SEGODNIA: Online edition, No. 62, 03/28/97
PASTORS ARE SECURING PENITENTS FOR THEMSELVES.
TRADE IN WINE AND CIGARETTES BRINGS A DOUBLE BENEFIT TO THE CHURCH
Segodnia, 28 March 1997
The widespread increase in commerce has not bypassed even such an institution "that is not of this world" as the church. How can one not recall the biblical parable (sic) about driving the moneychangers out of the temple! Only now the moneychangers obviously are well entrenched and are not about to depart. Declaring that its main concern is for the souls of believers, the Russian Orthodox church today engages actively in commerce, and that in none other than spirits and cigarettes. This way the churchmen are guaranteeing themselves not only an income, which could be used for the needs of the church, but also new penitents insofar as smoking and drinking are viewed as sin.
At the end of December an aid shipment arrived at the Paveletskaia-Trade station, designated for the church charity center Nika (it is worth noting that the creator of this center was the Department of External Church Relations of the Moscow patriarchate). It would seem that a church charity organization might receive such humanitarian aid as foodstuffs, clothing for the needy and the like. But Nika solved the problem of the support of the socially disadvantaged classes in a rather extraordinary way. This church institution received from Bulgaria--cigarettes. They weren't the expensive Marlboros or Camels but the cheap Stewardess and Rodopa brands. The philanthropists, sacrificing quality, received the quantity of 2644500 packs of Stewardess and 2713000 packs of Rodopa. And the cigarettes would have gone into the warehouse of Nika but fate intervened: just when the settlement of the customs duty was to begin the center had to come up with the money because the church charity fund hesitated and refused the cigarettes and they became state income.
At about the same time another church organization became a victim of the settlement of customs tax, the art manufacturing enterprise Sofrino. Surely all Muscovites have encountered on the streets stores and salesmen with the same name, trading in religious goods--candles, icons, crosses, and the like. But besides this there is a thoroughly for-profit business, the art manufacturing enterprise Sofrino which actively imports wine from Italy and Hungary. In the Appennines religious artisans bought more than 120 thousand bottles of Montalerto Spumonte, and in Hungary more than 257 thousand bottles of Riesling, Tsvaigelt, Tokaia and Muskat. Despite the fact that these batches of wine never reached Sofrino (the latter apparently did not reckon on the excise tax), according to several sources it continues to buy and import spirits into the country. So that some more time will pass and church organizations will be fully able to revert to filling up Russia with vodka of doubtful origin.