"In today's Russia, the principle of secularity [of the
state] and associated constitutional principles have been sacrificed for the
sake of sacralisation of power, including the clericalisation of organs of
state government," believes Sergei Buryanov of the Moscow-based Institute
of Freedom of Conscience.
Russia's 1993 Constitution proclaims the country a secular state without any compulsory
or state religion, where religious organisations are separate from the state
and equal before the law. The 1997 federal law on religion further stipulates
that religious organisations may not carry out the functions of state
institutions or accompany the activities of government organs with public
religious ceremonies, while state personnel do not have the right to use their
official positions "for the formation of one or other type of attitude
towards religion".
Without any change in the law or Constitution to provide for them, however,
there has been a steady increase over the past seven years in concordat-style
agreements between the Russian Orthodox Church and various organs of state.
These give the Church special access to the institutions concerned and
emphasise Orthodoxy as the legitimate ideology of Russian state tradition. It
is open to question whether these agreements violate Russia's international
human rights commitments, since the latter do not concern the secularity of the
state. In practice, however, these mini-concordats can serve to render
illegitimate the social activity of other religious organisations in the state
sphere, thus leading to discrimination on religious grounds.
PRISONS
On 30 August 1996 the Moscow Patriarchate concluded a co-operation agreement
with the Ministry of Internal Affairs, for the most part concerned with
arrangements within prisons. It stipulates that prison governors must provide
"favourable conditions" for Russian Orthodox clergy to conduct
religious talks and church services. At the request of dioceses or deaneries,
governors are to organise the production by prisoners of materials used in
restoring and building churches, as well as other religious items.
The agreement also covers the police force. Russian Orthodox clergy are to give
lecture courses to trainee officers on the role of religion in Russian state
history, with the aim of "inculcating patriotism and morality, respect for
national traditions and customs... and an understanding of the inhumane nature
of the doctrines of totalitarian and destructive sects." The construction
is also to be considered of an Orthodox chapel alongside the Ministry of
Internal Affairs building in Moscow, which "might serve to educate
personnel within Internal Affairs departments and police officers".
A chapel situated on publicly accessible territory belonging to the Ministry's
Moscow headquarters was duly consecrated in 2000. Within Russia's prisons,
however, the Church's hegemony appears to be less assured. In February 2000 the
national religious affairs newspaper NG-Religii reported how a charity
foundation representative bringing a donation of books to a regional prison was
asked by its governor whether he was Orthodox, "for we were overcome with
Protestants and Catholics," who were now forbidden from coming
"within cannon range" of the prison. In February 2003, by contrast,
the St Petersburg-based "Union of Christians" Protestant association
triumphantly reported that a thousand inmates in the northern capital's women's
prison were now subject to Christian radio programmes piped into their cells
for up to five hours a day.
Another branch of the internal security organs, even the FSB (the former KGB)
is now open about its special relationship with the Moscow Patriarchate. In
March 2003 Vertograd news agency reported the presentation by Bishop Yevlogi
(Smirnov) of Vladimir and Suzdal of a church award to the head of Vladimir
regional FSB department, partially for "assistance in returning to the
Russian Orthodox Church property which was in the hands of schismatic religious
formations". In March 2002 Kommersant national newspaper reported the
opening ceremony of the FSB's own institutional church near its Lubyanka
headquarters, during which the head of the FSB, Nikolai Patrushev, presented
Patriarch Aleksi II with an icon and the parish priest of the renovated church
with the keys to the building.
ARMY
On 4 April 1997 the Moscow Patriarchate concluded a co-operation agreement with
the Ministry of Defence. Under the rubric of patriotic education of servicemen,
both signatories vow "to work together to revive the Orthodox traditions
of the Russian army and navy". Commanders of the armed forces are urged to
invite Orthodox clergy to participate in military rituals and celebrations, as
well as to co-operate with Orthodox dioceses in inculcating conscripts with
"the proper attitude" towards military service. The agreement also
makes provision for the re-instatement of churches in military garrisons.
