(Interfax – St. Petersburg, July 12, 2013) Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia presided over a religious service marking the 400th anniversary of the House of Romanov at the Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg on Friday. Hundreds of worshippers gathered at the cathedral and in the square in front of it for the service, an Interfax correspondent […]
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(RFE/RL – rferl.org – July 11, 2013) Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill has urged Russians to have less fun and spend more of their free time in seclusion. On July 11, Kirill said there was “more fun than needed” in the life of Russians. He said people spent a lot of their energy working and should occupy their time in isolated, […]
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(Interfax – July 3, 2013) The recent laws criminalizing “propaganda” of homosexuality and actions aimed at hurting believers’ feelings have the support of the majority of Russians, privately-owned Russian news agency Interfax reported on 3 July, quoting figures from the latest opinion poll carried out by Levada Centre. Figures on the center’s own website (http://www.levada.ru/) show that 16 per cent […]
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(Interfax – MOSCOW, July 1, 2013) Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplain, chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Synodal Department for Church and Society, said Russia is moving towards maximum self-reliance and must become the center of global Christianity. “It is not accidental that many see Russia as a defender of Christian ideals and traditional moral values, as a country that provides a real […]
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(Moscow News – themoscownews.com – Natalia Antonova, Acting Editor-in-Chief – July 1, 2013) New laws are being adopted at a breakneck pace in Russia – almost as if some sort of legal Apocalypse will soon be upon us, and lawmakers are afraid that they are running out of time. One of the newest bills just signed into law by President […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – July 1, 2013) President Vladimir Putin has signed the so-called “blasphemy bill” and the “gay propaganda bill” two pieces of legislation that have outraged the liberal opposition. Both bills were passed unanimously by the State Duma on June 11, 2013, and their full texts appeared on the Kremlin’s site Sunday. The blasphemy law will […]
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(RFE/RL – rferl.org – Robert Coalson – July 1, 2013) It’s not a great time to be a freethinker in Russia. Offending somebody’s religious sensibilities could get you prosecuted according to legislation signed this weekend by President Vladimir Putin. Criticizing the wrong person with a snarky comment on a social network could run afoul of a vaguely worded law criminalizing […]
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(RIA Novosti – MOSCOW, June 17, 2013) About 64 percent of Russians identify themselves as belonging to the Russian Orthodox Church, but many of them have never read the Bible and rarely go to church or pray, a recent poll showed. Some 52 percent of Russian self-identified Orthodox Christians said that they have never read the New Testament, the […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, June 14, 2013) An admittedly unrepresentative poll of Russians attending Orthodox services on Palm Sunday conducted by the Sreda Sociological Service, the results of which were released this week, found that many of the most widespread assumptions about who goes to church in Russia and why are not justified. The sociologists asked […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Yekaterina Kravtsova – June 14, 2013) The bill protecting “believers’ feelings,” which rights activists and analysts have called a “step back” for Russia, a legal “Pandora’s Box” and a return to the Dark Ages, looks set to take effect in July after sailing through the State Duma with a unanimous vote on Wednesday. The so-called […]
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(Interfax – June 12, 2013) Russian rights activists and bloggers have criticized a bill protecting the feelings of religious believers, which the State Duma passed in the third and final reading on 11 June. The law, prompted by the controversial Pussy Riot “punk prayer” in 2012 in Moscow’s main cathedral, provides up to three years’ jail for offending religious feelings. […]
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(Interfax – June 11, 2013) Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that he and his wife Lyudmila Putina never married in church and that their decision to divorce was a mutual one, privately-owned Interfax news agency reported on 11 June. “We never married in church,” Putin said at a meeting with staff from the RT TV channel (formerly Russia Today). […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, June 10, 2013) Even though Muscovites will cast their votes for mayor only three months from now, Sergey Sobyanin and other aspirants are already playing the Muslim card to win support among ethnic Russians, a practice that is further alienating the Russian capital’s large and growing Muslim community. In a commentary in […]
