MOSCOW, Jan. 5, 2004 -- The Russian Orthodox, or Provoslaviy, religion has made a big comeback from its ostracism and repudiation of the communist era. For the last two years, Russian Orthodox Christmas Day, January 7, has even been celebrated as a national holiday.
Russia’s really big celebration is still New Year’s, but the true believers, and a lot who aren’t, gather in the orthodox churches – inevitably dripping with gold, silver, priceless jewels, and other gaudy trappings that god, if he really existed, couldn’t possibly reign without – to watch the fat, smug priests pontificate their unintelligible mumbo jumbo.
Not much different from the Catholics in America except that here the Russian Orthodox religion is back in bed with the state. Like bride and groom, they are again inseparable. All they have to do is figure out who gets the penetration rights.
My bets are on the church.
When my student Valera was reading the Russian Constitution on Constitution Day a couple of months ago, one of the comforting reassurances he read was that “the state shall guarantee the equality of rights and liberties” to everyone, regardless of race, sex, and a lot of other noble delineations including “attitude to religion.”
Furthermore, “any restrictions of the rights of citizens on…religious grounds shall be forbidden.”
“Thanks gods,” breathes the champion of human rights on satisfying himself that there will be no state interference in the right to practice – or not practice – one’s religion of choice.
That is, unless you criticize or make fun of the bride or groom, whichever the Russian Orthodox Church happens to be at the moment.
In which case you’ll wind up in prison on criminal charges, as Yury Samadurov discovered this Holy Week in Moscow.
Samadurov is the head of the Sakharov Museum, which is dedicated to the principles of human rights and democracy championed by Andrei Sakharov, the defiant Soviet dissident and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Samadurov made the mistake of organizing at the Sakharov Museum an exhibit on religion entitled Caution, Religion.
He should have taken his own advice.
Instead, he invited some 40 artists to submit a work of their choice related to their notions of religion. So one portrayed a traditional Russian Orthodox icon with a hole where the head should be, so that visitors to the exhibit could poke their head through it and get their pix taken as one of the Holy Trinity. Another painted a Coca Cola logo with the face of Jesus next to it saying “This is my blood.”
“All of the artists were expressing their own ideas and viewpoints on religion,” stressed Samadurov.
Four days after it opened, the exhibit was vandalized by six men, who were arrested and charged with hooliganism. But “after a publicity campaign organized by a Russian Orthodox priest,” reports the Moscow Times, all the charges were summarily dropped.
In the meantime, that fierce Kremlin lapdog, the Duma, or Congress, petitioned the Prosecutor General’s office to “take the necessary measures.”
So now, Samadurov and three of the artists are facing charges of “inciting religious hatred,” after Duma Deputy Alexander Chuyev declared Caution, Religion “an insult to the main religion of our country.”
For his crime of sullying the sanctity of the Russian Orthodox religion, Sumadurov faces a possible sentence of five years in prison or a ,000 fine.
God is in his heaven. All’s right with the world.
Across town, in northern Moscow, Korean Methodists haven’t benefitted so richly from the constitution. They have been evicted by a gang of private guards from the church they built on the million-dollar piece of real estate they bought on the cheap a long time ago.
It seems that last summer someone waving a contract that church officials say they never signed, filed papers with the Justice Ministry declaring himself to be the owner. He subsequently sold the property to a company called “Khant,” which sent the guards the night before Christmas Eve to evict the Methodists -- some of them shoeless -- into the frigid night. Although they cut the telephone lines, neighbors disturbed by the ruckus called the police.
Exercising his own constitutional rights, one of the guards reportedly shouted, “Koreans have no business here!” But that’s not what the constitution says.
The matter will eventually get to court, but nobody has said when. It will certainly not be soon, and when it does, the Koreans will probably lose their church because in Russia, law and justice seldom sit on the same bench.
You can be sure that “Khant” – whoever or whatever that is – paid somebody in the Justice Ministry a hefty piece of change to see that the million-dollar piece of property got into the right hands.
For now, members continue to sleep in the church and the guards continue to snarl.
In the meantime, we have our own uneasy snarling truce at chez moi. We sat down Monday evening to plan our budget for the next several months. I’ve promised Yegor to front his tuition at Moscow State University, for which he says he will need five thousand bucksi by August. Ever-thoughtful Yegor in turn convinced Shurik that, in addition to becoming a designer, he also should go to college to study management so he could manage his own design business. So Shurik decided he wanted to pursue a course in designing that would cost 0 a month starting this month, and then begin in the university this fall.
I made it clear that Yegor comes first. My first promise was to him and my first commitment is to him. So I started outlining, first my income, then my expenses. I have my pension, my job at English Exchange, my contract with the Institute of Diplomacy, and my private students -- all of which, assuming a disaster doesn’t strike, should round off to 50 a month for the next five months, after which my Institute contract will be finished till the fall.
My planned expenses total about 00 a month, but that doesn’t include things like the emergency 0 for Yegor’s dental work this week, or the 0 emergency dental work that Shurik is going to have today. Nor does it include the 0 or so we’re probably going to have to fork out for a washing machine rather immediately, since our antique piece of Russian junk is still refusing to disgorge the water from its last wash cycle a month ago.
Further, I’m going to Egypt in March – without my wrangling boyfriends and housemates – and that will be something between 0 and ,000. I also want to meet my best friend Marco Cassone, the second tenor and driving force in the American a capella “band,” M-Pact, in Europe sometime in April.
I also have to underwrite Vanya’s last semester in undergraduate university in Nizhny Novgorod – another 0 before the 15th of February.
When we got all through all the mathematical gyrations, I could have as much as 9500 in August. On the other hand, I could have barely ,000.
Shurik was very pushy. He demanded to know why, if Yegor could have ,000 for the university in August, he couldn’t also.
“Because I don’t have the money,” I said. “I just showed you.”
I also told him I couldn’t afford both his 0/month course now and the university in August. He’d have to make a choice. “I have to have both,” he huffed. “If I can’t have both, I won’t do either.”
“Okay, that suits me just fine,” I huffed in return, and stalked into the kitchen, furious. Who does this little snot think he is?
I was actually relieved. After Prague, I was sure our relationship wasn’t destined for the record books, and why waste any more money on him? I made up my mind then and there to get rid of him.
Then I became aware that he and Yegor were having a confidential conversation in our bedroom. I went back to the kitchen, where Yegor joined me a few minutes later. The next thing I knew there’s Shurik: “I love you; you don’t have to spend any money on me; I just want to live here with you.”
Wha….???
I looked at Yegor. He was smiling. Shurik was looking earnest and concerned. Holy shit! Maybe he really does love me. I grabbed him and kissed him passionately. Then I kissed Yegor. Then I made them kiss each other. “I’m very happy,” I said. “Are you very happy?” I said, looking at Shurik. “I’m very happy.” “Are you very happy?” to Yegor. “Yes.”
Suddenly the earth was back in orbit. I went into the living room, where Sasha, who had come shortly after the blow-up, was sitting. “Dane, you’re glowing,” he said.
Yegor and I had already promised to have sex that night. So after a delightful session with him, Zhenya and I made passionate love. Then, because neither Zhenya nor Yegor can sleep with anybody else, I went to bed with Sasha and – since I had promised Zhenya I wouldn’t have sex with anybody but him and Yegor – jerked Sasha off. That doesn’t count as sex, after all.
Chapt. 35 – 1533 words
Columns :: Freedom of religion – as long as it’s Orthodox
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