Russian Religion: Putin’s Oppression of the Perceived Minority

on June 5, 2014

As Russian president Vladimir Putin continues to push Russia into the forefront of international news, incidents across Russia and in the Ukraine in particular raise questions of the domestic well-being of Russian citizens. Many of these questions involve matters of religious liberty. Religious freedom in Russia became one of many foci in the US Commission on International Religious Freedom’s (USCIRF) annual report, released earlier this year.

The USCIRF has included Russia in each report available on their website dating back to 2006, and Putin’s Russia remains in the Tier 2 category, which “includes countries where the violations engaged in or tolerated by the government are serious and are characterized by at least one of the elements of the ‘systematic, ongoing, and egregious’ standard [which characterizes Tier 1 countries].”

In light of growing concerns over the preservation of religious liberties, the Kennan Institute of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars hosted a panel discussion in Washington, D.C. last week entitled, “The Politics of Religion in Putin’s Russia.”

Catherine Cosman, senior policy analyst at the USCIRF, began the presentation with a summary of the Commission’s concerns in the Russian Federation. Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and Orthodox Christianity comprise the totality of what Russia considers “traditional religions.” Cosman argues that Russia has experienced serious setbacks over the past two years. In July 2013, Russia issued a law prohibiting blasphemy, which legislated fines of up to $15,000 USD for “religiously offensive behavior.” Russia also enacted increased penalties to a long-standing Anti-Extremism Law in February of this year. This law includes a list of 2241 banned materials in late April. Even though the Anti-Extremism Law attempts to extricate acts of terror and hate crimes supposedly tied to religious faith, these two aforementioned pieces of legislation have led to an increasingly hostile environment for Russian religious minorities.

Cosman also asserts that religious minorities have experienced unjust imprisonment, especially groups like the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints. Other mainline Protestant groups have experienced forms of persecution in Putin’s Russia, but based on the definition of their “traditional religions,” this fact, however unjust, hardly comes as a surprise. What becomes even more troubling is the imprisonment of Muslims for extremism. According to Cosman, “Russian human rights groups have evidence of persecution and prosecution of Muslims for extremism, although they had no apparent link to such activities, including dozens detained for owning religious texts.” Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer, research professor in the Center for Eurasian, Russian, and Eastern European Studies and the department of anthropology at Georgetown University, later attempted to classify this movement as “Islamophobia.”

Balzer also brought up the issue of American intervention in these cases of human rights, criticizing American responses: “If you can denounce your opponents as Islamic extremists, [the United States] will not criticize you.”

Paul Goble, former Special Assistant for Soviet Nationalities for the US State Department, articulated a “negative convergence,” in which Putin has selected the worst of the Soviet Union and his misinformed image of Western capitalism to support his policies in Russia today, especially with regards to religion. His presentation was well received among members of the audience and the other members of the panel.

Goble suggests Putin has taken five things from the Soviet past:

1. The state defines the ideological state of society.
2. Religion is ritual, not belief.
3. Division of religions between registered and unregistered (which Goble argues officially creates a religious underground).
4. Religion only exists because it is tied to the state.
5. Ethnicity and faith are tied together (which explains the massive membership claims of the Russian Orthodox Church)

Goble also points to five things Putin has extracted from a misunderstanding of Western ideals:

1. Religion makes all political issues dichotomous (i.e. every question can be framed as an “either-or” statement).
2. Rejection of secularism (which Putin fundamentally misunderstands as covert atheism).
3. End of the Soviet Union meant there is no longer an official state ideology.
4. Assumption that Russia, under Putin’s leadership, had to rejoin the Christian West.
5. An unresolved tension between religion/ritual and faith.

Goble suggests, among other things, that this “negative convergence” has led to Russian action in the Ukraine, which plays home to the Russian Orthodox Church. Some of the human rights violations are a form of “Orthodox extremism,” a form of extremism ironically justified by anti-extremist legislation. Putin is attempting to develop a tradition to classify as “modern Russian society,” which includes Russian Orthodox Christianity as a key tenet. However, Goble claims this form of civil religion “destroys the possibility of genuine Orthodox faith and discourages young people from joining, causing them to turn to Protestantism or emigration.” In an attempt to establish a ritual tradition, Putin has missed the notion of independent choices of faith and caused Russia’s classification by the USCIRF.

Soli Deo Gloria

 

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