Copyrighted material. For private use only.
.c The Associated Press
18 February 1999
MOSCOW (AP) -- Local newspapers in Russia's Far East called them a totalitarian sect. A prosecutor accused them of hypnotizing people. Tax police raids and security service interrogations followed.
After a campaign of more than nine months to close down the Word of Life Pentecostalist Church in Magadan, a remote port city on Russia's east coast, 400 of the church's members applied this week for asylum in the United States.
They say their church, which was officially established in 1982 after years operating underground, has been suffering repression reminiscent of the anti- religious drives of the Soviet era.
``For a long time, we believers waited for freedom in Russia. We thought we'd finally have a real opportunity to profess our faith and help people,'' said the church's junior pastor, Alexander Vasilyenko, who was in Moscow to deliver the asylum applications.
``But in a lot of ways, that freedom has turned out to be imaginary,'' said the soft-spoken 26-year-old.
Vasilyenko said he didn't know where he and his congregation wanted to settle in America, though he knew of Pentecostalist churches in Florida where he thought they would be welcome.
The style of worship varies in different Pentecostalist churches. Many worshipers exercise Holy Spririt ``gifts,'' including speaking in tongues, faith healing and modern-day prophecies.
The U.S. Embassy declined to comment on the asylum applications, which are usually handled on a case-by-case basis.
In Russia, where 80 percent of the population belongs to the Orthodox Church, suspicion of minority faiths runs strong and deep.
The prejudice was enshrined in Russia's 1997 law on the freedom of conscience and religious associations, which recognizes Orthodoxy as the nation's leading faith and pledges to respect Islam, Judaism and Buddhism. Other denominations have to prove they've had a presence in Russia for at least 15 years before they're allowed full legal status.
The law gives courts the right to outlaw any religious group that incites hatred or intolerant behavior. That provision has opened the way for the Moscow court case against the Jehovah's Witnesses, who are accused of creating family rifts and threatening lives by pressuring sick people into refusing medical aid.
Human rights advocates say that in contrast to that high-profile trial, most cases of religious rights violations concern bullying and arbitrary decisions by local officials.
But the conflict has gone further in Magadan, a town about 3,700 miles east of Moscow.
In June, a local prosecutor opened a case against the church, accusing its pastors of hypnotizing congregants in order to get donations.
Two months later, the town's mayor gave permission to the local chapter of the neo-fascist Russian National Unity movement to rally outside the church during its Sunday services. Pickets held banners reading ``Death to sect members!'' Vasilyenko recalled.
In December and January, tax police raided the church in the middle of the night and confiscated files, including personal data about the members.
Security officials called congregants in for questioning, and warned some that they would have to choose between their church and their jobs, said Vladimir Ryakhovsky, a lawyer who is representing the church and is co-director of the Slavic Center for Law and Justice, which monitors religious rights violations in Russia.
The court case has been suspended indefinitely.
``This suits the authorities, because each time the church inquires about renting space or other such matters it's told, `We can't do anything until you settle the case,'' Ryakhovsky said.
courtesy of Ray Prigodich
(posted 19 February 1999)
Sects are actively taking advantage of the powerful and unregulated spiritual evolution of Russia
IDEOLOGY APPEALS TO A BUILDING.
A stranger's voice interrupted me as I was studying the store window's beer labels which were urging upon me the most pleasant thought: "Don't let yourself go dry."
"What do you think; who built this building?" a young person with a suspiciously sober appearance asked me, motioning to the grimy decrepit building from the Khrushchev era.
"Well, architects, builders . . .
"That means that someone created our world?"
Having caught on to who it was I was dealing with, I cordially said farewell to the Jehovah's Witness preacher. His colleagues had frequently tried to evangelize me and my family "by the building," but their optimistic sweet talk already had become too painfully tedious for me to give them any attention after work, for which I had not been paid in three months.
Go to the other side of the ledger: recently in Alapaev district of Sverdlovsk region a couple of satanists ritualistically set fire to themselves, and in a small town in Tula region, Severo-Zadonsk, members of a sect of satanists led by the 73-year-old Ziniada Kuzina were convicted; the first victim was her husband, whom the satanists killed.
Whether or not they were satanists is not the point; the main thing is that the fearsome word resounded: "Sect!" In the consciousness of the majority of Russians, sectarians are in the same category as fascists, witches, hitmen, and ghosts, who have been released to sow fear and misery.
ENTRANCE IS FREE; EXIT IS IMPOSSIBLE
I have before me the duma's "Analytical herald," no. 28, containing the report "On the national threat to Russia from destructive religious organizations." It includes, in particular, the claim that "there already are three to five million persons in various newly formed cults, 70 percent of whom are youth between the ages of 18 and 27, 80 percent of the adherents have high school or college education; one million are students, of whom 25-30 percent have dropped out from their studies. Up to 250,000 families have been destroyed, and at least that many underage children have been abandoned by parents who joined a sect. Only one in a thousand have left the sects. It is practically impossible to extract oneself from the sects and those who have returned to their homes are semi-invalids who are incapable of working and studying and they cannot find themselves in life and society. . . . Under the influence of sects, around 100,000 older folk have abandoned their city apartments and, donating their cash to their 'teachers,' they have departed for out-of-the-way places, while they are prohibited from going for medical treatment."
Of course, one can raise doubts--and with good reason--about the figures of this document, which was prepared by analysts of the Liberal Democrat fraction. The ministry of justice had a great laugh when they learned from this report that there were 6,000 sects registered in Russia. According to the ministry's data, in the country 16,000 religious associations have been registered, of which more than 8,000 are societies and parishes of the Russian Orthodox church, 3,000 are Muslim organizations, and then there are Catholics, protestants, Baptists, Buddhists. . . . But it is impossible not to acknowledge that the problem is real and affects hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people. It attracted public attention after a series of great scandals in 1992-1993 associated with the activity of the "White Brotherhood," which was led by the subsequently convicted kandidat of technical sciences Yury Krivonogov and the former Komsomol worker and reporter Marina Tsvigun. The society which had been excited about the return to "spirituality" awoke with a start: it turns out that not every religion leads to good. It was at that time that loud talk began about Scientology and the Unification Church, the Krishnaites, and Aum Shinrikyo. They were reminded that the first person to receive at the highest level the "fervent advocate of common human values" Sun Yen Moon was Mikhail Gorbachev, whose example was followed by other high officials of the capital and colleagues in Krasnoyarsk, Novgorod, Perm, Nizhny Novgorod, Ekaterinburg, and Kemerovo. Sectarians, who often were foreigners, were generously presented with buildings and tax privileges.
WHAT KIND OF A BEAST IS A SECT?
At just that time there broke out a stormy discussion regarding the law "On freedom of conscience" that had been adopted in 1990 and which was considered one of the best in the world by the strictest standards in the area of human rights. In fact, ten people who got together in bowing before a wagon's screech without delay were registered with the ministry of justice, which did not have the right of refusing a "group of ten." Lawyers groaned because of their helplessness: often the worshippers of the wagon's screech began without delay to deal in moonshine and narcotics. The discussion's participants were divided into two camps. Some insisted upon absolute freedom of conscience, which was incompatible with any kind of prohibitions and restrictions. The opponents objected: in the complicated Russian conditions a green light should be given to traditional religions, but for nontraditional religions there should be, at least, a caution light (and for some a red light, for the good of national spirituality). The very concept of the notion of "sect" turned out to be problematic. What kind of a beast was it?
Secular scholarly pedants were unanimous: it is a relatively small religious group existing apart from the basic confession (or confessions) of a country. Theologians had their own approach: a sect is any religious activity that is outside the church and in opposition to it. This definition excludes as sectarians, for example, fans of Tolkein or adherents of Kastenada (who practice, incidentally, a contemporary version of the magical techniques of ancient Mexicans using psychedelic drugs).
The Russian Orthodox church threw into the vanguard of the antisectarian struggle the consultative center of the Holy Martyr Ireneaus of Lyons (a famous medieval student of heresy) of the Department of Religious Education and Catechesis of the Moscow patriarchate, headed by Alexander Dvorkin.
Politicans of various stripes waged a battle for the new version of the law on freedom of conscience which culminated in the adoption in September 1997 of the law "On freedom of conscience and religious associations." It contained two new principles. First, a religious organization was required to submit a certification or recommendation from its central organization (as had earlier been said, "from above"), and in such a case the registration was completed within a month. If there was no such certification or recommendation, the applicant organization had to go through a fifteen-year probationary period: this organization was not forbidden but it was not registered, that is, it would not receive the status of legal entity until the end of the probationary period. The legislature acted in accordance with the resolution of the Parliament of Europe of 12 February 1986 which called everyone to profound caution regarding the new religious organizations. Second, the question of registration or refusal of registration was not to be resolved by bureaucrats but by state specialists in religious studies.
Recently Minister of Justice Pavel Krasheninnikov issued a certificate for registration to the primate of the Russian Orthodox church, Patriarch Alexis II of Moscow and all-Rus. However slowly and tardily, the new law is beginning to take effect. Let's take a look at the future.
