In the Kremlin

Games of the postmodern era

July 7, 2016 Boris Kolymagin

The Russian state systematically drives religion into reservation. Putin’s secularism looks back at the practice of the USSR, where religious life was strictly regulated and actually boiled down to the “departure of the cult”. The “Yarovaya Law”, which provides for the introduction to the law “On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations” of the head of “missionary activity”, is another step in this direction.

There was enough about the disadvantages of the bill. But what is interesting: the amendments have not yet entered into force, the president has not yet approved the document, and the heads of social institutions are in a hurry to play up and abandon their previous agreements with believers, even quite Orthodox.

I will not give specific facts so as not to harm. But the first calls were already sounded. In some houses of the elderly and in children's shelters under the plausible pretexts, meetings-concerts and lectures were canceled. It is likely that access to potential missionaries to such places will soon be blocked tightly.

Protestants of some denominations and representatives of new religious movements subjected the law of obstruction. “Traditional religions” were more careful, and more careful, as always, Orthodox.

At first glance, the “Yarovaya Law” in its religious part was directed against religious aliens from the West. He puts tough restrictions on Jehovah's Witnesses and all those who like to give out for free brochures on the topic of the otherworldly and pester the passers -by with the question “Is there God?” Most of the population are similar prohibitions at the cashier.

And they do not think at all that the constitutional rights of believers again begin to infringe on in society.

In the Russian Orthodox Church, “missionary” documents will certainly play the fundamentalists into the hands. To be more accurate, the counter -resorters - the most ideologized, most reactionary layer of church society. The efforts of Alexander Dvorkin and others like him in all dioceses have long been anti -secondary centers, whose task is to fight spiritual competitors, the withdrawal of people from new religious associations. Sometimes this struggle is tied to a police station and an administrative resource.

Perhaps Yarovaya did not contrast directly with the counter -resort. But their ideas did not disappear in the tuna.

Problems of religious extremism, especially radical Islam, are very acute today. However, when they are consistent, state -owned husbands sometimes have a temptation to go to the purely theological regions and establish state rules of the game there, which can lead to even greater confusion.

The fact that the lady-deputy, not even consulted with the relevant State Duma Committee, rushed to determine what missionaries are, speaks of the features of Putin's secularism. The pendulum changed direction, the post -Soviet atheism begins to declare itself in the field of legislation.

We will be honest: atheism deeply penetrated into the subcorta of our society. And now he takes symbolic capital from religion. It is enough to look at the boorish statements of the proxy of GDP in the past presidential election of Alexander Nevzorov, so that everything becomes clear.

As a counterargument, you can cite the case of Maxim Kormelitsky, who received the real term for the repostation of the picture with a sharp criticism of baptismal bathing. "What is the offensive of atheism, on the contrary, one obscurantism!" - exclaims an interested reader. And it will be wrong.

Yes, the legislator “encourages” the dominant religion, stamps the strange laws on the “insulting feelings of believers” ETS. But this "care" is actually directed against faith. She drives the church into a gold cage. And against the background of this gold, shocking figures of speech and the behavior of the same about. Dmitry Smirnov sound like replicas from the distant, funny 1990s. The religious rise remained there.

It is interesting what the venerable archpriest will say when his parishioners after Sunday service sit on the grass in the park to eat, and, as usual, read prayer before meals. And the police outfit will drive up after the call of the random passerby and will take the prayers where necessary. Is it really silent?

“Traditional” think that the “Yarovaya Law” will not affect them. But this is not so.

Today, the ideas of religion in all aspects are again tested for strength. The problem of religious freedom turned out to be associated not only with the right, with the democracy of the Western model and the Russian controlled democracy, but also with the issues of Putin's secularization. The state begins to transform traditional religions to its needs, stimulate some forms (for example, church-public actions) and extinguish others (mission). And these changes, in short, come down to the fact that faith is removed from religion and a religious and cultural code is left. Therefore, the ritual is so important, and woe to the one who encroach on it (see the Cormelitsky case).

Religion as faith and religion as a set of mythology and ritual behavior again enter into complex interaction. In the postmodern era, all this is a little like the game. But this game concerns the real life of millions of people. Moreover, the interests of the state are behind it.


Photo: Russia. Moscow. June 21, 2016. Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Security and Countering Corruption Irina Yarovaya and the Vice-Speaker of the State Duma of the Russian Federation Sergey Zheleznyak in the Elokhovsky Epiphany Cathedral. Stanislav Krasilnikov/TASS

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