Punk Raskol

In the pictures on the left - pickets near the building of the Moscow City Court were held on March 14 by both Pussy Riot defenders and their opponents.
February 21, Pussy Riot was performed in the XXS prayer “Theotokos, Putin Drive” (right)
Punk Raskol. 46% of citizens consider the punishment from 2 to 7 years in prison for participants in punk-grab in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. In the church itself there is no consensus on how to relate to the action of feminists from Pussy Riot, and experts talk about strengthening the conservative wing of the Russian Orthodox Church. The New Times sorted out the situation a month after the famous Punk-Molebn in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, followed by the arrest of the soloists of the Pussy Riot group, the Russian Orthodox Church literally went to meet the offenders: on March 22, the Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, the chairman of the synodal department of the interaction of the church and society, met with lawyers of the arrested and accepted from the lawyers of the arrested They are a letter. “The meeting went well. Of course, no constructive decisions were made, but Chaplin took a letter to Nadezhda Tolokonnikova addressed to him. He confirmed that he did not mind meeting the girls. But he will need to agree with his leadership. We need to negotiate with the leadership of the pre -trial detention center, ”said Nikolai Polozkov, the Pussy Riot lawyer Pussy Riot.

Recall: starting on March 18 in the churches of Moscow, priests collected signatures under the appeal to the Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika and Moscow prosecutor Sergei Kudeneev with a request to be prosecuted under Article 282 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“inciting religious enmity”) “all persons involved in the organization, conducting the shares and the distribution of materials and the Internet of materials and information about the Internet about the Internet blasphemous action. " And the inter -religious Council of Russia at the meeting on March 22 called the action in the XXS a crime and said: "It is gratifying to see that the state authorities showed due attention to what happened and conducts the necessary actions to investigate the incident."

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A number of priests interviewed by The New Times believe that persecution of the punk group is beneficial to politicians, but not the church in any way

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Customers Question of questions: who was the initiator of such cruel actions of the authorities in relation to the soloists of the punk group? OMON detained Nadezhda Tolokonnikov and Maria Alekhin on March 3, two weeks after the action in the XXS. On March 18, another member of the group was arrested by Ekaterina Samutsevich. During the investigation, until April 24, according to the court decision, they will be behind bars, in a pre -trial detention center. Tolokonnikova’s daughter is four years old, five years old to her son Alekhina. They accuse the Pussy Riot soloists in part 2 of Article 213 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“hooliganism”), the maximum term of punishment is seven years of imprisonment. The heroines of the scandal themselves deny their involvement in the action in XXS.

The Russian Orthodox Church initially reacted to the action very sluggishly. The same Archpriest Chaplin, on the day of Punk Molebn, told reporters that he did not see anything new in the action: “For two thousand years, our temple is besieged. Unhappy people. " But the very next day, he called to tighten the punishment for insulting the feelings of believers, and also stated that those politicians who would not condemn the Pussy Riot action "may stop counting on the support of the Orthodox." Soon Vladimir Putin followed his advice. “I hope this will not happen again,” he told the press on March 7.

The spouse of Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, an activist of the war group "War" Petr Verzilov, is sure that the reaction did not go to the action itself, but to a video that began to quickly spread on the Internet. “When the investigators only opened the case, they told me that the Primary was the original from Cyril. The Patriarch turned to the apparatus of Putin and to the head of the Moscow Central Internal Affairs Directorate of Moscow, Vladimir Kolokoltsev, with a request to punish Pussy Riot, ”said Verzilov The New Times. In his opinion, Vladimir Putin is angry with the group for the rally on January 20 - in the frontal place opposite the Kremlin with an anti -Putin song. “Investigators constantly emphasize that they are only small pawns and all orders come from a very, very high level,” says Verzilov.

