CC BY
202
Viktor BUDKIN
D.Sc. (Econ.), professor, honored worker of science and technology of Ukraine, chief researcher at the Institute of World Economy and
International Relations, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
(Kiev, Ukraine).
THE STATE AND RELIGION IN THE POST-SOVIET EXPANSE
Abstract
The author looks at the common and specific features of the relations between the state and religion in the CIS countries. He offers his opinion on the religious situation in Russia and the other
post-Soviet countries in the European part of the former Soviet Union, as well as in the Caucasus and Central Asia, and describes how religion is used for political purposes.
I n t r o d u c t i o n
The early post-Soviet period can be described as a period of avid interest in religion in the postSoviet expanse. The political forces that came to power in the newly independent states proved unable to create a pluralist ideological basis typical of Western democracies. Indeed, in the absence of a civil society and the obvious desire to leave the Soviet ideological constructs behind, the dualist orientation toward revived traditionalism and religious feelings (kept within certain limits or even persecuted by Soviet power) looked like the shortest way to an ideology acceptable to all. The religious confessions or at least most CIS religious communities, which for nearly seventy years of Soviet history had survived thanks to their loyalty to the government, proved unable to formulate their attitude to the new regime. Today, nearly all religious confessions, particularly Orthodoxy and Islam, never fail to support the new authorities and everything they do. The real situation in the state-religion sphere differs from country to country: from the symbiosis of Christian Orthodoxy and the state in Russia to state domination, to one degree or another, over religion in other CIS countries; the extreme form of such domination was found under Niyazov in Turkmenistan. Irrespective of the degree of such interaction, the CIS states have one thing in common: they are using the majority of the local confessions in their interests.
Religious Renaissance as the Shared Post-Soviet Trend
The situation in all post-Soviet CIS countries can be described as a religious renaissance; the popular masses have rediscovered their religious feelings after a long period of active rejection of or
indifference to the formal or even important religious dogmas. Today, religion has become a great part of the lives of the absolute majority of the local populations and, therefore, can be described as a social factor to be reckoned with.
It cannot be said though that slackened atheist propaganda was the revolutionary phenomenon of the last sixteen anti-communist years. Religiosity had been gradually mounting since the mid-1950s (when unquestioned faith in the communist ideology was undermined by the revelations of the personality cult). Its renaissance can be dated to the latter half of the 1980s and the dramatic changes of the early 1990s. By that time it had become obvious that only ideological doctrines used to revive traditionalism and religiosity could be used to fill the ideological vacuum in the newly independent states. This explains how the renaissance of the previous period developed into the imperative of religiosity as part of the basic ideological values in all the post-Soviet states. It satisfied the needs of the believers and served state interests.
Having discarded the ideological basis of the Soviet period, the “old-new” political structures,1 which needed fresh ideological constructs to build up new nation-states, had to rummage in the past of the titular nations in search of new ideas and traditional religious values. In all the post-Soviet states religion as one of the most important political tools is a shared phenomenon. In each of them, however, this phenomenon has its specific features.
The State-Orthodoxy Symbiosis: The Phenomenon of Poly-Confessional Russia
Religion has acquired a very distinct political role in the Russian Federation (RF), whereby not only inside the country, but outside it as well. On 1 February, 2007, when speaking at a press conference, President Putin supplied an all-embracing formula: “Both the Russian Federation’s traditional confessions and its nuclear shield are two integral parts that strengthen Russian statehood and create conditions conducive to the country’s stability inside and outside it.”2 This applies primarily to Orthodoxy, as the country’s leading confession, and the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC). It has acquired a new role, is building up its influence, and is beginning to be used by the state structures under President Yeltsin; under President Putin it gained even more weight. At all times the ROC has been and remains an “etatist” church, a fact that cannot be overestimated in a country that needs stability during times of deep-cutting change. This traditional role helped Russia liberate itself from the Mongol yoke in the 15th century and remain by the Soviet state’s side during the grim years of World War II, and also gives hope that Russia will revive as a great power.
At the turn of the 1990s, the ROC and its Patriarch Alexiy II demonstrated a loyalty of sorts to what was happening in the country. This stemmed from decades of communist atheism and the resultant lack of a staunch position among most of the Russian population The Church had to concentrate on restoring its ramified infrastructure to adjust to the obviously much more favorable conditions of confessional activities. It came to the fore at the peak of the political confrontation: in August 1991 when the State of Emergency Committee (GKChP) tried to reverse the course of history, the Church moved forward as a mediator; it helped to stabilize the situation, its efforts being very much appreci-
1 The term is used to emphasize that, as distinct from Central Europe and the Baltic states, the new leaders of these countries (with the exception of a very short period in Belarus and Georgia) belonged to the old Soviet party and state nomenklatura.
2 Verbatim Report about the Press Conference for Russian and Foreign Journalists, 1 February, 2007, available at [http://www.kremlin./ru//text//appears/2007/02/117597.shtml].
ated by those in power and by the public. Despite its failed mediation in October 1993 when the Church proved unable to bring President Yeltsin and his opponents to the negotiation table, it still demonstrated that it had enough power to initiate reconciliation and to influence the political processes in Russia. From the very beginning of perestroika, the Church leaders and the Patriarch’s office have been involved in public movements and elected structures at all levels; and in 1989 the Patriarch was elected People’s Deputy of the U.S.S.R. from the Charity and Health Foundation.
As time went on, the ROC gained even more political weight; it moved away from the reconciliation efforts of the Yeltsin period to establish the priority of the “Russian element” in the state and to plant the idea of Russians as one of the world’s greatest nations in people’s minds. As one of the sides in the political movement, the Church treats the task of preserving Russia as a great power with traditions and a history of its own as one of the priorities outlined at the 10th World Russian People’s Congress the ROC convened in April 2006. In practical terms, the ROC did a lot to help Putin defeat the separatism that came to the fore in the 1990s not only in national autonomies such as Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, etc., but also in some of the regions where Russians predominated (the Ural Republic project). The local clergy did not openly object, but the very unifying nature of Russian Orthodoxy helped Russia to remain a single state. The Church did a lot to spiritually support those fighting in Chechnia, thus decreasing the more or less common negative attitude to the military operations. It should be borne in mind that granted there are many parties in Russia and that its regions differ greatly, only two verticals—state power and the ROC—can be described as nationwide institutions.
In the new conditions, which have no analogies in Russia’s previous history, and in the presence of new state, party, and public organizations, the ROC turned out to be the most representative source of the revival of traditions as an important part of Russia’s ideological system. To strengthen their position, both the Church and the post-Soviet state turned to the past. This exercise promoted mutual trust and established cooperation between them. The very fact that the ROC accepted this state as “traditional” added legitimacy to the state structures in the eyes of the nation. The traditional unity between the state and the Church, which was obvious from the very beginning when Kievan Rus embraced Christianity in the 10th century, helped to preserve the state during the Patriotic wars of 1812 and 1941-1945, and survived other tests, has contributed to the present role of the ROC as one of the state’s pillars.
After restoring its position in Russia, the ROC is consistently and resolutely checking the encroachments of other confessions on its traditional, so-called “local” territory.3 Patriarch Alexiy II vetoed the very possibility of a Papal visit to Russia and disapproved of the Roman Catholic Church that intended to set up new eparchies on the ROC’s traditional territory. On this issue, Russia’s leaders side with the Church and the Patriarch. President Gorbachev, on the other hand, was inclined to establish closer relations with the Vatican and even visited John-Paul II at his residence. Today, however, the relations between Moscow and the Vatican are fairly cool.