WHEN POWER DEPARTED
The position of the government is more or less obvious. More complex is the position and situation of the Russian Orthodox church, which under pressure from society has entered into the struggle with destructive sectarianism. The bishops' council of 1994 declared the excommunication of all members of new religious movements. At the same time the church, which is separated from the state, demanded that the authorities defend Russians from the attack of foreign missionaries and sectarians. Centuries of our history lie behind this paradox. The Russian Orthodox church has considered itself from antiquity to be linked with the state by unbreakable ties of "marriage" and it has never separated itself from the authorities, even if they overpower it by expressing contemporary willful tendencies. In the seventeenth century the metropolitan of Kazan criticized the tsar to his flock, and the tsar sent musketeers to Kazan to pursue the believers for their piety: in order to shave their beards they even invaded the bath rooms. The tsars and grand princes deprived the church of their landholdings, and it remained silent. Tsar Peter the Great required priests to violate the sanctity of the confessional, and the church obeyed. In the eighteenth century church property was secularized, but whereas in Europe this happened at the beginning of the Reformation, in Russia secularization was essentially a book-keeping operation.
Soon after his forced emigration from USSR, in an interview with the New York Times Alexander Solzhenitsyn essentially condemned the excessive loyalty of the Russian Orthodox church to the soviet regime: in contrast with the Polish Catholic church, RPTs did not dare to become a support or hope for believers under the totalitarian state. So now the patriarchate again summoned the aid of the municipal authorities: sectarians and foreign missionaries are raiding believers. But the state is called to care for citizens, not believers; the church is called to care for them, apart from the state.
Addressing a parliamentary hearing of the German Bundestag devoted to the international aspects of the activity of so-called sects and psychogroups, the above-mentioned Alexander Dvorkin said: "After all who would argue against the idea that communism is a religious doctrine of a sectarian type. Therefore, when it was destroyed in USSR, people began to fill the spiritual vacuum with new content. This was exacerbated by the profound religious illiteracy of our people. Many did not have the opportunity to discover for themselves the Orthodox church, which had been extremely weakened by seventy years of persecution and needed time for recovery. New sects found many people before the church managed to do so."
We won't deal with the question why this was the case for the Orthodox, but not for Catholics, protestants, Jews, or Muslims (who also were greatly weakened by seventy years of persecution). But here the question about this spiritual, ideological vacuum which has been so exaggerated in recent years still evokes (at least in me) irritation. When I hear this regular talk about a "vacuum," and when calls resound to fill it with some new national ideology embracing Orthodox values (this in a country with millions of Muslims!), I always suspect that there is some charletan at work. Do they really not understand or know that for millions of soviet people communism never was an ideology or an important spiritual essence for life? Communism was power, but it definitely was not an ideology or even a religion. People praised communism because they had to.
But now authority has departed. The teacher has left the class. What should the pupils do? Freedom, it turns out, is strange. Nobody prescribes how one should live, but the question for everyone is how. The spiritual, not the ideological, crisis is obvious. The setting corresponds: a new advent of mysticism. Look at the book stalls. Hundreds, if not thousands, of titles--astrology, palmreading, works of Hermes Trismegist and his adherents, Rerikh, Blavatskaia,, Stirner, and the like. Resuscitation of the dead by telepathy, astrological forecasts, appeal to the Lion, not the Virgin.
The old order of things and manners has been shrugged off finally and irrevocably. Earlier there was some kind of clarity: "The plans of the party are the plans of the people." Now let it make the same plans and then answer for them. Now it must plan from day to day for itself and its associates and answer for the results to itself and only to itself. Is this some kind of joke? It is not a matter of a search for a new ideology or ideologies--they take shape and emerge continuously and, if one can say so, in a partial way, in time joining into community, united by common interests and goals. There are thousands of prescriptions for surmounting the hills and mounds covered by the clouds of Russia's history. And the "de-ideoligized" masses stir about, in pairs or alone--some go to the church with its age-old traditions, discipline, and hierarchy, some to occultism, palmreading, and astrology, and some in the end go to the sects with their strict, sometimes despotic, leaders and gurus, who know with certainty how one must live, beget, sow, vote, and exchange dollars for rubles for the benefit of the guru himself.
HORSEMEN OF DEATH
All of this has been imposed upon the particulars of the Russian nation, whose culture from the start has been spiritual, while communal life ceased to be an illusion some century and a half ago, when living people stopped selling in the markets. And then Stalin and his comrades exerted great energies to force presumptuous individualists back into the artificial community. Thousands of Lukich's statutes stand in the central squares of all cities. And the mausoleum sits at the center of the earth, with the corpse which was "more alive than all the living." What kind of world did we live in at that time? The medieval Polotsk chronicle described with horror the murder of living people by the horsemen of death--ghosts. The personification of destructive forces. Who could have imagined that it could reach completely beyond the bounds of the Russian consciousness, Russian politics?
Historical analogies have their dangers, but also their uses. When at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of twentieth centuries there arose an enormous spiritual crisis, the official Orthodox church, according to the data of Paul Miliukov, comprised more than 20 million believers. Some went into Old Belief, but at the same time there arose hundreds of larger and smaller sects: Shtundists and Baptists, Elders and Wanderers, Khlysts and Dukhobors, Silent Ones and Hermits, Skoptsy and Jumpers, Hallucinators and Chermeks. Their quests for "the Christian within Christianity" attracted the attention of Merezhkovsky and Gorky, Prishvin and Tsvetaeva, Berdiaev and Blok. However this mighty spirtual ferment, which in its time changed the spiritual map of western Europe, disappeared into the earth in Russia: bolsheviks offered to peoples of all confessions a universal faith, an ideology, which suited Orthodox, Muslims, Jews, and heathen, and effectively baked the cake for a soviet nation. The product was inedible, but it fit in all other respects (as we managed to convince ourselves) our own hides and stomachs. The tsar, father, sovereign, the most important figure of the semipatriarchal society was replaced by the generalisimo.
The 1990s, with perestroika, glasnost, and other novelties along with the bombardment of the parliament, evoked within society confusion and vacillation, but most important they destroyed the image of the Sovereign-Father on all levels: from the leader of the almighty state to the average family. The head of the family lost authority and his word ceased to be law for the majority of youth and his behavior ceased to be an example: "Imagine how you work hard all your life and even at your grave you get nothing." The truth of this is confirmed by the growth of drug addiction among children, which has increased by 800 percent since 1994.
And another problem is important--the obvious crisis phenomena in the traditional confessions themselves. Although less noted in Islam, they have evoked storms within Orthodoxy and Catholicism. Should the language of the liturgy be made contemporary? Should Catholic priests be permitted to marry? Can women be admittted to the ministry of deaconess? How should one view Latin American priests carrying machine guns to fight against tyranny and the drug cartels? Can the numerous Orthodox churches operating on the canonical Russian territory ever find a common language? The answers to most of the questions are the prerogative of theologians. But while the scholars dispute, people believe. How, and in what, is another question. For example, in the wagon's screech. The most influential force, the Russian Orthodox church, has still not put forward a philosophical or social doctrine which would either force it to distance itself from the secular problems faced by millions of its parishioners, or engage it tightly in the affairs of the wagon's screech.
Someone has noted that the spiritual state of contemporary Russia somewhat recalls the torrid spiritual atmosphere of the Jews of the first century with its fervent expectation of the Savior, Messiah. Analogies, I repeat, are a dangerous matter, but we today are dealing with a powerful and unregulated spiritual evolution in Russia, which is seeking self-identification: who am I? why am I? where am I going? In this setting the weakness of the Orthodox missionary movement is especially noteworthy, against which not only Catholics and protestants, but also representatives of exotic sects and groups that are completely new to Russia are striving to compete. (tr. by PDS)
(posted 19 February)
MOSCOW, Feb 18 (Reuters) - Russia's top clergyman, Patriarch Alexiy II of the Orthodox Church who celebrated his 70th birthday on Thursday, issued a defence of a controversial law on religion and warned of threats from ``spiritually alien'' cults.
In an interview with Itar-Tass news agency, Alexiy also welcomed what he called Russia's ``second baptism'' -- the revival of the Orthodox Church since the demise of the officially atheist Soviet state in 1991.
``I believe in our people, in its spiritual powers and mind, in its age-old devotion to spiritual and cultural tradition,'' he was quoted as saying.
``We have to make the faith the centre of thoughts, feelings and deeds of any person who wants to be an Orthodox Christian.''
But Alexiy, known for his tough line on non-traditional faiths, made clear Orthodoxy should enjoy precedence over other Christian confessions. ``The church's renaissance is just beginning,'' he told the agency.
``The Patriarch could not fail to note there is a certain danger from pseudo-religions, from spiritually alien 'conquistadors' who are ruining, willingly or unwillingly, the spiritual integrity of Russian society,'' Tass said.
Alexiy said Russia's 1997 law ``On freedom of conscience and religious organisations,'' condemned as discriminatory, by human rights groups, the United States and the Vatican, had not fully eradicated the threat of such ``alien'' religions.
But he added that the law did help the nation to ``protect itself against attempts to impose an alien will on it.''
