Details of the Provocative Plan to Cleanse the Religious Sphere in Russia

January 8, 2011 · Adam Bondaruk, Baptists, Victor Belykh, AUCECB, Persecution, Interview, KGB, Books, Unregistered Pentecostals, Nikolay Kotyakov, On Emigration, United Church of Evangelical Christians, Vestibule, Petr Saenko, Pentecostals, Religious Mafia, Slavik Radchuk, Contemporary Persecution, Security Services

It is no secret that the justice authorities rank first, perhaps, in the number of warnings issued to religious organizations. When carrying out oversight functions, officials of this body sometimes not only overstep the bounds of an inspection’s subject matter, but also demand information that was not even required during Stalin’s times.

In connection with this, a natural question arises: What is behind such activity, and do these actions by the Ministry of Justice amount to a purge of the religious field? Let’s try to make sense of it…

The Background of the Issue.

We all know the Russian proverb «a new broom sweeps clean». That is what happened this time, when the powers previously exercised by the Federal Registration Service were once again handed over to the Ministry of Justice. This body’s work began when, in October 2008, the website of the Russian Ministry of Justice posted a list of several dozen religious organizations against which the “new” agency planned to file liquidation suits.

The next “emergency” was Order No. 61 of the Russian Ministry of Justice of March 3, 2009, which regulates the conduct of state religious-studies expert review in Russia. An Expert Council was formed to carry out such reviews, and the Ministry essentially endowed it with powers comparable to those of the Soviet Council for Religious Affairs (though the question of authority is debatable: some scholars believe that the Council for Religious Affairs had far less power than the current expert body).

But the most astonishing thing was its composition. The Council came to include such “scholars” as Aleksandr Dvorkin, head of the St. Irenaeus of Lyons Center for Sectology; Aleksandr Kuzmin, director of the Saratov branch of Dvorkin’s Center; Evgeny Mukhtarov, a journalist and sectologist from Yaroslavl; the Russian Orthodox priest Lev Semenov, a staffer of Dvorkin’s Center; and Andrey Vasilchenko, a Yaroslavl sectologist, specialist on German fascism, and author of a whole series of popular books on the history of the Third Reich.

Such a move by the Ministry of Justice appeared to be a spit not only in the direction of non-Orthodox religious organizations, but also in the direction of well-known academics working on issues of state-confessional relations, who suddenly found themselves “unworthy” in comparison with the colorful figures named above.

The appointment as Chairman of the Council of the scandalously notorious “scholar” Mr. Dvorkin—who lacks not only religious-studies education, but also any secular higher education—stirred a wave of negative public opinion that escalated into the campaign «No to the Inquisitors!», which gathered around 13,000 signatures within two months.
Seeing such public engagement, the newly-minted chairman fell silent, but not for long; he couldn’t restrain himself and went back to his old ways. Thus, on May 16, 2010, during the evening broadcast of the state television channel «Russia», in the weekly segment «Special Correspondent», he made insulting statements about religious associations and a member of the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation. In his remarks, the head of the Expert Council called for a struggle against law-abiding religious organizations, and the “sectologist” named religious education for schoolchildren and the creation of a post of commissioner for “sect” affairs with the powers of a federal minister as the most effective measures in the fight against this evil.

And while Dvorkin, now in an “official capacity,” continues persistently to frighten Russia with “terrible” sects, the justice authorities are persistently trying to accuse these “sects” of breaking the law. As a result, requests for help are reaching the Institute of Religion and Law from clergy all across our boundless Motherland.

On the one hand, such activity by justice authorities has helped eliminate legal illiteracy among religious leaders—as the saying goes, every cloud has a silver lining. On the other hand, however, a dangerous trend has emerged toward total control over the internal activities of religious associations.

The first signs came when justice authorities began demanding membership lists from churches, including full names, citizenship, and dates of birth. This provoked well‑founded indignation among many clergy who still remember the repression of believers during the Soviet period.

