Paul Goble

Tallinn, November 15 - A report prepared by the Russian Federation's Justice Ministry for the October meeting of that country's Security Council calls for a series of measures that would allow Moscow to exercise far tighter control over Russian religious life than at any time since the end of the Soviet Union.

The report, as described in "Vedomosti" yesterday, urges restricting the number of missionaries coming into the country, making it easier for the authorities to shut down religious groups, and requiring that all members of one religion be subordinate to a single center ( http://www.vedomosti.ru/newspaper/article.shtml?2005/11/14/99429 ).

Some of these measures can be introduced administratively, while others would require legislative action. Consequently, they are not all likely to be introduced at least anytime soon. But taken together, these ideas suggest that senior officials in Moscow have little interest in maintaining the freedom of religion mandated by the Russian Constitution.

"Vedomosti," which did not say how it had obtained the document in question, entitled its discussion of it "Spiritual Centralism." According to the paper, the Justice Ministry officials behind this report argue that Russia has been subject to "foreign religious expansion" and must respond now in order to defend its spiritual space.

Over the last ten years alone, the report's authors say, the number of religious movements in the Russian Federation has risen from 20 to 69, something that they see as threatening the traditional religious fabric of the country rather than reflecting Russia 's new-found commitment to religious freedom.

The report calls for "reducing and putting in order the handing ouf of entry visas to foreign religious figures," something that officials in the Russian Far East have already done as the report's authors note. Because these steps could be taken administratively, the paper suggested, they were the most likely.

The report also urges simplifying the procedures under which the government could liquidate a religious community. It proposed that officials be allowed to close any religious group if a court had twice found it guilty in the course of the year of "crimines of an extremist direction."

And the report suggests the introduction of administrative and crmiinal responsibility for illegal religious activity. But both of these measures would require new laws, and Yevgeniy Sidorenko, the director of the Justice Ministry's constitutional law department, told "Vedomosti" that no such legislation had even been drafted.

At the same time, another Russian government official told the paper that the Justice Ministry would also like to make it more difficult for religious organizations to gain the official registration they need to rent or own land, open a bank account, and otherwise act as legal persons.

Aleksandr Chuyev, who is the deputy chairman of the Dumaäs Committe on Social Organizations, as quoted by "Vedomosti" as saying that such legislation, in the form of amendments to the law on freedom of conscience might be introduced and then approved before the end of this year.

But some of the Justice Ministry's most radical proposals are unlikely to be submitted to or approved by the country's legislature anytime soon. But because they provide an indication of the direction of official thinking, they may ultimately prove to be the most important.

The report, to give but one example, suggests that there is something wrong with a situation in which "members of one and the same religious confession are frequently represented by an inadequate number of religious centers: for example, there exist more than 40 officially registered central spiritual administrations of Muslims."

Such an arrangement, the report continues, "does not promote the consolidation of the Russian Muslim community." And the Justice Ministry proposes considering "the creation of one central organization [for Muslims, Jews and others with multiple centers] on a given territory as a legal person."

Geidar Dzhemal', the chairman of the Islamic Community of Russia, told the paper that this proposal, which has been made by various Kremlin officials in recent months, is part of a more general "campaign searching for forces which [supposedly] are destabilizing the regime."

And Zinoviy Kogan, the chairman of the Congress of Jewish Religious Communities and Organizations in the Russian Federation, pointed out that "in Judaism there are many different trends," something that would make the creation of a single administrative structure problematic at best.

Meanwhile, Father Vsevolod Chaplin, the deputy head of the Moscow Patriarchate's External Affairs Committee, told "Vedomosti" that he and his church were not unduly concerned by the Justice Ministry's report. He said he was unaware that the government had taken any new decisions in this area.

Instead, this senior Orthodox churchman concluded, all that the report really pointed to is the fact that the Russian government now recognizes how important it is to improve existing legislation in order to "permit society to exercise a greater degree to control over what is going on in the religious sphere."

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