In the last few years, the ROC has been demonstrating much more activity outside Russia. It has moved beyond post-Soviet territory to reach the large Russian diasporas formed at different periods of massive emigration from Russia. This follows the foreign policy of the RF, which has stepped up its efforts to fortify its position in the world.
When dealing with the Orthodox and Christian confessions in the CIS countries, the ROC remains determined to protect the territory inherited from Soviet times and keep rivals away. The hierarchs of the Kiev Patriarchate insist that the ROC interferes with the intention of the Ecumenical Patriarch to recognize the Ukrainian Orthodox Church as one of the “local” churches. When talking about the ROC as a lever of Russian influence in Ukraine, head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church
3 The ROC is one of the “local” churches, like the Bulgarian, Rumanian, Greek, and other Orthodox churches which received their territories within a certain state from the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Traditionally, the ROC’s territory covered the former Russian Empire and the Soviet Union; today, it is traditionally present on the territories of the CIS states.
Patriarch Filaret said: “Russia is more afraid of the united Local Orthodox Church in Ukraine than it is afraid of our NATO membership.”4
Unification with the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia that took place on 17 May, 2007 when Patriarch Alexiy II and Protohierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia Metropolitan Laurus signed the Act on Canonical Communication in Moscow at the Christ the Savior Cathedral boosted the ROC’s international prestige. The Act legally registered the results of the prolonged negotiations about the unification of the two branches of Orthodoxy that appeared ninety years previously and divided the Orthodox believers into those who stayed behind in the Soviet Union and those who -left it. This act did not merely extend the ROC’s sphere of influence; it signified that the Russian diaspora recognized the RF, something that could not happen while the Soviet Union was still alive.
It should be said that in Russia different confessions are treated differently in the legal and other respects. Art 28 of the RF Constitution says: “Everyone shall be guaranteed the right to freedom of conscience, to freedom of religious worship, including the right to profess, individually or jointly with others, any religion, or to profess no religion, to freely choose, possess and disseminate religious or other beliefs, and to act in conformity with them.” There are no encroachments on the rights of any confession, a fact successfully exploited by members of the previously banned or persecuted Christians (the Lutherans started three publishing centers in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Novosibirsk)5 and by the latest confessions (Krishnaites, Scientologists, and others, some of which were recognized as totalitarian sects and remained unregistered). In real life, Orthodox Christianity is seen as the main confession. Its contribution to the culture and identity of the Russians or even of all other peoples living in Russia cannot be underestimated. This fact is equally recognized by the nation and the state. The ROC and the authorities are continuously insisting on this and act together. Those who support the idea of religious tolerance all over the world and insist that Christian holidays should be ignored in the European countries would have remained unheeded in Russia. In fact, Christmas and Easter have become state holidays in post-Soviet Russia, a fact that drew no objections even from the Communist Party.
The ROC has recently become even more actively involved in all spheres of public life in Russia; this was especially evident at the 11th World Russian People’s Congress held in April 2007. Metropolitan of Smolensk and Kaliningrad Kirill, one of the most active and respected hierarchs, delivered the main report in which he outlined an impressive program of the ROC’s presence in all moral and spiritual spheres; he suggested that the ROC should be consulted about party programs, state politics, culture, education, etc. The Church is planning the broadest possible involvement in the social and economic sphere; it suggested introducing a progressive taxation scale together with luxury tax and tax on real estate and abolishing taxes for the poorest groups. This will obviously add to the authority and influence of the Church, which shouldered the burden of shaping the moral principles of Russian society.
Its mere size makes Russia a multi-confessional state. Islam is the second largest religion; its followers live in compact groups in some of the autonomous republics along the Volga (Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Chuvashia) and in the Northern Caucasus (Chechnia, Ingushetia, and all the other republics in the same region). Large numbers of Muslim guest workers from Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, and other Central Asian states work in Moscow and other large cities of the Russian Federation. It is believed that the Muslims comprise from 10 to 14 percent of the RF’s total population.6
4 “Patriarch Filaret. The Nation’s Concerns are the Concerns of the Church,” Herald of Orthodoxy, No. 11-12, 2006, p. 38 (in Ukrainian).
5 The Good News journal published in the United States carries information of this sort of activity. Translated into the local languages, the journal appears in the RF, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. There is also a Byelorussian-language edition.
6 Speaking at the OIC summit in 2003, President Putin quoted the figure of 20 million Muslims living in the RF. Ravil Gaynutdin, Chairman of the Council of the Muftis of Russia, quoted the same figure, while Federal Minister Vladimir Zorin relied on the All-Russia Population Census when he spoke about 14.5 million, or 10 percent of the country’s total population (see: I. Maksakov, “Musul’manskie milliony,” Izvestia, 13 November, 2003).
This large group cannot be ignored, nor can its interests be underestimated, but it carries much less political weight than the Orthodox Christians, which is explained by Islam’s “nonstate” status as a religion and the absence of an agreement among the numerous Muslim community bodies scattered across Russia (there are 62 muftiats, two spiritual administrations for the country’s European and Asian parts, the Coordinating Center of the North Caucasian Muslims, the Central Spiritual Administration, etc.).7 This means that none of the Islamic spiritual leaders can claim leadership of all, or even part, of Russia’s Muslim community. Some of the “legal” (i.e. unassociated with extremist movements) and respected muftis and religious figures are very critical of the state’s policy in relation to the Muslims. They are especially irritated by the ROC’s intention to introduce the Fundamentals of Christian Orthodoxy into the secondary school curriculum, which they are convinced would violate the principle of equality of all confessions. This irritation, however, remained within limits of a discussion, while the majority of the Muslim clergy in Russia is demonstratively loyal to the state and the regime.
Islam’s political weight with the power structures is limited to the predominantly Muslim regions (the Volga Area and the Northern Caucasus). The local laws comprise the individual provisions of the fiqh (Islamic legal doctrine). The laws of Tatarstan, for example, allow the religious organizations to accept private donations and keep donated property. It should be said that his respect for Muslim values helped President of Tatarstan Shaymiev stem radicalism in his republic and even remove radicals from the political scene altogether. The switch to the Shari‘a, at least in some spheres of Chechnia’s life, somewhat defused the tension and undermined the fighters’ position in this part of Russia. The role of Russia’s second largest confession should not be underestimated, but we must admit that its political impact is limited to certain regions, which makes it a religion of regional rather than national importance.
All other legal religions, both Christian (Roman Catholics, Baptists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, etc.) and others (Buddhists, who have a strong position in Kalmykia thanks to the support of its president, Judaists, who restored the network of synagogues and schools, Krishnaites, etc.), carry no political weight at the state level. As distinct from Islam and Buddhism, which are regional confessions, all the other religions are spread across the vast country, which deprived them of influence even at the lowest administrative levels.
