INTERVIEW: WITH ANDREI YURASH
by Tatiana Kalenichenko
The second session on the human dimension of the OSCE, which was held on 2-3 July in Vienna, the capital of Austria, was devoted to the topic of freedom of conscience and religious confession, as well as oppression in the religious field. And although the basic trends of the meeting were disclosed in his reporting by the executive director of the Institute of Religious Liberty, Maksim Vasin, we decided to speak in more detail with another participant in the event, the head of the Department for Affairs of Religions and Nationalities under the Ministry of Culture, Andrei Yurash.
-- Describe, please, the event as a whole and your impressions of it.
--I was invited personally to the OSCE [Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe] session in Vienna in order to participate in the so-called supplementary or secondary event (side event) within the framework of the basic meeting, which was supposed to focus its attention on problems of religious liberty on both the assembly level and within the framework of all other events. Since, relatively speaking, religious questions were in the center of the attention of all participants of the meeting, then I immediately had to participate actively in all discussions where the subject was Ukraine. I was even commissioned twice to speak for the Ukrainian delegation at the basic session, reacting to the absurd and frankly propagandistic statements of the Russian delegation.
--Like what, specifically?
--First, the necessity arose to voice a very clear position of Ukraine on questions of freedom of conscience and religion in those territories that are now annexed and controlled by the Russian federation. The pertinent statements and the realistic position of the Ukrainian delegation, confirmed by numbers and statistical summaries, evoked the anger and excuses in response among Russian representatives. This was not simply outrage on the part of our ideological and political opponents, but a whole flood of inappropriate, unrealistic, and propagandistic commentaries which without any subtlety were intended to conduct their own propaganda campaign.
At first it even seemed to us that, considering the absolute unreality of the statements made by the Putin delegates, it was not worth even getting into an argument. However, understanding the need of all other participants in the meeting to get objective and unprejudiced information, we in each case gave answers and made the necessary commentaries. So it turned out that in every case it became the final point in the discussion.
The leader of the Russian delegation, Grigory Lukiantsev, the deputy director of the Department for Affairs of Compatriots and Human Rights of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia, accented the theses, typical of Russian propaganda, of the special significance of so-called traditional values and, correspondingly, support of "traditional" forms of religiosity. Regarding the Crimean problem, he restricted himself to formal statements in the spirit of, say, the question is closed and the peninsula is operating within the legislative field of the Russian federation, and this "field," he assured, is exceptionally open and adjusted and it operates in accordance with norms and principles accepted by OSCE.
Among the Russian delegation, Father Roman Bogdasarov was distinguished by his special aggressiveness and irresponsible tendentiousness, who is now one of the leading propagandists and mouthpieces of the Moscow patriarchate, who since 2010 has occupied the post of director of the secretariat of the Inter-religious Council of Russia and is deputy head of the synod's Department for Relations of Church and Society. Unlike professional diplomats, who at least formally try to preserve appearances, this ecclesiastical "Goebbels" did not adopt diplomatic appearances but engaged in overtly propagandistic indoctrination.
In particular, he resorted to absolutely intolerant statements, officially and without any qualms of conscience affirming principles of discrimination in defining church organizations. For example, he unambiguously defended the necessity and appropriateness of dividing religious organizations into the so-called historic and the nontraditional, and among the Orthodox churches, into the supposedly canonical and the schismatic. Right away the American delegation called attention to the impermissibility of such a level of thinking and argumentation. And in so far as the statements of this member of the Russian delegation, articulated in the spirit of the "cold war," pertained to Ukraine, then it was necessary to speak out with a systematic expression and explanation of the corresponding points.
After I received the opportunity to respond to the verbal orgy of Father Bogdasarov, I began by saying we cannot help but react to the discriminatory assessments and approaches to questions of freedom of religion. Moreover, this is unacceptable when the subject is meetings devoted to confirming and developing completely contradictory approaches and principles—the equality of all church and religious organizations and a tolerant attitude toward all manifestations of religious consciousness and practical expression without exception. A session that in and of itself is supposed to demonstrate the principle of toleration cannot operate on a completely different paradigm.
In conversation with Russian representatives, we pointed out the impossibility of ranking religious organizations on the part of official bureaucrats, because this can lead to selectivity in the state's treatment of subjects in state-religious relations. However they tried to insist on their own point of view. In particular, the Russians liked to use the concept "canonicity" and "schismatics." Our observation that for Ukrainian legislation such a problem, in principle, does not exist on the agenda as the determination of who of the religious organizations, relatively speaking, is "correct" and who is not was received painfully by the emissaries of Moscow. My reply evoked a stormy reaction on the part of the previously mentioned Father Roman Bogdasarov, who once again issued a categorical "no": he says it is impossible to equate the "canonical" church, which according to his information numbers 15,000 parishes, and the public organization (by his definition) created by "citizen Denisenko," with 300 parishes. We responded with official data which were confirmed by documentation and proved the absurdity of the numbers presented.
