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Irina BABICH
D.Sc. (Hist.), Leading Research Fellow at the Department of the Caucasus, Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow, Russian Federation)
THE RUSSIAN STATE AND CIVIL SOCIETY: A DIALOG OF RELIGIONS IN THE NORTHERN CAUCASUS
Abstract
The author looks at the main trends developing in the contemporary religious situation in the Northern Caucasus, the principles on which religious
and secular morals are correlated, and the ways religious identity and the nature of religious communication are developing.
I n t r o d u c t i o n
In the 1990s, the Russian Federation lived through a period of religious resurrection of sorts inspired and instigated by the newly introduced democracy and freedom of conscience and the press. A new religious situation emerged: on the one hand, the traditional religions—Christian Orthodoxy and Islam with their centuries-long history in the Russian Empire—gained wide popularity; while on the other, they were joined by numerous Christian and non-Christian sects and groups.
The political leaders of perestroika of the late 1980s declared “freedom” with gusto and gleefully annulled the so-called Soviet ideology and Soviet morals which for many years had been imposed on the people to transform them into a “new historical community—the Soviet people.” Freed from the burdens of Soviet morality, the people began enjoying their newly found freedom until, late in the 1990s, ordinary people as well as the artistic intelligentsia and even the people in power realized that they were facing a “crisis of morality” and a “crisis of spiritual values.” The cherished freedom degenerated into anarchy, while society lost its moral landmarks. The nation obviously needed a new “post-perestroika ideology,” new spiritual values, and new moral prescriptions to guide it in the 21st century.
The ideological vacuum called for a new morality and new spiritual values rooted in religious values, which were hastily and consistently formulated.
In the Northern Caucasus, an external, international factor was also at play. This was not the first time that empires had been locked in geopolitical rivalry there. The Russian Empire had fought Western and Eastern powers to defend its right to the territory populated by numerous mountain peoples who spoke different languages; their cultures and level of sociopolitical development were likewise different. Religion was one of the instruments: Russia and Georgia had been intent on promoting Christianity among the local people, while the Ottoman Empire pushed forward Islam as a common religion for all the mountain dwellers.
THE CAUCASUS & GLOBALIZATION
In the early 1990s, the traditionally Muslim regions of the Russian Federation became free to perform religious ceremonies. The process (which is over 20 years old) attracted, at different times, Muslims from other Muslims states (Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Syria), as well as Muslims from the North Caucasian republics and Central Caucasian states.
Religious resurrection and “religious morals” unfolded and are still unfolding spontaneously: the spiritual structures and the state are doing nothing to help or to control this process. In fact, both Islam and Orthodoxy are developing with difficulty across the Russian Federation in spite of visible state support. “Warps” and “misunderstandings” create numerous problems: Russians embrace Islam, or one of the Protestant faiths, or even join fundamentalist sects.
I am convinced that the ethnoconfessional factor, which is steadily moving to the fore, does nothing to bring citizens together: it disunites them. Members of ethnic-religious groups are moving apart; they fan hatred of followers of other religions. The fundamentalist movement (Islamic or, to be more exact, Wahhabi) is mostly responsible for this. The Wahhabites treat all non-Islamic people as unfaithful (kaffirs), who should be hated, if not exterminated. Christian Orthodoxy is not alien to radicalism either—some of its trends likewise fan hatred among people.
Today, however, the national and religious diversity of the peoples of Russia should serve as the cornerstone of a common cultural foundation of a multicultural community of the peoples of Russia; the state should cement its unity and move toward a multicultural dialog across the CIS.
The North Caucasian republics are living amid geopolitical, socioeconomic, and national-religious complications caused by the combination of different religions—Christianity in general (Orthodoxy in particular) and Islam—specific for this particular region. Russians and the autochthonous people (Orthodox Christians and Muslims, for that matter) are living side by side in all the republics; and there are new migrant communities (Chechens, Kosovo Adighes, etc.).
Stages of Religious Renaissance in the Northern Caucasus
On the whole, religious renaissance in the Northern Caucasus proceeded in three stages: 19901995, 1996-2000, and 2001 until the present.
In 1990-1995, religious communities, the members of which gathered for prayer first in prayer houses and later in new or restored churches and mosques, mushroomed across the region.
The process, which engulfed all social strata, unfolded simultaneously and along with the process of national resurrection. It was a time when all the North Caucasian republics acquired numerous sociopolitical movements based on national (or even nationalist) ideas.
