Moscow, Russia - For seven decades Russia, a member of the Soviet Union, knew exactly what it was doing.
It was building Communism, creating a society where people would contribute their abilities in exchange for the provision of their needs.
Many people believe that Communism was what we call a "national idea" for Russian citizens at the time. Despite the horrors of the Stalin regime, the building of the communist utopia inspired millions of Soviet citizens, indeed.
At the beginning of the 1990s, the test-tube where the Communist experiment was conducted suddenly shattered. The Soviet Union collapsed and ideology became a curse word. At that time, only those who were "caught in the past" dwelt on a national idea, only unrepentant, shortsighted Communists.
The situation changed in 1996 when President Boris Yeltsin suddenly announced that Russia needed a national idea again. Apparently, the Kremlin leader, who used to be a devoted Communist in the past, felt rather uncomfortable in the ideological vacuum that swallowed Russia.
Since then, Russian politicians have been conducting a sluggish discussion about whether the national idea could be represented by the notion of "statehood," "patriotism," or "national spirit," or a combination of the three.
Apparently, however, such an idea was already discovered long ago - the Orthodox religion. After seven decades of horror, when Orthodox churches were blown to pieces, monasteries turned into stables, and atheism forced upon minds and souls, the Orthodox faith is finally experiencing an amazing renaissance, a blossoming.
On weekends, churches around Russia overflow with people. The Orthodox Christmas, celebrated on January 7, has become a national festive event with the participation of top state leaders, including the president.
The recent celebration of the 100th anniversary of the canonization of St. Seraphim Sarovsky turned into an Orthodox version of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, when thousands of pilgrims from all over Russia came to live in tents near the Diveyevo Monastery.
According to official statistics, the number of Russians who consider themselves Orthodox believers has tripled since the end of the 1980s. In 1986, they constituted 16% of the Russian population, and today, about 50%.
Curiously, though, the number of believers who receive communion and go to confession regularly has not changed since the times before Gorbachev's "perestroika" (about 1.5%-2%).
It is likely that after the Communist persecution of the Orthodox Church, people are still cautious about living their spiritual lives openly. There is another plausible explanation, though. The growing popularity of religion has a lot to do with popular trends and, even worse, with corrupt political practices.
High society dames rush to attend Sunday services to demonstrate their new clothes from trendy Moscow fashion designers like Slava Zaitsev or Valentin Yudashkin. Former high-ranking Communist officials crowd around altars, holding candles and patiently waiting for television cameras to broadcast this touching image around the country.
"They do not even know what to do in front of an icon - to spit on it or to make the sign of the cross," authentic believers say with disdain. Indeed, if we look closely at state bureaucrats who have suddenly filled the first rows in front of the church altar, we can easily conclude that these people are much less concerned with serving the Lord than with personal gratification and image-making.
Nevertheless, with a vacuum in national ideology and an erosion of morals caused by sharp changes in Russian lifestyle, the Church now plays an increasingly important role as a keeper of family values and moral traditions, and ultimately, as a uniting force in the nation.
The majority of Russian intelligentsia believes such a role would only be welcomed if the influence of the Church did not approach a seemingly dangerous line in relation to the secular state.
The new text of the Russian national anthem contains a reference to God, and the Orthodox hierarchy applies strong pressure on state authorities to include religion as an official subject in secondary schools. The Church uses every opportunity to play the same leading and guiding role that the Communist party used to play not so long ago.
For example, there have been attempts by the Orthodox leadership to teach morals to businessmen. Recently, the World Russian People's Council, gathered with the blessing of Patriarch Alexy II, passed an astounding document titled "A Code of moral principles and rules in business." The authors, obviously inspired by the Ten Commandments, offered ten principles of honest business practices.
More than ten years into its transition to a market economy, Russia has finally received the "Business Bible." The Russian tax authorities especially like it. The Code speaks thoroughly and even enthusiastically about paying taxes.
All businessmen are told to consider the payment of taxes "as an honorable deed deserving gratitude on the part of society, rather than a heavy burden or a task carried out contrary to one's will and sometimes evaded all together."
