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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44. [Batygin] We have really come round to talking about ''Pamyat.'' And I would like to recall that some representatives of the association long ago advanced the slogan ''Orthodoxy as Homeland''... 45. [Innokentiy] Let us first of all examine what we mean by "'Pamyat." We have read articles in newspapers and journals and, moreover, we have at our disposal separate testimony from eyewitnesses. It is not certain that those people who represent themselves as members of the association have a proper right to do so. I am not convinced that "'Pamyat'" exists as a organization in the full sense of the word. But at least neither you nor I know its composition or program. 46. Preservation of the monuments of Russian culture is one of "'Pamyat's"' aims. This aim is acceptable to all of us. But we are evidently not interested in the "'Pamyat"' association as such but with its associated trend of nationalistic activism. It is possible that "'Pamyat"' is a myth. I hear from people who call themselves members of the association that they are against nationalistic slogans and demagoguery. 47. Let me note that using the outward attributes of Orthodox theology in combination with the propaganda of ideas dreamed up by those who essentially advocate enmity and political force testifies to the ignorance and demagogic nature of these kinds of declarations. A superficial knowledge is worse than no knowledge at all. Evidently having read in popular publications that the 'church people'' at one time proclaimed Moscow as a 'third Rome,' the Russophile nationalists have seized on this phrase. But they fail to take into account the fact that when Filofey talked about a 'third Rome'' he used the words in a eschatological sense and was talking neither about political greatness nor the advance of 'the latest times.' Nothing is said here in the spirit of majestic-monumental exclusivity. 48. Finally--and this is most important--we are obliged to consider who is to blame for the destruction of Russian holy things. People remember first and foremost the Church of Christ the Savior. In fact, the loss of this incomparably beautiful monument to Russian glory is irreplaceable. It is mainly Kaganovich who is abused here. But he did not do what he is accused of alone, in a desert. It would be more correct to raise the question about general national responsibility for what happened. As a historian of the Russian Church, I see clearly here a certain share of responsibility on the part of the prerevolutionary clergy, which was not adequately engaged in bringing enlightenment to the people, first and foremost the peasantry.
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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.