he is comfortable publicly displaying his Orthodox identity, he also seeks to reassure members of other religious groups as well as nonbelievers that he is the president of all Russians. This author stressed Putin's attempts to forge a nondenominational "civil religion" that draws upon the shared values of all of Russia's traditional religions. In his annual messages to Christians, Muslims, Jews and Buddhists on their religious holidays, Putin usually stresses the public value of faith in helping to inculcate tolerance, charity, peace and patriotism.
Kishkovsky noted that at Putin's inauguration, Patriarch Aleksii II, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, was present but played no role in the public ceremonies. The patriarch did, however, conduct a private prayer service for Putin in one of the Kremlin's chapels.
This public/private dimension plays out in other areas. The president and his wife, Ludmila, attend church services on a regular basis, and Putin often visits churches and monasteries all across the country in the course of his travels. The Russian press has also displayed an interest in reports that, in keeping with classic Russian traditions, both Putin and his wife turn for advice and counsel to monastics. Archimandrite Tikhon Shevkunov of the Sretensky Monastery in Moscow is often identified as an advisor to the president, while his wife reportedly has a long-standing relationship with her "spiritual mother," Mother Ludmila of the Snetogorsky cloister.
Yet there is never any indication that Putin is a religious fanatic or intolerant. The composition of his cabinet shows that he has not employed any sort of religious litmus test in selecting personnel. Some, in fact, have been critical of what they perceive is a form of ecumenism on the president's part; the belief that Orthodoxy is a Russian variant of universal moral and spiritual values, an anchor for national identity, but that other faiths have equal value.
After a visit to the famous Solovki monastery in August 2001, Putin, drawing upon the famous sermon "On Law and Grace" of the 11th-century Metropolitan Illarion of Kiev, told reporters, "God has saved all nations, Metropolitan Illarion once said. If so, all nations are equal in the eyes of God."
Putin has also met with other leading world religious figures, including Pope John Paul II and the Archbishop of Canterbury, and sometimes draws a distinction between the interests of the Russian Church and those of the state. Danil Shchipkov, a Nezavisimaia Gazeta reporter, wrote in July 2003 that, at times, the "President emphasizes his distance from the church, but remains Orthodox."
Putin's comfort with his own personal religiosity, in turn, appeals to a broad spectrum of the population that might be termed as "Putin believers," those who consider themselves to be Orthodox, have some knowledge of dogma and ritual, yet are comfortable with a secular Russia.
They are satisfied with a certain degree of western European-style accommodationism between church and state -- having the Orthodox church play some role in education and social services -- but do not wish to see the Orthodox church restored to its pre-revolutionary role as a state church. In other words, they approve of the fact that the State Duma and other government cafeterias now offer Lenten menus but would not want them made mandatory.
In political terms, Putin's piety is a mixed blessing. It may help to deflect the criticism from extremist political forces that fulminate against Western "poisons" that pollute Russia to have an avowedly Orthodox leader embrace political and economic reforms. At the same time, it is worrisome to those who feel that Putin may seek to use religion, and specifically the Orthodox Church, as a bulwark to support the curtailing of civil liberties and political freedoms.
Yet all agree that the Putin presidency continues to show the relevance of the church's influence in 21st century Russia. (Nikolas K. Gvosdev is executive editor of The National Interest, posted 25 February 2004))
Russia Religion News Current News Items
Members of the Russian Union of Writers characterized the policy of Nizhny Novgorod authorities with respect to relations with religious associations as incompetent and unprincipled in their declaration that was published on the pages of the Nizhegorod newspaper "Orthodox Word," Blagovest-info reports.
The authors of the document called appeals for the spiritual regeneration of Russia issuing from the mouths of state figures of various levels insincere. In their opinion, this rhetoric and attendance of Orthodox churches are motivated only by attempts to imitate the president of the country. The writers stress that only bureaucrats' lack of religious convictions and elementary knowledge in the area of religious studies can explain the successful registration in Nizhny Novgorod province of "the totalitarian sects of Scientologists, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, the 'Mother of God' center, White Brotherhood, and others."
