SUPPORT IN STATE DUMA FOR IDEA OF REPLACING "GULAG ARCHIPELAGO" WITH BIBLE IN SCHOOL CURRICULUM
The first deputy chairman of the Russian State Duma's Committee on Education and Science, Oleg Smolin, endorsed the idea of substituting in the Russian school curriculum study of the Bible for reading "Gulag Archipelago" by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, radio station This is Moscow Speaking reported on 30 June.
This initiative was advanced by the head of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow patriarchate, Metropolitan of Volokolamsk Ilarion, in a broadcast on Rossiia 24 television channel.
Smolin thinks that "the school curriculum in literature is large even without this. "Gulag Archipelago" gives rather little representation about the real historical process. It is necessary to look at the curriculum and remove what is too politicized," he said.
Metropolitan Ilarion stated that the absence of religious texts in the school course in literature is a great omission. "If our school pupils study "The Lay of the Host of Igor," and the "Legend of Gilgamesh," then why within the context of a course of literature can they not study the Bible itself, the Torah, or the Quran?" he said on air on Rossiia 24.
In the Russian Federation, the Bible is considered to be extremist material, but only in the Jehovah's Witnesses' translation, a columnist for the portal Credo.Press recalls. (tr. by PDS, posted 1 July 2019)
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