On 31 October 2002 Izvestiya national newspaper reported that the Ministry of
Defence call-up commission in the region of Oryol included a Russian Orthodox
priest, whose role was "to expose scoundrels who refuse military service
by hiding behind faith". Since the priest had appeared on the commission,
according to one local military commissar, "there has not been a single
case in which a conscript had refused to serve". While the Moscow
Patriarchate does not make public the total number of Orthodox churches and
chapels currently operating within military installations and prisons, one
Orthodox source estimated to Forum 18 on 16 May that there were around 100 in
Moscow city and region. In May 1999 the English-language Moscow Times reported
that one of the first, consecrated at a closed nuclear base outside the Russian
capital in April 1998, is partly dedicated to St Barbara because "it was
on 17 December, her saint's day, that the militant atheist and church
persecutor Nikita Khrushchev signed a decree in 1960 founding this branch of
the armed forces".
In an interview with Forum 18 in Kalmykia this April, local Muslim leader
Nasirullaev Asadullah spoke of plans to build a mosque in a local prison where
there was already an Orthodox church and a Buddhist temple. On 16 May Council
of Muftis press secretary Farid Asadullin told Forum 18 that there were
"very much fewer" than 100 mosques within Russia's military
installations and prisons. While Muslim communities in Arkhangelsk, Vologda,
Tver and Mordovia regions work with local law enforcement agencies in the
spheres of prevention and rehabilitation, he said, there was as yet no formal
co-operation agreement between the Council of Muftis and the Ministry of
Internal Affairs, or any other federal ministry. "If a precedent is created
with the Russian Orthodox Church, then, as Russia's second confession, we
believe that we should be able to work with those of Muslim faith," he
remarked.
EDUCATION
On 2 August 1999 the Moscow Patriarchate concluded a co-operation agreement
with the Ministry of Education. The document obliges both signatories to work
together in educating the young generation "in the spirit of high moral
values" by sharing information and experience, "preparing amendments
to the norms of current legislation," organising the introduction into
schools of tuition of the foundations of Orthodox culture and preparing state
standards in theology and religious studies.
On 5 December 2001 the Moscow edition of Argumenty i Fakty newspaper cited
assistant education minister Yuri Kovrizhnykh as stating that close
co-operation between church and state was the best way to save the young
generation from "totalitarian sects and religious fanaticism". In
practice, Kovrizhnykh reportedly declared, this would mean "opening
Orthodox kindergartens, schools, gymnasiums, Christian-sports and
Christian-patriotic clubs under the auspices of the local authorities".
Article 4 of the 1997 law on religion, however, stipulates that the state
"is to secure the secular character of education and of state and
municipal educational institutions". The publication in October 2002 by
the Ministry of Education of a model syllabus for a new school subject -
"Orthodox Culture" provoked as yet unresolved concern over whether
the course would be taught from a secular standpoint on an optional basis. In a
December 1999 letter, according to several Moscow sources, Patriarch Aleksi
wrote that, should bishops encounter difficulties in getting a course called
"The Foundations of Orthodox Belief" introduced into state schools,
they should call it "The Foundations of Orthodox Culture".
At the local level, promotion of Orthodoxy in state education appears in
practice to rely more upon joint initiatives by clergy and state
representatives than as is prescribed by the law - parents or pupils. In
Samara region, the local authorities have embarked upon an educational
experiment - local Archbishop Sergi (Poletkin) consecrated the first Orthodox
church to be attached to a state secondary school there on 7 January 2003. The
first intrusion by the Orthodox Church into their for the most part secular
everyday lives, such initiatives can encounter hostility from local people. On
19 April 2002 Izvestiya reported that 70 per cent of parents of pupils at a
state comprehensive school in Novomoskovsk, Tula region, had rejected plans by
a local archimandrite and the municipal authorities to turn it into an Orthodox
lycee, even when renovation and computer equipment were also proposed. In an
interview on the "Tem Vremenem" ("Meanwhile") discussion
programme on national television on 28 April 2003, academic Dmitri Oreshkin
referred indignantly to slogans at a recent demonstration outside the Ministry
of Education in favour of the introduction of Orthodoxy into state schools.