The law, which identifies Orthodox Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Judaism as Russia's traditional faiths, requires religious groups to re-register by a December 1999 deadline and sets a 15-year waiting term for those deemed ``non-traditional.''
Unregistered groups lack full legal rights and cannot conduct missionary or educational work. The law gives the courts the right to disband any religious group they find guilty of inciting hatred or intolerant behaviour.
The influential Orthodox Church and many of its defenders among parliamentarians and top officials say the law is needed to halt the spread of dangerous sects trying to exploit a spiritual vacuum left after the fall of the Soviet Union.
But critics accuse the church, still rebuilding itself after decades of official harassment and persecution, of wanting to monopolise Russia's spiritual life. They say the law breaches Russia's constitution, which proclaims a secular state where all religions are equal.
A case has been filed under the new law against the Jehovah's Witnesses in Moscow. Prosecutors want to ban the group, saying it breaks up families and sows religious hatred.
Other religious groups have come under pressure since the new law was passed and often face similar accusations of anti-social activity and brainwashing naive Russians.
Copyright 1999 Reuters Limited.
(posted 18 February 1999)
The prosecutor's office sent a fax to the judge 45 minutes after today's session in the trial of Jehovah's Witnesses in Moscow was to begin, saying that they could not send a representative to court. It was signed by A.V. Viktorov, chief prosecutor for the Northern Administrative Circuit. While expressing concern over the need for a speedy trial, Judge Yelena Prokhorycheva allowed a recess until 10 a.m. Monday.
The trial was already postponed in November 1998 to allow the prosecution
two months to gather evidence. "The accusations against us are simply
not true," said Vasilii Kalin, director of the Witnesses' Administrative
Center in St. Petersburg. "We are concerned that this delay is just
another excuse to manufacture evidence through a smear campaign."
On Wednesday, the prosecutor questioned the defense on the evidence
presented Tuesday. Most of the prosecutor's questions were on obscure
points of doctrine or church procedure and were not allowed by the judge.
The prosecutor again on Wednesday asked the judge to excuse herself for
bias in behalf of the defense.
The prosecution seems to have thought that Jehovah's Witnesses should be banned just because the prosecution wants it, said A.V. Leontyev, with the defense team. "We have yet to see real evidence from them at the trial."
This trial is the first time the 1997 Russian Federation law on religion is being tested in court. Many human rights groups and other governments see the trial as a test of freedom of religion and belief in Russia. Jehovah's Witnesses have been in Russia for more than 100 years.
Detailed information on the Moscow trial can be found at www.jw-russia.org. The text of this release is posted on worldnews.lbtech.com.
(posted 18 February 1999)
JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES ON TRIAL IN MOSCOW FACE BAN
First test in court of a 1997 law requiring nontraditional religions to meet tough standards for recognition.
Fred Weir Special to The Christian Science Monitor
MOSCOW
Religious pluralism is under attack in a cramped suburban courtroom here, where a judge is considering the case for banning a sect whose beliefs and practices are foreign to Russian tradition.
Human rights lawyers for the defendants, the Moscow congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses, say the trial is a litmus test of the potential for genuine freedom of conscience in post-Soviet Russia.
"The law is being used as a weapon to harass and oppress all minority faiths in Russia," says John Burns, a Canadian trial lawyer representing the group against charges that they foment religious discord, destroy families, and incite people to commit suicide. The case is the first courtroom test of a 1997 law that defined four "traditional" Russian religions - Orthodox Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, and Islam - and set tough conditions for any outside faiths to obtain legal recognition.
The legislation has been widely criticized for effectively setting up the Russian Orthodox Church - which lobbied heavily for it - as the official state religion.
"In the hands of unscrupulous leaders this law could definitely be used to enforce ideological and religious purity," says Geraldine Fagen, Moscow director of the Keston Institute, which monitors religious freedom in post-Communist countries.
Through most of Russian history, church and state have been inextricably linked, with their joint purposes tending to define the limits of "Russian-ness." Soviet leaders attempted to eliminate the church and replace its role with the Communist Party and its ideology.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, the new Russia's leaders pledged to chart a course to modern, democratic, secular statehood. But those promises appear increasingly dubious as President Boris Yeltsin's troubled government slides into the embrace of religious nationalism. "There is a visible reversion taking place," says Ms. Fagen. "The move has been to decrease religious freedom in Russia."
The law requires any "nontraditional" religion seeking to function in Russia to undergo 15 years probation, during which it is forbidden to own property, hold a bank account, publish literature, proselytize, or invite foreign preachers into the country. "It's basically a Catch-22," says Fagen. "The authorities say they will only register religions that are solidly rooted in Russia, but the law prohibits outside faiths from doing all the things necessary to establish themselves," she says.
Mr. Burns says several religious groups will launch a challenge to the 15-year rule in Russia's Constitutional Court.
The Jehovah's Witnesses, who claim 10,000 members in Moscow and 250,000 across Russia, were registered under the Soviet-era religion law but were ordered to go through the process again. Last autumn the Moscow city prosecutor moved to block their application, acting on a complaint from a shadowy organization linked to the Russian Orthodox Church, the Committee for the Salvation of Youth. If accepted by Judge Yelena Prokhorcheva, the indictment will result in the group being banned in Moscow in perpetuity.
Mr. Burns says he is hopeful, but warns that under Russian rules the prosecutor has the power to keep the case against the group going indefinitely, even if it is repeatedly thrown out of court. And he points out that even a high-profile victory in Moscow may not prevent local prosecutors from harassing or banning groups that don't conform to official expectations.
"At the bottom, it's about control," Mr. Burns says. "The Russian government sees religion not as a matter of private conscience but as an expression of obedience to the state, or at the very least not anything different or threatening."
(posted 19 February 1999)
When Madeline Albright came to Russia, she expressed concern that Jehovah's
Witnesses are being restricted in our country. Albright has left,
and the Witnesses are still being tried. I would be interested in
knowing whether in USA any religious organizations are forbidden?
L. Fediakin. Moscow region
On 9 February in Golovin court of the capital a hearing on the case for liquidation of the Moscow congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses was resumed. But there is in this matter nothing about restriction of faith. The suit contains points about encouraging suicide, compulsory breakup of the family, and enticing minors. There is not even any issue about prohibition of the organization but only about depriving it of the status of a religion, after which it would have to pay taxes on its enormous publishing activity. Jehovah's Witnesses are recognized as a nonreligious organization in many countries of Europe: Austria, Germany, Belgium, Spain, Portugal. In USA generally there is no such concept as a "religious organization." There the issue comes down to whether you pay taxes or are exempt from taxes. (tr. by PDS)
(posted 18 February 1999)
Despite claims that the Russian Orthodox Church has no involvement with the trial to ban Jehovah's Witnesses in Moscow, some 50 Orthodox supporters filled the courthouse today. They included priests, fatigue-clad members of the Church's private military force, and a number of followers who read from prayer books, held up icons and made the sign of the cross.
The defense team attacked the prosecutor's charges, calling them a rehash of Soviet propaganda and shameful to modern Russia. For example, the charge that Jehovah's Witnesses cause harm to families because they don't celebrate all holidays is the same one that was used against Jehovah's Witnesses by the Nazis in 1933 and the Soviets in 1951, said Russian human rights attorney Galina Krylova. Krylova chided the prosecution for its lack of originality.
"Did you copy your charges from the Soviet documents?" Krylova asked the prosecution. "I am ashamed as a Russian citizen to hear what is going on in a courtroom in 1999."
While the prosecution's case was built around out-of-context excerpts from the religious publications of Jehovah's Witnesses, the defense cited scholarly works, scientific studies, international and Russian law, and the Holy Bible. For example, a study prepared by the Institute of Religion and Law for the Duma Committee on Religious Associations showed that the faith of Jehovah's Witnesses encourages strong family ties.
Showing that, contrary to the prosecution charge, Jehovah's Witnesses seek appropriate medical care, Russian defense attorney Artur Leontyev entered as evidence the analysis of several top Russian physicians. Citing the problems with Russia's blood supply, these doctors encouraged the avoidance of blood transfusions. Leontyev asked how Jehovah's Witnesses could be considered unreasonable for refusing blood transfusions in favor of nonblood medicine when Russian doctors are encouraging it.
Rebutting the charge that Jehovah's Witnesses promote religious intolerance, Leontyev cited a psychological study performed by Victor Kagan, a doctor and director of Academic Programs under the Russian Academy of Education. The study showed that among those surveyed, there was a greater level of tolerance for others of differing beliefs after a person became one of Jehovah's Witnesses.
Detailed information on the Moscow trial can be found at www.jw-russia.org. The text of this release is posted on worldnews.lbtech.com. For more information on Jehovah's Witnesses, visit www.watchtower.org.
(posted 17 February 1999)
A secret Soviet-era document uncovered in Estonia suggests that Patriarch Alexy II, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church and spiritual leader of tens of millions of Christians, was a fully fledged KGB agent.
Accusations that Alexy, elected Patriarch in 1990, co-operated closely with the KGB under the code name Drozdov (thrush), have circulated since a parliamentary commission was allowed a brief look at secret police files in Moscow in 1991.