At the second stage (1995-2000), religious renaissance gathered momentum: churches, mosques, etc. were built in great numbers, religious communities were set up, and Sunday schools were opened.
At the third stage (2000-2010), some of those who had embraced religion on the crest of the religious enthusiasm moved away, while true believers developed an even greater interest in the fundamentals of religious life, conduct, conscience, and morals.
The Correlation between Religious and Cultural (Ethnocultural) Identity in the North Caucasian Republics
In 1990s-2000s, religious and ethnocultural identity in the North Caucasian republics developed simultaneously and in parallel to each other.
The share of active believers (those who regularly attended corresponding religious institu-tions—a mosque, church, or prayer house) was fairly small.
Exact figures are not available either from academic structures, or republican authorities (the state structures responsible for contacts with religious organizations— committees for nationalities, contacts with compatriots and the media, committees for culture, sport, the media, and cooperation with public organizations, commissioners for religious affairs in the republican governments, etc.).
The participant observation method widely used by cultural anthropologists (ethnologists) and the polls conducted in the North Caucasian republics suggest that the share of active followers of any of the religions did not exceed 5 percent; normally from 30 to 50 people regularly attend services in a church, mosque, or prayer house—a tiny share of the total.
On the other hand, the fact that the religious renaissance has changed, in many respects, the moral climate in the Northern Caucasus is obvious. There is any number of those who admit that Christianity, Islam, or a Baptist community, etc. helped them abandon their former amoral or even criminal lives.
It should be said that the nature of religious life in the North Caucasian republics largely depends on confessional affiliation.
Islam. A powerful wave of the Islamic resurrection of the 1990s is subsiding. The North Caucasian Muslims1 can be divided into two groups: active Muslims who attend services at least once a week, on Fridays (there are few of them), and ethnic Muslims, the bulk of the mountain dwellers who rarely come to the mosque (normally once or twice a year on major holidays).
The Islamic jamaats are normally based on four categories of Muslims:
(1) those who rarely attend services in the mosque yet regularly pray at home and observe fasts (mostly women);
(2) those who attend services only on major holidays, never pray at home and do not observe fasts;
(3) those who attend Friday services in the mosque and either pray or do not pray at home;
(4) those who frequently (or even every day) pray in mosques (mainly young people).
“Ideological” and “canonical” gaps gradually developed among the North Caucasian faithful. The young Muslims tend to detach themselves from the so-called ethnic Muslims (Muslims by tradition) among whom they count those who never pray either at home or in a mosque and still call themselves Muslims. Normally, they turn to their religion on special occasions (burials, weddings, or the main religious holidays), for which reason the younger generation of Muslims brand the Islam practiced by the older generation “burial, people’s, or traditional Islam.” They describe themselves as “praying or young” Muslims who are developing new or pure Islam.
In the latter half of the 1990s, large communities fell apart into smaller ones, which can be explained by the greater number of young Islamic leaders and the mounting rivalry among them for the leading positions in Islamic society; this required new mosques: new jamaats without mosques of their own needed them.
The young leaders wanted to shape religious (Islamic) identity as opposed to national (ethnocultural) one. They looked at the Caucasian cultures, the cultures of the North Caucasian peoples, as a cultural expanse of sorts to be approached from the point of view of the Hadith, which said that the new Islamic culture should preserve those traditions that did not contradict Islam. Local academics were also involved.
Many of the Islamic ideologists believe that the ethnic revival of the North Caucasian peoples should rely not so much on the local traditions and their further development, but on shaping a new
1 The Ossets are the only exception; the majority of them are Orthodox Christians; they have also preserved an ancient pagan stratum combined with elements of neo-paganism.
THE CAUCASUS & GLOBALIZATION
Islamic culture. The young Muslims, for example, who never supported the local ethnic dress, preferred to promote that idea of Islamic style.
Nevertheless, at first, the national leaders of the mountain peoples tried to blend the new ideology with the national, rather than Islamic, culture. The young Muslims regarded themselves as Muslims rather than members of their corresponding ethnic groups, while the old Muslims considered themselves members of their nationalities.
I should say that Islamic ideology developed and spread far and wide because of the obvious crisis of secular ideology across Russia. While in the rest of Russia the academic and artistic intelligentsia was engaged, throughout the 1990s, in a torturous quest for new cementing ideas, in the North Caucasian republics, general human values were smoothly replaced with purely Islamic values.