I simply presented the official and indisputable statistical information, which did not require commentaries. Because the way the Russian ideologues and agitators act and resort to such propagandistic tricks gives every reason to think that there are no limits to the propaganda and they themselves resort to manipulations and lies. Of course, there is no dispute that the UPTs within the jurisdiction of the Moscow patriarchate, which Father Bogdasarov defined as the only "canonical and historical church," today has in Ukraine the greatest number of religious organizations—around 12,600, and not 15,000 as the speaker from the Moscow patriarchate declared. But the church which is headed by Patriarch Filaret (the UPTsKP), along with the UAPTs, unites not 300 but around 6,200 parishes. The difference between the realities of church life in contemporary Ukraine and the statement of the Russian church agitator comes to a factor of more than 20 times.
In my opinion, the OSCE should not forget and react in an appropriate way to the activity of those religious organizations that not only promote and affirm principles of exclusivity and the violation of the principles of equality, but also by their concrete actions lead not only to interchurch or inter-religious conflicts but also to conflicts in the political area. The responsibility of such religious organizations in the sense of provoking and supporting conflict should be recognized and condemned by the world community in an appropriate way.
--Was the question of Crimea and the restrictions of religious liberty on the peninsula raised in a supplementary way?
--Some time after the presentation in the plenary session, within the framework of discussion on the conclusions of the special Ukrainian side event, the Crimean question had to be opened, and in the context of the artificial creation of the so-called Tauride muftiate as a form of pressure and influence upon the Ecclesiastical Board of Muslims of Crimea that was provoked by the Russian authorities. The discussion was initiated by the American delegation, which demonstrated its awareness of the situation.
It was necessary to respond clearly to the accents that the Russians spun out on Crimea. The Russian federation delegation insisted that this territory was already their responsibility, and thus raising the question of the affiliation of the peninsula to Ukraine did not even make sense. According to their logic, religious organizations operating in Crimea were in the Russian legal field and it supposedly was better than in Europe. In this regard it was necessary to take recourse to factual information showing the falsity of the Kremlin propaganda. In the appropriate context I introduced just a few points: according to Ukrainian statistics, at the beginning of 2014 there were 2,086 active religious organizations in Crimea, while in the account given by Russia to UNESCO at the beginning of 2015 there were about 1,000 active organizations on the peninsula. That is, in just one year the network of religious organizations, according to official Russian statistics, had been cut in half! About 1,000 religious organizations, that is, 50%, had simply disappeared from the religious map of the peninsula! Could anything else be necessary to establish and prove the phenomenal level of violations of the rights of religious organizations?
It is known that almost 700 of them were operating without registration, which is completely legal according to Ukrainian legislation. In the main, these were Muslim communities and more than 200 protestant communities. Russian legislation does not permit unregistered forms of existence for religious societies in principle. Yet more tragic seems the case with those 300 organizations that were operating on the basis of full, official registration. So we have to deal with the undisputed fact that the network of many churches and religious structures was radically reduced, in particular, the UPTs of the Kiev patriarchate, UGKTs, and numerous protestant denominations. All these facts, presented at the plenary meeting of OSCE, did not evoke a desire even among the Russians to deny or negate something. They received recognition and complete understanding on the part of all the other delegations and participants in the conference.
--Is it possible to say that a religious factor was present in the development of events in Crimea or in the east?
--As an immediate example, I recalled the situation in Ukrainian Crimea and the Donbass, where territorial annexation, in the first instance, and brutal military actions, in the second, absolutely obviously had a religious factor in their preconditions: the propaganda by particular religious organizations of the revanchist totalitarian ideology of the "Russian World." On the practical political plane, Putin embodied those ideologies that several years earlier had been inspired by the head of the Moscow patriarchate in the governmental leadership of Russia. So that the responsibility of this religious organization for the provocation and course of events in Crimea and the Donbass still must be appropriately assessed by the world community, and corresponding conclusions must be drawn from the situation itself. Playing into the hands of the aggressor or provocateur (regardless of whether he dons religious clothing to conceal his aggressive, expansionist goals, or not) is the way to encourage him into yet more aggressive actions and yet greater violence.
We had the opportunity to discuss more about religious liberty in a separate seminar devoted to Ukraine. We approached the question of the inter-relations of religions in Ukraine from various points of view with the executive director of the Institute of Religious Liberty, Maksim Vasin, and a professor from Oxford University, Ms. Nazila Ghanea. For example, Maksim Vasin clearly and in a variety of details described for everyone the distinctives of Ukrainian legislation that create the most auspicious conditions for the development and activity of religious organizations in our state.
