There is no book in English comparable to this one in the authority that it brings to the portrayal of Russian religious policy. The analysis is built from the author’s decade-long and in-depth experience in Russia. It relies on up-to-date data and documents, taking into account significant alternative works in both English and Russian publications. Geraldine Fagan traverses Russian society and culture freely as a veteran correspondent and religious rights advocate working for Forum 18 News Service. Scholars and religious workers have relied on the accurate and timely reporting of Forum 18 for reliable knowledge about the conditions of religious rights in the countries that were created from the former Soviet Union. With Fagan at the point, Forum 18 has penetrated the peripheries of the great expanses of Russia as well as its urbanized core to get the particulars of local government and court actions and to portray the conditions on the ground in intimate detail. This book uses that close-up knowledge to assess the great changes that are taking place in the religious and political sphere since the demise of the USSR.
The portrayal of the multi-faceted political processes that led up to the passage of the pivotal 1997 law, which favored four religions by name, is clearer than any other I have read. Fagan’s analysis in Chapter 6 of the narrative surrounding the “traditional religions” designation is very helpful in clarifying how the concept, which is not explicitly stated in the 1997 law, gained legs. The analytical descriptions of the ongoing consequences of the (mis-)application of this law for the range of religious groups from Jehovah’s Witnesses to conservative Muslims builds a portrait of frequent indifference to norms of justice, but with noteworthy exceptions that prove the rule. The favoritism given to the Russian Orthodox Church and the deference to the Moscow Patriarchate are well documented, as is the Patriarchate’s aggressive pursuit of its own privilege. The discussion of the ebb and flow of debate about and preparation for religious education in schools gets beneath the headlines to help the reader perceive the fundamental structure of interests that has driven this rocky process of change.
Opposite the copyright page of the book, the author uses the words of Luke 9:49-50, first in Old Russian script and then in English translation, as a kind of frontispiece, presaging some of what comes after. “And John answered and said, Master, we saw one casting out devils in thy name; and we forbade him, because he followeth not with us. And Jesus said unto him, Forbid him not: for he that is not against us is for us.” In a secular age and in a society with a history of a particularly virulent strain of militant atheism, faith differences too quickly get interpreted as animosities. This is a systemic problem in post-Soviet Russia, a country that started out in 1991 with a liberal legal approach to religion but has become a society in which persecution and favoritism define religious policy. More aptly, as Fagan conceives it, Russia has a non-policy on the federal level, the center ceding control of religion to local prerogatives that are often decidedly contrary to the Russian constitution. Concentrating on self promotion and protection of special interests, central authorities, led by Vladimir Putin, curry favor with the Russian Orthodox, expecting Orthodox identity to unite the diverse faith groups within the Federation. Unfortunately, if Fagan is correct – and I believe that she is – the social bond that defines Russia no longer can be subsumed (if it ever was) under the umbrella of Pravoslavie [Orthodoxy]. Lack of attention to building a broader civic cultural identity threatens the future of a united Russia.
With the Boston Marathon bomb attacks in mind, the importance of works such as Fagan’s is ever more apparent. Ignorance of religion and of state policy toward religion (and closely related ethnic dynamics) is dangerous. This ignorance has global consequences that are revealed as we learn that practice in distant locales in Russia may have shaped murderous actions in the United States. Moreover, inside Russia, denying the fundamental religious rights of significant populations leads to strife that can escalate to violence under the right circumstances. In situations in which diverse religious orientations are persecuted or suppressed, and in which the state sets so much of the tone, with religious groups acting accordingly, inter-group hatred and violence are not far behind. Russia provides perhaps too apt an example of these social and spiritual dynamics and regressive tendencies.
Jerry Pankhurst, Wittenberg University, Springfield, Ohio