FROM
CHURCH TO A HUT.
CONSTITUTIONAL COURT PERMITS WORSHIP IN HOMES: WHY THIS AFFECTS
HUNDREDS OF
THOUSANDS OF RUSSIANS
by
Alexander Soldatov
Novaia
Gazeta, 16
November 2019
It
required more than
a month for the Constitutional Court of Russia to formulate a
decision on the
case of a Seventh-Day Adventist from Rostov oblast, Olga
Glamozdinova. The
hearings were held back on 8 October, but the court announced
the decision on
14 November. And it became quite sensational for the modern
Russian Federation,
where it is usual only to introduce ever new restrictions of the
rights of
believers if they do not belong to one of the four "traditional"
religious organizations. (The constitution does not distinguish
between
"traditional" and "nontraditional" believers, guaranteeing
everybody the identical rights.)
The plot
of the case
is simple but it affects the interests of hundreds of thousands
of Russian
citizens. Olga Glamozdinova invited her fellow believers to
prayer meetings in
a residence belonging to her in the village of Veselyi. In early
2017 she
concluded with the local congregation of Adventists an agreement
for free use
providing the congregation the right to conduct meetings in this
house for four
hours a week. Rosreestr opposed this and fined Glamozdinova
10,000 rubles.
Courts of general jurisdiction analyzed this dispute and ruled
that the
residence and the land parcel with it cannot be used "in a way
not
designated" for religious activity.
The
logic of the Constitutional
Court, which did not agree with Rosreestr and the local course,
turned out to
be almost philosophical!
It
consists in the
fact that human life is not only a physical but also a spiritual
phenomenon.
That means a residential building is meant to also satisfy
spiritual needs of
residents, including religious ones. To be sure, the court's
decision contains
a qualification. A residence provided to a religious
organization must not
acquire characteristic signs of a "liturgical" building (like
cupolas,
minarets, etc.) or an administrative building. In that case, the
court
suggests, misuse is already occurring. To be sure the line there
is very fine
and, if you will, it is impossible to define it objectively. If,
for example, a
pious bureaucrat or oligarch erects an iconostasis with an altar
in his home
(which is not so rare nowadays), then should it be viewed as
"characteristic signs of a liturgical building"? The law does
not
answer that question.
Why does
the C.C.
decision affect hundreds of thousands of believers? In the 20th
century, Russia
went through the terrible experience of total religious
persecution for the
sake of building an atheist society. Peaks of persecutions
occurred in the 20s
and 30s and the beginning of the 60s. Each such period led to
the emergence of
a multitude of "catacombs," and underground religious groups of
various confessions, forcing believers outside the legal field.
After all, you
do not banish faith with persecutions. . . .
By 1939
only about
400 open churches remained in the U.S.S.R., mainly
"renovationist"
ones that were under the complete control of the NKVD. At the
same time,
according to the 1937 census, a majority of soviet citizens
called themselves
believers. They worshiped in homes, sometimes in secret
societies, of which
there were several thousands. The war changed the picture: in
1943 Stalin
reconstituted the Moscow patriarchate, recognizing attending its
churches as
the only permissible form of profession of the Orthodox faith in
the U.S.S.R.
Persecution of the "catacombs" that did not wish to recognize
the
artificial construct only intensified.
A weak
likeness of
the repressions of the 30s was the "Khrushchev persecution" of
the
early 60s. But even it left traces in the form of gigantic
Baptist and Adventist
brotherhoods that decided to refuse soviet registration. In
documents of the
Council of Religious Affairs they are called "Initsiativniki."
Hundreds of local churches of these protestant groups have
refused registration
until the present, gathering for worship in private premises and
continually
facing administrative pressure from the government.
Several
confessions
in the U.S.S.R. were denied registration categorically—primarily
Jehovah's
Witnesses, True Orthodox Christians, Christ-Believers, Skoptsy,
Beguny, and a
number of Old Believer concords. Christians of Evangelical Faith
(Pentecostals)
began receiving registration only under Brezhnev in the late
60s.
According
to
international and Russian rights advocacy organizations (the
American
Commission on International Religious Freedom, Amnesty
International, Memorial,
and others), Russia today is experiencing a new wave of
religious persecutions.
Those
same Jehovah's
Witnesses, who were officially recognized as victims of
widespread repression
and even received financial compensation for this, are again
completely driven
underground: in 2017 the Supreme Court prohibited their
activity. Their
translation of the Bible was entered into the Federal List of
Extremist Materials,
and its group reading is considered to be a crime.
In Tula,
authorities
tried to destroy a house of worship of "Initsiativniki"
Baptists.
In the
Moscow suburb
of Noginsk, a church of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine is being
threatened.
In 2015,
in Penza,
court bailiffs demolished a whole monastery of the True Orthodox
Church.
In
2009-2010, all 11
historic churches of the Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church in
Suzdal were
seized.
Round-ups
of Muslims "illegally"
meeting in individual prayer buildings are being conducted since
their refusal
to go to a mosque is considered to be a sign of "extremism."
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