Russia: Warnings of sectarian tensions

[and-justice-for-all]

http://www.mmorning.com/ArticleC.asp?Article=3988&CategoryID=7

"The former Soviet super-state is replacing one form of authoritarianism with another, as the Orthodox Church continues its efforts to control the politics and culture of this sprawling nation. “In the (former) Soviet Union, you could not admit to being a believer. Today, you cannot admit to being an atheist.”

“It is a great event for the region, for the whole of Russia, because it is another step towards the renaissance of our national religious culture stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Pacific Ocean”, Putin said on Russian television.
The new Christ the Saviour Cathedral was consecrated on September 10 by Alexius II, Patriarch of Moscow and the spiritual leader of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Kaliningrad was formerly known as Koenigsberg, capital of the German region of East Prussia, which was annexed by the Soviet Union after World War II.
The Orthodox Church, or more precisely, Orthodox Christian “culture”, has caused controversy following a decision in five regions of the Russian Federation to order the mandatory teaching of Orthodox Christian “culture”, with critics warning that the initiative could fuel xenophobic tendencies in the multi-confessional country.
After five years of debate and protests by other religious groups, the authorities in five regions -- Belgorod, Smolensk, Kaluga, Bryansk and Kursk -- this month introduced the “Basics of Orthodox culture” as a compulsory “regional civilization course.”
Those regions are predominantly Orthodox, but the move has sparked concern in a country which has, among others, some 20 million Muslims, many of them in the volatile North Caucasus.
“Our country is multi-confessional. We must be tolerant and teach the history of all religions”, said Education Minister Andrei Fursenko in the Rossiskaya Gazeta daily.
But the regions did not require Moscow’s approval, since although the law stipulates that religious courses should be optional, it is more vague regarding “religious culture”.
“This forced measure is unfair to other religions and will contribute to the rise of xenophobia”, noted Vladimir Ilyushenko, an expert at the Sociology Institute at Russia’s Academy of Sciences.
Xenophobia is a particularly sensitive issue in Russia, where the number of murders with racist motives tripled to 14 between March and May, compared to the same period in 2005, according to the research group Sova.
Alexander Verkhovsky, an expert at the Sova research center, said he was afraid that the new discipline’s teachers -- laymen instructed by the Moscow Patriarchate for three years -- “risk presenting Russia as an Orthodox country, which would traumatize, for example, Ingush students.
“The course is harmful, because it resurrects the empire mentality” with a superiority complex for some, in this case Russians, at the expense of others, he said.
Mandatory teaching “of Orthodoxy will give additional ideological support to xenophobes and make an already existing problem only worse”, echoed Valeri Yemeliyanov from the www.credo.ru religious issues website.
A spokesman for the Patriarchate insisted that “whatever their origins, every Russian citizen should know that it was Orthodoxy that formed the Russian state”.
Students would not be learning prayers or church rites, but would become sensitive to wider perspective on Orthodox history and art, the spokesman said.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Orthodox Church has rapidly gained influence, enjoying strong support from the authorities. It owns a television channel, has a high-profile role in blessing historical buildings and units of the armed forces.
Some 64 percent of Russians say they are “believers”, but only 22 percent say they observe “all the rites of their religion”, according to a poll published in late August by the VTsIOM institute.
Still, as the Izvestia daily commented recently: “In the Soviet Union you could not admit to being a believer. Today, you cannot admit to being an atheist”.