A Struggle to Survive on Russian Soil

It was time to worship in the capital of the Russian Orthodox world, but there wasn’t one incense-darkened icon, one black-robed priest or one word uttered in Old Church Slavonic.

Instead, believers of a different sort--Jehovah’s Witnesses--faced a simple stage. Two women were demonstrating how to win Russian converts over to the Witnesses, a controversial religious group with roots in the United States.

One of the women, reading from a script, pretended to fend off the other, who was offering the Witnesses’ literature. “I’m Russian Orthodox,” the first woman said. “No thanks.”

“Well,” said the second woman, “it’s so very nice to meet another believing person. Now, if you have a minute, couldn’t we read something from the Bible?”

At this gathering of Jehovah’s Witnesses in northern Moscow, the lesson in proselytizing was not merely a matter of worship style. It was part of a struggle for survival.

Most Russians follow an Orthodox Christian tradition that emphasizes ritual and monastic spirituality--and rejects Witness-like proselytizing. Russian “anti-cult” centers denounce the Witnesses’ practices. The Witnesses, who claim 117,000 active adherents across Russia and 6 million worldwide, have been denied registration as a legal entity by Moscow authorities. And their members are embroiled in a court case testing a 1997 Russian federal law that aims to regulate religious organizations and restrict sects.

The rift is deepened by the fact that Witnesses consider themselves to be the only true Christians, and hold that their church is the only path to salvation.

They also renounce much of the secular world: They don’t vote, celebrate national holidays or marry non-Witnesses. Besides rejecting blood transfusions, they refuse to serve in the military or to pledge allegiance to any government.

In a country where up to 80% of the population identifies itself as Orthodox and where Orthodoxy is as much a cultural label as a religious one, the Witnesses’ beliefs perplex and even offend many people.

One point of cultural conflict involves icons. Witnesses regard icons as idolatrous, whereas such images are a central part of Orthodox worship and a millennium-old art form.

Iconography “goes back to our . . . roots,” Moscow prosecutor Tatyana Kondrateva said, “and when we are told that all of those symbols come from the devil, this infuriates people.”

In February, prosecutors who want the Witnesses banned under the 1997 law were dealt a blow when their case was dismissed for lack of evidence. But in late May, a judicial panel reinstated it, and the retrial is scheduled for next month.

Religious rights watchdogs say the case sets an alarming precedent for the government’s handling of minority religious organizations.

The director of the Witnesses’ Russian headquarters, Vasily Kalin, said the prosecutors’ goal “is to close down the entire Jehovah’s Witnesses community in Moscow.”

The legal proceedings began in 1998, when a Moscow court opened a civil case against the Witnesses, claiming violations of the 1997 religion law. The initial complaint came from the Moscow-based Committee for the Rescue of Youth, an anti-cult group.

Prosecutor Kondrateva said she isn’t basing her case on actual events but on the potential for illegal activity indicated in the Witnesses’ literature.

Her office accuses the Witnesses of fomenting religious strife, destroying the family, infringing on the rights of others and coercing minors into religious activity. The prosecution is also charging Witnesses with encouraging suicide, or refusing medical assistance to others.

The last charge is based on the Witnesses’ prohibition of blood transfusions.

Paralleling the court case, authorities in Moscow are holding the organization in a tight and at times arbitrary squeeze. The 1997 religion law dictated that religious groups re-register with local and federal departments of justice, and though the Jehovah’s Witnesses secured new federal registration in 1999, they have been unable to obtain re-registration in Moscow.

In a recent interview, the official responsible for registering religious organizations in the city, Vladimir Zhbankov, said he hasn’t re-registered the Witnesses because the necessary documents are tied up in the court case.

An attorney for the Witnesses, Galina Krylova, insists that Zhbankov has access to all required registration documents.

Much of the group’s status hinges not on registration, however, but on the court case. If the prosecution scores in the September retrial, the Witnesses will lose their current legal status and, with it, the ability to rent property, distribute literature and invite foreign guests--the missionaries and teachers who come from the United States and elsewhere.

Kondrateva, the prosecutor, said her goal is not to ban the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Moscow, where the group claims as many as 15,000 active members, but to make the organization act within the law.

Officially, the Russian Orthodox Church is taking a neutral stance on the controversial case.

“It’s not our issue at all,” said Yelena Speranskaya, a member of the foreign relations department at the Moscow Patriarchy.

But church officials dismiss Witnesses’ theology, saying it has nothing in common with Christianity.

Kondrateva, who identifies herself as Orthodox, said, “You should act with regard for the culture and traditions of a country.”

Tradition is also on the mind of Moscow official Zhbankov, who supports amending the 1997 law to give government privileges to Russia’s “traditional religions,” such as Orthodoxy, Buddhism, Islam and Judaism. In his view, such support could include financial assistance to the “traditional” groups.

Zhbankov noted that most small sects have been on Russian soil far less time than such religions and he complained that “today they are enjoying the same rights.”

Russian officials contend that it is possible for a democracy to secure religious rights for minority groups while giving a privileged status to long-existing faiths.

Religions “are all equal before the law,” said Alexander Dvorkin, an Orthodox layman, “but they could not by any means be equal before the history of the country.”

Even liberal Russians, such as Anatoly Pchelintsev, a lawyer for the Salvation Army in Moscow, say much the same. “Where the overwhelming majority professes to one religion--be it Russian Orthodoxy or Buddhism or Islam--the government should meet its citizens halfway,” he said.

And citizens should meet the government halfway too, critics of the Witnesses say. They say the group lives by its own laws.

“You can say the state is nothing,” said Kondrateva, a silver cross dangling from her neck, “but is this a proper position to have if you work in this country?

“If your religious beliefs persuade you to not take the state into consideration,” she said, “then go and live in the taiga, in the forest.”

Sergei L. Loiko of The Times’ Moscow bureau contributed to this story.