The writers also referred negatively to a number of neoprotestant religious organizations such as "Chapel on Golgotha," "Potter's House," "Source of Life," and Seventh-day Adventists who "are trying to convert more and more Nizhny Novgorodians, drawing them into an ideology and culture that are alien to us Russians."
"The height of cynicism is manifested in permission for the construction of a Catholic convent in the Pecher district on Nizhny Novgorod territory," the writers note. "One must be absolutely blind and deaf and unprincipled in the extreme to open the door into the heart of Orthodoxy, the fourth principality of the Mother of God, Nizhegorod land, to our radical opponents, who have many times tried to subordinate the Russian Orthodox church to themselves by means of cross and sword and by deceit and flattery." It is not hard to predict, they said, that the monastery will become an outpost and eventually a center of Catholicism in the Volga region, which cannot be permitted. "If that is achieved and the convent is built, dozens of generations of our ancestors will curse us," the writers predicted.
The statement was signed by literary figures who are well known in Nizhny Novgorod, V. Shhamshurin, V. Zhiltsov, V. Sdovniakov, E. Bochkova, A. Bysotsky, Archpriest Vladimir Gofman, I. Dementieva, V. Karpenko, P. Klimeshov, I Kuzmichev, S. Leontieva, V. Nikolaev, A. Plotnikov, V. Polovinkin, K. Proimin, O. Riabov, B. Seleznev, A. Tiukaev, N. Simonov, V. Fedorov, A. Figarev, E. Erastov, and others. (tr. by PDS, posted 25 February 2004)
Russia Religion News Current News Items
Residents of the town of Shopokov (Sokuluk District (Kyrgyzstan's northern Chuy Region)) are against the building of a Hall of Realms [i.e. "Kingdom Hall], which belongs to the Jehovah's Witness religious organization, in the centre of their town. The residents have voiced concern that the church is deliberately being built near a school and a lyceum in the town in order to lure ignorant young people into its ranks.
According to teachers from Secondary School No.1 in Shopokov, the sectarians have already been actively propagating their values among people in Shopokov. The town's people very often find at the doors of their flats various colourful booklets, literature and application forms for joining it. Pupils from this school Dilbar Choybekova and Irina Rogozina (all names transliterated throughout the text) said underage children did not realize fully what religion they would like to belong to. The sectarians take advantage of this and lure young people by asking quite innocent questions. They draw them deeper into the conversation when they see an interest in their eyes.
Teachers from Secondary School No.1, led by Director Natalya Demina, have sent an official letter to the head of the Shopokov town administration, Yevgeniy Belokurov, asking him to stop the sectarians from building the church.
The appeal says the closeness of the Hall of Realms will enable the sect to bring in underage children without the knowledge of their parents. The school is simply unable to control this process.
The appeal also says the sect's activities will also have an adverse effect on schoolchildren's secular education.
The letter was signed by 40 teachers and the parents of schoolchildren.
The town's residents have also been to houses in the town and collected their fellow townspeople's signatures. They have collected 600 signatures so far.
Pupils from Secondary School No.1 have also met the head of the town's administration. The administrator gave an assurance to them that the building would be stopped.
(Passage omitted: Schoolchildren suggested setting up a playground in the building site)
Anxious parents have also appealed to the dean of the Holy Spirit church in the village of Sokuluk, Father Aleksey, and asked him for help in solving this problem. Father Aleksey said that he had expressed his opinion to Yevgeniy Belokurov, but he could not influence a decision by the head (of the Shopokov town administration).
Source: KyrgzInfo news agency web site, Bishkek, (Copyright 2004 BBC Monitoring, posted 25 February 2004)
Russia Religion News Current News Items
Moscow prosecution of Jehovahıs Witnesses heard court appointed expert in linguistics, Oksana Mikhaylovna Grunchenko, of the V.V. Vinogradov Institute of the Russian Language, Russian Academy of Sciences. Moscow Prosecutor Tatiana Kondratyeva asked expert Grunchenko to read from selected texts of Jehovahıs Witnesses including some critical of Christendomıs support of fraticidal war, such as World War I.