This means that Christian Orthodoxy is the only “state confession” in Russia and that its ideology corresponds to the official one and is, therefore, supported by the Kremlin. According to Metropolitan Kirill, today Christian Orthodoxy stands a much better chance of influencing society than ever before: under Soviet power, when the Church was persecuted, and even under the czar, when he had the final say in the Holy Synod, the highest religious structure. The following conclusion is suggested: “Politics, economics, and social issues can not only attract attention of the Church—they should attract its attention.”8
The European CIS Members: The Moscow Patriarchate Strives to Preserve Its Position
In Byelorussia, the government has been successfully cooperating with Orthodoxy, a process that has already produced good results. Between 1989 and 1992, 10 eparchies and eparchial seats were set up within the Byelorussian Exarchate of the ROC established in 1989. Twenty-five Ortho-
7 R. Silantiev, “Muftii braniatsia—tol’ko teshatsia,” Izvestia, 7 July, 2006.
8 “My dolzhny vernut’sia k vospitaniu tsennostey,” Metropolitan Kirill’s interview to Izvestia, 20 April, 2004.
dox monasteries were restored between 1988 and 2005, while the number of clerics increased more than 3-fold—from 399 to 1,264.9
The ROC preserved its influence in the republic by promptly reorganizing its structures when it set up the exarchate; it also tided them over the chaos of the Soviet Union’s disintegration when Byelorussia was developing into an independent state. The centuries-old friendship with Russia helped the ROC to preserve its position in the newly independent country. Orthodoxy helped Alexander Lukashenko become the president in July 1994 amid the ideological and geopolitical confusion of the early period of independence. The opposition was looking at the West and wanted a greater role for Catholicism and the Uniate Church. It is only natural that the president, who has been in power for fifteen years now, supports the Byelorussian Exarchate of the ROC. It, in turn, is using the president’s support to uphold his regime and neutralize, by the same token, the world’s predominantly negative attitude to the Byelorussian leader. Orthodoxy has a good chance of remaining the dominant confession in Belarus because all the other confessions are also nationally oriented. The official publication Belarus. Fakty. 2005 (Belarus. Facts. 2005), which registered the Church’s rapid resurrection of the 1990s, pointed out: “Byelorussians, the titular nation, predominate among the Orthodox believers.”10 Byelorussians comprise 81.2 percent of the total population; together with the local Russians (there are 11.4 percent of them in the republic), they form the basis of Orthodox predomination in Belarus. Roman Catholicism, the second largest confession, is popular mainly among the local Poles (3.9 percent of the total population), but it cannot compete with Orthodoxy.11 Since the early 1990s, the Vatican has set up 4 eparchies in Belarus and has over 400 churches across the republic, but Catholicism has no clout with the state structures.12 It represents a national minority and can be even described as an alien phenomenon in the predominantly Orthodox country. There is a tendency among those who oppose the ruling regime to join the Greek Catholic Church, but the absolute majority of the local people regard it as a Papal institution, not much different from Catholicism. The Protestant, Judaist, Muslim, Krishnaite, and other communities are too small to claim any political role at all, which leaves Orthodoxy, represented by the ROC Byelorussian Exarchate, as the only politically important confession.
The religious situation in Ukraine, another mainly Christian CIS country, is very complicated. There are two Orthodox churches on its territory, one opposing the other (the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kiev Patriarchate); the Greek Catholic Church has a fairly large following, while Roman Catholics, Protestants, and Judaists carry enough weight to be reckoned with. During the fifteen years of independence, the three Ukrainian presidents never failed to congratulate all these confessions on their holidays, and their representatives are invariably present at all the official events. New synagogues and Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, and Uniate churches and prayer houses are being built in great numbers. The believers have regained possession of the temples confiscated by Soviet power. After 70 years of persecution, proselytizing is an inevitable and natural phenomenon responsible for the unexpected religious preferences of those at the top. Alexander Turchinov, the second in command in the Yulia Timoshenko Bloc, who headed the Security Service of Ukraine in 2005-2006 is a Protestant, while head of Pravex-Bank Leonid Chernovetskiy, who was elected mayor of Kiev in 2006, belongs to the exotic confession The Embassy of the Blessed Kingdom of God for All Nations headed by Black prophet Sunday Adelaja.
This speaks not so much of the religious tolerance of the Ukrainian authorities as of their desire to expand their social basis. This became especially clear during Viktor Iushchenko’s presidency: his declining rating forced him and his supporters from the Nasha Ukraina Bloc to use this lever. The
9 See: Belarus. Fakty. 2005, Kavaler Publishers, Minsk, 2005, p. 210.
10 Ibid., p. 210.
11 See: Ibidem.
12 See: Ibid., p. 211.
state and the “confessions of secondary importance” remain mutually loyal: the latter though have been unable to tip the political balance in Ukraine, limiting their contribution only to a certain increase in social stability.
Confrontation among the three main Christian trends—the ROC of the Moscow Patriarchate, the UOC of the Kiev Patriarchate, and the so-called Uniate Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church13 — destabilizes the situation.
In November 1991, at the height of the independence movement in Ukraine, head of the Ukrainian Metropolis of the Russian Orthodox Church Filaret (Mikhail Denisenko) convened a Local Council of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (still part of the ROC) to request independence from the Moscow Patriarchate. Moscow dismissed the request as schism and anathemized Filaret. In April 1992, the Assembly of Hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church declined the request in sharp terms; in June 1992, the All-Ukraine Orthodox Council passed a decision to detach itself from the ROC and become the independent UOC of the Kiev Patriarchate. After a while, when the newly formed structure had been functioning under patriarchs Mstislav and Vladimir, in October 1995, Filaret, the man who had inspired the independence movement, became patriarch.
The ROC took measures to preserve its position in Ukraine. In October 1990, the Assembly of Hierarchs of the ROC gave the UOC the right to administer its affairs independently even if the Moscow Patriarchate remained the central structure. Faced with the threat of a schism, the Moscow supporters elected Vladimir (Viktor Sabadash) Metropolitan of Kiev and All Ukraine, who was also head of the UOC of the MP.
Simultaneously, the Committee in Defense of the Greek Catholic Church initiated restoration of its structures. It was on the Committee’s insistence that on 30 November, 1989 the Council for Religious Affairs at the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian S.S.R. began registering the Greek Catholic communities. In 1991, Cardinal Miroslav Lyubachivsky was appointed head of the GCC; upon his death in January 2001 the post went to Cardinal Lyubomir Guzar. The persecutions of the Soviet period kept the church hierarchs abroad until the early 1990s; all of them were educated in Catholic schools in the United States, Austria, and the Vatican where they served and made their careers.14 Few of them were educated at home, in clandestine seminaries in Ukraine. Today, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church pays much attention to the religious education of its clerics both in Ukraine and abroad.
The legalization process led to the redistribution of church property. Under Soviet power, the ROC was the only owner of what was left of pre-revolutionary church property. This process was particularly confrontational early in the 1990s, when central power preferred to stay away from the church squabbles that developed into direct clashes between the supporters of the two opposing confessions in the west of Ukraine and in Kiev where the clergy of the UOC of MP was driven from the churches they served in. Some of the churches were divided between the two confessions, many of those closed earlier were reopened, and new ones were built. The number of churches now owned by the UOC of the MP (which has the largest number of churches), the UOC of the KP, and the GCC reached 1,300. The pro-Moscow and two other confessions disagree over purely religious matters; their property-related confrontation led to uncompromising disagreements between the pro-Moscow
13 Some of the Orthodox hierarchs in the Ukrainian and Byelorussian lands that were part of Poland declared the union of Orthodoxy and Catholicism at the Brest Church Council in 1596. They recognized the Pope as their head, but preserved the old rites. The ROC has at all times been dead set against the Union as a political rather than religious measure designed to reunite Catholicism and Orthodoxy. When Western Ukraine, the Trans-Carpathian Region, and Western Byelorussia finally became part of the Soviet Union, a Council of some of the representatives of the Greek Catholic Church was held in Lvov in 1946 to annul the Brest Union. It was late in the 1980s, during perestroika, that the ban on the Uniate Greek Catholic Church was lifted in Ukraine and Byelorussia.