Christian Orthodoxy. Its revival in the region is fairly slow; it is a gradual process with 20 to 40 Sunday churchgoers in the Cossack villages.2 Most people go to church twice a year on holidays like Christmas and Easter.
Today, it is the Orthodox churches and clergy, which provide moral and psychological support to the Russians and the Cossacks in the North Caucasian republics, where they are being gradually squeezed out by the autochthonous peoples, the mountain dwellers.
Since practically none of the Orthodox priests live in the places where they serve (they prefer the republican capitals and have limited attendance of “their” churches to Sundays), there is no real bond between them and the congregation. More than that, this does nothing for the authority of the Orthodox Church and the Orthodox clergy in the Russian and Cossack villages.
Christian movements. They are Old Believers; Evangelical-Christian Baptists; Evangelical Christians; Evangelical Christians in the Spirit of the Apostles; Pentecostals; Seventh Day Adventists; and Jehovah’s Witnesses. There are also several smaller structures: the Evangelical Organization Iskhod, Evangelical Christians Slovo i Delo, Evangelical Christian Nadezhda, Evangelical Pentecostals Zhivoe Slovo, Church of the Cross, etc.
This is due to the deliberate intention to present the same religious values in different wrappings. Their leaders regularly get together to plan further joint actions in many directions. The majority has few followers and no influence; this does not apply, however, to the Baptists, Pentecostals, or Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Today, Christian movements are gathering momentum and weight thanks to a propaganda onslaught among the Russians and the Adighes. Christianity is gaining popularity among the autochthonous North Caucasian peoples mainly because the insistent anti-Wahhabi campaign planted fear of Islam among them. Field materials clearly demonstrate that the mountain peoples not merely turn to Christian organizations in search of spiritual support, they come to Orthodox churches and are baptized yet prefer to keep this secret; they can be described as “clandestine Orthodox mountain dwellers.”
Our polls suggest that in the North Caucasian republics, the process of acquiring religious identity is very slow: few local people describe themselves as followers of any religion.
The majority prefers a cultural or rather civil (secular) identity.
The larger group of Adighes bases its identity on the national (Adighe) culture—Adighe Khabze; they are actively supported by the local artistic intelligentsia and the republican leaders.
In September 2003, M. Bejanov, a research fellow at the Adighe Institute of Humanitarian Studies (who served for some time as adviser to the Nationalities Committee at the Government of the Adighe Republic), published an article called “Adygeyskie obychai i obriady” (The Adighe Customs and Rites) in the local Adighe Mak newspaper, which triggered a discussion between the Muslims and the Adighe intelligentsia. The author was dead set against replacing the Adighe traditions with Islamic ones. Historian Asker Sokht, who headed the republican Adighe Khase, sided in the Nasha respub-lika newspaper he published in the Takhtamukaev District with those who stood opposed to the Islam-
2 Large church attendance is limited to North Caucasian cities, mainly in the capitals (Nalchik, Cherkessk, Maykop, etc.).
ic culture. He also gave space to an article by R. Gusaruk entitled “Islamism ili adygstvo, chto voz’met verkh” (Islamism vs. Adighe Customs, What Will Prevail?). On the other hand, members of the Council of the Spiritual Administration of the Muslims of Adigey and the Krasnodar Territory took the side of the Muslims against the Adighe intellectuals.
Religion as an Instrument of New Morality and Spiritual Values in the North Caucasian Republics
Our discussions with religious leaders and members of the artistic intelligentsia engaged in formulating new moral norms and spiritual values convinced us that, on the one hand, the religious leaders intend to offer their communities a new morality based on spiritual values; while on the other, the intelligentsia has no sympathy with the religious leaders and their efforts: the intellectuals prefer national cultures as the cornerstone of the new morality.
The Russian intellectuals do not identify themselves with Orthodoxy—they prefer common human (secular) values; for example, the Union of the Slavs of the Republic of Adigey, a popular public structure which defends the interests of the Russian part of the republic’s population, maintains no contacts with the local Russian Orthodox structure, the Maykop Eparchy, and never writes in its newspaper about religious spiritual values.
Our polls have revealed, beyond doubt, that neither national nor religious traditions can withstand the onslaught of cultural globalization.