But the Estonian text is the first publicly available document to support the theory that Alexy was more than a mere collaborator and that from 1958 he was an active agent, using the KGB as a career ladder at a time when the secret police persecuted organised religion.
The Russian Orthodox Church claims the document is a forgery but has made no attempt to disprove its authenticity. The Patriarch has made no comment.
"As far as I understand, what's being said is that someone, somewhere, brought out into the open some kind of paper carrying neither the Patriarch's signature nor reliable information that he had any kind of involvement in this sort of activity," said a church spokesman, Father Vsevolod Chaplin.
Yet the evidence, in the 1958 annual report of the Estonian branch of the KGB, which was left behind in Tallinn when the Soviet authorities pulled out of the newly independent country in 1991, is compelling. The typewritten report carries the legend "Top Secret Ekz. No. 2 Series K" and the title Summary of operational intelligence work by the 4th department of the KGB in the Council of Ministers of the Estonian SSR in 1958.
On page 125 is a short account of the recruitment, in that year, of a young Orthodox priest given the codename Drozdov. The agent is not named, but key points coincide with Alexy's life.
Like the Patriarch, Drozdov was born in Tallinn in 1929, spoke fluent Russian and Estonian, was a doctor of theology and was serving as an Orthodox priest in Estonia in 1958. Drozdov, who impressed the KGB with his eagerness, discretion and lively, forthcoming manner, began his career as an agent by providing information on a corrupt priest at a church in the town of Jyhvi.
The Patriarch was the rector of the Church of the Epiphany in Jyhvi from 1950 until 1957. By 1961 he had become the Bishop of Tallinn and Estonia aged only 32. The 1958 KGB report on Drozdov said his promotion to this post was "considered".
In the same year that he became a bishop, Alexy's rapid rise within the World Council of Churches began - the very course the KGB planned for Drozdov.
Indrek Jürjo, the Estonian historian who investigated the KGB report, said: "It must be him. There were very few priests of the Orthodox Church here at that time. The description, the age - it fits."
This material is subject to copyright and any unauthorised use, copying or mirroring is prohibited.
(posted 16 February 1999)
Today is the first day of Maslenitsa
by Sergei Domnin
Segodnia, 15 February 1999
Winter has barely established its rights to exist and the time has come for it to leave. As of today, Maslenitsa has begun. According to the "ritual" system emerging fairly recently it has assumed the place of the holiday of Russian winter although actually this custom has profound religious roots. As the rector of one of Moscow's churches explained to us, the week that is called by people Maslenitsa more correctly is named "cheese week." In contemporary Russian language this means the week, that is, six weekdays, which precede the Great Fast [Lent]. Maslenitsa week moves about the calendar as Paskha [Easter] does. From Paskha the days of the Great Fast are counted back and then a week before this Maslenitsa begins.
Maslenitsa is not a holiday in its religious essence. It has been made this more by the national consciousness. Really it is a week which rather prepares people for the Great Fast. During Maslenitsa, meat is not eaten; that is, a kind of semi-fast is observed. During this time traditionally pancakes are baked, fish is cooked, sour cream, butter, and milk are eaten, in a word, everything except meat. On the contrary, on Wednesday and Friday of Maslenitsa certain restrictions on simple food (milk, eggs) that apply to these days ordinarily are lifted. thus this weeks is called an uninterrupted week. The slight relaxation serves as a kind of consolation before the Great Fast. Few know that according to church law during the course of the day on Wednesday and Friday one is not supposed to eat, but one may eat only in the evening, although practically nobody observes this now.
Maslenitsa is celebrated because the Russian people were trained in the monastic rules, laws, and principles, but very many items in Christianity have been "paganized." This pagan seal, the seal of sin, the seal of passion lies also on the popular image of Maslenitsa. Many people who do not have church training and consecration, eating up before the fast, celebrate maslenitsa with parties, lavish drinking, and gluttony. Such conduct does not coincide with the church's teaching about Maslenitsa. It should be observed in a conscientious Christian way, trying to attend church more often. During this week the services begin in a manner more characteristic for the fast, with great prostrations.
The Saturday which falls in Maslenitsa is marked as a day of remembrance of all ancestors and of those distinguished by spiritual accomplishment. This is directly connected with the Great Fast. Believers recall those who through the long history of the Russian church were accomplished in fasting and prayer and they recall the heroes of the spirit who demonstrated how one should conduct the fast and perform what is called asceticism, the science of the spiritual accomplishment, rational restraint, and transformation of the soul.
The last day of Maslenitsa is the day of Adam's grief and church singing recalls the expulsion of Adam from Paradise. As is known, the cause of the expulsion was the fall into sin. Adam's grief for the lost paradise is the grief of all humanity, including those of the present time who again are trying to be united with God.
The climax of Maslenitsa is Forgiveness Sunday. This is the day for Christians to ask for forgiveness and to repent together, to be reconciled so that they can begin without anger and hatred in their souls the spiritual accomplishments of repentance during the Great Fast with a peaceful state of spirit. (tr. by PDS)
(posted 15 February 1999)
PAGAN PANCAKE FEST READIES RUSSIA FOR LENT
by Peter Henderson
MOSCOW, Feb 19 (Reuters) - One is a blin, two are bliny and any of the famous pancakes cooked by a real Russian grandmother are delicious.
That becomes clear to millions of Russians this week during pagan celebrations marking the end of winter, which the Orthodox Church has accommodated as a week of feasting before Lent.
The winter snow is unlikely to melt for some weeks in many parts of Russia, but the celebrations mean seven days of walks through the snow, visiting relatives and gobbling piles of thin pancakes, usually made by the family's grandmother, or babushka.
Bliny are Russian pancakes with a slightly sour taste and the thickness of a few playing cards, accompanied by caviar or indeed almost any other filling on hand, from jam to sour cream and salmon.
The light brown bliny are shaped like small suns, accounting for their central role in pre-Christian festivals of the end of winter, when the returning sun brightens the sky.
CHRISTIANITY TAKES ON PAGAN FUN
Christianity came to Russia near the end of the first Christian millennium, long after Slav peasants began working the land.
Paganism took hold in Russia as early as the second century AD and Maslenitsa, a shortened form of the Russian for ``butter week,'' was first mentioned in the sixth century, said Larisa Zhigaitsova, a Russian history teacher at Moscow State University.
Each of the seven days had a purpose and a name such as Flirting Day, when couples wooed each other over a warm pancake, and Sweet Tooth, when mothers-in-law invited daughters-in-law over for bliny, an invitation reciprocated later in the week.
The week, which this year finishes on Sunday, ends with more bliny and the ritual burning of a straw puppet symbolising winter, the ashes of which are spread on the fields to assure fertility ahead of spring planting.
Christian missionaries facing such fun had a clever strategy to ween the Slavs from paganism, Zhigaitsova said.
``The Church knew that it could not completely destroy those festivals, and so it made sure many Church holidays fell at the same time as traditional holidays.''
Maslenitsa was traditionally celebrated at the end of March at the equinox, when the day has finally become equal to the night and peasants could think about spring planting.
Now it falls during cheese week, a build-up to Lent's seven weeks of self-denial before Easter, said Viktor Malyukhin, a spokesman for the Russian Orthodox Church.
``Maslenitsa is a folk holiday which falls at the same time on the holy calendar as cheese week, the last week before Lent when you can eat butter, eggs, sour cream,'' he said.
Coincidentally, bliny are made of milk and eggs and are generally smeared liberally with sour cream. THE FIRST BLIN IS ALWAYS A MESS
Russian popular culture owes a lot to the blin and its sidekick, butter.
``You cannot spoil porridge with butter,'' a Russian cook might say, meaning one cannot have too much of a good thing, while she slapped butter between layers of a stack of bliny.
``Akh, blin!'' another might cry, using a popular euphemism for a strong and similar sounding curse, as she took a turn at the frying pan and watched a lovely pancake degenerate into a half-cooked ball of dough.
``The first blin is always a mess,'' the cook might respond, as would any Russian urging another who did not succeed at first to try, try again.
But the secret to a delicious blin is widely held to be beyond technique as befits its cultural role.
``Babushkas probably make better ones because they put their souls into it. Contemporary chefs are more, well, superficial,'' said Tatyana Kalashnikova, the 45-year-old cook at St Petersburg's Literaturnoe Kafe (Literary Cafe)
Alexander Pushkin, Russia's national poet, reportedly made his last stop at the cafe before going to a fatal duel in 1837.
Kalashnikova's bliny have the slightly chewy texture and satisfying heft one might want for a last meal, though at the time Russia's Western-oriented capital, St Petersburg, and the cafe itself, probably snubbed the humble Russian blin. THE RECIPE
Real old fashioned bliny are made with buckwheat flour, which gives the pancakes a zip, Kalashnikova said.
``Blini from buckwheat flour are darker -- wheat and buckwheat are completely different cereals. A blin from buckwheat is a more expressive blin, more piquant.''
She uses buckwheat during Maslenitsa but admits to using, and preferring, regular flour the rest of the year.
