DUMA COMMITTEE FOR RELIGIOUS AFFAIRS TO
BE HEADED BY
ORTHODOX SECT FIGHTER FROM KPRF
by Vladislav Maltsev
The press service of the Communist
Party of the
Russian Federation (KPRF) told Interfax that the new head of the
Committee on
Affairs of Public Associations and Religious Organizations will
be a deputy
from that party, Sergei Gavrilov. At first glance, such a
decision is
surprising, but, as Life.ru ascertained, the new appointee is
already well
known as one of the most dyed-in-the-wool Duma fighters for
Orthodoxy against
sects, neopaganism, and "militant liberalism."
In April 2012, Gavrilov was the
initiator and
coordinator of the creation of the Inter-Fractional Deputies'
Group for Defense
of Christian Values. In an interview on this occasion, published
on 14 April
2012 on the KPRF's website, Gavrilov declared that "the original
Russian
spirituality, based on Orthodox Christianity, is the only one
that ensures the
viability of our people and gives a chance for the real revival
of the
state."
"Their name is legion, as Sacred
Scripture
said," he explained with regard to the threats from which
believers had to
be protected by the deputies' group that he was coordinating.
"The
persecution of believers and aggressive fighting against God
have existed from
the very moment of the evangelical preaching of Christ. It has
now taken the
form of militant liberalism, the ideology of total consumerism
and secularism,
and globalization American-style."
In another interview the politician was
more specific.
"Today the direct descendents of the revolutionaries are not
those who
respect the memory of Lenin but those who rally on Bolotnaya
Square,"
Gavrilov told the Orthodox newspaper Krestovskii Most in
Occtober 2014.
"It is the radical liberals who have the revolutionary urge to
destruction, to break with traditions, and to disrespect for
sacred things and
our history."
The deputy added that he and his
colleagues of the
Inter-Fractional Group (including Elena Muzulina) "began to work
especially actively after the notorious events in the church of
Christ the
Savior (the punk prayer service by Pussy Riot on 21 February
2012) and they
adopted special statements in defense of traditional
confessions, believers'
rights, increased punishment for pedophilia, and against
totalitarian
sects."
Concerning the threat of the latter,
Gavrilov said in
the name of his colleagues in the Inter-Fractional Group in an
interview back
in 2012: "We think that citizens of the Russian federation
should have the
right to be protected from the violence of destructive sects."
The politician returned to this idea a
year ago,
initiating a draft law regarding the obligatory licensing of
religious
organizations and the creation in the State Duma of a working
group on the
question of combating the development of sectarianism, whose
first session was
held on 24 September 2015, with the participation of
representatives of
Orthodox organizations.
"The primary objective of sects is to
break up
the unity of the world and make people spiritually depressed and
often
extremists," Gavrilov described the situation at this meeting.
"We
view this from the point of view of the spread of neopagan
sects, including
those in the northern Caucasus. It is no accident that many of
these sects
participate in the war againat the civilian population in the
Donbass on the
part of Ukraine. Ukraine has become just an example of the
quasi-free access of
all non-governmental organizations and pseudo-religious
confessions—stadiums
filled with sects. And we see the enslaved population, which is
summoned to
participate actively in the civil war in Ukraine. These
phenomena, financed
from abroad, pose a serious threat, in our view, to the national
security of
Russia."
Then he promised "to develop measures
for heading
off this danger, preventive measures of strict control for
obstructing these
terrible sects from work with the population." However in the
previous
convocation of the State Duma, Gavrilov headed the Committee on
Affairs of
Property and the standing Committee on Affairs of Public
Associations and
Religious Organization was headed by Yaroslav Nilov (LPDR). The
latter spoke
rather critically last year regarding Gavrilov's draft law,
which one can see
at a number of points was similar to the "Yarovaya Package"
adopted
this year with regard to limiting missionary activity of foreign
religious organizations.
In the new convocation of parliament,
this situation
has changed and one may expect from Sergei Anatolievich the
embodiment of the
resolute antisectarian initiatives he earlier announced.
We note separately that on 19 June of this year, on the Feast of Trinity, in the St. Sergius Holy Trinity lavra, Patriarch of Moscow and all-Rus Kirill awarded Sergei Gavrilov a certificate of gratitude for work already conducted within the walls of the Russian parliament. (tr. by PDS, posted 28 September 2016)
RUSSIAN STATE DUMA COMMITTEE ON
RELIGIOUS AFFAIRS TO
BE HEADED BY A COMMUNIST: WHAT IS ONE TO EXPECT?
by Sergei Svetlov
Alive
Faith Media, 27 September 2016
Yesterday, 26 September, at a joint
briefing the
leaders of the Duma parties announced how the management of the
committees will
be distributed.
Thus it was learned that the Committee
on Affairs of
Public Associations and Religious Organizations will be headed
by a
representative of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation
(KPRF).
During the briefing, Gennady Ziuganov
declared that
"there are specialists in the ranks of the party who have great
experience
in these matters." Naturally, after such statements the Internet
flashed
with commentaries about the 70-year experience of the
communists' struggle with
religion.
However, few know that today's
communists not only do
not fight with religion but even consider that the fall of the
USSR occurred particularly
because of the struggle with God. In addition, nowadays
believers are freely
accepted into the ranks of the party and Mr. Ziuganov himself
thinks that the
first socialist was none other than Jesus Christ, whose
commandments are the
prototype of the Code of the Builder of Communism.
Today the KPRF has removed the cloak of
mystery on
this matter, naming as the new head of the Committee on Affairs
of Public
Associations and Religious Organizations Sergei Gavrilov.
It should be noted that Gavrilov really
does have
experience in religious matters: in the previous convocation of
the State Duma,
besides membership on the Committee on Property he also led the
Inter-Fractional
Group for the Defense of Christian Values.
In the Duma of the previous convocation, contacts with religious organizations were overseen by the fraction of the LDPR, in the person of Yaroslav Nilov, who in this convocation will head the Committee on Labor, Social Policy, and Veterans' Affairs. (tr. by PDS, posted 29 September 2016)
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