Ms. Grunchenko stated the text linked historical facts to Biblical verses and while critical, the style was respectful and not humiliating. Prosecutor Kondrayteva asked the expert to read from the Bible book of Joel 1:5 to 13, "Wake up, you drunkards, and weep and howl, all you wine drinkers." Expert Grunchenko explained the application to clergy in Christendom was metaphorical, common to religious dialogue.
The court heard questions on the gospel of John 13:34, 35 where Jesus commanded Christians to love one another. Expert Grunchenko agreed the expert study was mainly about religious doctrine and beliefs. On Thursday, 26 February 2004, the Court will hear evidence from, Konstantin Igoryevich Alekseyev, the only psychocholinguist on the expert panel. He will comment on the allegation of mind control as applied to the literature of Jehovahıs Witnesses. (posted 25 February 2004)
Russia Religion News Current News Items
The editorial offices of Regnum news agency received the text of an appeal by a group of Russian rights defenders to Patriarch of all-Rus Alexis II in connection with the trial of organizers of the "Beware, religion!" exhibit that is being prepared. The exhibit was trashed by activists of the radical "For the moral regeneration of the fatherland" organization on 18 February 2003.
The following is the full text of this document.
Your Holiness!
We are profoundly disturbed by the completely unprecedented situation that has arisen in connection with the upcoming criminal indictment of the famous Russian rights defender, the director of the Andrei Sakharov Museum and Community Center, Yu.V. Samodurov, an employee of the Andrei Sakharov Museum and Community Center, L.V. Vasilovsky, and three artists, A.A. Mikhalchuk, A.G. Zupumiana, and N. Zolian. We are convinced that the judicial proceedings of this case will inevitably be of a scandalous nature and will bring harm to the prestige and authority of the Russian Orthodox church as well as the Russian state.
The investigation accuses them of conducting the "Beware, religion!" exhibit in the Andrei Sakharov Museum and Community Center, where, among other exhibits, there were works of contemporary topical art which employed a religious theme in a polemical fashion.
Topical art takes advantage of the most diverse phenomena of culture, including religious phenomena. For us, certainly, offense to the feelings of believers is completely unacceptable. We remember the persecution that the communist system conducted for decades against believers. But today the church has received the long-awaited possibility of free action and religion is encompassed with public respect. Thus it is evident that a small exhibit inside a building could not cause harm to the church and believers. To be sure, not all of the displays of this exhibit were near to our ethical and aesthetic notions by any means, but we are profoundly convinced that it is very important to defend the principle of freedom of culture and freedom of art from persecution.
Thus we cannot understand the statement of the vice-chairman of the Department of External Church Relations of the Moscow patriarchate, Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, who declared in connection with the upcoming trial that "religious symbols (along with state symbols) should be protected by law." Such a declaration stands in contradiction to the principles of ideological pluralism and a secular state that lie at the base of the constitutional structure of Russia. In addition, it is evident that the displays of the exhibit were not an outrage against real objects of worship. Perhaps they were parodies of them. But whatever one thinks of such parodies, this cannot in any way be considered criminal behavior! For centuries art has taken advantage of and represented in exaggerated or understated form or even parodied that which in the eyes of the majority has been "taboo," including national, state, ideological, and religious symbols and rituals. And this is normal. It is hardly in the interests of the church to create sterile, that is, lifeless, conditions for itself. In addition, it is absurd for the justice of a legal government to apply standards that originally were created for the protection of the rights and dignity of minorities to the protection of ethnic and confessional groups that constitute the overwhelming majority within society and are protected by the state.
If the right to judge art has now been returned to the prosecutor's office, then the very important principle that has been established by great efforts in the past fifteen years in our country, the principle of religious and intellectual pluralism, will be destroyed. After all, the precedent of turning law enforcement agencies into arbitrators of ideological disputes is dangerous for the church itself. Who knows how policies with respect to the church will turn in our state? Could the possibility of ideological persecutions be turned against believers and against church culture? The last two centuries recall too many examples when the systems of censorship and administrative and police persecution, which were first created for the protection of traditional, national, and religious structures were turned into weapons of persecution of believers and the church.