Here is how she prepares for the crowds:
``The process -- we take warm milk, then sift some flour. We dissolve sugar and salt to taste in the warm milk, add an egg, yeast, then mix in the flour and put aside to rise about 30 minutes. When it has risen, we start making bliny.''
A half litre of milk (two cups), 350 grams of flour (12 ounces or 1-3/4 cups) and one egg make 20 bliny, enough for a hungry family.
There should be about 1/2 teaspoon each of sugar and salt. Some cooks separate the eggs and fold beaten egg whites in at the end.
``Cook in a very hot pan -- we have a special frying pan for bliny and nothing else, so that the bliny are easy to take out of the pan,'' Kalashnikova says.
Oil the pan before pouring in batter, swirling it a bit to get a round shape six to eight inches across. Babushkas oil the pan by dipping half a peeled potato, stuck on the end of a fork, into some oil and then rubbing it in the pan.
Flip the blin when bubbles rise through the batter, as it turns light brown and becomes easy to separate from the pan.
Stack on a plate and with butter between layers so they do not stick together. ``On the side we serve (smoked) fish, caviar, honey, sour cream, jam, butter -- whatever you want,'' Kalashnikova said.
(posted 19 February 1999)
All last week in Golovin district municipal court of Moscow the hearing of the civil case brought by the procurator of the northern administrative district of the capital for prohibiting the activity of the Moscow congregation of the "Jehovah's Witnesses" religious organization was conducted. By decision of Judge Elena Prokhorocheva reporters were not allowed into the sessions; indeed the premises in which the hearing was conducted barely accommodated twenty persons. We recall that the case was brought at the request of the public organization "Committee for Protection of Youth from Totalitarian Sects," which had accused the Jehovists of inciting national hostility, destruction of the family, infringement on the person, rights, and freedom of citizens, refusal of blood transfusions, and enticing minors into the activity of the organization. In the course of the trial representatives of "Jehovah's Witnesses" petitioned for the removal of Prokhorocheva, accusing her of partiality, but this petition was denied. Although the court did satisfy their petition and denied the Committee for Protection of Youth the right of participation in the case as a third party, because its charter did not include the right of representing the interests of other citizens in judicial cases. No final decision of the case was reached. (tr. by PDS)
(posted 15 February 1999)
From 10 to 13 January in the city of Belokurikh, Altai territory, with the blessing of the most holy patriarch of Moscow and all-Rus, Alexis II, the Orthodox Siberian International Scholarly and Practical Conference, "Totalitarian Sects in Siberia," was held. This was really the first genuinely representative and serious forum devoted to the extremely important issue which already has penetrated Siberian territory. Seventy-two participants attended the conference, including laity and clergy from ten dioceses of the Russian Orthodox church, specifically Bishop Antony of Barnaul and Altai. The administration of Altai territory was represented by A.V. Bronnikova, advisor on matters of religion to the head of the administration; Altai State University was represented by kandidat of history V.Ya Barkalov, the chair of the department of political science and kandidat of philosophy M.M. Volobtsova, chair of the department of theology; federal security and internal affairs for Altai territory were represented by officials responsible for relations with religious organizations. The Center of the Holy Martyr Irenaeus of Lyon (Moscow), the Center of Holy Prince Alexander Nevsky (Novosibirsk), and the International Dialogue Center (Orkhus, Denmark) also participated in the work of the conference. It is especially appropriate to note the participation of two foreign guests, Professor Ogord, president of the International Dialogue Center, and Pastor Romas Gandou, vice president of the Dialogue center. Their presence and participation in the conference not only gave it an international character but also demonstrated to the Russian participants the solidarity of traditional cultural educational Christian churches in the face of the common danger that is being produced by the new forms of pseudoreligious education of totalitarian movements.
In the three days of the work of the conference, more than thirty-five reports were presented regarding various aspects of the activity of totalitarian sects and destructive cults in Siberia and throughout Russia, as well as in other countries and about the issues associated with them, including laws on freedom of conscience in Russia and various countries of the world and methods of working to resist sectarianism and practical advice.
The reports dealt, in particular, with such sects as Scientology, Unification Church of Moon, Society of Krishna Consciousness, the neocharismatic movement "Word of Life," various neo-pagan sects and movements, and pseudo-Christian sects that have grown up domestically. Many of the reports evoked lively discussion.
An important role in the conduct of the conference was played by Archpriest Sergei Khodakovsky, rector of the Saint Panteleimon church of Belokurikha, who assumed full responsibility for the organizational aspect and a substantial portion of the material expenses associated with the conference.
The conference adopted a broad concluding document, which clearly and unequivocally expressed the attitude of the Orthodox church and all right-thinking forces of our society toward various totalitarian sects and movements which have buffeted our country. Many of the sects were named in this document specifically. "The experience of Russia has shown that a country in which Christian spirituality has been destroyed will be subjected to the danger of the development of the most primitive pagan superstitions and practices, both those which arise within it and those that are imported," the declaration says. "We recognize sadly that those groups of pwople who departed from Christ in western countries not have transferred the preaching of their neo-pagan and occultic doctrines to Russia. We have witnessed that the activity of totalitarian sects and preaching of their members that is unrestricted by legislation have an unconcealed character of expansion, directed to the undermining of the security, civil peace, and all structures of the Russian state."
In the recommendations of the conference the wish was expressed that in all Siberian diocesan administrations there be created informational and consultation centers for gathering and distributing information about totalitarian sects operating on the territory of the diocese. Also expressed was the desire that such forums be a regular occurrence in Siberian territory. The second conference is being planned for Novosibirsk in approximately a year. (tr. by PDS) [Dvorkin is the director of the St. Irenaeus of Lyons Center]
(posted 15 February 1999)
From age to age the hunt for heretics goes on in our society
The leader of our liberal democrats and his party girlfriend Nina Viktorovna Krilevskaia report, for example, that on Kamchatka the Jehovah's Witnesses are making money by the primordial oldest profession and turning the money over to the Jehovist association. In the process and, one should suggest, intentionally they reward the sailors they seduce with foul diseases.
Crusade
Candidate of philosophy Irina Alexandrovna Galitskaia, who is the director of the religious studies group of the Institute for the Development of Personality of the Russian Academy of Education identifies in the religious teaching of these Witnesses a kind of Shigalevshchina, at first plunging society into a frenzy and then two or three significant acts of terrorism. Besides this, as a good woman, she is concerned that this filthy faith has its roots not in some tender heart of Riazan territory but in the completely alien ground of the state of Pennsylvania and that the sectarian leaders located in USA can easily exploit the deceived Russian citizens for undermining our national security. "They must be prohibited," she said with all her heart. And that is not all.
Should we report to you the opinion of an important person, the director of the administration of the domestic policies of the administration of the president of Russia, Andrei Viktorovich Loginov? I won't hide it: he has a frightful attitude about sectarians. In a word, they are monsters, beasts, and perverts. I understood Loginov to be saying that these enemies of the human race do nothing to protect a decent girl or woman, a mother, and, as horrible as it is to say, they force innocent children to serve their base passions. And if any one of their followers tries to break out of the murky religious underground into the fresh air of Orthodoxy or, even worse, Judaism, then it's all over. A bullet in the head or a noose around the neck--Mr. Loginov spares us the details, but he is 100 percent sure; they murder.
Does one report the main line of the Leninist communist party of the Russian federation, which always is combating the opium of the people? Its research center has pummeled the sects, but not at all because they, so to speak, are sitting on a pin and are trying to give quite rational citizens access to it. No. The research center has a broadly bolshevik point of view and argues that the issue is not opium as such but that the sectarians have a different kind of opium, unlike that which for a thousand years has met the needs of real Russian people. Hence, it is (I quote) "undermining the spiritual foundation of the Russian people."
Really, there is reason to be filled with great anxiety. My poor fatherland, why are you surrendering to evil forces? Motherland, why are you not upset about the intrusion of adherents of an American faith? It seems to me that one name is whispered in response, repeated like a mantra: "Bring Dvorkin; call for Dvorkin."
The biography of Alexander Leonidovich Dvorkin, the defender of piety, the hammer against the Jehovists and similar garbage, which has been distributed by the Irenaeus of Lyons Center, of which he is the head, describes a complex and glorious fate. As a youth he shook the dust of the totalitarianism of his homeland from his feet and crossed the ocean as a political (!) emigrant. He married an American citizen and became himself a full-blooded American. Regarding his marriage his biography is silent, out of some apparently false modesty, although there is nothing shamful in it; even saints had wives. Returning seven years ago to his paternal home, Dvorkin wisely maintained his adherence to the stars-and-stripes and his American passport. He is quite right: can one really take citizenship in a country in which power could fall into the hands of Jehovists, or Krishnaists, or even Antichrist himself who is personified as a student studying the principles of Doctor Moon.
Dvorkin was not the first in our homeland to accuse the sectarians of violent actions. He was the first to blame them with inciting murder. And finally he was the first to manage to penetrate the inner sancta of these Witnesses, Krishnaists, Moonists, and Mormons, and their cold-blooded attempt to seize governmental power in Russia.
