From: fweir.ncade@rex.iasnet.ru

Date: Wed, 06 Aug 1997 20:00:02 (MSK)

For the Hindustan Times

From: Fred Weir in Moscow

MOSCOW (HT) -- President Boris Yeltsin moved this week to head off a politically dangerous rift between Church and State over a controversial religion law, but reconciliation could come at a high price for foreign confessions -- including Hindu ones -- that want to practice freely in Russia.

Mr. Yeltsin and the powerful Russian Orthodox Church have quarelled this summer over the President's veto of a law that would grant national status to just four "traditional" Russian faiths -- Orthodoxy, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism -- making them, in effect, Russia's official religions.

The law, passed by the opposition-dominated parliament last month and strongly favoured by the Church, would restrict all other confessions, and cancel their existing rights to publish, conduct missionary activity, own property and maintain schools.

Mr. Yeltsin vetoed the law after the United States State Department published a report warning that religious freedom was being curbed in Russia and the U.S. Congress threatened to cut off financial aid to Moscow.

The veto seriously undermined the Kremlin's good relations with the Orthodox Church, and created the prospect of political crisis when parliament returns in September from its summer recess. Most experts believe opposition deputies could easily muster the two-thirds vote required to overturn the veto, throwing a Constitutional hand grenade into Mr. Yeltsin's lap at a time when he has no shortage of other headaches.

The Kremlin has argued that the proposed law violates Russia's Constitution and severely restricts minority rights. Any "non-traditional" sect wishing official sanction would be required to undergo a 15-year bureaucratic process of registration -- during which it would be forbidden from seeking converts or even holding a bank account. Even after registration, it would only be permitted to exist in localities where it could prove a continuous presence.

"We are very grateful that Yeltsin vetoed that law," says an Asian diplomat, who asked not to be further identified. "It would represent a serious departure from the secularism that has characterized the post-Soviet Russian state, and would impose terrible hardships on small confessions, and ones that are new to Russia."

The Krishna Consciousness Society, which has been very active in Russia in recent years, along with several other lesser known Hindu groups, would be effectively banned under the legislation.

A large number of Christian missionary groups, and even the powerful Roman Catholic Church, would be similarly affected.

But Mr. Yeltsin, who has always been careful to maintain close relations with the Orthodox Church -- Russia's traditional faith and one that claims 80-million followers -- appeared this week to be backtracking from his determination to squelch the law.

The President has said that some version of the law is necessary to "protect the spiritual health of the Russian people" against doomsday sects and crackpot cults, and has urged a joint parliamentary commission to find an acceptable compromise.

On Wednesday Mr. Yeltsin attended the opening of a new church in Moscow together with Patriarch Alexy II, spiritual head of the Russian Orthodox Church, and indicated that such a compromise is near.

"No obstacles shall separate us, because we know the role and the importance of the restoration in Russia of Orthodox Christianity and the Orthodox Church," Mr. Yeltsin told the Patriarch, according to news agencies.

Patriarch Alexy told journalists that Mr. Yeltsin had assured him the law will be enacted in its basic form, and that it would provide protection from "destructive pseudo-religious cults and foreign false-missionaries".

For many, that signals the end of separation between Church and State and a new era of official patronage for a few religions -- and discrimination against others -- in Russia.

"Whatever compromises may be made, we doubt they will include small confessions, such as Hindus, who have been active in Russia," says the diplomat.

"Perhaps some accommodation will be made for the Catholic Church, or big Western Protestant groups. But others, who have also been part of the new diversity in this country, will suffer. That's very unfortunate," he says.

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Johnson's Russia List

#1112

10 August 1997

djohnson@cdi.org