We would not be appealing to you if the case about the exhibit in the Sakharov museum could be an ordinary farce on the order of the notorious "monkey trial." Unfortunately, there is reason to be concerned that due to the speculations of radical pseudoreligious organizations as well as the zeal of some forces within law enforcement agencies who are striving for "prominent cases," a real threat has arisen of a show trial for purely political purposes of a certain Russian public figure and art critic and artists.
At any rate, this case has become connected for Russian and international public opinion with the Russian Orthodox church, which actually has become a hostage to this political intrigue and this game of ambition and the attempt to drag the church along the path of violence that is not proper for it. We recall that several days after the opening of the exhibit in January 2003 it was trashed by people who were members of the radical Orthodox "For the moral regeneration of the fatherland" public organization, headed by Fr Alexander Shargunov. The active role of Father Shargunov, who is a cleric of the Moscow diocese that is subordinate to you, given the strict subordination that exists in the Moscow patriarchate, could create the impression that the actions of the persons who trashed the exhibit received your blessing in some form or another. Unfortunately, the zeal of the Shargunovites and the attempts of the Moscow prosecutor to portray the trial being prepared as protection of the Russian Orthodox church has turned the Moscow patriarchate into one of the central figures of this ugly political scandal, a scandal which doubtless will have wide repercussions in the public life of our country and abroad.
The Andrei Sakharov Museum and Community Center has for eight years now been one of the centers of activity for defending rights in our country. It should not be forgotten that it was the action of rights defenders, who often risked their freedom and even their lives, that played an enormous role in protecting the church and believers, lay and clerical, from persecution on the part of the soviet authorities.
Attempts of political provocateurs to use the church to conceal the persecution of rights defenders casts a shadow upon the good name of Russian Orthodoxy.
We call you to declare your position with respect to the judicial persecution of museum workers and artists.
Nine rights defenders placed their signatures under the appeal, who represented organizations of both a federal and regional scale, including a member of the Commission on Human Rights of the Presidency of the Russian federation, Svetlana Gannushkina of the "Civil Cooperation" Committee, Lev Ponomarev of the "For Human Rights" Russian movement, Alexander Tkachenko of the Russian Pen Center, Ernst Cherny of the "Ecology and Law" coalition, and others. (tr. by PDS, posted 24 February 2004)
BALANCING ART, THE STATE AND RELIGION WITHOUT CALLING THE POLICE by
Serge Schmemann
New York Times, 23 February 2004
The story from Russia, briefly, was this: In January 2003, the Andrei Sakharov Museum in Moscow held an exhibition of new art called "Caution Religion." The name gives the idea of what it was about: one triptych showed men crucified on a cross, a Soviet star and a swastika; another featured an icon without a face, inviting visitors to put their own visage in the opening. The show would probably have passed unnoticed had it not been vandalized on the third day by two irate Russian Orthodox believers.
With that, it became a major event. The Russian Orthodox Church assailed the "blasphemy." The director of the Sakharov Museum founded in memory of the physicist and human-rights champion and dedicated to victims of Soviet repression fought back with ringing defenses of freedom of art. In August, charges against the two attackers were dropped on the ground that the show was more than their religious sensitivities could bear.
By then, every nationalist lawmaker was up in arms. So finally, on Dec. 29, the state prosecutor advised the museum director, Yuri Samodurov, and three of the artists that they faced charges of inciting national and religious hatreds. Conviction can mean stiff fines or even prison.
My first reaction was indignation and incredulity. The Russian Orthodox Church has become heavily identified with Russian nationalism and reaction, and some priests and believers have even found common cause with disgruntled old Communists. For someone who had spent a few years as a reporter in the old Soviet Union, the greater dismay came with seeing artists again treated as enemies of the state.