I deliberately focused on four problematic issues, which most often arise as the most discussed and contradictory. First, I tried most objectively to focus on the causes, circumstances, and forms of so-called "state interference in the religious sphere," which really is a form of state response to the challenges of the current moment and the means of resolving the most critical needs of religious societies. The more so, since the Russian delegation continually made accusations about supposed state interference in religious affairs. The second question that I tried to give my attention to is the so-called "seizure" of churches, about which the leaders of the Moscow patriarchate never tire of speaking. They have a one-sided and unambiguous interpretation of cases where at the level of individual parishes local societies decide to change their church jurisdictional affiliation. The third issue was the question of possible forms of response by state agencies to separatist rhetoric by individual religious leaders and figures. And the fourth topic of my presentation was a discussion of the problem that is quite obviously exacerbated in the Ukrainian religious space every month—the intensification of the confrontational narrative in the rhetoric and documents of individual churches. Instead of going the way of understanding, individual communities deliberately choose the path of escalation of the conflict.
You see for yourself that all of these are not formal, but substantial problems of the religious segment of our time. For no one, either in Ukraine or abroad, do there arise doubts that the Ukrainian state guarantees religious organizations their rights regarding maximally free existence. We should also think about circumstances in the opposite impact: it is necessary to create mechanisms that would make impossible situations where religious groups interfere in the course of political processes and provoke conflict. I repeat: Ukraine is now in a state of war and we are witnesses to the occupation of several territories, and I have no doubts that there is a religious subtext in the current situation. Back in 2009 Patriarch Kirill, at the time of his numerous visits to Ukraine, began planting the idea of the "Russian World", which Putin used and continues to use, and on a practical level is embodied in the life of insurgents in the Donbass. So that at the base of the current cataclysms in Ukraine is one of the fundamentalistic, chauvinistic, religious conceptions. It is clear that everybody who preaches or embodies in life such principle, including specific religious leaders, must bear full responsibility for what they are doing.
--And just what kind of mechanisms of accountability do you see?
--The laws of each state, including Ukraine, say that if a specific person preaches separatism, then it should be punished: regardless of whether it is a secular person or a religious figure. In such a case, the religious leader appears as an ordinary person who directly or covertly is promoting the destruction of the territorial integrity of the state. So if the subject is instances where someone is urging hatred or when someone is refusing to another the right to existence or simply is insulting on religious grounds. These are all judicial matters and they should be considered from the point of view of criminal law. Special legislation is hardly needed in such cases. There is also accountability in the context of what we have in the state.
--Did you notice the reaction to your speech by representatives of other delegations besides the USA and Russia?
--We talked a long time with the representative of Canada and were in constant discourse with the Polish delegation. On the whole, more than a dozen official persons expressed support for us in various ways. But it is enough simply to describe the situation in order to give evidence of the extent to which everything that happened in Hofburg Castle (where the OSCE meeting was held) was demonstrative and revealing. Without any exaggeration, the Ukrainian problem was mentioned most often in the main session, and representatives of our state were given the greatest number of opportunities to state their opinion to the public. Besides the plenary sessions, four tangential or background (side events) seminars were planned. Three of these were supposed to be devoted to Ukraine. I have already described one of the seminars in relative detail. In addition, on the first day of the meeting there was an extraordinarily fruitful meeting "When God becomes a weapon: persecution on religious grounds within the framework of armed conflict in Eastern Ukraine" where there was a representative English-language publication of a brochure that was prepared by the efforts of the Kiev office of the Center of Civil Liberties and the Institute of Religious Liberty.
There was supposed to be a third seminar on the second day of the meeting, which was initiated by individual organizers of a pro-Russian orientation, where questions of the so-called "persecutions" of individual religious organizations on the part of the Ukrainian government were supposed to be discussed. However after seeing the assertive and convincing position of the Ukrainian delegation, the organizers cancelled the seminar literally a few hours before its start.
The character of the discussion on the first and second days of the session showed that not only Ukrainians but anybody else did not want to, and would not, accept the propaganda that the Russian federation and its satellites were trying to affirm. Actually two events mentioned above were organized in the same vein which described the reality in Ukraine from the point of view of the prospects and guarantee of freedom of conscience, and not the spinning out of myths that they were trying to impose on Ukraine from the outside.
The leadership of OSCE, after seeing the productivity of such an approach, immediately offered us help in organizing another joint event in Ukraine. The main thing, according to the desire of the leaders of OSCE, is that all such events would serve the long-term goal of the activity: establishment of guarantees of freedom of conscience. The first of a series of such meetings, conducted in Ukraine on a nationwide level, already occurred in May, when we managed in Kiev to gather leaders of almost all provincial subdivisions responsible for implementation of government policy in the sphere of religion. We are now at a stage of coordinating the concept of an inter-religious forum which in the planned format has not occurred in the capital of Ukraine for ten years.
--That would be very interesting.