Is it necessary to recall that according to Article 23 of the Constitution, everyone has the right to privacy, and that under Article 3, paragraph 5 of the Federal Law “On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations,” nobody is obliged to disclose their attitude toward religion?

Furthermore, by virtue of Article 3, paragraph 1 of Federal Law No. 152‑FZ of 27 June 2006 “On Personal Data,” any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (data subject), including surname, name, patronymic, year, month, date and place of birth, address, family, social, and property status, education, profession, income, and other information, constitutes personal data.

Under Article 6, paragraph 1 of the aforesaid Law, personal data may be processed by an operator only with the consent of the data subjects. Moreover, persons who gain access to personal data must ensure the confidentiality of those data, and in accordance with Article 9, paragraph 4 of the Law, personal data may be processed solely with the written consent of the data subject. This Law classifies information on religious affiliation as a special category of personal data, and consequently, by virtue of Article 10, paragraph 1, processing of special categories of personal data is not permitted.

Therefore, by making such demands, justice authorities themselves become violators of the law.

But that was only the beginning. Alongside membership lists came demands to produce correspondence between religious organizations and legal entities or individuals. In several regions, officials decided to restrict citizens’ constitutional right to freedom of conscience by demanding that members of religious organizations be exclusively residents of the city in which the religious association operates.

Recently, a pastor from a church in Rostov‑on‑Don consulted the Institute of Religion and Law after the local justice department requested information on the place, time, purposes, and core content of prayer services; prayer retreats of the Church Council; and inter‑church prayers.

This occurred despite the fact that Article 4, paragraph 2 of the Federal Law “On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations” explicitly states that, in accordance with the constitutional principle of separation of religious associations from the state, the state shall not interfere in the activities of religious associations unless those activities contravene the law, while Article 18, paragraph 2 of Federal Law No. 294, in turn, obliges officials of supervisory bodies to comply with the legislation of the Russian Federation, the rights and legitimate interests of the religious organization under inspection, and not to demand from the religious organization documents or other information whose submission is not provided for by Russian law.

Analyzing what is happening, one gets the impression that justice‑agency officials are either unfamiliar with the legislation governing the activities of religious associations or are deliberately ignoring its requirements.

Who, then, initiates such inspections? Are the unlawful demands made under instructions from above, or is it simply ordinary legal illiteracy on the part of bureaucrats?

In all fairness, it should be noted that, as a rule, questionable demands come not from the Russian Ministry of Justice itself but from its territorial bodies. Taking this into account, one might conclude that the blame lies with the legal nihilism of individual officials and their desire to “curry favor” by ticking a box on supposedly uncovered offenses. Yet, against the backdrop of mass inspections, statements by the newly‑minted “Head” of the expert council about combating dissidents are heard ever more frequently.

In closing, I would like to tell the reader one interesting story. On 14 April 2010, the Rosbalt news agency (Moscow) hosted a round‑table on the topic: “Life in a Sect: Quest for Happiness, Escape from Reality, or Protest?”

The discussion was attended by the author of this article, lawyer Anatoly Pchelintsev, Dvorkin, and his “comrades‑in‑arms”: neo‑psychologist Alina Vinogradova and neo‑religious studies scholar Tatyana Korpacheva.

The round‑table proceeded as usual, in an atmosphere of heated polemics. Mr. Dvorkin and his “support group” tried to frighten everyone with an invisible enemy in the guise of dangerous “totalitarian sects” that harm the mental health of their followers, while we, for our part, attempted to urge them to relate at least one real fact connected with the “destructive activities” of those “terrifying” organizations.

After the event, I decided to approach Dvorkin with a question: does any methodological manual exist that is used when conducting state religious‑studies expert evaluations? I waited until Mr. Dvorkin was free and put the question to him. The answer I heard was: “I do not reveal the secrets of the Ministry of Justice; apply through the proper channels with an official request.” This involuntarily raises the question: how many other “secrets” does the Chief Guardian of the Ministry of Justice’s Secrets know? And is his provocative plan to “cleanse” the religious field of our country not being carried out with the help of justice agencies…

Inna Zagrebina Slavic Legal Center

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