Art had been one of the major vehicles of resistance to the Soviet dictatorship: the closing of an exhibit of avant-garde artists in 1962 by Nikita Khrushchev and the bulldozing of an exhibition of unofficial art in 1974 were among the milestones of the dissident movement. Sadder still, religion had been one of the major targets of Soviet repression, especially public demonstrations of belief, or religious imagery in art or literature. No doubt these memories were in the minds of the 39 artists who raised their works in the Sakharov Museum to warn against a state that had enforced "scientific atheism" so recently now embracing a national church with the same ardor.
O.K., argued the defender of Russia in me, but nobody has been convicted of anything yet, and the debate prompted by the trashing of the exhibition has been at least as lively and creative as the one over the Madonna with elephant dung at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, or, more recently, over the Israeli ambassador's angry attempt to smash a work of art in Stockholm that featured the picture of a suicide bomber. True, state prosecutors didn't step in, but in the Brooklyn affair, Rudolph Giuliani, then mayor, matched the Russian parliamentarians huff for puff. Besides, many advanced countries have laws against inciting hatred or vandalizing revered symbols. In the United States, a law against flag-burning was passed in 1989; though it was overturned, there's a movement to back the idea with a constitutional amendment.
To be frank, I too become indignant at deliberately provocative uses of hallowed religious or national symbols. Insults may be protected as free speech, but not under the canons of good taste or cultural tolerance. One work, a Coca-Cola advertisement with the words "This is my blood," taken from the Last Supper, may be explained as a sophisticated artistic statement, as it was at the Sakharov show, but it is certain to cause anguish among believers. The usual defense of curators is that they are seeking "artistic dialogue," as the director of Stockholm's Museum of National Antiquities said after the Israeli ambassador, Zvi Mazel, attacked the offending sculpture. That defense smacks too much of the disingenuous protestation of a guilty child.
The right to free expression does not absolve people from responsibility for what they choose to present. That does not exclude shock as an artistic vehicle. But there is a line beyond which shock becomes offense and even anguish, and it is not one that should be casually crossed.
Still, there's something medieval about summoning a commission of experts, as the Russian prosecutor did, to determine whether the exhibition "utilized verbal or visual methods" that were demeaning to "any ethnic, racial or religious group." Letting the state decide what's good or bad for society led to the suppression of all the best Russian artists and writers in the Soviet Union.
Basically, the contents of art are none of the state's business. A mature society should be able to tolerate even offensive art, or at least to find ways of coping with it that do not involve the police. That is especially true in a country like Russia, which is painfully emerging from 70 years of brutal state control over all intellectual and artistic life. That same Sakharov Museum has vast panels of small, black-and-white mug shots of people who perished under the Soviet Union's forced cultural and political orthodoxy. Many are of museum curators and artists.
Russia Religion News Current News Items
Despite being reminded that the European Court of Human Rights has ruled that Jehovahıs Witnesses are a "known religion" and entitled to the protection afforded by the European Convention, the prosecutor renewed her request to ban Jehovahıs Witnesses in Moscow as the trial resumed on Tuesday and continued on Wednesday. Tomorrow, Thursday, February 19, 2004, Professor Eileen Barker, a leading sociologist and professor of the London School of Economics, will testify as a witness. Professor Barker is in Moscow to deliver a lecture at the Moscow State University.
PROSECUTOR AGAINST JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES
Gazeta, 18 January 2004
In the Golovin court of Moscow a trial is underway in the case regarding the liquidation of the capital congregation of "Jehovah's Witnesses." Yesterday Prosecutor Tatiana Kondratiev supported her earlier motion for the closing, stating that the activity of the congregation has an extremist nature. Attorney Galina Krylova, representing the interests of the Jehovah's Witnesses in court, noted that "this claim is not supported by any supplementary evidence." In addition, according to the defense attorney, the prosecutor has refused to submit a written accusation of extremism as required by law.
