Moscow Times
July 25, 2005
Church Says Revolution Would Be Bloody
By Stephen Boykewich
Staff Writer
In a sign that the Russian Orthodox Church wants to play a role in national politics, its leading spokesman warned a gathering of pro-Kremlin youth leaders that an Orange Revolution in Russia would bring only bloody chaos.
"Russia has already lived through one colored revolution -- a red one," Vsevolod Chaplin said on Saturday in a speech to leaders of the Nashi youth movement at their summer camp on Lake Seliger, northwest of Moscow, Interfax reported.
"Russia will not survive a new revolution," said Chaplin, who is the church's deputy head for external relations.
The possibility of large-scale street protests like those that shook Ukraine last year was a frequent topic at the two-week camp, which was to end Monday. Kremlin-connected spin doctor Gleb Pavlovsky warned during a visit to the camp that "numerous groups are preparing large demonstrations not just for 2008, but as soon as this fall."
Nashi, or Us, is seen by many as a Kremlin-orchestrated effort to build a bulwark against a potential popular uprising in the run-up to the 2008 presidential election. The group gained attention shortly after its founding in April for its aggressively patriotic rhetoric and the staging in May of a rally in Moscow attended by 50,000 people.
According to Nashi head Vasily Yakemenko, the movement currently has more than 150,000 members nationwide.
Opposition youth movements such as Ukraine's Pora and Serbia's Otpor have been instrumental in unseating governments in their respective countries. Representatives from both groups have recently met with their Russian counterparts, fueling Kremlin fears of future unrest.
Chaplin's speech was notable as an explicitly political address by a church representative -- still a rarity in spite of the church's increasing presence in the secular sphere. Patriarch Alexy II regularly meets with President Vladimir Putin, and Orthodox clergy are often prominent guests at political events.
Chaplin used vivid terms in raising the specter of Russia's disintegration, as Putin himself has.
"If the country breaks apart, it will become not a mass of little Switzerlands, but one big Yugoslavia torn by bloody chaos, which no foreign peacekeepers will be able to control," Chaplin said. "The defense of the country's unity, its independence and its spiritual freedom must be the business of all society and every one of us."
Lawrence Uzzell, head of International Religious Freedom Watch and a frequent commentator on religious affairs in the former Soviet Union, said Chaplin's statements were "a perfectly logical extension of the Moscow Patriarchate's servile relationship to the state."
"The Moscow Patriarchate has a long history of being Russian first and Orthodox second," Uzzell said. "Unfortunately, when there is a conflict between the interests of the Russian people and the interests of the Russian state, the Moscow Patriarchate usually comes down on the side of the state."
Chaplin's speech came after a round table last month on "The Orthodox Question and the Threat of an Orange Revolution in Russia," which explicitly addressed ways to use religious tradition to combat revolutionary tendencies. Chaplin, State Duma Deputy Alexander Makarov and lay activists discussed strategies such as school courses in Orthodox culture, greater church presence on national television channels and concerts by Orthodox rock musicians.
Ukraine's Orange Revolution has been a sore point for the Russian Orthodox Church for several reasons.
"Members of the Moscow Patriarchate in Ukraine acted as agents of secular Russian political interests" during the 2004 elections, Uzzell said. "There were many instances of members of the Moscow Patriarchate in Ukraine using their influence with their parishioners to get them to vote" for Viktor Yanukovych, the candidate favored by the Kremlin.
Political tensions between Russia and Ukraine in the wake of the Orange Revolution have also fueled Ukrainian desires for a church that is fully independent of Moscow. Currently, Ukraine's main Orthodox church comes under the authority of the Moscow Patriarchate.
"The Moscow Patriarchate is the last surviving Soviet institution both in terms of its statist mentality and its imperialist mentality," Uzzell said. "In a sense it is an empire-restoring institution that is used by the Russian state as a vehicle for political interference in the affairs of countries like Ukraine."
Nashi press secretary Ivan Mostovich insisted that there was no special relationship between the Kremlin-connected movement and the Russian Orthodox Church. He acknowledged that Nashi members had been helping renovate the Nilova Pustyn monastery near the Lake Seliger camp over the past two weeks, but said that their cooperation was based on commonly worldly goals, rather than spiritual ones.
"We have a working relationship with the Russian Orthodox Church as we do with every structure that is working for the good of our country," Mostovich said. "That relates both to Orthodox believers and to Muslims and to every other group that plays a major role in the life of our country."
Mostovich pointed out that on Friday, Chaplin shared a platform with Sheikh Mohammad Karachai, deputy chairman of the Russian Society of Muftis, one of the country's main organizations of Muslim clerics.
Karachai, like Chaplin, sounded a note of national unity, telling his audience, "Unity must be revived and preserved," Nashi's web site reported.
He also praised the Nashi leaders for having found an alternative to the more indulgent aspects of contemporary youth culture.
"Nashi has shown that it is possible to organize youth who are not interested in alcohol and drugs, but are oriented toward education and learning," Karachai said. He urged those gathered to "remain high-principled people who care about spiritual values rather than material goods."