Stanislav Minin: “There is no political request for the trial against Kulyabin”

religious scholar, columnist for Nezavisimaya Gazeta Stanislav Minin commented for the SOVA Center the situation around the case of the "blasphemous" production of the opera "Tannhäuser" in Novosibirsk.

Novosibirsk The Tannhäuser case is significant for a number of reasons. First of all, the hierarchs Russian Orthodox Church after the incident with the exhibition of Samodurov and Erofeev and process over "Pussy Riot has become the norm reaction to any cultural statement that critically or simply religious themes are freely touched upon. The norm is an appeal to the prosecutor's office. If this is the order, then there are two perspectives. The first is cultural conformity, refusal of creative people from any game with religious symbols and texts. The second is the polemical anti-clericalism of culture. Normal discussion of the parties - both about religion and culture - becomes impossible, because the Church involves the prosecutor's office and the court as arbitrators in the dispute. described above interaction formats do not imply acquaintance of the parties with each other. The artist may not delve into the ideas and practices of a particular religious tradition, and the arch-, proto- and simply priest - in the content of the performance, as happened with Metropolitan Tikhon (Emelyanov) and "Tannhäuser" by Timothy Kulyabin.

From Moscow, signals are already being sent to the diocese to allow church and cultural prejudicial conflicts. This is, in principle, understandable. Judicial persecution of a young director who did not break into the temple, but put in theater performance, not understood by the local bishop, is unlikely to arouse sympathy among anyone other than church ultra-conservatives and poorly educated parishioners. No political request for a trial against Kulyabin, which could coincide with the interests of the Church (as was the case with "Pussy Riot") no, there is only a local alliance of the ROC and authority through the prosecutor's office. Keeping up all the new complaints similar Novosibirsk, the Patriarchate will be held hostage by an extremely conservative church layer. This is not in her best interests. More promising is considered a strategic partnership with the state, within which the ROC, maintaining legal and formal independence, de facto regularly performs functions of the Ministry of Morality. This partnership allows the Church exercise partial control over the spheres of education, upbringing and culture, and count on priority attention to its interests in the economic areas. However, such relationships mean that the Church does not go too far and does not pulls the blanket over. The Kulyabin case is a clear excess: the Russian Orthodox Church cannot publicly side with the director, but can stop the development of the scandal and its copying in other dioceses.

Happening "Tannhäuser" demonstrated that in the public life of Russia dramatic a combination of several trends. This is anti-intellectualism, the absence accepted by all the principles of community life and the perversion of the functions of the institutions of power, First of all, the judiciary. Allegations of violating "the rights of believers" and "using church symbols for other purposes ”(in the play!) are intellectually weak, if not to say - untenable. Rejection of professional religious studies or art examination in court is a flagrant violation procedures. However, local courts salute if the request comes from church circles. There are no guarantees of freedom of creativity, no clear definitions of the "rights of believers" or "feelings of believers" which the state in Russia.