By decision of the court at the next session on Wednesday the prosecutor must present testimony supporting the necessity of liquidating the congregation. The trial on the Jehovah's Witnesses case began in September 1998. The prosecutor of the northern district of Moscow came to the conclusion in the course of its investigation of the activity of the congregation that it incites religious hostility, breaks up the family, and persuades severely ill people to refuse medical treatment on religious bases. But in 2001 the Golovin court did not agree with the prosecutor. This was appealed to the Moscow City Court which overruled the decision and sent the case back for a new review. In Spring 2002 a second trial began, at which it was decided to conduct an expert study of the literature published by Jehovah's Witnesses. However the Moscow City Court also overruled this decision and again sent the case for review in the Golovin court, which ordered the conducting of a philological-psycholinguistic expert analysis. (tr. by PDS, posted 23 February 2004)
BAN ON LITERATURE OF JEHOVAHıS WITNESSES DISTURBING TO RUSSIAN EXPERT
Jehovah's Witnesses Office of Public Information, 20 February 2004
In the ongoing 5-year civil trial to ban Jehovahıs Witnesses in Moscow, the Court listened to the testimony of one of its own appointed experts, Professor Anatoliy Nikolayevich Baranov of the Vinogradov Russian Language Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. When asked by defense counsel what he would think of a ban on the literature of Jehovahıs Witnesses, he stated he would find it disturbing both as a linguist and as an ordinary citizen. Yesterday, Eileen Barker, Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics and founder of the London-based Inform, (Information on Religious Movements) testified that Jehovahıs Witnesses are a well established religion that freely practice their religion throughout Europe. She stated that so-called anti-cult experts, often the driving force behind calls for banning minority religious groups, do so on ideological grounds. We have the right religion, therefore theirs must be wrong, and so they must be banned.ı On Tuesday, February 24, 2004, the court will hear the second of its three appointed experts.
TRIAL IN CASE FOR LIQUIDATION OF MOSCOW CONGREGATION OF JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES
Religiia
v svetskom obshchestve, 20 February 2004
On 17 February in the Golovin court of Moscow the trial of the case for the liquidation of the Moscow congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses was resumed. Back in 1998 the prosecutor of the northern district of the capital concluded that the Jehovah's Witnesses incite religious enmity, break up the family, and persuade people to refuse medical care, and it initiated a judicial investigation. However in 2001 the Golovin court did not find sufficient basis for prohibiting the congregation. This decision was overturned by the Moscow City Court to which the prosecutor had appealed, and the case was sent back for a new review. In the Spring of 2002 a second trial began. After a second intervention by the Moscow City Court, overruling the decision of the municipal court on an expert analysis of the literature published by the Witnesses, the case was again remanded to the Golovin court, which in February 2003 ordered the conducting of a philological-psycholinguistic expert analysis. Upon its completion the trial resumed.
At the first session Prosecutor Tatiana Kondratieva requested the liquidation of the Moscow congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses as an organization whose activity is of an "extremist" nature.
As she stated in an interview with the Interfax news agency, Attorney Galina Krylova, who represents the interests of the Jehovah's Witnesses in court, said "this claim is not supported by any additional evidence. In addition, the prosecutor has refused to submit its written accusation of extremism as required by law."
The court required the prosecutor to submit evidence at the session on 18 February.
At the session on 20 February an expert linguist, associate of the Institute of the Russian Language of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Anatoly Baranov, delivered the results of the expert analysis that was conducted. In the opinion of specialists, although in the texts distributed by the Jehovah's Witnesses "definite devices of rhetorical influence of the audience are present," and they contain "ideas about withdrawal from the world and of nonparticipation in social processes, such as from elections or higher education," and there also are calls for refusing service in the armed forces and respect for the state flag, nevertheless "in the literature studied there is no derogatory characterization, descriptive assessment, or negative orientation with respect to other religious associations." The experts also did not find information in the materials studied which would arouse readers to actions that would lead to the destruction of the family.
