Window on Eurasia

Russia’s Religious Oppose Ending Deferments for Seminarians

Paul Goble

Vienna, June 21, 2006 – The leaders of Russia’s largest religious communities – Orthodoxy, Islam, and Protestantism – are individually and collectively speaking out against Defense Ministry plans to end existing draft deferments for those studying in their respective religious training institutions.

According to Archpriest Pavel Velikhanov, an official at the Moscow
Theological Academy and Seminary, if the new law goes into force, three
quarters of all those studying in the seminaries of the Orthodox Church
will be called up, “Novyye izvestiya” reported yesterday.

Such an exodus from the Church’s primary training institutions, he
continued, would “call into question the entire system of religious
education of the Russian Orthodox Church.” And because the total
number of men involved is no more than 500 or 600, it would do little
to help the military.

Other Orthodox figures were equally dramatic in their comments about
the possible impact of the draft law. In “Izvestiya” yesterday,
outspoken Deacon Andrei Kurayev argued that because priests in training
swear not to harm any living thing, they might not make the most
effective soldiers.

And Father Dmitriy Dmirnov, who oversees the Patriarchate’s relations
with the military and security agencies, told “Novyye izvestiya”
that ending these deferments could have the most negative demographic
consequences, lowering birthrates among the families of priests.

Meanwhile, Marat-khazrat Murtazin, the rector of Moscow’s Islamic
University, said that ending deferments might affect as many as 2,000
Muslims now studying to become mullahs and imams. And having left
school to serve in the military, he said, they might never resume their
religious instruction.

On the one hand, he said, that could mean that many mosques would
remain without a well-trained religious leader. And on the other, Gul’nar
Gaziyeva, a press secretary of the Union of Muftis of Russia (SMR),
said it would open positions for those trained abroad “and not in the
spirit of traditional moderate Islam.”

And finally, Vladimir Tkachuk, who heads the university which prepares
clergy for the Seventh Day Adventist Church, told “Novyye
izvestiya” that for his denomination, “the adoption of the laws about the
elimination of deferments for seminarians is close to a catastrophe.”

The Adventist leader added that this action by the government struck
him as strange. “On the one hand,” he said, “the government stresses
the need to lift spirituality in the country. And on the other, it
strikes against the religious training institutions,” something that
can only bring “great harm” to those involved.

Up to now, the leaders of these religions have been speaking on behalf
of their respective faiths, but Murtazin said that the question is so
important that it may be raised at an upcoming session of the
Inter-religious Council of Russia, a suggestion that he would not have
made without support from other religious leaders.

In his analysis, “Novyye izvestiya’s” Mikhail Pozdnyaev said that
the current military reforms could have some other negative
consequences, including a new outbreak of “dedovshchina”
(“hazing’) as the length of service is reduced. And he cited one
Duma member as saying the planned reforms will do little to solve other
problems as well.

Given this entirely predictable reaction, why did the Russian
government go ahead? The answer to that was provided by Defense Minister Ivanov: the army of the Russian Federation was rapidly becoming “a
workers-peasant” force in which children of the middle class were
exempt.

A commitment to redress that situation, especially when combined with
the anger of religious leaders, suggests that a compromise is likely.
And Pozdnayev suggests that one is being readied: Under its terms,
those in religious training schools would be deferred until graduation but
then would have to serve.

If that arrangement were made and if the government addresses the all
too real problems of military life in Russia today, then, Pozdnayev
suggests, anger among religious leaders about deferments and their
possible end will quickly and quietly disappear.