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.
“National Academy of Sciences”1 page
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# Concatenated JPRS Reports, 1989 ## Document 2 of 3 who need confession, even if only for consolation. Attempts to talk seriously about replacing the words of a pastor with some greater effectiveness for some ritual service seem to me cynical. 23. However, the main thing promoting the elimination of the ''line of prohibition'' is possession of information. No prohibitions on knowledge are in line with the legal establishments of civilized society, but our need for knowledge about religion is very great. This can be seen from the great demand for books that provide a scientific description of religious doctrine, hopefully without commentaries that are insulting for believers and unpleasant to read even for a person with no religious convictions. I happened to encounter a certain variety of coercive--phantasmagoric!--blasphemy. Glued into a book of quotations from Holy Scripture... Here it was, the ''wiles of history''! The quotations cut from books that are the apotheosis of senseless cynicism triumphant--Leo Taksil's ''The Bible for Laughs'' and ''The Gospel for Laughs.'" Truly they know not what they do. 24. We find the sources of the Russian literary tradition in Metropolitan Ilarion's 'The Word of the Law and Heaven.' Why then today, when the recreation of our cultural legacy is taking place by moving toward truth and life is the Bible--the book that mankind has held in reverence for millennia (and today in many countries in the world oaths are sworn on the Bible, and not at all out of naivete)--if not banned here, then in extremely short supply? What if its content is far remote from dialectical materialism and historical materialism. What if someone does not accept that the Word is divinely inspired; a person reading even a small part of it must experience the illumination of true light, that state of 'trepidation' (I use the words of S.S. Averintsev, spoken by him with respect to a contemporary 'rethinking' of the topic of the Gospels) that arises when one is concerned with a miracle. I am convinced that despite the shifts that have been planned, the problem remains what might be called painful. The Bible is essential not only for the millions of believers but for any person of culture. 25. Confessing a faith is another matter. This is a matter of personal choice and freedom of conscience. The issue is quite clear to me. No one, even less today, bans the study of doctrine and the history of religion. At least our and your generations do not remember the times when churches were being destroyed. 26. [Innokentiy] But the issue is not clear to me. Here you have a newspaper cutting on your desk. Let me read the ABC that reminded me of my own candidness. The author writes that the people should know their own history, their own heroes. Then he points out the directions of social thinking that ''they understand'' differently.
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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.