2 Moscow Museum Officials Fined for ‘Blasphemous’ Art Exhibition

The director of the Sakharov Museum was convicted Monday of inciting religious hatred with a controversial art exhibition that was deemed “blasphemous and profane” by the Russian Orthodox Church.

A federal district court fined museum director Yuri Samodurov and curator Lyudmila Vasilovskaya $3,600 each for organizing the 2003 exhibit, which featured dozens of artists’ expressions on the subject of religion. The show, “Caution: Religion,” was closed down quickly after being attacked by vandals.

Among the works that aroused the fury of religious conservatives was an icon into which visitors could insert their own faces, and a figure of Christ superimposed on a Coca-Cola logo with the words “This is my blood.”

“This is a frightening and dangerous precedent ... a very dangerous precedent for culture and civil society, because the court found contemporary art criminally liable,” Samodurov said after the ruling.

“Our work is ahead of us [on appeal], because we must secure a full acquittal. Otherwise, culture in our country will be forever locked inside a frame of religion, and all painters, museum and art gallery experts will approach their work with fear,” he said.

The verdict comes at a time of rising influence of the Orthodox Church, which is seen by many Russians as an institution of national identity -- though President Vladimir V. Putin, himself an active practitioner, has emphasized freedom for all religions. About 71% of Russians consider themselves Orthodox believers.

Archpriest Vladimir Pereslegin, a cleric with the Moscow patriarchy who led a group of hymn-singing protesters outside the courthouse, pronounced satisfaction with the verdict but not the relatively lenient sentence.

“Not only in the eyes of God, but also in the eyes of society and the eyes of the legitimate judicial authorities, Samodurov and his accomplices have been pronounced criminal offenders in full view of the criminal code of this country,” Pereslegin said.

“But the lenience of the sentence handed down makes all nonpartisan people to feel perplexed and indignant,” the priest said. “It was a crime against society, and it was not just some art objects which were desecrated, but real sacred objects.”

The Orthodox Church, in an official statement, described the verdict as fair.

“Of course, these people should not be put in jail and portrayed as martyrs, thus giving rights activists a new pretext to raise money in the West in support of prisoners of conscience,” Vsevolod Chaplin, the church’s deputy external relations chief, told the Interfax news agency.

Charges against a third defendant, painter Anna Mikhalchuk, were dismissed because the statute of limitations had run out.

For Samodurov and his co-worker, prosecutors had sought a sentence of three years of internal exile -- a reminder of sentences dispensed to intellectuals during the Soviet era, whose human rights abuses have long been chronicled in the Sakharov Museum’s exhibits. The Moscow museum was founded in the name of Soviet-era physicist and dissident Andrei Sakharov.

“With this verdict, the judge has violated the equality of citizens,” said Lev Ponomarev, director of the All-Russia Movement for Human Rights. “The judge stated that Russia is an Orthodox Christian state ... and that demeaning Orthodox Christianity stirs up national hatred toward Russians. As for me, I would consider such statements as stirring up national hatred by the judge himself.”

Rachel Denber, acting head of Human Rights Watch’s Europe and Central Asia division, said the verdict “sets a dangerous precedent for state censorship of art and public discussion.”

Samodurov has said the exhibition was similar to others held in the United States and Europe, in which artists were invited to submit expressions on the general theme of religion.

He said he was not aware of the content of the artists’ work until shortly before the show opened.

“The actions of accused Samodurov and Vasilovskaya shall ... be found criminal and punishable, since they committed acts aimed at fomenting hatred and humiliating the dignity of persons of other nationalities and religions,” federal Judge Vladimir Proshchenko said in a long reading of the verdict.

Defense lawyers said they would appeal the conviction, not only in Russian courts but in the European Court of Human Rights.