14 This gives reason for the GCC’s opponents to talk about the “alien nature” of its hierarchs; the same, in fact, is said about Vladimir, who heads the UOC of the MP (a Ukrainian who returned to his homeland after making his career in Russia).
and the other two mutually tolerant churches. The fact that in November 2005 the seat of the Greek Catholics was moved from Lvov to Kiev aroused no objections from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kiev Patriarchate, or from Patriarch Filaret, who said: “This is the Greek Catholics’ internal affair and we shall not interfere.” Cardinal Guzar, their head, appreciated this by saying: “The UOC of the KP said that our return to Kiev will not interfere with it if we refrain from proselytizing.”15 Patriarch Alexiy II described this as another sign of aggression on the part of the Greek Catholics.
Cardinal Guzar made a very important comment when he talked about the “return to Kiev.” Immediately after the Brest Union (when Ukraine was part of Poland), the head of the confession remained in Kiev until Poland was divided between Russia, Austria, and Prussia in the late 18th century. Banned in the Russian Empire, the Greek Catholic Church had to move to Lvov, which belonged to Austria-Hungary in the 19th century, and to Poland after World War I. According to Ukrainian sources,16 since 1987, the Committee in Defense of the UGCC has been insisting that the Church should be reinstated in the western parts of Ukraine. Its communities were restored, while the St. Yur Cathedral in Lvov was transferred to the head of the Greek Catholics. The very fact that the residence was moved to Kiev means that the Church intended to claim its rights over the whole of the republic. This fact invited sharp responses from the pro-Moscow Church, which interpreted the “return to Kiev”, as well as the formation of the UOC of the KP, as an encroachment on its traditional territory. In the same interview, Cardinal Guzar pointed out that President Iushchenko preferred to remain neutral: he treated the situation as the Greek Catholics’ internal issue.
By the early 21st century, the three churches had finally divided up the flock and territory among them. The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church has about 3 thousand eparchies with about 1 million followers, mainly in the country’s west. Six thousand communities of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate predominate in the east, while 1,750 communities of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kiev Patriarchate are found in the center and the west.17 Different sources offer different figures. Priest Zuev, for example, believes that the Moscow-oriented Church has 10 parishes; the Kiev-oriented Church about three thousand, while the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church has approximately one thousand parishes.18 No matter what, all the students of Ukrainian Christianity agree that those who side with the Moscow Patriarchate outnumber all the other followers and that the territorial division has become obvious. This is another destabilizing factor that adds urgency to one of the most obvious features on the republic’s scene: political division between the pro-Russian population of the eastern part and the pro-Western population of the country’s west.
None of the confessions are officially involved in political confrontation, however, they are all in fact politically orientated either toward Russia, or toward independence of Orthodoxy in Ukraine as a factor of stronger statehood (the UOC of the KP), or toward the West (the Greek Catholics). The Address of the Synod of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church given at the height of the fall 2004 presidential election and the Orange Revolution was very typical. It said in part: “Our Church has never campaigned for any of the candidates,” and it also contained the complete set of those accusations hurled at the “claimant from the East” (Viktor Ianukovich) which were widely publicized by Iushchenko and his supporters.19 On the other hand, it was the followers of the UOC
15 “My ne dlia kogo ne predstavliaem ugrozu,” Izvestia v Ukraine, 14 October, 2005.
16 See, for example: V. Lubskiy, V. Teremko, M. Lubskaia, Religious Studies. Textbook, Akademvidav, Kiev, 2006, p. 306 (in Ukrainian).
17 See: Ibid., p. 307.
18 See: P. Zuev, “Edinstvo v mnogoobrazii,” Zerkalo nedeli, 27 January, 2007.
19 “God is with the People. Address of the Synod of the Bishops of the Kiev-Galich Metropolis of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church to Those Loyal to It and to All People of Good Will about the Present Public Situation in Ukraine,” Ekspres, 25 November, 2004 (in Ukrainian).
of the MP that stood behind Ianukovich and his Party of the Regions. They ensured his success at the parliamentary elections of 2006 and at the extraordinary parliamentary elections on 30 September, 2007.
In the absence of one dominating confession (as in Russia), the government has to treat all the churches equally. All three presidents of Ukraine—Leonid Kravchuk, Leonid Kuchma, and Viktor Iushchenko—preferred to keep their sympathies to themselves. Significantly, in the last ten years, the heads of the three confessions were regularly, and simultaneously, awarded the highest Ukrainian orders. In 2007, President Iushchenko and his family attended Easter services in the cathedrals of all the confessions: of the Moscow and Kiev Patriarchates, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, the Greek Catholic, and the Roman Catholic churches, which celebrated Easter on the same day in 2007.
It should be said here that, unlike the Russian leaders, the Ukrainian top crust is absolutely loyal to the Pope. In June 2001, under President Kuchma, Pope John-Paul II came to Ukraine and gathered crowds of Catholics in Kiev and Lvov from inside the country and even from abroad, something that would not have happened in Russia. President Iushchenko has already invited Pope Benedict XVI to Ukraine.
While all the confessions enjoy an equal status, the idea of a single local church in Ukraine remains on the agenda. While during the stagnation years of Leonid Kuchma’s presidency the issue was never raised in earnest, it has come to the fore under the new president. President Iushchenko obviously sees it as a priority. In June 2005, when visiting Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, he pointed out: “We treat all churches equally and abide by the principle of noninterference in their affairs,”20 but the very fact of this meeting testifies that there are plans to involve the Constantinople Patriarchate in the religious situation in the country. After all, only the Constantinople Patriarchate has the right to declare Orthodox churches independent.
Despite continued, latent, but very real confrontation between the Moscow and Constantinople Patriarchates, Bartholomew I has not yet dared to openly confront the Russian Orthodox Church by setting up a local church in Ukraine. He is obviously under pressure from the Moscow Patriarchate and he has not yet sorted out the situation in Ukraine. Indeed, the numerous attempts of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kiev Patriarchate to restore its unity with the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church have so far failed. The Moscow Patriarchate, in turn, is trying to establish closer contacts with the latter. The UOC of the MP is openly hostile to the Kiev Patriarchate as a schismatic and noncanonical structure. Bartholomew I is fully aware of the danger of having two independent Orthodox churches in one country: communities and property will have to be shifted between them, while the clerics will become engaged in bitter polemics. Orthodoxy can hardly be expected to remain the “state religion” and to fortify its position in society. The new ideas about independence that have been recently circulating cannot strengthen the status of any church without an agreement from Constantinople. The UOC of the KP obviously needs Constantinople’s confirmation of its canonical and “local” status.
Judaism and Islam also have a certain role to play in Ukraine.
Jewish emigration of the last quarter of the 20th century cut down the size of the Jewish population in Ukraine, but in the early 1990s those who stayed behind began restoring the old religious buildings and Judaic schools; the Brodsky Central Synagogue in Kiev was returned to the Jewish community. Foreign organizations are doing a lot in the religious sphere; they send their clerics (Yakov Dov Bleich, the Chief Rabbi of Ukraine, came from the United States), help to revive education and religious traditions, etc. Every year thousands of Hasidic pilgrims visit the burial of their teacher (tzadik) in the city of Uman. The community, which accounts for merely 0.2 percent of the total population, is much more active than the other national minorities,
20 “Meeting with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew,” Uriadovy kur’er, 10 June, 2005 (in Ukrainian).
which is partly explained by the external factor—the large Jewish Ukrainian diaspora (today the number of Ukrainian Jews in Israel is five times larger than the official number of Jews in Ukraine) and contacts with Jewish business abroad. Jews occupy prominent places in Ukrainian business and the media.