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(Interfax – KYIV, June 6, 2013) Only three social institutes – the Church, the media and the Armed Forces – enjoy confidence of Ukrainians, according to the survey done by the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation and the Razumkov Center. Some 31.7% trust the Church fully, 38.4% are inclined to trust, 10.6% are not inclined, and 9.3% have no confidence […]
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(Eurasia Daily Monitor: Volume 10, Issue 101 – Valery Dzutsev – Jamestown Foundation – jamestown.org – May 29, 2013) On April 26, the authoritative Russian newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta hosted a roundtable of experts on the situation in Syria. Although almost all the experts, as usual, accused the United States and the West of fueling civil unrest in Syria now and […]
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(Moscow News – themoscownews.com – May 28, 2013) A Russian government commission has approved a draft law increasing criminal punishments for extremism-related crimes and wrongdoing by religious organizations, seeking stiffer penalties for an existing controversial extremism law. “The government legislation commission has approved for consideration a draft law establishing a legal basis for neutralizing the destructive activities of religious organizations […]
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(Interfax – May 25, 2013) Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that to move forward Russia needs to look back at its traditions and roots, Interfax news agency reported on 25 May, quoting the Kremlin’s website. In a message on the occasion of the unveiling of a monument to Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Germogen (Hermogenes), Putin says: “Today’s […]
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(Interfax – MOSCOW, May 23, 2013) The 2012 international religious freedom report of the U.S. State department has been done superficially and does not reflect the objective situation, the Russian Foreign Ministry said. “We are to conclude that the U.S. State Department has again presented a contorted and politicized picture of the situation in the religious freedom sphere in the […]
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(Interfax – Moscow, May 21, 2013) Most Russians (57%) think that state should not interfere in church affairs and vice versa, poll conducted by the Levada Center showed. At the same time, 30% respondents said they thought state and church should participate actively in each others’ affairs and 14% failed to answer. When asked who is to punish people insulting […]
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(Interfax – Moscow, May 21, 2013) The head of Russia’s oldest human rights organization, the Moscow Helsinki Group, Lyudmila Alekseyeva, has said that the draft bill on the protection of believers’ feelings passed by the State Duma in the second reading (today) violates human rights and contravenes the Constitution, despite softening amendments. “This is yet another repressive bill,” Alekseyeva told […]
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(RIA Novosti – WASHINGTON, May 20, 2013) Russia is among several countries around the world including Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Cuba, Iran, and China that imposed restrictions on freedom of religion last year, according to an annual report released Monday by the US State Department. “This report is a clear-eyed, objective look at the state of religious freedom around […]
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(Moscow Times – thesmoscowtimes.com – Alexander Winning – May 17, 2013) Rights activists on Thursday ridiculed the notion that Russia is a secular state, saying draft legislation seeking tougher penalties for offending believers’ feelings shows the country is returning to 18th-century morals. “Officials and religious leaders are leading us back to Peter the Great’s times,” Viktor Bondarenko, founder of rights […]
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(Interfax – MOSCOW, May 2, 2013) The Russian government commission for legislative work has approved a bill defining the procedure and sites of conducting religious events. The bill amending the law on the freedom of conscience and on religious associations was drafted by the Justice Ministry by way of enforcing a December 2012 judgment of the Constitutional Court, the government […]
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(Interfax – Moscow, April 26, 2013) Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and all Russia thinks that the level of relations between the church and the state does not match its potential. “The level of church-state partnership in Russia is much lower than in Germany where the state collect taxes for the Church, France where the president appoints bishops in the Alsace-Lorraine […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, April 16, 2013 – windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2013/04/window-on-eurasia-russians-leaving.html) There are now more than 15,000 Protestant congregations in the Russian Federation, according to a Moscow expert, a figure that surpasses the total of Russian Orthodox parishes and reflects in part Russian flight from the latter because of growing anger about the policies of the Moscow Patriarchate […]
