Window on Eurasia

Putin Questioners Divided on Orthodoxy’s Role in Russian Life

Paul Goble

Vienna, July 11, 2006 – An analysis of the 1130 questions about religious affairs sent in to President Vladimir Putin for his Internet press conference on July 6th suggests that Russians are deeply divided over the role the Moscow Patriarchate should play in political and social life.

Many who identified themselves as Orthodox Christians asked questions
that indicated that they support the policies of the Patriarchate and
welcome an even greater role in public life for the Russian Orthodox
Church, Portal-Credo.ru’s Roman Lunkin
[http://portal-credo.ru/site/print.php?act=comment&id=1016].

The pro-Orthodox questioners asked Putin to take an even more assertive
role not only in promoting the Patriarchate but also in fending off
challenges from other religious groups, including those that the
emailers described as “totalitarian sects that propagandize ‘a
pro-American way of life.’”

One wrote to ask why Putin, who has never been shy about identifying
himself as Orthodox, was not doing more to make the Russian Orthodox
Church the state religion of the country and to ensure that in place of
his own picture on the walls of government buildings, there would be
icons of the Church.

And another even asked Putin whether he was familiar with the
prediction of some that Russia would be defined by three Vladimirs – the first
(the prince of Kyiv) who adopted Christianity, the second (Lenin) who
tried to blot it out, and the third (himself) who would ensure
Russia’s return to the fold of the Church.

But others, including some who said they were Orthodox and all others
who identified themselves variously as atheists, agnostics, or
followers of non-Orthodox faiths, indicated by their questions that they were
deeply concerned about the Patriarchate’s efforts to dominate the
country’s ideological life.

Indeed, Lunkin noted, many people raised in the spirit of Soviet
atheism and in no way liberal have become in reaction to the Patriarchate’s
efforts “advocates of freedom of conscience because they feel the
danger of the pressure of a new governmental ideology with the
symbolism of Orthodoxy.”

And one of these wrote in his email to Putin that “in light of the
evolving situation in Russia between the state and the Russian Orthodox
Church, the day is not far off when there will appear a New Orthodox
Inquisition and the non-Orthodox will simply begin to be burned at the
stake.”

Most of the critics were not so emotional. Some complained about the
special tax advantages the Church enjoys. One was upset that Patriarch
Aleksii II has a luxury home in Peredelkino and a car with special
governmental license plates. And still others were upset about the less
than savory behavior of some Orthodox priests.

But most of those who sent in emails on this occasion criticizing the
Orthodox Church focused their comments on the efforts of the
Patriarchate to introduce religious instruction in Russian schools,
priests into the armed services, and a church presence at all state
occasions.

Those who identified themselves as atheists were the most numerous and
the most outspoken, Luken said. But other non-Christians were also
active in dispatching critical emails. Protestant Christians were the
second most numerous of the critical groups, followed by followers of
Hare Krishna.

One Protestant complained to Putin that the Russian president should
not view Orthodoxy as Russia’s largest religion. In fact, the emailer
said, the number of people attending Protestant services there is now
five times that of those who participate in Orthodox services, whatever
the Patriarchate claims.

And Hare Krishna emailers raised the question of when they would be
allowed to purchase the land for their temple in Moscow, a neuralgic
issue in the Russian capital and the one that attracted the greater
number of email votes asking that Putin respond to it on the air.

Obviously, Lunkin said, the distribution of questions posed by those
with access to the Internet does not necessarily reflect the
distribution of views in the Russian population as a whole. Instead, it
reflects the community of Internet users, a group he characterized as
Russia’s middle class – urban, educated, and professional.

But however that may be, Lunkin’s creative approach to the questions
Russians did pose in this forum provides a useful model for sampling
the attitudes of at least the Internet community on many issues, including
those more immediately pressing that the proper relationship of
Orthodoxy to the state in a secular Russia.

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