While the Jewish community’s political role in the republic is much greater than its share in the country’s total population because it remains open to the world and maintains wide social contacts, the much larger Muslim community (about 4 percent of the total population, or up to 2 million people, 250 thousand of whom are Crimean Tartars who returned from exile where they were deported under Stalin’s orders in 1944)21 is keeping a much lower political profile. It is too closed and too concerned with its internal religious issues. The Crimea, where politics are largely shaped by the confrontation between the Tartars (who are Muslims) and the other population groups, is the only exception. The conflicts, however, are rooted not so much in religious as in economic issues (land particular). At the national level, the Spiritual Administration of the Muslims of Ukraine tends toward stability and opposes the radical groups banned in other countries but legal in Ukraine, such as Hizb ut-Tahrir, Jamaat Islamiyya, and others.
In Ukraine none of the confessions can claim a leading political role or describe itself as the main state religion. The state, in turn, can support neither of them; politically, people at the helm depend on the followers of all religions when it comes to elections. For this reason the religious factor has no definite role to play; state-church relations depend on the fragile status quo; the regime does not rely on any of the confessions to fortify its position at home and abroad (this is what happens in Russia).
The Orthodox Church of Moldova is hardly noticeable on the domestic scene: the local population is not religious enough, while the country’s leaders and President Voronin, who is a communist, do nothing to encourage religion and religious feelings. Foreign experts have already pointed this out: Polish students of the religious process across the post-Soviet expanse have described the situation as “an increased interest in religion in a fairly atheist society.”22 At the same time, there are several issues (related to the continued existence of an independent and integral Moldova) on which the state and the Orthodox Church disagree. Those who want reunification with Rumania would like to see the Bessarabian Orthodox Church, which is subordinated to the independent Rumanian Orthodox Church, back. The Rumanian Orthodox Church was banned in 1940 when Bessarabia became part of the Soviet Union. Despite the freedom and independence of the religious cults registered in Art 31 of the country’s Constitution, the government and the official church rebuffed these efforts on the grounds that the BOC would pursue pro-Rumanian rather than national policies. The Church and the state disagree over religious policy in the self-declared Transdniestrian Moldovan Republic: the president is dead set against the very fact of the republic’s existence and against the unofficial yet real assistance of the Russian leaders; the official Church, itself part of the ROC of the MP is more restrained.
The State and Religion in the Caucasus
In the Southern Caucasus, state-church relations differ from country to country. With the discovery of oil late in the 19th century, Baku and the other cities of Azerbaijan became truly multinational, while the rural areas remained predominantly Azeri. This means that urban areas were poly-
21 See: A. Kozlovskiy, “Musul’mane Ukrainy—protiv ekstremizma,” Kievskiy vestnik, 5 July, 2007; A. Wolf, “Natsional’nosti Ukrainy,” Gazeta “2000”, 6 July, 2007.
22 Europa srodkowo-wschodnia. 2003. Rocznik XIII, Institut Studiow Politycznych PAN, Warsaw, 2003, p. 152.
confessional, while the villages remained Islamic. Under Soviet power all religious activities were restricted and state-controlled, which could not but diminish the level of religiosity across the country. The situation changed in the early half of the 1990s when President Heydar Aliev realized that religion could add stability to the country gradually reviving from the crisis of the first years of its independent development. Islamic cultic buildings, holy places, and schools were rapidly restored across the country. The people at the helm were tolerant of Christian and other traditional confessions. Azerbaijan is a secular state, which means that the impact of its main religion (Islam) on the political and social processes is fairly limited.
The relations between the Georgian Orthodox Church and the country’s leaders are far from simple. The Church and its Catholicos Patriarch Ilia II prefer to maintain traditionally good relations with Russian Orthodoxy. This means that the present course toward confrontation with Russia pursued by President Saakashvili contradicts the traditionally good relations between Georgian and Russian Orthodoxy. While the Western-oriented president is tolerant of the nontraditional cults pouring into the country, the Church is very much concerned with their inflow. Some of the church hierarchs even try to physically stem the process: one of them, using his staff to dispel a crowd of Protestants, was detained. The Georgian opposition and the Church are equally troubled by the prospect of a rapidly growing Muslim population: President Saakashvili intends to let the deported (in 1944) Meskhe-tian Turks return to their homes in Samtskhe-Javakheti. There are several tens of thousands of them; if they come back they will claim their land and other property back, they may go as far as demanding a religion-based autonomy. The Armenians of the Akhalkalaki District have been campaigning for autonomy for some time. This has already created latent opposition between the Church and the secular leaders, but so far there has been no open conflict.
The Armenian context is very close to the situation in Russia. L. Kolesnikov, one of the most prominent Russian experts in Armenia, has described the situation in the following words: “The system of state-church relations in the Republic of Armenia is one of the central political factors, the cornerstone of Armenian unity, unity of the diaspora, and peace and stability inside the country, as well as of its future.”23 The Armenian Apostolic Church is a vehicle of the national idea of the people scattered across the world: the Armenian diaspora outnumbers the republic’s population. The present economic difficulties make the Armenian Gregorian Church even more important: it is responsible for the nation’s ethnic and cultural unity. The country’s leaders are appreciative of everything the diaspora is doing for the republic: everything that is done is rooted in the national-religious awareness of unity of the entire Armenian nation. The country, which has the ROC of the MP, Catholics, Judaists, and Protestants, is much more religiously united than the other CIS members: over 80 percent of its population belongs to the Armenian Apostolic Church.24
Former President of Armenia Levon Ter-Petrossian, who described the elections of the head of the AAC as a national rather than purely Church issue and who in 1995 actively supported Catholicos of Cilicia Garegin as the candidate for the post of Catholicos of the Armenian Apostolic Church, strengthened cooperation between the Church and the state. This reduced the tension that existed for many years between the Etchmiadzin community inside Armenia and the Cilicia community that functioned abroad and brought the Armenian diaspora closer to its historical homeland. It should be said that as a vehicle of national ideas, the Armenian Apostolic Church is helping to preserve them as the common ideological basis amid the political storms that are raging in the republic. Garegin I, who is considered to be a supporter of the Dashnaktsutiun Party, did much to bring this formerly opposition organization into the bloc that before and after the May 2007 parliamentary elections supported Prime Minister Serge Sarkissian and President Robert Kocharian.