However in everything that Dvorkin and those who think like he does swear to, there is not a single word of truth.
He is lyingwhen he assumes the crown of thorns of a political emigrant. He left the Soviet Union for Israel. I don't care what kind of blood he has--Tatar, Persian, or Eskomo. A Jew is a Jew; Israel is Israel. There's no need to lie.
He is lying when he declares that our law "On Freedom of Conscience" of 1990 was an American version, even though there simply is not any similar law in USA.
He is lying when he reports to an anxious society about the 250,000 families destroyed by sectarians. I called an agent of the Russian procuracy who should have access to such data. He referred me to Professor Nikolai Antonovich Trofimchuk, the head of the department of religious studies of the Academy of State Services. The professor answered that no such statistics exist and Dvorkin is "making them up."
He is lying when he accuses the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Society of Krishna Consciousness, the Unification Church, the Church of Scientology, and other religious associations of crimes against the individual and state security. There is not a single instance of criminal behavior; there only is wretched and evil fabrication
Return to paradise
Believe me: acquaintance with the life and works of Mr. Dvorkin did not give me the least comfort. This study in the end gave an impression that you have literally swallowed some kind of evil and turned yourself inside out. But at the same time you begin slowly to realize that he has not operated in a vacuum and that you must realize that within the enigmatic Russian soul there are some strings on which this man is able to play with his skillful hands.
In the fate of our wayward fatherland and, it turns out, in our common fate there is a certain tragic nexus. Having received the heritage of Vladimir Monomakh's "Testament," which urged his children and the whole nation to conquer their enemies "by good deeds, repentance, tears, and kindness," it brushed it aside, like a children's fairy tale, but although it treated Ivan the Terrible with awe, honoring him at times for the excesses of the oprichniki and at other times for those who were tried and martyred by him, whom he piously enrolled in the synodik, and then at other times for Metropolitan Filipp (Kolychev) who was killed upon his wish and who fearlessly denounced the bloody occupations of the tsar. While it has in its roll of saints the great elder Nil of Sora, who was a convinced opponent of the use of force in matters of faith, it honors more Joseph of Volotsk, who approved prescribing the trusty drugs for every "heretic" for his final spiritual healing--the bonfire or the executioner's block. Although it possessed a marvelous treasury of Christian love, it locked it away tightly and undertook to persecute Old Believers with unheardof brutality.
Church and state, hand in hand, tried so persistently and ardently to exterminate from the national soul any tendency toward diversity of religious thought that one can imagine that Russia never knew any more important task. Meanwhile all of the enormous and bloody work during the course of centuries drained Russia morally but turned out, in substance, to be completely fruitless. At the beginning of the present century the country had from 20 to 35 million schismatics, people who had separated themselves from state Orthodoxy and belonged either to the Old Believers or some other of the "sects."
No single state (even USSR--but about this later) had anywhere or ever sought to destroy in people the quest for a new heaven on a par with the official church (or the church in union with the state).
The chief purpose of a person is to find God. True, this search in some situations may take on strange, sometimes even frightening, forms. The way of thought that is circumscribed by standard patterns and is not trained by history and culture and is weighed down by the pressure of generally accepted opinions is not able to reach to that highest spiritual tension with which the meaning of life and personal salvation have always been pursued in Russia.
One can take the example of Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy, whose departure from Yasnaia Poliana was, in essence, a flight from the falsity of ordinary existence to the final truth of service of God, from the world of vanity to the world of providence, and from the speculative idea to its concrete realization. One can recall his younger contemporary who left Petersburg for the steppe beyond the Volga, leaving the decadence in a quest for religious truth, leaving the war against God to enter faith. He became a preacher of Christianity, but not the kind received from the hands of the church but straight from the Gospel and applied directly to life. I am speaking of the poet Alexander Dobroliubov. Of him, as about Brother Alexander, the spiritual leader of the "Dobroliubov brotherhood," Dmitry Merezhkovsky wrote after a brief acquaintance with him: "I had no doubt that I had seen a saint before me."
There is substantial interest in the history of the relations of the soviet regime with non-Orthodox people for study of sectarians, not of the Dvorkin type but of the, if you will, moral type. Smashing the "Tikhonite" church, destroying the priests (as Vladimir Ilich instructed, as many as possible), breaking up churches and monasteries, the triumphant bolsheviks were unable to disabuse any Tolstoyans of their conscientious nonviolence and refusal to fight in the ranks of the Red Army for the good of oppressed humanity. The conscientious objectors were sent to the wall. I had the bitter experience of reading in one archive a letter by one of these martyrs written just before death: "When Christ was condemned to death, he said: 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.' The same with me. Let them do with me what they will; I will forgive them and will suffer for the name of Christ." That was what was written just a few hours before his execution by the nineteen-year-old peasant boy S.A. Dragunovsky, who was shot on 24 December 1919 for refusing military service on religious convictions.
Among the high bolsheviks there were at the same time people (V.D. Bonch-Bruevich in first place) who were trying to seduce party leaders with tempting pictures of the participation of millions of sectarians of various denominations in the construction of the communist society. There was some basis for it. Having been persecuted in the past by state and church, the sectarians who were enjoying the freedom of conscience that had been granted were ready to roll up their sleves and build within several years in Russia tens and hundreds of model agricultural communes. Sober, honest, hard-working people--they would move mountains. In the name of the government they even sent out a call to all those sectarians who had fled from tsarist Russian: come back. This call was supported even by the secretary and first biographer of Lev Tolstoy, Pavel Ivanovich Biriukov, in 1921, who wrote to the Dukhobors of America and Canada whom he long had known: "Don't some of you want to resettle in Russia in order to establish here your way of thinking and form of life for enlightening the Russian people, which still is in darkness?"
And they believed it. They returned. They worked indefatigably even on worthless, inhospitable lands, transforming them into prosperous farms. Molokans and New Israelites in the northern Caucasus and the steppes, Mennonites (there even was an All-Russian Mennonite Society) in the Crimea, Omsk province, Minusinsk, and Armavir; and Dukhobors on the Don, Temperence Christians outside Moscow and in Kolomna district, while the former student of the Moscow Ecclesiastical Academy who had become a convinced Tolstoyan, in the soviet era an instructor for agricultural communes of the commissariat of land, Ivan Tregubov, did not let up in insisting to his supervisor that "communism is much more successfully and simply achieved by sectarian communes than by soviet communes."
But the sectarian Christ evoked in bolsheviks the same hatred that the Orthodox Christ did. Economic successes of the communes and the strong way of life of the Mennonites, Temperance Christians, or Molokans aroused a primal revolutionary instinct: confiscate and divide. In Minusinsk and the Crimea the Mennonites' land was seized and the newspapers printed all sorts of vile things (a la Dvorkin) and they were pronounced secret enemies of the workers and peasants' government. In the steppes the Molokans' farms began to wither. Twenty-two of the factories that they had built in a short time, which produced tens of thousands of pounds of excellent butter and Russian Swiss cheese, herds of pedigreed and productive cattle, and well-maintained pastures--all were destroyed. The disillusioned Molokans wrote to the government: "If you cannot recognize our communes as useful for socialist construction and give them full freedom in matters of faith and common worship, then permit us to return to our former place of residence."
Before return to their homeland they had lived in Turkey. Now Turkey again took them in, Russian people, Christians, great laborers, and model citizens. Then the society of the "New Israel" invited them to Uruguay.
The New Israelites turned up in Uruguay in 1910, 300 families, 1500 mouths with modest possessions, nearly naked people on a completely barren land. Thirteen years later, setting out on their return trip, they left behind 20,000 hectares of well-groomed fields and pastures, herds of horses and healthy cattle, dozens of tractors, threshing machines, planters, automobiles, two ships and all kinds of other equipment. In Russia they got land sixty versts from the railroad and in the sweat of their brow they undertook to organize the steppe given to them for a new life. In three years of the most difficult labor without any machinery they broke up the virgin land and laid the basic foundations for highly productive farming. They had fewer tractors than in Uruguay, but more than Sholokov's heroes had--eight machines. However the Dvorkins of that time undertook to sic on the New Israelites all the soviet dogs, portraying them as kulaks, counterrevolutionaries, and swindlers. The most just judges in the world deprived the preachers of their electoral rights. To the two associated class enemies, the priest and the kulak, was added a third, the sectarian. In 1929 "New Israel" realized clearly that active faith and conscientious labor in USSR were impossible.
The subsequent fate of Molokans, New Israelites, and all other sectarians who were enticed to the homeland by deceit is unfortunately not known to me. Did their feet manage to carry them away from the soviet regime to reach a normal life somewhere in Turkey or overseas, as P.I. Biriukov managed to do by settling peacefully in Switzerland? Or did they vanish in prisons, camps, or convoys as their unselfish deceiver, Ivan Tregubov, did in 1931? The abandoned machine has not stopped since then.
The state consistently mowed down sectarians throughout the territory of USSR.