Shaping Religious and Secular Ideologies
Religious and secular ideologies are being shaped as two parallel trends. The religious organizations determined to plant religious ideology rely on the moral values of their corresponding faiths alone, which means that the North Caucasian republics are acquiring ideological diversity made up of Islamic ideology, Orthodox ideology, as well as the “Christian” morality of the Baptists, Pentecostals, etc.
Our interviews with religious leaders confirmed that they refused to base the new ideology on the common values present in practically all religious movements; each of the leaders teaches his followers that his teaching alone offers the truth and genuine moral values, while all the others contain half-truths at best.
The artistic intelligentsia, which is expected to formulate a secular ideology and morality based on common human values, rejects the positive potential of religious moral values; they are convinced that morality should be civil (secular). Artists and other creative workers of the North Caucasian republics do not support any of the religions present in the region; they prefer to rely on culture, national culture, to be more exact. What is more, they oppose it to religious morality, culture, and ideology.
Relations among Followers of Different Religions
The Orthodox Christians, Muslims, and members of Christian movements never abandon their attempts to promote their respective faiths among the followers of other religions. They never resort
THE CAUCASUS & GLOBALIZATION
to violence: they mostly rely on peaceful propaganda in an effort to make others “happy.” For them, their religion is the only correct one, the tenets and lifestyle of which alone can pave the way to eternal bliss. To achieve their aim, they try the following:
(1) theological disputes with followers of other confessions and members of other religious organizations;
(2) “peaceful” yet insistent propaganda of their religious truths;
(3) propaganda of their religious teaching as the only correct one.
In everyday life, members of all confessions and religious organizations in the Northern Caucasus live side by side as good neighbors. On the other hand, their relations are marred by political factors and, in particular, the relations between the heads of confessions and religious organizations.
For example, the Muslim and Orthodox leaders in the Northern Caucasus have achieved a political agreement under which they are engaged in latent opposition to the so-called non-traditional Christian structures. They have the local administrations and security structures on their side (the republican power structures, the Federal Security Service, and the Ministry of the Interior). This is caused by an objective factor: Islam and Christian Orthodoxy are not strong enough to promote their influence and boost their authority among the locals to close the door on the non-traditional Christian teachings.
Dissemination of non-traditional Christian ideas and their structures testifies to the fact that, for various reasons, neither the Islamic nor the Orthodox organizations can defeat them ideologically. They prefer to suppress their opponents by force, with the help of the republican administrations and security structures, rather than improve their own performance to outmatch the non-traditional Christian movements.
The Christian non-traditional organizations rely on missionaries to disseminate their faiths among the Russians and Adighes. They act intelligently and efficiently through wide-scale social charities; tactics known as “love bombardment” are widely used in the North Caucasian republics (the Orthodox Church, on the other hand, collects money among its followers in the form of payment for services).
The Christian movements are based mainly in the cities, however they pursue their aims both in the cities and in the countryside, up in the mountains and in the Russian and Cossack villages.
According to the leaders of the Christian communities, the North Caucasian mountain dwellers are more receptive to propaganda even though they are actively lured into Islam, the traditional religion of the local peoples. Islam and Islamic organizations oppose, as vigorously as they can, any change of faith among the mountain dwellers. Those who dare to embrace a different faith live in fear of condemnation of their families. This explains why some of the new members of the Christian movements prefer to keep their new, non-traditional faith secret.
In fact, many of the newly converted belong to mixed families with parents or spouses of different nationalities. We met several of them. Significantly, some of the Adighe Christians descended from fathers who in Soviet times were mullahs. The fact that in pre-Islamic times, in the early Middle Ages, many of the local nationalities (Adighes being one of them) were Christian serves as a weighty argument in favor of joining a non-traditional Christian organization.
Many of the non-traditional Christian organizations run their own rehabilitation centers, for example, the Iskhod Evangelical Movement in the Republic of Adigey. The Baptists in Maykop also have a rehabilitation center in the Tulskaia settlement where 10 men with drug and alcohol problems live side by side with “brothers” (members of the Baptist community). The Christian movements combine social support with propaganda in social institutions; Baptists, for example, work in the boarding school in the village of Shovgenovskiy.