23 Armenia: problemy nezavisimogo razvitia, Russian Institute of Strategic Studies, Moscow, 1998, p. 159.
24 See: Ibid., pp. 139, 141.
The Religious Situation in Central Asia: Obvious Problems and Latent Conflicts
In Central Asia, the relations between the state and religion are very different from what we have seen in the European part of the CIS and the Caucasus. Approaches to the state/religion problem differ, but none of the ruling regimes (with the exception of Kazakhstan to a certain extent) has so far managed to use the religious factor to boost its own authority. In fact, in some of the countries this factor is either the main (in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan) or an important (in Kyrgyzstan and in the south of Kazakhstan) source of destabilization. The religion-state (the ruling clan) confrontation is caused by several ideological, political, and economic reasons, yet none of the countries has more or less coherent approaches and strategies designed to remedy the situation. It seems that the task cannot be resolved within the limits of the post-Soviet state order that functions under the pressure of the inherited administrative-command principles combined with revived traditional Islamic or even Europeanized approaches (the latter being embraced for the sake of recognition by the West). The two dominating confessions—Islam and Orthodoxy—share one common feature at least: everything that they brought to the region (with a one thousand-year gap) has nothing to do with the centuries-old traditions of the nomads. In Central Asia both confessions function in the form of numerous faiths and sects, which means that their followers are spread thin among the sects and faiths.
This is especially true of Orthodoxy, which came to the region less than 200 years ago, when Central Asia became part of the Russian Empire. It has much fewer followers than Islam, however, their share is still considerable: 30 percent in Kazakhstan and 16 percent in Kyrgyzstan25; the figures for the other republics are much smaller.
The share of the Orthodox population determines the degree of attention the Orthodox voters receive from the authorities; they are especially courted in Kazakhstan. In none of the countries, however, do the central and local authorities treat this confession as a priority: the share of Russians and Russian speakers, who are mainly Orthodox Christians, is not large enough to attract much attention. This happens in the north of Kazakhstan where the local administrations need Russian voters. Christian Orthodoxy lost some of its political weight in the 1990s when its followers emigrated from the republic in large numbers. It should be said that the religious renaissance of the first decade of independence was much more obvious among the Muslims than among the Orthodox Christians: in the last 15 years the number of mosques in Kazakhstan increased 150-fold, while the number of Orthodox churches grew from 25 to 44.26
The Central Asian leaders are in two minds about Orthodoxy. Its central structures are in Russia, the local Orthodox structures being ruled by the Moscow Patriarchate, which means that the body and soul of the Orthodox clergy and the flock are separated: the physical part belongs to the local countries, while the souls are part of the Orthodox world, the Russian world. It should be said that the ROC of the MP is normally unwilling to make its structures in the newly independent states even formally autonomous. It does this under the pressure of political circumstances (this happened in Ukraine and Belarus). It is obviously afraid of losing part of its traditional territory. The Moscow Patriarchate did not set up autonomous structures in Central Asia; this is why it took the Orthodox believers in Kazakhstan many years to create a national Orthodox center in a country with the largest Orthodox
25 See: M. Asanbaev, “Religious Situation in Kazakhstan: Potential Conflicts and Risk Factors,” Central Asia and the Caucasus, No. 6 (42), 2006, p. 78; A. Sukhov, “Post-Soviet Radicalization of Islam in Kyrgyzstan: Hizb ut-Tahrir,” Central Asia and the Caucasus, No. 6 (42), 2006, p. 103.
26 See: A. Sukhov, op. cit., pp. 103, 106.
population in Central Asia. Back in 1991, the ROC Holy Synod set up 3 eparchies in Kazakhstan directly subordinated to the Moscow Patriarchate; as late as 2003 it passed a decision to create the Metropolitan see of the Republic of Kazakhstan as part of the ROC. On the other hand, the confession’s “state-oriented” nature, which I mentioned above, is obvious in Kazakhstan. The Orthodox followers live in peace with the new authorities, which are naturally more concerned with the Muslims, the largest part of the local population.
The relatively few numbers of followers and the fact that Orthodoxy is managed from abroad will not allow this confession to come to the fore as the state-forming religion. Authorities (this is especially true of Kazakhstan and less true of the other Central Asian countries) have to take Orthodoxy and its followers into account, but no more than this. The long history of coexistence between Orthodoxy and official Islam (which Soviet power recognized), especially in the atheist Soviet state, taught them religious tolerance. They divided the flock into Russian speakers (mostly Orthodox) and members of the titular nations (mainly Muslims). As distinct from the early 1990s, when there was a certain amount of tension between the religions, today they both contribute to political stabilization (as distinct from the sects and extremist movements that rushed into the region as soon as the Soviet Union fell apart).
Experts in the Central Asian religions are especially concerned with hectic activities of the non-traditional Christian and other sects.27 They have few followers (not more than several percent in each of the countries), but massive funding from abroad allows the Lutherans, Baptists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the most recent cults (Agape, the Good News, the Jesus Christ Church) and unregistered sects to pursue widespread proselytizing activities; they have enough money to help new members financially and offer employment and education. In the far from simple social and economic conditions, this makes the nontraditional confessions doubly attractive. They all seek members from the titular nations: over 15 thousand Kyrgyz have already embraced Protestantism; the New Life sect concentrates on Kazakhs and Uyghurs. This is fraught with religious confrontation at the everyday level: Islam is especially intolerant of apostates. M. Asanbaev of the Institute of Strategic Studies under the President of Kazakhstan has pointed out that the nontraditional confessions in Kazakhstan have grown much more aggressive and warns: “This might change the republic’s confessional picture and produce religious conflicts.”28
The relations between the ruling regimes and Islam, the region’s most popular religion, remain very complicated. The situation differs from country to country, but in many respects it is very similar in all countries. The countries’ leaders have to realize that most of their population is Muslim and so they must keep as close to the key principles of Islam as is possible in a secular state (which formally accepts the Western democratic patterns and political correctness). On the other hand, the greater loyalty to this religion compared with the others notwithstanding, the authorities do not completely trust the Muslim organizations of all (including official) types; they are especially severe with all sorts of extremist movements. All attempts to put the entire hierarchy of the Islamic organizations (in the form of the Spiritual Administrations of the Muslims) under state control failed everywhere with the exception of Turkmenistan, where the late president can be better described as a dictator. In real life, the government and Islam (including official Islam) in Central Asia are merely living side by side; there is no integration between them, which can be observed in the orthodox Islamic countries, and no unity, which is seen in Russia between Christian Orthodoxy and the state.
This is explained by the very different ideas the countries’ leaders and the key Islamic dogmas have about state order. Samuel Huntington concluded his investigation of the world religions by say-
27 See, for example, the disturbing assessments of their impact on the region’s political stability: A. Krylov, “Religion in the Social and Political Life of the Republic of Kyrgyzstan,” Central Asia and the Caucasus, No. 6 (42), 2006, pp. 87-88; M. Abisheva, T. Shaymergenov, “Religious-Political Extremism in Central Asia: Why and How It is Spreading,” Central Asia and the Caucasus, No. 6 (42), 2006, p. 45.
28 M. Asanbaev, op. cit., p. 85.
ing that the Muslims treat the tribe, clan, family, or the Muslim commune as a whole (ummah) as priorities rather than the state: “The idea of sovereign nation states is incompatible with belief in the sovereignty of Allah and the primacy of the ummah.”29 Today, the Islamic theologians have accepted the Caliphate and other types of religious-orientated states. During the relatively short independence period, when most of the people are living worse than before, when there is no consensus among the political forces (Kyrgyzstan is the best example), when conflicts are not resolved but merely swept under the rug, the region stands no chance of reaching a balance between the state and religion. It exists in some of the Muslim states, however, in Turkey, which is viewed as an example to be emulated, the system recently faltered.