"'Orthodox! You are in your own country!' I'm not prepared to be Orthodox
does that mean I am not in my own country?"
HEALTH
On 5 March 2003 the Moscow Patriarchate concluded a co-operation agreement with
the Ministry of Health. The signatory parties vow to work together to create
conditions in hospitals for the performance of Orthodox rites, to formulate
draft legislation on the ethics of biomedicine and other medical issues, to
plan and implement programmes aimed at educating the population in health issues,
to familiarise medical students with the Russian Orthodox Church's social
policy on health, and to assist those who "have suffered from the
non-traditional forms of influence of modern cults". Here too there is
some indication of resistance. On 8 April 2002 Moskovsky Komsomolets national
newspaper reported that the Moscow city authorities had agreed to turn over
part of a children's clinic housing X-ray and allergies units to create an
Orthodox hospital church, to the vehement protest of the young patients'
parents.
TRANSPORT
The Moscow Patriarchate also has a joint project with the Ministry of Railways,
in accordance with which Orthodox chapels are to be created at each of Moscow's
mainline stations. On 16 April 2002 the Chapel of St Matrona was opened at
Kursk station, while the Chapel of St Mitrofan of Voronezh has been functioning
at Paveletsky station since August 2001. On 18 August 2001 Patriarch Aleksi II
consecrated a chapel at Moscow's Domodedovo airport. There are apparently no
plans to provide interfaith facilities in the manner of chaplaincies at other
international airports, however. "We take a negative view of the idea of
affording the opportunity of holding prayer services at stations and airports
to passengers professing other faiths," Fr Valentin Temakov, assistant
editor of the Moscow Patriarchate's publishing department and co-ordinator of
the railway chapels project, told Izvestiya. "Orthodoxy is the
state-forming religion and it is inappropriate to talk about some kind of democracy
and equality of confessions in this context."
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
While the Moscow Patriarchate has not yet concluded a co-operation agreement
with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Patriarch Aleksi and Metropolitan Kirill
of Smolensk and Kaliningrad reportedly discussed co-operation with Foreign
Minister Igor Ivanov and other high-ranking officials on 6 March 2003, during
the first visit by a Russian patriarch to the Ministry in its 200-year history.
According to a Foreign Ministry communique issued the same day, Ivanov pointed
to Russian diplomacy's historical support for the Russian Orthodox missions to
America and the Far East, as well as its traditional defence of the interests
of Orthodox peoples. Today, such co-operation strengthens Russia's "inner
spiritual strength" and "raises her moral authority on the world
stage," declared Ivanov, while close contact between the diplomatic
service and the Russian Orthodox Church "helps us to deepen our
understanding of global developments".
REGIONS
Just as the 1997 law on the religion was bolstered by dozens of similar legal
acts on the local level, so the Moscow Patriarchate's federal agreements with
state organs are supported by similar regional arrangements. A co-operation
agreement concluded on 15 September 2001 between the state administration of
Belgorod region and the local Orthodox diocese, for example, obliges the state
authorities to facilitate the study of "Russian language, Russian history,
Russian culture and Orthodoxy" in state schools. In early 2003 Smolensk
regional administration concluded a similar agreement with the local Orthodox
diocese covering educational, social and cultural activity. In November 2001
the Orthodox diocese of Moscow concluded co-operation agreements with Moscow
region's education and sentence administration departments.
In the regions, support for the Orthodox Church as an arm of state ideology is
sometimes overt. In December 2002 Izvestiya reported that governor of Saratov
region Dmitri Ayatskov had announced to the local press that he had lodged a
proposal to finance "our Orthodox religion" with government money.
According to the newspaper, Ayatskov and then local Orthodox archbishop
Aleksandr (Timofeyev) went on to explain that this was partly aimed at fighting
against the dissemination of "alien religions," while a local
official dealing with social affairs declared that the 19 religious confessions
registered in the region had divided the people into 19 groups and thus
provoked a "hidden civil war". On 12 March 2003 RTR state news agency
reported that Ayatskov had ordered all meat dishes to be taken off the menu at
the regional government cafeteria for the duration of Orthodox Lent.