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(RIA Novosti – ULAN-UDE, April 11, 2013) The Kremlin favors the idea of adopting a law protecting the religious feelings of Russian citizens, the Russian presidential spokesman said Thursday. Russia’s lower house of parliament, the State Duma, passed the bill in the first reading on Tuesday. “The Kremlin supports the idea of the law, and the wording of the […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Alexander Winning – April 10, 2013) The State Duma on Tuesday overwhelmingly passed in a first reading a contentious bill that would radically toughen penalties for those who offend believers’ feelings or desecrate relics and places of worship. Supporters of the legislation say it aims to safeguard traditional Russian values, which they say are under […]
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(Interfax – MOSCOW, April 9, 2013) The draft law that introduces criminal penalties for hurting the feelings of the believers and desecrating holy places is an anti-Church document, which will cause an outbreak of militant atheism, the Russian Communist Party parliamentary group believes. “This criminal penalty will not add to the Church’s authority. This is an anti-Church law,” Communist Party […]
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(Interfax / Religion – Moscow, April 3, 2013) The Russian church official urges Russian elite to realize their responsibility before nation and make their capitals work for the welfare of the Russian economic system. “Our elite has to consider attentively the signs of time and think whether it is time to change, to restore their connections with people and make […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Alexander Bratersky – April 3, 2013) He never appears for the presentation of his books. His interviews, even short ones, are often literally a sensation and some people even question his very existence. In modern Russia, Viktor Pelevin is considered a cult figure and many of his books, from “Omon Ra,” a touching and grotesque […]
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MOSCOW. March 25 (Interfax) – Justice Minister Alexander Konovalov believes the stunt carried out by the feminist punk group Pussy Riot in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior is an indication of a moral decline in society. “There has been a considerable moral decline. The dancing of the girls, who consider themselves art revolutionaries, on the ambon of a church […]
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MOSCOW. March 25 (Interfax) – Russians who would like Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, one of the jailed members of the Pussy Riot punk rock band, to be released on parole make up roughly the same proportion as those who want her to serve out her two-year term, an opinion poll suggests. On March 20, the chairman of the Public Supervisory Commission of […]
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(Interfax – March 21, 2013) Russian human rights ombudsman Vladimir Lukin said he will continue insisting that the court reverse the conviction of members of the feminist punk group Pussy Riot. “No doubt, the case will go higher and will reach the Supreme Court. We have worded our position and it is unchanged,” Lukin told Interfax on Thursday. It was reported […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, March 15, 2013 – http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2013/03/window-on-eurasia-new-pope-mixed.html) After its problems with the Polish John Paul II and its more hopeful ties with the German Benedict XVI, Moscow views the new Argentine pope, Francis I, as a very mixed blessing, someone with whom the Russian government and its Church may be able to cooperate on […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Igor Rozin, based on Interfax – March 14, 2013) Representatives for the Russian church and the government hailed the election of the new pope as a good sign for Orthodox-Catholic relations. The Russian Orthodox Church has welcomed the election of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, archbishop of Buenos Aires, as Pope Francis. “The new […]
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(Interfax – March 7, 2013) Russian President Vladimir Putin has denied he can influence the fate of members of the female punk band Pussy Riot who are currently serving prison terms. He was talking to journalists on a visit to Vologda on 7 March, as reported by Interfax news agency that day. “That depends not on me, but on the […]
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Moscow, March 5, Interfax – Russia’s Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar supports the punishment of the members of the Pussy Riot punk band for their performance in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow. “If we talk about the sentence itself, I think it isn’t that bad, because they did hurt believers’ feelings. It’s obvious they were to be punished. […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, March 1, 2013 – http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2013/03/window-on-eurasia-five-new-statistics.html) Five new statistics about Russia this past week one about Muslims in the army, a second about the state of its roads, a third about the number of illegal migrants in the country, a fourth about Russian attitudes toward religious instruction in the schools, and a […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Ivan Nechepurenko – February 26, 2013) President Vladimir Putin said last week that returning a Jewish book collection confiscated after the Bolshevik Revolution was impossible because it would open a “Pandora’s box” of claims on such property. “[If Russia] starts satisfying these sorts of claims, there would be no end to them and no telling […]
