Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency JPRS translation reproduces an interview published in the Soviet journal Sotsiologicheskiye Issledovaniya, signed to press on 8 July 1988. In it, deputy chief editor Gennadiy Batygin talks with Innokentiy, a teacher at the Leningrad seminary. The conversation takes place during the millennium of the Christianization of Russia. They discuss religion under glasnost and perestroyka, ideological prohibitions, the shortage of Bibles, preservation of church monuments and the position of believers in Soviet society. The document contains no UFO material.
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# Concatenated JPRS Reports, 1989 ## Document 2 of 3 comes to mind: a pendulum of the public frame of mind swung for so long to the right and now swinging sharply to the left, and then to the right again, and some time is required for it to reach equilibrium. 39. [Innokentiy] What is needed is not time but wisdom, or, more accurately, what in Orthodox ascetic practice is called the wisdom of humility [smirennomudriye] for a sober and comprehensive examination of the historical experience of the past--ancient and modern--and recognition of our own responsibility for it by right of national legacy. 40. [Batygin] Do you think that a national spirit of the Russian people exists, can it be considered the 'keeper of the faith''? How is the national question resolved in the Orthodox theology? 41. [Innokentiy] In the Orthodox ecclesiology (the teaching on the Church) it is resolved simply. The Church is shaped according to the attribute of the land, that is, the place of one's residence. The Russian Orthodox Church is the orthodox church in Russia but not a church for Russians. Historically, representatives of many nationalities have made up its clergy and flock, and never in the thousand-year history has our Church known the problem of 'national purity.' 42. In general, the problem of the foreigner does not exist in the Church as a Christian community. I recall the words of the apostle Paul when addressing the diverse national, class and property relationships among the Christian community in Galatia--an area in Asia Minor--during the first decades of the existence of Christianity: "'For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bondman nor freeman, there is neither male nor female, for ye are all one in Christ Jesus." 43. As far as the Russian people are concerned, this is a great nation. And not only in the geographical sense but also the spiritual and cultural sense. And if you talk about the Russian national self-awareness, as for the Orthodox self-awareness, then nationalism is alien to it. The problem of nationalism it not a theological problem but a sociological problem, but it seems that nationalism can be understood and even justified in small ethnic groups located within a multinational environment. Here, nationalism is justified to the extent that it does not pass beyond the confines of a people's spiritual self-determination. And as far as I know, as an historian, Russian nationalism must be a deviation from our culture and from Russian spiritual traditions. Today it is even difficult to separate it from lack of culture and lack of spirituality.
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 19 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.