State Tolerance Increases as Russian Christianity Marks 1,000th Year

On the wall of a tired-looking office building tucked away from Moscow’s bustle and billowing exhaust, a graffiti artist has scrawled a cross and the Greek letters alpha and omega, proclaiming his belief in the eternity of God.

Thousands are drawn to a Ukrainian village by a report that a vision of the Virgin Mary has appeared on the side of an abandoned chapel.

Attentive but somewhat uncomfortable-looking young men slip into the backs of churches to be suddenly immersed in the solemn commotion of chanting, bowing and sweeping signs of the cross.

Seventy years after the Communist revolution, religious faith is alive in the Soviet Union and undergoing a modest revival.

Laws Will Be Rewritten

In 1988, the 1,000th anniversary of Russian Christendom, state and church will be re-evaluating the church’s past while authorities define its future by rewriting the laws governing the practice of religion.

The conflict is not as open as it was in the first years of Soviet power, when church and state were sworn enemies. But some believers are behind bars or barbed wire because of their convictions, the government tightly controls religious activity and the best jobs in Soviet society are reserved for members of the Communist Party, which fosters atheism.

No figures are available on the number of Muslims, Jews or Christians in the Soviet Union, much less of the number of Russian Orthodox, Baptists, Lutherans, Roman Catholics or adherents to other Christian religions.

Unofficial estimates set the number of believers in the tens of millions, mostly Russian Orthodox whose faith dates to the baptism of Prince Vladimir of Kiev in the year 988.

Yuri Smirnov, head of the international department of the government’s Council on Religious Affairs, said authorities have recognized past errors in dealing with the churches and are trying to rectify them under the leadership of General Secretary Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

“We recognize there were efforts to pressure believers,” he said in an interview. “Practically, (previous Communist leaders) tried to force the masses away from religion. In practice, much has changed. The needs of believers, the church in our country, are being regarded more calmly and attentively.”

Smirnov added that officials have noted a “definite growth in the interest in religion.”

Churches such as the one in the Lithuanian city of Klaipeda, closed and turned into a concert hall in 1961, are being returned to worshipers, he said.

The government is preparing to amend the laws that limit organized religion, but it is too early to discuss what changes might be made, Smirnov said.

Religious activists, many of whom have been released from prison or exile over the last year, agree that authorities have a more tolerant attitude.

They insist that it will mean nothing unless officials repeal the stringent limitations imposed in 1929 during the height of the Soviet Union’s anti-religious fervor.

Under those regulations, religious groups must register with the government, may not conduct any kind of charitable or medical work, or hold Bible or prayer meetings. As much as possible, the 1929 decree seeks to limit religious practice to church services.

The Rev. Gleb Yakunin, a Russian Orthodox priest freed from Siberian exile in 1987, said he and other activists received a promise from the Ministry of Justice that their views will be considered as officials rewrite the law.

Activists demand the release of almost 300 people they say are being held in jails or prison camps because of their religious convictions.

They also say there must be a change in the Soviet constitution, which guarantees the right to practice religion but provides no right to spread it. In contrast, non-believers are given the right to carry out “atheist propaganda.”

Russian Orthodox Church leaders sit cautiously on the sideline, and activists accuse them of being compromised by their association with authorities.

“They can drink cognac and eat caviar, but they can’t do anything,” charged Alexander Ogorodnikov, a Russian Orthodox Christian and former political prisoner.

The church contributes heavily to the officially sponsored Peace Committee, and its leaders are quoted in the official press as expressing support for policies of the Communist Party and government.

“It is the moral duty of every Soviet citizen to devote all his efforts and abilities to creative participation in perestroika, “ Metropolitan Alexei of Leningrad and Novgorod said in an interview with the official newspaper Moscow News. Perestroika is the term for Gorbachev’s plan for restructuring Soviet society.

While not proposing any specific changes, Alexei said church-state relations had outgrown the limits placed on churches immediately after the revolution when “the church and believers did not always take the correct stand.”

Asked at a news conference about limits on charitable activities, Metropolitan Pitirim of the Russian Orthodox Church said the state takes care of such matters.

He said the charity of the Russian Orthodox Church is now concerned only with “the moral, personal support of one person by another.”

Religious sources say that even though the Russian Orthodox Church no longer has the property it once held under the czars, it is well-off because of the generosity of believers and the absence of commitments to running schools and charities.

Although dependent on authority often hostile to religion, the leaders of today’s Russian Orthodox Church are in one sense following tradition. During centuries of czarist rule, church leaders managed relations that fluctuated with the czar’s attitude toward the church.

A leading Soviet historian, Dmitri Likhachev, told the weekly publication Literaturnaya Gazeta that society must recognize past contributions of the church and stop meddling in its present affairs.

Russian monks copied manuscripts and made important advances in science, art and architecture, he said.

“We know the role the church played in the history of Russia,” he added. “During a period of feudal disintegration it came out for unity, against internecine wars, it inspired people to the struggle against foreign invaders.”

Government and Communist Party officials agree with religious figures that the hierarchy presides over a deep and growing faith.

Boris Grebenshchikov, leader of Aquarium, one of the Soviet Union’s top rock groups, wears a cross around his neck and declares that “every good musician is spiritual.”

Official publications cast doubt on the report that an apparition of the Virgin Mary appeared on the wall of a vacant chapel on the outskirts of Grushevo, near Lvov, but they acknowledged that it had the power to attract thousands.

Archimandrite Niphon Saikali, representative in Moscow of the Greek Orthodox patriarch, said attendance at the Church of the Archangel Gabriel in Moscow has increased by almost 50% in the decade he has been in the Soviet capital.

“Forty percent of the parishioners here are young people,” he said. “I see them always.”

About 300 people attend services regularly, but the figure swells to about 2,000 on a major feast like Easter, he said.

Those who worship publicly have for years faced a broad campaign against religious expression. Police often patrol churches to see which local citizens are regular visitors, and plainclothes KGB agents sometimes photograph those taking part in holiday religious rituals.

From the birth of Communist philosophy, religion has been under fire. Karl Marx deemed it “the opiate of the people.”

In Leningrad, the former Kazan Cathedral was turned into a museum dedicated to the philosophy that the development of religious thought ultimately leads to atheism.

Textbooks of the late 1960s and 1970s taught students that “religion is a fantastic, distorted reflection of the world.”

But Kommunist, the influential theoretical journal, said religious belief has not withered away.

Historian Alexander Klibanov and philosopher Lev Mitrokhin wrote in the journal that while atheist propaganda has been hugely successful, there are many believers who formed their convictions after the revolution.

The writers said many believers are well-educated, far from “semi-literate or unfamiliar with the evidence of science, believing only by tradition,” as cast in atheist propaganda.

The authors suggested that official corruption and crime disillusioned some people with the Soviet system and encouraged them to look for another way to understand the world.

Ogorodnikov, 37, said he was one such person.

He and other students in the 1970s turned to religion “after a long search and discovery of the lie of Marxism, discovery of its historical unbelievability, . . . reading samizdat (underground publications) and learning of the suffering of Stalinist camps.”

But others have reasons that are less clear.

Vladimir Shibayev, a Russian Orthodox priest, said he is often approached by people who want to be baptized but know little about church doctrine.

They may be attracted to the church hoping its rituals, music and art rather than the faith itself may fill a void in their lives, he said.

Some religious activists say there can be no compromise between religion and the Communist authorities.

But Smirnov said that despite the abuses, the gradual lessening of tension between church and state in 70 years of Soviet power was a sign of hope.