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MOSCOW, February 21 (RIA Novosti) – Representatives of the four factions in the State Duma, the lower chamber of the Russian parliament, on Wednesday requested an extremism probe into an article on a Russian Orthodox Church reform by political scientist Stanislav Belkovsky. In the article published by the Moskovsky Komsomolets daily on February 15, Belkovsky says that the Russian Orthodox […]
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(Moscow News – themoscownews.com – Aleksandras Budrys – February 20, 2013) Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the country should not return cultural property confiscated by Bolshevik and Soviet authorities after the 1917 revolution to its previous owners. “If we now agree that such property of the Russian state will be transferred to someone, we will open a Pandora’s box. […]
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Moscow, February 18, Interfax – The inaugural congress of the Russian Ten Commandments Party took place in Moscow. The total of 134 delegates from 45 Russian subjects, including Christians of different confessions, Muslims, and Jews, participated in the inaugural congress on February 17. The political council, the decision making body of the party, was headed by Sergey Mezentsev, Ph.D. “I […]
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Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2013 From: “Russian Analytical Digest (RAD)” <newslist@isn.ch> Subject: No.122: Pussy Riot RUSSIAN ANALYTICAL DIGEST Newsletter 4 February 2013/No. 122 Pussy Riot To download this issue please click here: http://www.css.ethz.ch/publications/DetailansichtPubDB_EN?rec_id=2415 Analyses Failed for Now: Pussy Riot and the Rule of Law in Russia, by Caroline von Gall, Cologne The Pussy Riot Trial and the Russian Orthodox Church, […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – www.rbth.ru – Lucia Bellinello, RBTH – February 12, 2013) A few hours after Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation, Russia was already thinking about building relations with his successor. It had not happened for nearly 600 years. On February 11, 2013 Pope Benedict XVI (Ratzinger) announced his resignation in Latin to the Vatican. “I have […]
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MOSCOW. Feb 8 (Interfax) – The Russian Foreign Ministry has recommended that the Culture Ministry and the Russian State Library go to court to claim a fine imposed on the U.S. Library of Congress for holding seven books lent to it in 1994 from the so-called Schneerson Library, i.e. a collection of tens of thousands of old Judaic books and […]
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(Moscow News – themoscownews.com – Anna Arutunyan – February 4, 2013) Anna Arutunyan is the politics editor of The Moscow News Just when I thought I was done, they pull me back in. Nearly one year since the girls staged the punk rock dance that got two of them sent to penal colonies, they are still one of the world’s […]
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(Moscow News – themoscownews.com – Kristen Blyth – February 4, 2013) He’s young and slim, with a narrow face and dark beard. Deeply religious and intensely conservative, he supports all the precepts of traditional Christian values: church, family, God. He’s anti-abortion, anti-homosexuality, and opposes teaching evolution in schools. “It’s crazy to think that the world is millions or billions of […]
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(RIA Novosti – Andrei Zolotov, Jr. – January 31, 2013) [Photos here: http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20130131/179151559/Church-vs-Nukes-The-Dilemma-of-a-Secret-Russian-Town.html] SAROV – After an overnight trip from Moscow, the train chugs into a tiny, single-track station and stops at closed metal gates crowned with barbed wire. Some passengers disembark and walk to the nearby checkpoint where soldiers match their IDs against a list of authorized guests; others […]
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(Interfax – February 1, 2013) Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill served a liturgy in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior on the fourth anniversary of his enthronement as patriarch. “These four years were full of so many events that would be enough for forty years and even more,” the patriarch said after the liturgy. A lot was done […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, January 24 – http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2013/01/window-on-eurasia-kirill-moving-russian.html) Patriarch Kirill over the last two years has been working to transform the administration of the Russian Orthodox Church from that of “the late Middle Ages” into another one resembling “enlightened absolutism,” according to a leading specialist on the Russian church. In an article in “Vedomosti” yesterday, Nikolay […]
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