Senior Baptist Presbyter D. Kadatskiy (in the Republic of Adigey) points out that the ideological platforms of the non-traditional religious organizations and of the other religions differ greatly: “Our life is devoted to God, therefore we cannot single out that part of it in which we could communicate with members of other religions on everyday issues.” This means that no confessional dialog
with members of other religions is possible in general. Christian organizations insist on their own religious ideology and prefer to rely solely on the moral values of their religious trend.
The traditional confessions in the Northern Caucasus are not strong enough because the religious, Islamic and Christian, renaissance has not been going on very long and because they are plagued by numerous internal problems, such as inadequately educated clergy, etc.
In Lieu of a Conclusion: Forms and Nature of a Religious Dialog Among Peoples with Different Religious Landmarks
A religious dialog should be organized at several levels among:
■ religious leaders;
■ rank-and-file members;
■ members of religious organizations, believers, secular part of the population, and “semi-religious " people (ethnic Muslims and ethnic Orthodox Christians).
It seems that the following communication forms can help organize a positive, “healthy” dialog:
(1) Members of religious communities should be taught to recognize the relative nature of the “religious truths” and different ways and methods of religious quest and should accept the right of other people to live differently than their religious brethren and to profess different truths.
(2) The intelligentsia in all parts of Russia should pool forces to create a common layer of the system of human values shared by mankind and based on culture rather than on religion that is acceptable across the country irrespective of the locally dominating religions. This system could be complemented with religious values borrowed from different religions, however the foundation should remain secular and civil.
(3) To blunt the edge of religious contradictions, Russia should pursue a policy of multicultur-alism; it should be said that under Soviet power and in the post-Soviet period multicultur-alism and cultural pluralism were always present: no other principle can bring together so many nationalities within one vast state. The Soviet slogan of “friendship among nations” is as topical as ever. Today, however, we should work hard to plant the ideas of multicultural-ism in the current religious, cultural, and ideological conditions.
(4) We need a field of shared secular spirituality; much can be done by local intellectuals (writers, artists, heads of local TV and radio channels, as well as theater people)—it is for them to create a new multicultural expanse which would include the history of the North Caucasian peoples, the traditions of the mountain dwellers, the Russian and Cossack traditions, Islamic values, and Orthodox values. This will help them to find a place of their own in the processes generated by the present social, economic, and political reality. The republican administrations should pay more attention to shaping a common cultural field and shared civil identity in the North Caucasian republics.
(5) Religious renaissance breeds problems, which call for consistent efforts to lay the foundation for further cooperation between the state and civil society in the current religious situation in the Russian Federation. So far, the numerous religious trends that have spread far and wide have called to life all sorts of conflicts inside religions and between them (neither the clergy nor the members of religious communities have proven immune to them).
To lay the foundation of relations between the state and civil society, the concept of “traditional religions” should be specified; regulatory documents relating to teaching the fundamentals of religious life in secondary schools are badly needed.
The following types of conflicts have become a regular feature of the dialog inside religions and between them: rejection of other confessions by both the leaders and members of religious communities; and the absence in public ideology of a conception of multiculturalism and its meaning. This is responsible for the political overtones in the dialog between religions: the leaders of the traditional North Caucasian religions (Christian Orthodoxy and Islam) have closed ranks against the Christian, so-called non-traditional, religions. Both rely on the so-called administrative resource represented by the republican administrations and security structures. This is done in violation of Art 14.2 of the Constitution, which says: “Religious associations shall be separate from the State and shall be equal before the law.” Interference does nothing for the relations among the followers of different religions.
Elmir KULIEV
Ph.D. (Philos.), Director, Department of Geoculture, Institute of Strategic Studies of the Caucasus
(Baku, Azerbaijan).
ON MODERNIZATION IN AZERBAIJAN: THE SECULAR AND THE RELIGIOUS IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY
Abstract
What are the prospects for interaction between the secular and the religious in the social and political life of Azerbaijan? How are the secular and the religious changing in the world today; how are they interconnected in the legal and cultural expanse? To answer these questions, the author traces how ideas about the “indivisibility” of religion and the state
in Islamic religious-political thought are developing, analyzes the latest experience of secularization in Azerbaijan, and outlines the directions in which relations between the state and the confessions are moving. The above, however, calls for a description of the geocultural paradigm which has determined the axiological trends of current modernization.
I n t r o d u c t i o n
All the social, economic, and political changes of the last two decades in Azerbaijan have been unfolding as a modernization effort designed to overcome the country’s economic and technological