On the other hand, tax evasion is considered to be "stealing from orphans, elderly people, disabled people, and other socially unprotected groups of the population," the Code says.
In general, it all makes sense. There is no argument against such moral axioms. However, the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RUIE) adopted its own charter of Business Ethics several years ago. From the point of view of Russian businessmen, the Code is a rather blunt attempt by the Orthodox Church to expand its influence among secular institutions, primarily among the business community.
Many entrepreneurs fear that the Code, which is intended strictly for Orthodox businessmen, might lead to ethnic and religious antagonisms. "And what about the business people of other faiths?" asked Oleg Kiselyov, a RUIE leader, hinting at the fact that there are quite a few Jews and Muslims among Russian oligarchs.
The authors of the Business Bible are not yet satisfied with their results. The Church hierarchy announced their desire to publish the Ten Commandments of a State Official.
Russian society, which has been involved in heated debates on the role of the Church in a secular state, has been divided even further over the recent verdict of a Moscow district court in a case involving organizers of the Beware of Religion! exhibition. Many human rights activists called the event "the trial of the century" that threatened to plunge Russia into the depths of retrograde clericalism.
The case involved an exhibition held in January 2003 in Moscow at the Andrei Sakharov Center. A triptych depicting Christ crucified on a cross, on a star, and on a swastika was the least controversial exhibit there.
An image of Christ the Savior in a billboard advertising Coca-Cola met visitors at the entrance. Guests could put their faces in an opening carved in place of Christ's face in a giant, full-length icon.
No matter how shocking these exhibits might be for an average viewer, they were not intended to offend the believers, Yuri Samodurov, director of the Sakharov Center and one of the three defendants in the case, told judges.
In his opinion, the name of the exhibition itself - Beware of Religion! -- bears a double meaning. On the one hand, it is an appeal to respect religion and believers. On the other hand, it is a warning about the dangers of any kind of religious fundamentalism, be it Orthodox or Muslim, and about the danger of fusing religion and the state into some sort of theocratic dictatorship.
Religious fundamentalism is the target of criticism on the part of the author of the triptych depicting Christ simultaneously crucified on a cross, a star, and a swastika, Samodurov said. Many people thought his statements were rather timely considering the dangerous spread of religious influence in modern Russian society.
A declaration for the Freedom of Conscience, adopted by influential human rights organizations in response to the verdict against Samodurov, strongly warns against this danger. Human rights activists have already coined the Samodurov trial the "monkey trial" in reference to the persecution of supporters of Darwin's theory of evolution in Great Britain in the 19th century. Defending the secular nature of the state, the authors of the document proclaim religion as the "personal choice of any human being."
The sensitive reaction of the Russian human rights activists is quite understandable. The trial must have evoked a disturbing deja-vu sensation among them.
The persecution of artists who challenged the ruling ideology was characteristic of the Communist regime. For example, there was the "bulldozer" attack on the avant-garde exhibition in Moscow and the persecution of Boris Pasternak, the author of 'Doctor Zhivago,' who dared to publish his famous "anti-Soviet" novel abroad.
The paradox in the trial against the organizers of the Beware of Religion! exhibition is that the force attempting to limit the freedom of artistic expression is not the Communists but the Church. For many Russian intellectuals this is a foreboding sign of the growing power and influence of the Orthodox Church in secular society.
Regarding the trial, Sakharov's widow and prominent human rights activist Yelena Bonner, recalled her husband's words, "I regard religious freedom as part of the general freedom of belief. If I lived in a clerical state, I would probably defend atheism and the persecuted infidels and non-believers."
Russian President Vladimir Putin recently spoke on the same subject but from a different angle. He said, "We must promote human values, and they are related to religion."
Putin does not support the idea of teaching religion at Russian schools, but he encourages public debate on the subject of teaching the history of religion. It is important, though, not to "wash out" the constitutional separation of church and state, the president said.
Only the near future will show how public opinion will sway in the former country of non-believers.