When I was reading investigative cases in the archives of state security, I copied out the following:
Georgia, 1938. Sentenced to be shot, the Zubkovs, husband and wife, Alexis and Anna. They did not participate in elections. Moreover, leading 300 Dukhobors "with religious songs, they marched past the election polling places." (These Dukhobors will justify Russia before the Creator at the Final Judgment.)
Ulianivsk province, 1950. Baptists Mikhail Trubin, Gavriil Oshanin, Fedor Vaniukhin sentenced to 25 years. In their sect they conducted criminal conversations that in USSR Stalin is praised as even the tsar was not praised and that only God could be so great. (It would have been better for these uncultured peasants to profess the same incorrect faith as the patriarch of Moscow and all-Rus, Alexis I (Simansky), who called comrade Stalin the "God-given leader," and for his courage he received not 25 years but many medals, a fine car, and other awards and pleasant gifts.)
In the same Ulianovsk province, a year later, the Jehovah's Witness Ivan Grigorievich Davydov was sentenced to 25 years in the camps. In interpreting the Gospel the criminal Ivan Grigorievich said that the soviet government is temporary and predicted the imminent advent of another life.
The soviet fatherland, our natural mother, by which exalted word shall we still call you? Mr. Dvorkin, join the authors of these sentences. Join with those who killed and sentenced people only because they were Baptists, Pentecostals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Dukhobors, or Tolstoyans. After all, if you are right it means that the Stalinist executioners also were right.
Dog's head with snarling mouth
At the beginning of perestroika, at the time of the first glimmers of freedom of conscience, I once was in a two-story building on Smolensk Boulevard in Moscow, the Council on Religious Affairs. Its chairman was receiving messengers. From all ends of the country people were arriving here and they gathered in the spacious hall and reported by turns to the chairman their complaints against the ferocious regime.
And in the first rows someone in a gray overcoat got up and with an emaciated face and also a gray and quiet voice he asked for justice for his son, who had been arrested, condemned and sentenced for refusing to serve in the army on the basis of religious convictions. "Jehovist, Jehovist," was whispered all around, and I realized with amazement how suddenly virtully among all people there arose a felling of hostility toward this single man.
"Their sons," the chairman shouted, pointing around the hall and with a single intentional gesture depriving the unfortunate father of all hope, "are fulfilling their international duty in Afghanistan! Do you mean to say that they have to die there for your son?"
My dear Orthodox brothers and sisters muttered approviningly. I sat there, crestfallen. A profound scholar in holy scripture, a penetrating and powerful preacher, a resident of Barnaul and parishioner of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, Ignaty Tikhonovich Lapkin, wrote in one of his instructional pamphlets: "The true Christian is a pacifist to death. . . ." And further: "Christ removed forever the sword from the hand of his followers." Really, if one does not accommodate the Gospel to political and state needs, then the word of the Savior to the rich young ruler, "Do not kill," can have only one, definite, and unquestionable meaning. If you want "to enter into eternal life" (Mt 19.17), don't kill anyone.
In the Christian sense it was not those Orthodox who without complaint surrendered their sons to the Afghan war and took pride in the sacrifices they made who were right, but that fearless Jehovah's Witness, who taught his son to say "no," was right.
What sufferings the Witnesses suffered in Hitler's Germany and in USSR only God himself can honor.
But we know in any case (but we do not recall, we do not want to recall, the Dvorkins have erased all memory for us!) that in March of 1951 the Council of Ministers of USSR, under the chairmanship of the still living and pipe smoking native father resolved "to expel all active participants of the antisoviet sect of Jehovists and members of their families," and 9,389 men and women, old folks and children, on one April night were thrown out of their homes and sent beyond the Urals.
Witnesses, like Christians under the heal of some kind of Diocletian, were subjected in soviet torture chambers to the most refined torture. In the celebrated city of Lviv, for example, investigators enjoyed putting "straight jackets" on Jehovah's Witnesses, putting on them overalls made of rubberized fabric and pumping them up with air. The victim lost consciousness from suffocation. Mister Dvorkin! Take up your pencil. When in the not too distant future Holy Rus is covered with a "network" of "rural rehabilitation centers" created in accordance with your idea, preferably (according to you) in rural parishes or small monasteries, and when "rapid response units" will evict sectarian heretics directly from their homes-- I guess on a thoroughly legal basis on orders bearing your signature, Alexander Leonidovich, and a seal with the image of a broom and a dog's head with snarling mouth [signifying Ivan the Terrible's Oprichnina forces--translator's note] --then these magnificent overalls will turn out to be useful for you. Somewhere in a monastery basement: you, Mr. Dvorkin, all dressed in black, with burning gaze and candles burning, and he, the damned, Jehovist, Krishnaite, or Scientologist, brought here for final deprogramming. He turns blue and wheezes, and you speak to him with a voice dried from fasting and suffering: "will you recant?"
Why am I reviewing the pages on which tears and blood have dried? Why am I reviving the past? In order that it not be shut up in the archives and not slumber there, stirring and shuddering from nightmares. Barely altered, renovated, and touched up, it is prospering and flourishing within our present reality, adopting from it several rather evil characteristics. It could not have been otherwise. If a society is assiduously nurtured in a spirit of hatred for people of a different faith, then we do not have the right to claim that it has given up the rubberized overalls once and for all.
We have the misfortune of wanting to see everyone around us, and even more so our relatives, as like ourselves. But making everyone the same happens either in the army or the camp. The free person must be different, and diversity is the ground for nourishing high culture. Contradictions that are inherent to the world and to humanity promote either the mightily creative act, and this is good, or revolution, which is worse than the plague. Christian achievement is first of all a matter of creativity, freedom, and love, and neither the State Duma with its political arrogance, nor bureaucratic offices with their dejected attempts to separate everything right away into black and white, ours and theirs, nor least of all the contemporary inquisition, no matter what noble clothing it may sport, have anything to do with it. We prohibit them today--we will arrest them tomorrow; we deny registration today--tomorrow we exile them; we close their prayer buildings today--tomorrow we open the gates of the camps. There has never been a third way in our fatherland.
"Witnesses" in the dock
Meanwhile, Mrs. Galitskaia has been summoned by the procurator of the northern administrative district of Moscow to the session of the Golovin interregional court. Procurator A. Viktorov hopes that even the ghost of the Jehovah's Witnesses will not exist in the capital, neither juridically nor actually, and he counts on Irina Alexandrovna's coming to his aid
The procurator also sets his hopes upon Mr. Dvorkin. At least, he sent him the appropriate request and received on the awe-inspiring letterhead (Moscow patriarchate; Holy Synod; Department of Catechesis and Religious Education) from the chief sect-fighter the corresponding certification about the Witnesses: "socially dangerous, pseudo-Christian, international religious organization." The same answer, in essence, came from sect-fighter number 2, the priest Oleg Steniaev. And after all, dear sirs, this is unheard of in a state which is separated by law from the church, but it still is habitual. In the best soviet traditions, the procurator tried to snuff out the Jehovah's Witnesses and he is being encouraged in his good intentions by the Orthodox clergy and the Orthodox inquisitor. Yesterday the CPSU directed the investigation; today it is the Russian Orthodox church. Yesterday the secretary of the district committee phoned with the words, "Look into this;" today the theologian and religious minister scribble out the lines. Dear Lord, My God, have we really angered you so much that we are doomed to wander in a circle, treading today in yesterday's bloody tracks?
And the case itself, no matter from what angle you view it, is an amazing stretch. The attempts to get the Witnesses on a criminal article has failed three times in the capital, but every time either the procurator general or the procurator of Moscow insisted on further investigation. Finally, as a result of almost two years of dreaming up the matter: ask the court to deprive them of their registration and prohibit them.
Meanwhile I am not a completely unaware blockhead and I understand fully, and even sympathize with, our people whose children and relatives have received baptism and become Jehovah's Witnesses. Our people are so structured that they like things as they have been. The well-worn ruts are the dearest heritage. So when a young man, a son, perhaps an only son, suddenly goes out of his mind obviously. Away with all amusements; family traditions, forgive me, to the dog's ass; sober and dull on red-letter days; disrespect for the state or at least only tolerance; refusal to defend the fatherland; and preference for the Bible over all other books. Really, isn't it clear that he is out of his mind? Theologians and Orthodox pastors declare this to our people: "They are out of their minds. They must be deprogrammed."
Deprogramming, which Mr. Dvorkin and his associates have injected into Russian reality, has been condemned by the whole world as a crime against the individual. But nobody is now talking about this. The mother of a fine twenty-year-old youth, who had been searching for God and became a Jehovah's Witness and transformed his life accordingly quite abruptly, told me in despair: "They want to destroy our nation. This is one hundred percent hostility. We should have Orthodoxy." He became different, and she doesn't want to reconcile with him.
Our people generally don't like people who are different. And having associated themselves with the Committee for the Protection of Youth, they demand of the government that it use an iron broom to sweep all sectarian dirt out of Orthodox Russia.
The state will have much to do.
