The ROC, which imported cigarettes to Russia in the 1990s, reminded: promotion of cigarettes in art is a sin

· Russia, Russian Orthodox Church, Contemporary Persecution

The Russian Orthodox Church has urged figures in art and advertising to stop creating a romantic image of smokers.

“It is a sin to promote cigarettes in art. It is also deceitful for cigarette companies to support cultural and sporting events,” said Bishop Panteleimon, head of the Synodal Department for Charity and Social Ministry, as quoted by Interfax.

The comment was prompted by a recently submitted government draft law “On Protecting Public Health from Environmental Tobacco Smoke and the Consequences of Tobacco Consumption.” The document envisages a total ban on smoking on trains, at railway stations, in hotels and restaurants, setting a minimum price for cigarettes, and other restrictive measures.

The Church representative recalled that smoking is not only a sin and a destructive passion, but also one of the varieties of drug addiction, which in the literal sense poisons the life of both the smoker and those around them.

Church and cigarettes — opposites attract: in the 1990s the ROC actively traded in them

The head of the synodal department believes that by restricting tobacco smoking in public places, it will be possible to protect the rights of non-smokers. “Smokers insist that the state must protect their rights. But who will protect the rights of non-smokers — the elderly, pregnant women, children?” Bishop Panteleimon stated.

“If you do smoke, then smoke where no one sees you. Do not tempt others and do not set a bad example for children,” the bishop said.

The latest flare-up of the cigarette problem in art is connected with the enforcement on September 1 of the law “On Protecting Children from Information Harmful to Their Health and Development.” The law provides for a number of measures to protect children from printed materials and audio and video content of a pornographic nature, including in the form of propaganda. It also establishes standards for the distribution of visual products not recommended for viewing by children under 18, by providing them with special informational labels — “6+,” “12+,” “16+,” and “18+” ratings.

However, it then emerged that because of this law, even beloved Soviet cartoons could fall under censorship, such as “Well, Just You Wait!” and “Crocodile Gena,” whose characters allow themselves to smoke on screen.

The animator and director of the film “Gray Wolf & Little Red Riding Hood,” where “the wolf smokes heavily,” called the new law “On Protecting Children from Information Harmful to Their Health and Development” “obscurantism to please the authorities.” “Stupid, indecent behavior by the Church and the authorities, for which they should be ashamed before us and before future generations,” Bardin said. He is convinced that such laws are returning the country to the Middle Ages. “I had hoped to live in the 21st century, but they are throwing me back somewhere into the 15th,” Bardin declared.

A smoking gun: in 1996 alone, ROC structures brought 8 billion cigarettes into Russia

Let us note that the Russian Orthodox Church has a direct connection to the cigarette topic that Bishop Panteleimon spoke of protecting against propaganda, because in the 1990s it actively sold this poison on Russian territory. However, during Boris Yeltsin’s era, the ROC, which had established mutually beneficial cooperation with the state and was exempted from customs duties, was also heavily involved in selling alcohol, alongside the Afghan Veterans Foundation and the Sports Foundation.

As Novaya Gazeta wrote in February 2012, citing an “extensive dossier” by historian Sergei Bychkov, who published dozens of articles on the tobacco business of the former head of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate (DECR MP), Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad — now the Patriarch — it was in the 1990s that the current head of the ROC “amassed a fortune,” including from the trade in cigarettes.

In 1993, with the participation of the Moscow Patriarchate, the financial-trading group “Nika” was created, whose vice-president was Archpriest Vladimir Veriga — the commercial director of the DECR MP, headed by Metropolitan Kirill.

A year later, two “parallel” commissions for humanitarian aid emerged under the Russian Government and the DECR MP: the first decided which aid could be exempted from taxes and excise duties, and the second imported this aid through church channels and sold it to commercial structures. Thus, most of the aid exempted from taxes was distributed through regular trading networks at regular market prices.

According to the government commission on humanitarian aid, in 1996 alone the DECR MP imported about 8 billion cigarettes into the country.

The publication notes that the piquancy of Kirill’s tobacco business is underscored by the fact that in Orthodoxy, smoking is considered a sin, destructive to health and life.

Kirill himself once tried to justify his involvement in this business: “The people who were doing this did not know what to do: should they burn these cigarettes or send them back? We appealed to the government, and it made a decision: to recognize it as humanitarian cargo and give the opportunity to sell it.”

But the government categorically denied this information, after which Patriarch Alexy II disbanded the DECR MP commission and created a new ROC Commission for Humanitarian Aid, headed by Bishop Alexy (Frolov).

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