An Interview with Pavel Seviarynets
The editor of the East-West Church Report reached Pavel Seviarynets by telephone in the northeastern Belarusian city of Vitsebsk [Russian: Vitebsk] back in July 2011. In the wake of mass opposition protests—brutally dispersed by riot police as unlawful—on the night of the 19 December 2010 presidential election, he had spent five months in a KGB detention center (in Belarus, the secret police retain their Soviet-era title). At the time of the editor’s interview, Seviarynets was confined to his home city while awaiting an appeal against a sentence of three years’ correctional labor, handed down due to his involvement in the December 2010 protests as campaign manager for the Belarusian Christian Democracy Party. This appeal being unsuccessful, Seviarynets was sent to an open-regime prison soon after this interview and held there until his release in November 2013. He has been recognized as a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International.
The interview took place in Russian. Other than a brief quotation, it has not been published previously.
In the early 20th century most Belarusian Christian Democrats were Catholic. The majority of Belarusian Christians I have spoken with who are involved in the present-day pro-democracy movement are Protestant. Were you already a Christian when you first took an interest in politics? Was there a connection between your interest in politics and your becoming an Orthodox Christian specifically?
As far as the church affiliation of Belarusian Christian Democracy activists is concerned, just over 30 percent are Protestant, 22 percent are Catholic—including Greek Catholics—and 45 percent are Orthodox. So Orthodox are the largest component group, and they include our [2010] presidential candidate, Vital Rymasheuski, myself as one of the co-chairs, and most regional leaders. Why there are fewer Catholics than 80 years ago is a question for us too, of course—we have a special program focused on work with Catholics that includes contact during pilgrimages, as Catholics are the most politically passive of the churches in Belarus, unfortunately. This has to do with the position of the Catholic hierarchy. Also, when a Belarusian national revival took place during the early 20th century, Catholics were its driving force, and so the Soviet machine deliberately destroyed them. This meant that the Catholic Church was in a very weak state by the time of the second Belarusian revival 20 years ago [1990-91]. The only Catholic political leader then was Zianon Pazniak, and the Catholic Church has not produced a serious political leader since, unlike the Protestants and Orthodox.
As for me personally, I was a nonbeliever when I became involved in politics. I was imprisoned in 1998 as leader of the Young Front [Belarusian: Malady Front], the largest pro-democracy youth organization. It was in prison that I repented and recognized Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.
Was this due to people you met in prison?
No. It was just an inner revelation, very strong. I just understood that God was acting in that way, more than I could understand, even.
So it had nothing to do with anything you had read, or anywhere you had gone beforehand?
No. I didn’t go anywhere before that, absolutely nowhere.
Did it have any connection with your family?
No, no. My family were non-believers. Afterwards, I went to various churches—including Protestant churches—for almost three years. But I was never a member of a Protestant church. I tried to attend a Protestant, Catholic, or Orthodox church every Sunday. I was finally baptized in 2001. Once again, it was not my human, personal decision, so to speak, but a decision for which I prayed and received an answer. The Orthodox Church was the church where I was supposed to be. And so it was not a human or personal choice. I think that God was simply leading me.
How did becoming a Christian change your view of politics?
Straight after I repented in 1999 we carried out reforms in the Young Front. Until then we had not identified ourselves politically with any ideological or Christian movement, but in that year we drew up a program: A Christian Choice for the Young Front. Working with like-minded believers, we had essentially transferred the organization to the track of Christian democracy by 2000.
The Young Front remains the largest, best-known democratic organization in Belarus. While there were several thousand members when it was founded, there are fewer now due to pressure from the regime. I cannot say exactly how many, because five of its leaders are currently [July 2011] in prison in the wake of the 19 December 2010 protests, and people are prosecuted for membership. Young people are particular targets—they are expelled from university and so on. But I can say that the current leader of the Young Front— Zmitser Dashkevich—is a Protestant, and the vicechairs are either Protestant or Orthodox believers.
Once many [of the original] members of the Young Front reached their late twenties, they decided to found—or rather, revive—Belarusian Christian Democracy, and from 2004-05 we began to set up the party’s organizational committee. To me it is clear that the very concept of Belarus— its national idea, as they say—is in essence Christian. Belarusians were created by God as a Christian nation, a Christian people. And if we, with the help of the Bible, the Church, and God’s commandments, are able to decode this national program—that is, to propose a Christian answer to problems in the spheres of economics, politics, and culture—then we will realize the plan set out for us by God.
Is the principle of religious freedom important for Belarus in this context?
Without religious freedom, the Church cannot work to its full extent for the benefit of all society, everyone in culture… I won’t say politics, because the Church as an institution cannot interfere in the affairs of the state. However, believers may—and are even called to—participate in politics in a positive sense. That is prohibited right now. The Church is not just separate from the state; in some cases it is banned from working in social, cultural, and especially political life. Without religious freedom we cannot develop such fundamental things as a people, a national idea, national economics, national politics. Religious freedom is a fundamental value. We cannot do anything without it—anything we tried to do would be built upon sand.
In Belarus, religious freedom has a special role, because the Church is the only structure of civil society not under the control of the authoritarian regime. In practice, only the churches are capable of undertaking social initiatives that might be realized upon a national scale. This is because all NGOs that are not connected with the regime are either not permitted to work or else neutralized so that they are small and cannot do anything even in their local region, let alone the whole country.
In order for churches to operate, however, they need registration. Our Orthodox and Catholic Churches need to form parishes and register them. Protestants have a huge number of problems—they have dozens of congregations that are not registered. The current law [On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organizations, adopted in 1992 and substantially amended in 2002] is thus the main limitation on religious freedom in Belarus. In practice, the three main churches can be controlled and prevented from working on a Belarus-wide scale by threats to take away their registration or to confiscate their land—it is the state that allocates land to the churches, after all.
If the churches are not allowed to work, then social projects dealing with problems like abortion or alcoholism— rehabilitation centers—are not allowed to develop beyond a few initiatives. In Belarus there are a huge number of problems connected with both abortion and alcoholism—a third of men are alcoholics, according to the World Health Organization. The churches would work with them effectively, but they are not able to do so. At first glance the churches aren’t restricted—“please go ahead”—but as soon as you organize a charitable concert, evangelization, a rehabilitation center, or some other initiative, or if you want to register a new congregation, that’s it: the goodwill of the state ends. It starts to ban, does not allow access, and only in rare cases— through a corrupt scheme or by exacting a promise not to get involved in public or political life—does it register or permit. But in most cases it just does not grant permission.
The state proclaims its readiness to work with alcoholics, but it is ineffective because it is the state that turns these people to drink. In Belarus we have very cheap alcohol—catastrophically cheap. It is ten times cheaper to drink strong liquor here than it is to buy food. The state has no interest in this work happening, and there are a huge number of problems as a result. So religious freedom is like a key—huge social and political problems are linked to it. If you unlock using this key—that is, if you return religious freedom to Belarus—the climate will change within the churches in the first one or two years, and—as far as I can judge by social processes—after another few years it will change throughout the country.
In fact, if you were to propose various reforms to me—a bloc of economic reforms, a bloc of social reforms, or a new law on freedom of conscience and its implementation, I’d choose the last one. Because I know that through that, however surprising it may seem, Belarus can be opened up in the most effective way—opened up to God and to positive social processes.