Jehovah's Witnesses, the Unification Church, the Church of the Last Covenant, and its founder, Vissarion, (to whom young, and not so young, people have flocked in Siberia and Minusinsk, abandoning Moscow and St. Petersburg, while their relatives weep), the Orthodox Church of the "Sovereign" Mother of God, the Society of Krishna Consciousness--all step forward, and get out of Russia! God, have mercy. Why? Does not every faith require that a person devote to it one's heart? Did not the apostles forsake all to follow Jesus?
Did not the Savior himself say to the multitude the strange and frightful (from the point of view of our people) words: "If anyone comes to me and does not hate father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, and even one's own life, that person cannot be my disciple" (Lk 14.16)?
Fathers and mothers, fathers-in-law and mothers-in-law on both sides, who constitute in the main the Committee for Protection of Youth, burn with the desire to go to war with the sect and to get the State Duma to pass a law prohibiting the Gospel in Russia.The Koran and the New Testament and the Buddhist scriptures are agreed in directing the thoughtful youth to seek not the Mercedes 600 and mansion but spiritual values, enlightenment, and peace, which surely you agree our people also seek.
The person who has become a believer often is the greatest freak that every family, supposedly, has. Relatives sincerely wish to help this person, but as a rule they cannot do anything more than suffer mutual pain. Because they perceive his new spiritual state as a sickness or the result of some fatal attraction that interferes with the person's ability to accept reality calmly, while in the great majority of cases this persistent quest leads the soul to God.
A personal note
The first issue of the magazine "Prozrenie" (edited by A. Dvorkin) recently appeared and criticized me for my defense of the Krishnaists. In passing he reveals several dark secrets of my past: I worked for a newspaper which "for many years devoutly and faithfully served the soviet totalitarian ideological machine," I was a party member. . . . For some strange reason Mr. Dvorkin does not hold against me my not fully Aryan descent. But let's not give the public bread, but only call me by my patronymic, Alexander Iosefovich. Do you feel the subtle hatred of this "Iosefovich"? And then add the surname! It's a bad case. The young Deacon Kuraev in his latest pamphlet, "Occultism in Orthodoxy," did not go so far.
Fellows! Don't get worked up. Don't stamp your feet. Long ago I shared with the reading public some details of my biography and I regretted some while regarding others I said simply that my father was not only an engineer but also a Jew and my mother was Russian. As regards the Krishnaites--while you may smother them I will defend them in accordance with my Christian and civic duty. Jehovah's Witnesses, too. Protestants, too. Church of Unification, too. Church of the "Sovereign" Mother of God; all of those whom you deny the right to believe as their conscience demands.
If you think that, having declared a crusade against sectarians, you are bringing closer the hour of the final triumph of Orthodoxy, then you are wrong. There is no more profound historic and religious deception. Because within the shadow of the abbot of Volotsk whom you have injudiciously resurrected everything vital within our church has been destroyed, and then without any doubt the words of the seer must prove pertinent: "You have the name that you are alive, but you are dead" (Rev 3.1)
If you maintian that you are serving the Orthodox church, then it's no use. For whom and for what is it of use: bishops, who cannot be distinguished from the most unbridled politicians; politicians, who are no different from bishops than two drops of water; to your own pocketbook; to the irrepresible desire to achieve fame; simply not for the church. It would be good for you to recall that Judas also served the ecclesiastical leadership; he did his work and was rewarded.
If you claim that you are showing people the path to Christ, then in this you are greviously mistaken. Because people do not flock to Christ by force, under convoy, in handcuffs; they do not come to him with the aid of the procurator and judge, slanders and intimidations. All of this was in our past, "in the ages before us," (Ecc 1.10), and it gave us our present home.
There is no Christianity in the Christian world, the Jehovah's Witnesses say. And really can we not hear the truth in their words that torments us? Metropolitan Antony Blum of Surozh solemnly declared, "There are now millions of us Christians, and we are rather useless," professing an Orthodoxy that has nothing in common with the Orthodoxy of Mr. Dvorkin and all similar pursuers of the sectarian mischief.
Sectarians are not where you are looking for them.
They are where the obscuratism of an Orthodox newspaper informs poor people about a temple of Satan which has been constructed by satanist workers and how in various countries children are being trained to be outrageous magicians. They are where the obscurantist, pounding his fist, demands unanimity of thought. Where the priest does not condemn the old tradition about Jews who sacrifice Christian children. Where long ago they have forgotten such love for the brother without which, according to the apostle's words, "I am nothing" (I Cor 13.2). And this, really, is today's chief lesson of sectarian studies. (tr. by PDS)
(posted 14 February 1999)
MOSCOW: The prosecutor in the trial to ban Jehovah's Witnesses in Moscow asked for an adjournment today because of illness and declined to allow another prosecuting attorney to present the case. Prosecutor T. I. Kondratyeva appeared before the court and requested an adjournment until Monday because of her illness. Kondratyeva said the second prosecutor was too busy to present the case in her place.
Thursday, the prosecution made five motions--including calling for the removal of the judge--all of which were denied. The prosecutor also attempted to avoid questions from the defense about the charges brought by her office that Jehovah's Witnesses promote religious intolerance and split up families. According to trial observers, Thursday ended with a frustrated prosecutor and an irritated judge.
This civil case brought against Jehovah's Witnesses is the first that uses Russia's controversial new law on religion. Human rights leaders fear that a prosecution victory in this case could result in human rights violations against many religious faiths throughout Russia. The defense has twice called for dismissal of the case for lack of evidence. Jehovah's Witnesses are the fifth largest Christian faith in Russia and have been present there for more than a century.
Detailed information on the Moscow trial can be found at www.jw-russia.org.
JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES FIGHT BACK AT SMEAR CAMPAIGN DURING PIVOTAL HUMAN
RIGHTS CASE
from Watch Tower Public Affairs Office
12 February 1999
While a Moscow civil court considers a pivotal case that could ban Jehovah's Witnesses in Moscow, media reports indicate an increased effort to plant false stories about this Christian faith.
"It is interesting the depths to which someone is stooping in order to smear Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia," said Vasilii Kalin, director of the Witnesses' Administrative Center in St. Petersburg. "With their legal arguments falling apart, our enemies are exploiting terrible human tragedy in a heavy-handed effort to turn the public against us."
Church members are disturbed by recent efforts to link Jehovah's Witnesses to the suicide of three girls in Balashika, in the Moscow area, and to brand Jehovah's Witnesses as Nazi collaborators. News reports making these claims appeared on February 9, 1999, the same day that the Moscow trial resumed.
Kalin said that Jehovah's Witnesses have been the target of an orchestrated smear campaign for more than two years. However, "the timing of the two recent false reports seems to me to be more than coincidental," he said. "We hope that the public and the media will greet these reportsóand any future onesówith the skepticism that they deserve."
Several Russia media outlets speculated that the deaths of three girls in Balashika were the result of involvement with a religious group and specifically named Jehovah's Witnesses as being suspect. During its report on the deaths, ORT television showed footage of group suicides committed in the United States by members of cults. In reality, the girls had no involvement with Jehovah's Witnesses, and later media reports retracted the earlier speculation.
Jehovah's Witnesses see the charge as ironic, particularly considering that they recently sponsored an international campaign to educate the public on warning signs of teenage suicide. Jehovah's Witnesses distributed more than 20 million copies of an article series entitled "Suicide: A Scourge of Young People" in more than 150 countries during September 1998.
Historians see no collaboration with Nazis
On the same day that the suicide story appeared, Moscow TV-6 claimed that Jehovah's Witnesses are anti-Semitic Nazi collaborators. The story was supplied by the Committee for the Defense of Youth, a group that has ties to the Russian Orthodox Church and that is assisting the prosecution in the Moscow court case to ban Jehovah's Witnesses.
Documented accounts show that 25,000 German Jehovah's Witnesses were targeted as enemies of the State during the Hitler regime. The Witnesses were, according to British historian John Conway, "against any form of collaboration with the Nazis and against service in the army." They would not heil Hitler, join the Nazi Party, vote, support the military, or participate in Nazi atrocities. For adhering to their religious belief, about 10,000 Witnesses were subject to economic sanctions, arrest, torture, imprisonment, starvation, or execution. Nearly 2,000 Witnesses died. Of these, nearly 300 were executed as conscientious objectors. Polish sociologist Anna Pawelcznska called Jehovah's Witnesses in Germany "a tiny island of unflagging resistance existing in the bosom of a terrorized nation."
The charge of collaboration with the Nazis and other manufactured propaganda
about the Witnesses was promoted by the East German Stasi in the 1960s,
according to Dr. Detlef Garbe, a leading authority on the history of Jehovah's
Witnesses in the Nazi era.
Jehovah's Witnesses are members of an established Christian faith present
in Russian for more than a century, 70 years of which were spent under
Soviet ban. Five thousand Witness families were deported to Siberia
under Stalin. Some of the accusations used against Jehovah's Witnesses
today are identical to the ones circulated by the Nazis and Stalinists
more than half a century ago.
Detailed information on the Moscow trial can be found at www.jw-russia.org.
The text of this release is posted on worldnews.lbtech.com.
(posted 13 February 1999)
Coprighted material. For private use only.
If material is quoted, please give credit to the publication from which it came. It is not necessary to credit this Web page.