The main question in the Pussy Riot case is who the punk-graben punk offended more: Vladimir Putin or Patriarch Kirill Alexander Soldatov, a religious publicist and editor of Portala-Sredo.ru, told The New Times that, according to his information, the Pussy Riot actually took a conversation: “But Putin made Putin's decision on his own.” According to Soldatov, the authorities initiated tough measures against Pussy Riot to switch the attention of the press and the liberal public from the analysis of the elections: “In my memory there was no such information campaign in Russia, which would keep attention for a month.” Political scientist Stanislav Belkovsky, on the contrary, is sure that the initiative came from the Patriarch: “But Putin expressed his opinion at the request of Cyril, as he respects the Holy of the Russian Orthodox Church and cannot refuse him. This story has nothing to do with the elections - having lost its moral authority, the church simply compensates for its administrative resource, ”said Belkovsky The New Times.

However, it can not be remembered that the actions in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior were preceded by another, to which no one paid attention to: on February 19, a similar performance was executed in the Epiphany Cathedral in Elokhov (it is located on Elokhovskaya Street in Moscow), which under the Soviet regime was one of the main cathedrals of the Russian Orthodox Church and where the previous head of the Orthodox Church Patriarch Alei II served Easter and Christmas services. However, this action had no consequences. Didn't you notice? Or did not find a political strategist who realized how to promote and use this story?

A number of priests interviewed by The New Times believe that persecution of the punk group is beneficial to politicians, but not the church. “It was important for someone that everyone blamed the church in strict arrest. We perfectly understand that if it were not for the prime minister’s surname in the song, it would hardly have been such a tough reaction to this trick. At the same time, these girls made a big gift to Putin before the elections: so to discredit the protest movement as a whole - this is necessary to try, ”says one of the priests who asked not to mention his name. So or not, but the Levada Center survey, published on March 22, showed that 46% of Russians consider the term of 2 to 7 years to the participants of the action in XXS. 35% called such a punishment excessive, and only 9% of respondents said that such shares should not be prosecuted. Here, however, it is important that the same 46% of the action in the temple learned from sociologists, 30% knew about it, 20% heard, but did not know what the girls did, and only 4% of the respondents said that they were monitoring the scandal. In other words, it was the arrest of the Pussy Riot soloists, the wide lighting of the scandal on federal television channels turned punk hooliganism into a powerful PR action. “The story with these girls in reaction and passions is clearly redundant in relation to the event itself. So far, thank God, it is ineptly conducting. But in principle, this is a model of reaction to differentness, ”said the famous political strategist Gleb Pavlovsky.

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Kuraev was called to the carpet at the Moscow Theological Academy, where he teaches. There were no sanctions yet, and only one of his colleagues invited him to repent

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In defense and against almost immediately after the arrest of the Pussi Ryot soloists, a petition to the Patriarch appeared on the network with a request to show mercy and intercede for the arrested. It was compiled by the representative of the Vera Hospice Fund Lidia Moniava. In an interview with The New Times, she said that she was outraged by the sharp statements of Vsevolod Chaplin about Pussy Riot, and when she saw that many people consider the arrest of soloists a “real nightmare” on the Internet, compiled a petition text and published it in their live magazine: “Now there are already 7.5 thousand signatures under it. The Patriarch we took 5700 signatures that we collected in the first four days. ” Among the signed there were quite a few priests, and mainly from the regions-the Irkutsk, Novgorod, Novosibirsk regions, signed the text and priests from parishes outside Russia, serving in Los Angeles, Dublin. There were Muscovites. So, about. Andrei Zuevsky from the Church of St. Nicholas in Tolmachi told The New Times that the action in the XXS was planned, hostile to the feelings of believers. But he signed a petition because it "reflects the Christian attitude to what happened." “I was simply struck that many laity and clergy began to demand from the state a cruel punishment for these people. I would like to ask where all these priests and church activists would be, if Christ, with His omnipotent will, imprisoned for seven years in prison in a jailing over Him, and then bursting with him? The power of Christianity is not to answer evil to evil, ”said Zuevsky. The Russian Orthodox Church did not answer the petition, and the head of the Patriarchal press service Vladimir Vigilyansky said that citizens are trying to force the patriarch to influence law enforcement agencies.

Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin met with Pussy Riot lawyers and agreed to visit the arrested girls in a pre -trial detention center

The first action in defense of Pussy Riot took place on March 8: through social networks, the call to arrange a prayer service in support of Pussy Riot in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior spread. The church prepared: when people came to the temple, it turned out to be closed "for technical reasons", riot police stomped nearby. As a result of brawls with members of the Congress of Russian communities, including assistant Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin Alexander Bosykh, several people were detained. The second wave of support shares was scheduled for March 14, when the Moscow City Court examined the complaint of Pussy Riot's lawyers on arrest. People stood in pickets by the court building. And then young people appeared again, who began to pour them with water and tried to select posters. And among them again there was still the same barefoot: the Internet went around the photograph of his direct blow with his fist in the face of Taisiya Kollykhi standing with the picket. In a conversation with The New Times, Bosykh confirmed that Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, who leads, recall, in the Moscow Patriarchate, a department responsible for the relationship between the Church with the Company, blesses him to the shares: “The Russian Orthodox Church very much supports the youth wing Kro. For example, it allocates a room for sports. Periodically, the church gives us blessings on our shares - for example, sports runs. This is so that people do not think that we are extremists and bandits. And after I opposed the prayer service on March 8, Chaplin called me and thanked it. ” According to Bosykh, the assault on March 14 Chaplin no longer approved, but he did not scold - he “scolded”. Vsevolod Chaplin confirmed The New Times that the Russian Orthodox Church provides a support: “The Orthodox community can and should protest against attempts to protect and justify the crime that was committed in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. Of course, no one needs to beat, but it is possible and necessary to oppose such actions. ”

Split? As if in response to a civilian petition in defense of Pussy Riot and shares in their support in Moscow churches and temples, letters appeared to collect signatures to the prosecutor's office against the participant of the action in XXS. The head of the Synodal Information Department of the Moscow Patriarchate, Vladimir Legoyd, denied a message about a special decree from above: “I am sure that there was no such circular.” However, the historian, associate professor of the RSU, Dmitry Antonov told The New Times that in his parish the letter was read out by the priest: “He said that he ordered the signature to collect deanery. At the same time, the priest himself took a neutral position: he did not personally comment on the Pussy Riot action itself. ” According to Antonov, few signed the paper - about 5-10% of the parishioners present.

One of the priests, occupying a tolerant position against Pussy Riot, admitted to The New Times that, contrary to his personal opinion, he read the letter, fearing the sanctions: “Yes, there were no such paper in the Novodevichy monastery. Everyone else was definitely received. The dean called me, asked me to be off. ” According to him, parishioners "reacted with understanding, but few signed." According to another priest, most abbot simply put a letter at the entrance to the temple, not reading his flock.

Some of the abbot believe that the initiative with a letter to the prosecutor’s office was no longer from the Patriarch, but from church officials a level below. “It was the initiative of the vicar bishops, priests with an administrative resource and seeking to run ahead of the steam locomotive,” one of them is sure. The head of the press service of the Patriarch Vladimir Vigilyansky adheres to this position: “This is not from above, it was one of the priests. And I understand them in some way, because the bacchanalia, which is expressed in the protection of the arrested, provokes people. ”

Professor of the Moscow Theological Academy Deacon Andrei Kuraev told The New Times that an accompanying circular was attached to the letter, so it is approximately known where the initiative came from. But he refused to name specific names.

Experts with whom the New Times thought that the story of Pussy Riot indicates an increase in the right, conservative wing inside the Russian Orthodox Church. “The conservative wing rallied and louder than usual, declared itself. In the information space of the Church, it now dominates. Several weak votes of church "modernists" are not heard behind the canonade of hatred, ”says religious publicist Alexander Soldatov. Religious scholar Boris Falikov also believes that the conservative wing of the church has intensified. “And the patriarch is now in general with them,” he said.

Kuraev objected tightly on this deacon. “There are disagreements. But this is not a civil war and, of course, not a split - this word for the church is taboo. There is no discussion either. Even if I express my point of view on what is happening, I do not lead the intra-church controversy with someone specific, ”he said in an interview with The New Times. But the truth is that Kuraev himself was summoned to the carpet at the Moscow Theological Academy, where he teaches. The sanctions had not yet followed, and the conversation, according to him, was calm, and only one of his colleagues invited him to repent.