State order in all the Central Asian countries hinges on the rigid vertical of power based on the clan system of personal loyalty to the president, who controls the system. This means that the ruling clan cannot afford a similar (religious) vertical (Iran can serve as an example of the opposite). In Central Asia, the ruling clans prefer a weak and dispersed Muslim community, its influence limited to religious matters. This is fraught with the nation’s alienation from the state, which will come to be associated with the clans. The gap between the present regimes’ dualist conception (priority of the secular state with elements of Islam) and the religious organizations’ priority of the eternal Muslim dogmas makes it hard to achieve an agreement on the basic principles of state order even with flexible official Islam. It is much harder to achieve any agreement with the “soft” and extremist opposition.
The above is common to all the Central Asian countries, each of which has its own specifics. In Kazakhstan, the regime may more or less ignore the state-Islam issue: the share of followers of other confessions is much larger than in the neighboring states. The Constitution and the 1992 Law on the Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organizations based on the principle of religious tolerance put Islam and all other religions on an equal footing. This became possible because the Kazakhs are less religious than the other Central Asian titular nations (Uzbeks especially). The state has gone as far as disbanding the Committee for Religious Affairs and curbed its influence on the Spiritual Administration of the Muslims of Kazakhstan.
The relations between the state and religion (Islam in particular) in Kazakhstan suggest the following conclusions. First, President Nazarbaev’s firm grip on the political developments in Kazakhstan limits the possibility of destabilization of public life throughout the country, a rather dangerous hotbed of which is located only in the Chimkent Region in the country’s south where Muslim extremist organizations are popular among the local Uzbeks. Otherwise the religious factor (Islamic radicalism in particular) cannot be used to upset the political and social balance in the country. Second, increasing religiosity and the growing number of religious organizations (there were 3,259 of them in the middle of the current decade, only 1,766 of them being Muslim)30 do not allow any of them to claim a leading position at the state level. The country’s leaders are free to take into account the position of any of the local confessions, including Islam, the largest of them, but not to be guided by them when dealing with political issues.
The situation in Kyrgyzstan is very close to that in Kazakhstan: President Akaev’s previous weak regime, which pursued similar tactics, achieved different results. While the Kazakhstan leaders managed to exploit the multi-confessional nature of their country to weaken the impact of each of the religions on the domestic political developments, their Kyrgyz colleagues (both previous and present) proved unable to do the same in their country. President Akaev’s pro-Western (to a certain extent) course and the 1991 Law on the Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organizations gave Baptists, Presbyterians, and other Christian confessions free rein (by the mid-1990s there were about 900 reg-
29 S. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Touchstone Books, New York, 1998, p. 175.
30 See: G. Mukhambetzhanova, “Religia v kazakhstanskom obshchestve,” Kazinform, 25 May, 2005; Zh. Amerbe-kova, “Bor’ba za umy,” Megapolis, 9 January, 2006 (quoted from: M. Asanbaev, op. cit., p. 78).
istered Christian missionaries in the republic)31 and opened the doors for the sects (the White Brotherhood, Reverend Moon’s Unification Church, Dianetics, etc.) banned in many other countries. In May 2002, the Spiritual Administration of the Muslims of Kyrgyzstan was forced to issue a special statement pointing out that the sects fighting for spheres of influence were creating religious tension in the country. The situation inside the local Muslim community is not simple either: many of the local groups headed by religious extremists (there are especially many of them in the south, in the Osh and Jalal-Abad regions) refuse to recognize the authority of the muftis and the Spiritual Administration that represent official Islam. Two national congresses of the local Muslims convened in 1996 and 2003 did nothing to relieve the tension: the radicals turned a deaf ear to those who preached “peaceful” Islam.
It is too early to discuss any developments in the religious sphere in Turkmenistan where a new president and new government have come to power. In the past, under President Niyazov, the state unceremoniously interfered in the religious sphere: the clergy was forced to use the president’s book Rukhnama to preach; those who refused to substitute the president’s work for the Koran were removed from their posts. This made Turkmenistan a very special country among the post-Soviet states. The head of state did not use religion to achieve his aims: religion was controlled by a dictator who never feared either internal or external extremism. He was the only one of his Central Asian colleagues who demonstrated loyalty to the Taliban. According to Martha Brill Olcott, one of the leading experts in Central Asian affairs, President Niyazov, guided by economic considerations and his plans to lay gas pipelines in the southern direction, went as far as talking to President Clinton about recognition of the Taliban.32
In Tajikistan, the relations between the state and religion were far from simple. For five years the nation lived in a state of civil war unleashed by religious extremists supported by the Taliban and other radical organizations that sought power. The 1997 agreement on national reconciliation presupposed that the Muslim community would play an important part on the political scene. President Emomali Rakhmon had to accept this: the United Tajik Opposition and its ideological foundation, the Islamic Revival Party of Tajikistan, were invited to join the Cabinet and other power structures. Gradually, however, their influence was curbed; the Islamic Revival Party was losing ground, which became obvious at the parliamentary elections of 2000 and 2005. As an opposition party unable to oppose Emomali Rakhmon as the presidential candidate, it had to boycott the 2006 presidential election. It lost its political clout as the regime’s main religious and ideological opponent because its followers refused to accept its new conciliatory position, which the party assumed under pressure. The president skillfully used the nation’s fear of a repeated civil war and outside support coming not only from Russia and neighbors, but also from the United States, which regards Tajikistan as the cornerstone of its rear in the Afghan campaign. In October 2006, on the eve of the presidential election, a representative of the U.S. State Department visited Tajikistan, which was interpreted as a sign of American support of Emomali Rakhmon. Today, the Muslim opposition is disunited; the government is no longer confronted by its religious opponents; instead there are regional clans—Kulob (the president’s homeland); Garm (with the largest Islamic opposition potential), Khujand (which ruled the republic in Soviet times and was elbowed out after the civil war), and others—that are claiming power.
In Uzbekistan, the relations between the state and religion are no less complicated, yet whereas in Tajikistan the confrontation was brought in from Afghanistan and the country left the worst of it behind, the confrontation between the Karimov regime and a large part of the Muslim community is locally rooted. In Uzbekistan, Islam is part of the local traditions, history, culture and mentality, which explains why the local people are much more intolerant of Westernization (the parliament as
31 See: A. Krylov, op. cit., p. 87.
32 See: M.B. Olcott, Central Asia's Second Chance, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington D.C., 2005, 387 pp.
one of its signs) and a secular state than their neighbors in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. The gap between the rich and the poor typical of all the Central Asian countries is the widest in Uzbekistan. In the countryside (where the bulk of population is found), families with many children find it hard to survive: there are no jobs and there are numerous poor Muslim clerics, most of them being “people’s clerics” without formal religious education. This makes them susceptible to the proponents of “nonofficial” Islam, both local and foreign, with which the region is teeming.
Cruel suppression of the dissidents in Uzbekistan added religious hues to the radical opposition. This allows the ruling regime to accuse its opponents of religious extremism (this happened in 2005 when riots in Tashkent and Andijan were ruthlessly suppressed). The immanent religiosity level (much higher than in any of the neighboring countries), mass discontent in the countryside, and the makhallia (urban traditional structures) make Uzbekistan the center of illegal extremist teachings and of two religious-political organizations—Hizb ut-Tahrir-al-Islami (the Islamic Liberation Party) and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan—that operate across the entire region.
