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.
“Cooper”1 page
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# Concatenated JPRS Reports, 1989 ## Document 2 of 3 convent, closed 60 years ago, has become an active cloister for women. Monks with medical training will serve in a hospice for the aged set up in a monastery. The decision of the Yaroslavl Oblast soviet is not an isolated example of fruitful cooperation between state and church. 60. At the same time, normalization of the position of the church and of believers is only just starting in our country. We carry the heavy burden of problems "'from the old regime.'" In my view, the main thing is to make what is secret open. Many enforceable enactments, instructions and explanations concerning religious life remain a closed book, and too much depends on the personality of the person authorized by the USSR Council of Ministers Council on Religious Affairs in any given region. He can always say "'No provision is made for this!'" And everything. I have never once heard that a dispute between believers and the state has been decided in the courts. What I have in mind is civil suits... Meanwhile, as they say among laymen, the game is all at one goal mouth. 61. But this is still only half the trouble. Believers find themselves in the position of outcasts not at all because of the official separation of church and state. As you have said, a believer lives in the same social conditions as any person, and at first glance is not isolated in any way. But, as the apostle said, 'as unknown and yet well known.' It is difficult choose the exact words to describe the very complex sociological problem of the position of believers in the secular social environment. Here, of course, there is not always an articulated allusion, an allusion of dissent, and in fact, under conditions of the declared and actually affirmed spiritual unity of Soviet people the adoption of nonmaterialist convictions means nothing but that until we get the hidden challenges and social conflict. But I think that because the phenomenon of religious belief itself is perceived by the mass psychology as 'strange' rather than alien, pseudoconflict is in some way remarkable. I am sure that your appearance in a cassock on the street makes passersby look round with a so-called unhealthy interest. A conversation took place at the institute about the life and teaching of a religious philosopher. The rumor had been spread that a real monk was coming, perhaps even the archimandrite. The hall was full. Even the young girls wanted to watch... But to our astonishment the monk was just a normal person. Even the representative of the party buro was disappointed. Shaw was wrong, but the seminar continued late into the might. 62. In my opinion, the problem of the coexistence of the church and of society is also enrooted here. It cannot be resolved 'from above,' but life itself is already looking for ways to escape from the impasse: a person's devotion to any religious denomination should
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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.