The Holy Russian Empire
Filed under: Russia
Russia is not required to give freedoms to other religions because Russia is not the United States. People here differ from Americans. I'm not talking about right of a person to have freedom of belief. I mean, instead, the right of an organization to advertise its ideology. Not every country can have the same level of religious freedom as the United States.Most people around me are atheists. Atheism in this country is the most important religion, despite the fact that many atheists call themselves Orthodox. The majority of people, I am sure, are not interested in the struggles among churches for congregations and for what's in the pockets of believers. Never ask me about what the issue is, the issue is money.
If one talks about freedom of conscience in Russia, then: All faiths are equal. But some faiths are more equal than others.
What can I say? In principle, everything in the article is correct. Of course, it's different in different regions, but the general direction of movement is like this. In everything, including the issues dealing with faith, the Soviet dictatorship that is being resurrected wants to point the citizens in the direction it considers the right one. Descending, along with this, to brainwashing or more crude power pressure. All this is obvious and pointless to deny.
The New York Times has offered another installment in its series of long articles about Russia which are translated onto a Russian-language blog and commented upon by Russian readers. Above are four such comments on the new article, which exposes the horrific level of persecution by state-sponsored orthodox Christianity of all protestant religions in the nation. Reporting from the city of Stary Oskyol, the reporter begins:
It was not long after a Methodist church put down roots here that the troubles began. First came visits from agents of the FSB, the successor to the KGB, who evidently saw a threat in a few dozen searching souls who liked to huddle in cramped apartments to read the Bible and, perhaps, drink a little tea. Local officials then labeled the church a "sect." Finally, last month, they shut it down.
The result is that, as shown below, Russian protestants are forced underground into virtual bunkers, hiding from the authorities just as in Soviet times.
Welcome back to the USSR! Russians want to sit on the G-8 panel, but they don't want to extend any of the same democratic values that are the bedrock of that organization's value system in their country. This is fully-fledged neo-Soviet hypocrisy, childish in its ignorance, and it will surely bring Russia once again to catastrophe.
Watch a video report on the crackdown here.
To read more about how the Russian government is using its visa regime to exclude the "wrong" religions from reaching Russia, click here.
NOTE: To comment on this post for publication, write to: kimzigfeld@gmail.com
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