The next hearing is scheduled for 24 February. (tr. by PDS, posted 23 February 2004)
Jehovahıs Witnesses have been present in Russia since 1891. The organisation registered with the USSR authorities in 1991, with the Russian authorities in 1992 and with the Moscow authorities in 1993. In 1995, a body affiliated to the Russian Orthodox Church known as the "Salvation Committee" filed a complaint against the management of the Moscow Jehovahıs Witnesses making certain allegations against them: exorbitant membership dues, incitement of hatred of other religions. The prosecutorıs office refused to initiate a criminal investigation, finding that the applicant association operated within the law and that there had been no complaints from private persons or legal entities about it. The Salvation Committee persisted in its efforts, making essentially the same complaint on four further occasions. Each time, the prosecutorıs office reopened the case but then terminated the investigation for lack of cause, except for the fifth occasion, in 1998. The investigator concluded that the applicant association violated national and international law and was inconsistent with the Constitution. Although she terminated the criminal case, the investigator recommended that action for banning and liquidating the association be taken. The prosecutor acted on this advice in April 1998. He relied on five allegations against the applicant association, including incitement of religious discord, break up of families and endangering life through the refusal of medical treatment on religious grounds. The District Court proceedings began in September 1998 but were stayed in March 1999 to allow five experts to prepare reports on the issues involved. The hearing resumed in February 2001. Over forty witnesses and experts were heard. Four of the five experts prepared a succinct joint report that was critical of the Jehovahıs Witnessesı faith. The fifth expert produced a lengthy dissenting report. The court dismissed all the allegations brought by the prosecution. On appeal, the City Court quashed the decision and remitted it to the District Court. At the rehearing in November 2001, the prosecutor stated that although she had no information about any individual member violating the law, her actions were based on the applicant associationıs literature. The hearing was adjourned and proceedings are still pending.
The applicant association also sought to re-register, as required by the 1997 Law on Freedom of Conscience and Religious Association. In all, it made five attempts to register, each one being refused by the Moscow Justice Department because of missing documents or minor errors. The association took legal action in October 2000 seeking to force the Justice Department to consider their application. In December 2000, the District Court, of its own motion, adjourned the hearing until February 2001. The association therefore missed the final date for re-registration stipulated in the 1997 law: 31 December 2000. In early 2001, the Justice Department issued the second formal refusal of registration, citing the ongoing liquidation proceedings in the District Court. Two of the applicants took legal proceedings in their own right in 2001. These were eventually dismissed, with the courts ruling that their individual religious freedom was not affected by the failure to re-register the association. In August 2002, the District Court ruled that the Justice Departmentıs refusals were unlawful, but did not order registration of the association. Instead, the association had to make a new application for re-registration using the new forms introduced by the Justice Department in July 2002. The association appealed unsuccessfully.
The applicants submit that they were repeatedly vilified in the press from the outset of the liquidation proceedings.
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The retrial aimed at banning Jehovahıs Witnesses in Moscow resumed today, February 17, 2004, in the Golovinsky Intermunicipal District Court, Judge Vera K. Dubinskaya presiding.
The latest in a series of expert studies conducted on the literature of Jehovahıs Witnesses is complete and will be considered when the trial resumes. The Court ordered the expert study in May 2003. Since the first trial started in September 1998, at least four expert studies have delayed a final decision by over four years.
In the meantime, Moscow authorities have frustrated efforts by Jehovahıs Witnesses to obtain places of worship. The Witnesses have not been able to purchase existing buildings, nor could they obtain properties on which to build. In their attempts to rent meeting places, they have encountered a pattern of obstruction and difficulties. On 26 occasions during 2003, Jehovahıs Witnesses were refused rental contracts, and there have been four such incidents in the first three weeks of 2004. Managers are threatened with dismissal if they continue to rent meeting places to Jehovahıs Witnesses.
In December 2001 an application was submitted to the European Court of Human Rights on the basis of repetitive prosecution, which violates individual and collective rights of the Applicants as guaranteed under the European Convention. The European Court is presently collecting further details on these incidents.
There are now over 133,000 active Witnesses in Russia, and last year 282,350 persons attended their commemoration of the death of Christ. (posted 17 February 2004)
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