--Yes, because we are discussing approximate dates of the planned forum in order to implement this idea with maximum fruitfulness. Evidence of the success and productivity of our cooperation with OSCE is seen in the fact that they have already asked us to attend again the next session in Warsaw at the end of September, where by tradition the question of combating discrimination would be taken up. Since in Vienna the Ukrainian delegation evidenced maximum activity on two levels—within the frameworks of speeches in the plenary session and during special, supplemental events—then it has been agreed to use such a schema in Poland also.
--What were the conclusions of the Vienna meeting? Can one take from them a scenario for development or specific advice?
--The Ukrainian problem is a priority for OSCE, and this was noted. Both on the level of declarations and on the level of practical priorities. Nobody had any doubt why it turned out that it was the Ukrainian-Russian problem that was central. In terms of intensity and impact, only afterward can attention be turned to problems of the Turkish minority in Greece and the Greek minority in Turkey, or to details of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, and the like.
Our legislation is very liberal and exceptionally productive in terms of religious liberty. It is clear that there are specific and contradictory challenges. And I was very pleased and honored that we were able to explain to international experts the mechanisms of the state responses to them. It is important that this is not a formality which simply remains on paper, but realistic means of resolving conflict situations. And it is yet more important that the mechanisms that were proposed were able to find recognition and support on the part of leading international monitoring and analytical structures, both the OSCE itself and also other organizations.
International experts acknowledged that we understand the challenges facing Ukrainian society in the religious segment and we are trying to cooperate with absolutely all structures for the realization of their desires and expectations. For example, some of the opponents of the present government accuse the executive authority in Ukraine that Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk wrote a letter to the ecumenical patriarch in Constantinople, supposedly interfering in religious affairs. But we explained that the government that is responsible for the development of the religious situation in the state is ready to write such appeals or letters for every religious structure, if such a necessity arises and if this would facilitate the resolution of pressing problems of a specific denomination.
The structures of executive authority at the present stage are actively engaged specifically in preparing the necessary documents, including for foreign structures, in the matter of organizing the hadj for Ukrainian Muslims within the bounds of the so-called Ukrainian quota. Therefore it is completely logical and proper that such a schema or method be used by executive bodies in the case of the Orthodox religious sphere in Ukraine, which is most conflicted.
If one part (and besides larger than their opponents) of Ukrainian Orthodox believers want to enter into eucharistic unity with the Constantinople patriarchate and receive recognition on the part of the world Orthodox community, then the task of the government is to facilitate maximally this process, including by means of writing appropriate letters. If another part of the Orthodox sphere were to insist on their desire to remain under the patronage of the Moscow patriarchate, then without doubt we would initiate an appeal to Patriarch Kirill requesting to leave that part of Ukrainian Orthodox believers under his jurisdiction.
That is, the direct obligation of the government is to help each religious group in exercising its constitutional right to those forms of religious self-expression that it considers appropriate. Therefore everything that the government can do, it should do for guaranteeing the rights of believers. I do not even want to turn in this regard to purely theological arguments, since from the point of view of the government they cannot be causative. I think that each person who is involved in the religious sphere understands that no form of autocephaly can be peacefully achieved without relevant involvement of the government. Therefore those who accuse the government of alleged interference in religious affairs actually are making a deliberate substitution of concepts and again working on the "fuel supply" of the Russian and pro-Russian propaganda machine.
--Earlier we heard talk from the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations that a final transition should be made to a partnership model of relations of the state and religious organizations. Is this process going forward and is it this model of cooperation that is being implemented?
--We want to implement it. Our department recently sent to the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations suggestions and reasons why the period when there was misunderstanding between us should remain a thing of the past. For example, the last meeting of the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations discussed so many questions which directly pertain to the executive authority, which shows how inevitable is the process of relations between the government and religious communities. This includes both controversial questions of mobilization, and of the adoption of a law permitting religious organizations to establish educational institutions, and the question of new members of the council and temporary replacement of old ones, and granting permission for priests to cross the front lines into the ATO zone, and decisions on land, and so on. All these numerous questions were sent to me, as the person who heads the standing subdivision of executive authority and is immediately engaged with the relevant questions. At the same time, leaders of religious organizations had the opportunity to receive answers to all of these difficult questions directly and immediately.
Literally immediately after this session, our department suggested to the council of churches to restore the status of the department as a permanent observer with the right to the floor as an adviser. This is necessary so that both sides of the cooperation—both the government structures and the religious organizations—would have the opportunity to understand and be aware of any problems at the stage where they arise. This will be useful and beneficial for the churches themselves, which will see the reaction to controversial points on the part of the government, and for the government, which will receive better opportunity to minimize conflicts in the religious sphere. That is, governmental actors will be able to respond not at the level of putting out the fire but at the stage when there will be occasion and possibility for preventing new outbreaks from arising and religious problems from escalating. (tr. by PDS, posted 16 August 2015)
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