Its international status allows Hizb ut-Tahrir to extend wide support to its followers in the region. As a pragmatic organization with an eclectic ideology, it is frequently criticized by orthodox Islamists, in particular because (according to Iuldashev) they accepted parliamentarianism: “In Kyrgyzstan, HT even took part in the election process by lobbying its own presidential candi-dates.”33 The party’s position in relation to the Central Asian regimes is practical and clear: they all contradict the Islamic model (read: the Caliphate based on Islamic principles). Hizb ut-Tahrir plans to achieve this aim, first by setting up an Islamic state in one country or even part of it (in the Ferghana Valley) and by gradually spreading it to Uzbekistan and its neighbors. It is placing its stakes on consistent ideological and organizational efforts, which have already earned widespread support among the local people who find it hard to accept the extremist tactics of armed struggle. By acting slowly but surely, Hizb ut-Tahrir is mounting its pressure on the local regimes by creating the danger of a regime change in the future. Today, the total number of its followers in Central Asia is assessed at several thousands; its emirates are working with good results in the Ferghana, Tashkent, and Samarkand regions of Uzbekistan, the Osh and Jalal-Abad regions of Kyrgyzstan, and the Sogd Region of Tajikistan.
The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan is the most active among the radical organizations. Refusing to limit itself to Uzbekistan, it is working across the region and has its centers in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkey, Iran, and Chechnia. In the 1990s, about one thousand of its members were trained in Afghanistan and Pakistan; Uzbek extremists fought in the civil war in Tajikistan as the Namangani Battalion (Namangan shu’basi).34 In 1999 and 2000, the IMU fighters staged several armed riots in Uzbekistan and invaded Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, which had to deploy more troops along their borders. Uzbekistan planted landmines on its side of the border, causing much displeasure among the local people who lived on cross-border trade.
As distinct from Hizb ut-Tahrir, the IMU relies on force, terror, and even jihad against the infidels. To gain wider support in the international extremist Muslim community, the IMU declared itself an enemy of all “enemies of Islam” (the list includes the U.S., Israel, and NATO) and sided with al-Qa‘eda of Osama bin-Laden and the Taliban. It is busy luring the most backward marginalized groups from among the discontented nation under its banner of “pure Islam.” The bulk of the population, however, sympathizes with Hizb ut-Tahrir and its moderate methods. While the two structures are still busy competing for supporters among themselves, the local regimes can consider themselves to be relatively safe.
33 I. Mirsayitov, “The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan: Development Stages and its Present State,” Central Asia and the Caucasus, No. 6 (42), 2006, p. 113.
34 See: R.N. Zhanguzhin, Novye nezavisimye gosudarstva Tsentral'noy Azii v sisteme sovremennykh mezhdunarod-nykh otnosheniy, IMEMO, Kiev, 2005; R. Karimov, “Konfliktny potentsial v treugol’nike Uzbekistan-Afghanistan-Tadzhikistan,” Tsentral'naia Azia i Kavklaz, No. 3 (4), 1999, p. 45.
The above means that none of the confessions can claim a leading role in any of the Central Asian states. Christian Orthodoxy and other Christian faiths can never come to the fore in a Muslim country. Meanwhile, appalling poverty, massive unemployment, lack of prospects for the younger generation, as well as the huge property gap between the nation and the very limited group of the ruling elite, which enjoys much better career opportunities, have already created the fertile soil now being tilled by the proponents of “pure” Islam exploiting the principles the Prophet Muhammad promoted at one time: unselfishness, moderation, mutual support, and other moral values. The glaring contradictions between the Koranic ideals and social realities are undermining the position of “official Islam” and do not allow the secular leaders to fully tap its potential in their struggle against the hostile religious-political movements. “Official Islam” is unable to stand opposed to aggressive extremist influences that preach outwardly similar (and, therefore, much more acceptable than Christian and other beliefs) religious dogmas.
The efforts of the spiritual administrations to preserve the traditional Hanafi madhab are of no benefit to “official Islam.” Under Soviet power the educational level of the local clerics left much to be desired, while the religious renaissance of the 1980s-1990s required large numbers of mullahs. Today, their absolute majority can be described as “people’s mullahs” able to serve at the everyday level. Their scant education does not allow them to compete with the better educated missionaries of aggressive sects always ready to plunge into ijtihad (interpretation of vague religious formulas). The certification of the mullahs the Spiritual Administration of the Muslims of Kyrgyzstan conducted in the Osh Region revealed that the majority could barely read and write; 25 percent could not lead religious rites, while 60 percent should work hard to be certified next time.35 In other countries too, most mullahs serving in the newly opened mosques belong to the nonofficial clergy with hardly acceptable educational levels. Many of them work in unregistered communities or serve in mosques built on foreign money; they preach principles that differ from the Hanafi ones. Clerics for the nontra-ditional Central Asian madhabs are trained in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and other Muslim countries. This explains how the Sunni of the Hanbala madhab, much more radical than the traditional Hanafi madhab, reached Central Asia. According to Rustem Zhanguzhin from Ukraine, this is the response of the extreme Islamic conservatives to the secular nature and Westernization of the Central Asian coun-tries.36 This means that the state-religion confrontation will gradually mount to reach its peak in the form of political disturbances across the entire region.
C o n c l u s i o n
In all the post-Soviet states, the main confessions are language-oriented: the ROC relies on Russian and Russian-speaking followers, the Georgian and Armenian churches operate among the corresponding titular nations, while Catholicism is popular among the Poles and descendants of Central European nations living in the post-Soviet expanse. Judaism is the religion of the Jews, etc. In the Muslim CIS countries and Russia’s autonomies, Islam relies on the titular nations. This caused a massive outflow of potential members of religious minorities from Central Asia and the Caucasus; today, this has already alienated members of the religious minorities on the everyday and cultural level, which makes it hard for the local leaders to exploit the Russian speakers’ educational and professional potential and put an end to “everyday isolationism.”
Under Soviet power, two key “official” religions—Orthodoxy and Islam—learned to passively cooperate with the powers that be, however they proved unable to stick to their traditional territories under pressure from the Uniate Church in Ukraine and all sorts of sects in Central Asia. While maintain-
35 See: A. Krylov, op. cit., p. 89.
36 See: R.N. Zhanguzhin, op. cit., p. 197.
ing the habitual mutual neutrality they learned in Soviet times, each of the two main confessions is engaged in an uncompromising struggle against the new arrivals—the nontraditional religions and sects.
The situation in general and state-religion relations in particular may develop as follows: religion will obviously remain one of the leading ideological pillars in all of these countries as long as there is no equally powerful, but cardinally different ideology in sight. Atheism, which thoroughly discredited itself during the Soviet era, cannot serve as an alternative. We can expect, however, much closer ties, if not a blend, with nationalism (within the framework of developing national awareness and the national idea, etc.) and changes brought about by the drift toward an information, and probably more democratic, society and more active civil institutions.
No matter how hard the state and the main confessions work to preserve the status quo, the CIS countries will become even more poly-confessional for the simple reason that the nontraditional confessions are backed, financially and ideologically, by powerful foreign structures. Their impact on large numbers of the local populations cannot be stemmed or even limited. The “official” confessions are too passive to compete with their new opponents; they cannot deal with the social evils that will definitely survive for a long time to come.
Today, and in the future, the attitude toward religion in all the CIS countries will depend on the ruling clans’ policy, which means that the comparative significance of the various confessions might change; the same can be said about the role of religions in different countries, and the changes brought about by the inevitable rotation of political forces and political leaders. Whether religion will play greater or lesser role in each of the post-Soviet countries will depend on the new leaders and their foreign partners: Orthodox Russia, the politically correct West, and the nontraditional confessions with their vast resources.
