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Paper Prepared by the National Security Council
Staff2
Religion in the Soviet Union: An Overview
There has been a lot of talk and ink of late about a transformation in
the Soviet regime’s attitude toward religion. During the Washington
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Summit, Gorbachev invoked the name of the
Almighty in a comment (actually, he said, “God willing,” hardly a
Biblical quotation), and the press immediately began speculating that he
is a closet believer.
Last Saturday,3
Gorbachev called in Patriarch
Pimen, primate of the Russian Orthodox Church, to make a statement about
greater toleration of religion and to declare that “mistakes” were made
under Stalin. Again, the Western press played this as a new
departure—perestroika for the priesthood.
No one should get carried away by those developments. Seven decades of
brutal repression of religion cannot be erased by a few well-chosen
platitudes. It was Lenin, not Stalin, who began the systematic attack on
religion and set up an atheistic propaganda campaign to paint clergymen
and believers as enemies of the people. It was the Bolsheviks under
Lenin who arrested, tortured, and murdered Pimen’s martyred predecessor,
Patriarch Tikhon. As recently as two years ago under Gorbachev, believers were still being
thrown into labor camps and mental hospitals.
A remark made to Administration officials by a Soviet negotiator during
the last Summit best sums up the current Soviet policy toward religion.
“We no longer see religion as the ‛enemy of the people,’” he said, “but
as a ‛fellow traveler.’” This remark shows that the Soviet regime is
attempting to use the spontaneous rebirth of faith and interest in the
churches throughout the USSR to its
own advantage. The Soviets have created a situation that even more
tightly intertwines rather than separates church and state. The USSR Council of Religious Affairs remains
the administrator of churches and, at Party direction, sets the limits
of religious freedom at any given time. Russian Orthodox dissidents
argue that the official church is compromised by its subservient
relationship to the State. They demand that the church be allowed to run
its own affairs. Pimen and the rest of the Orthodox Church hierarchy,
however, continue to serve at the state’s bidding. Pimen, in fact, is
believed by many critics always to have been a pawn of the regime.
1988 is the year of the Millennium of Christianity in Kiev Rus—the
thousandth anniversary of the baptism of Prince Vladimir of Kiev, whose
spiritual descendants are the Russians, Ukrainians, and Belorussians.
The Millennium has drawn the attention of Christians everywhere, causing
a predicament for the Soviet leadership: how to keep believers under
control while turning a facade of tolerance to the world.
The regime’s strategy is to make the official Millennium celebration one
of the biggest propaganda charades in history. Its basic move has
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been to enlist the leadership
of the Russian Orthodox Church, the church that, at least nominally,
claims 47 million adherents in the USSR. The Church hierarchy has been working hand-in-hand
with the secular authorities to prepare the official celebration, which
begins two days after you leave the Soviet Union, on June 4th.
Most of the Millennium festivities are to be held in Moscow, not Kiev
(where everything started in 988), and this has infuriated Ukrainians
both in the Soviet Union and abroad. The reason why the Kremlin dares
not celebrate appropriately in Kiev is because of the repression of the
Ukrainian Catholic (Uniate) and Orthodox Churches. In 1946, the Uniate
Church was officially banned, and the separate Ukrainian Orthodox Church
was subjugated to the Russian Orthodox Church. The Ukrainian issue is an
explosive one, especially in view of the underground Uniate Church’s
appeal for official recognition. This Church, which owes its allegiance
to Rome, but maintains an Eastern rite, claims more than ten million
potential communicants. Its right to exist is firmly defended in the
West, especially by the Pope, who has refused to attend the Millennium
celebration in the Soviet Union unless he is permitted to visit
Lithuania and the Ukraine. The Soviets have denied the Pope permission
to make these visits.
Apart from all this, there is some improvement in religious tolerance.
Over the past year, several churches have been allowed to build and
administer old-age homes, and some church members are being allowed to
volunteer time in hospitals and orphanages. Three hundred new churches
(of all denominations) have been built since 1985. This is a step in the
right direction, even though it hardly makes up for the seventy thousand
churches that were destroyed during the first seventy years of the
Soviet regime. This year, the Soviets are publishing a Millennial
edition of the Bible in 100,000 copies. The dissidents say that one copy
will cost about 200 rubles, the salary an average Soviet makes in a
month. If they are right in claiming there are 47 million Orthodox
Christians, even 100,000 bibles won’t go very far.
Our hope is that these reforms continue and expand, and that there is no
return to a more suppressive environment after the Millennium is
over.
Laws that limit freedom of religion still remain. The most resented is
the one that prohibits religious instruction outside the home. Parents
are permitted to teach their own children about religion, but not other
peoples’ children. Churches are forbidden to establish Sunday Schools.
Hebrew schools are taboo. Many people have served terms at hard labor
for violating these laws.
Another repressive statute outlaws religious activity by unregistered
sects. This has caused suffering to the evangelical Baptists, Seventh
Day Adventists, Pentecostals, and Jehovah’s Witnesses, because,
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in their belief in separating
church and state, these denominations do not wish to be registered. It
has also led to the incarceration in prisons and mental hospitals of a
large number of Hare Krishnas, who have concurrently been subjected to a
campaign of denigration in the Soviet media.
Still another law permits the State to arrest conscientious objectors as
draft dodgers.
There are a myriad other ways that religion is suppressed: requests for
registration of parishes are delayed indefinitely by bureaucratic
inaction; packages of religious literature from abroad never reach their
destinations; especially-energetic priests (almost always those who
oppose the state’s control of churches) are exiled to rural areas.
Nevertheless, faith is flourishing as never before in the USSR, particularly among younger people.
The churches are well-attended, especially at Christmas and Easter, and
the main Synagogue in Moscow has an active and constant congregation.
Even if—as many dread—the pendulum swings back to more repressive
counter-measures, the regime will find it impossible to extinguish the
light that now burns even more brightly in darkness.
