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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## Document 2 of 3 terrible for me: what might happen! The stereotype of "'cavalry"' propaganda--with bells on!-- enrooted in the consciousness hampers us: believers and church people are either stupid or have unseemly designs. Soviet people should know that the church is separated from the state but not separated from society. In this connection your view on sociological problems in the spiritual life of our fellow citizens and your position as a theological scholar, historian and simply a man are of undoubted interest. 6. [Innokentiy] Forgive me, but the last-named position seems to me to be perhaps the one that is most suitable for this kind of dialogue. Any 'churchman,' 'theological scholar'' or 'historian'' in our country lives in the same social conditions as any person. As a citizen he is subject to the same legal standards and social laws. Perhaps the 'proud stare of the foreigner'' of an American Sovietologist would not catch this, but for us this should be obvious. 7. With regard to the "'stereotype of cavalry propaganda," for you, a sociologist, it is no secret what its influence has been on the shaping of the intellectual climate and ideological standards. At least your early ideas about us, the clerics of the Russian Orthodox Church, bore, I would say, the veneer of a certain romanticism, and the propaganda to which you refer could hardly have counted on that. In fact, the alluring prospect was separated from the hustle and bustle of this world. But as you rightly noted, an invisible but quite rigid line of prohibition was in fact drawn between us. It exists even now in the consciousness of many, including quite respected people. A more critical look at the line between the "'permitted'" and the "'banned'" will, I hope, help in some degree to place in its proper perspective the question of freedom of choice and assessment of the cultural legacy. 8. [Batygin] You mentioned freedom. F. Engels wrote that free will is the ability to make decisions from a position of knowledge. But it would seem that people have different knowledge and a different perception of exactly the same realities of life. There are probably even people today who would like to force you to abandon your religious convictions and enforce a "'materialistic truth.' And not at all because religiosity, which "'has still not been overcome,'' interferes with their lives; they are obsessed with concern for what is near and dear to them, its "'ideological maturity,'' and ultimately, "'all-around and harmonious development.'' 9. Here we are not dealing only with religion. We often encounter an alternative postulation, as, for example, one that is far from being a private issue: are you for perestroyka or against it? This kind of open and naive sociologism seems to be generally radical and
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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.