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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33. However, let us return to the question of question the Russian spiritual legacy. We have dwelled on the fact that we do have scholars, laymen and church people devoted to the cause of preserving the monuments of history. Interest in ancient Russian is growing in the consciousness of the people. You have on your bookshelf a beautifully bound, compact and inexpensive edition of the ''Trinity'' anthology compiled by G.I. Vzdornov-- the highest achievement of ancient Russian art. Thank God that there is not so much foreign text as in similar publications. 34. No, I am in no way against propaganda of our art abroad. But it is quite obvious that it is primarily the Russian people who should be given broad access to their own history and culture. Do what you will, it is still impossible to separate the lofty beauty of the 'Trinity''--the icons--from the idea of the Divine Trinity. Permit me to open the book and read one piece: 'The image determines the balance found between the soul and the spirit, the flesh and ethereality, feeling and thought, life and death, suffering and the passionless, eternal and immortal existence in heaven. And because of its amazing multiple layers, equaled nowhere else, Rublev's 'Trinity' has been and remains equally arresting both for the theological scholar and for the ordinary person who looks in it for an image of consolation when building his own life.' 35. [Batygin] Obviously no one has the right to dictate to a person the method whereby he perceives cultural values. He must also take up freedom of choice, and responsibility for his own position in life. Perhaps I am mistaken, but it is much easier and simpler to exist in an atmosphere of rigid prohibitions and proscriptions, in an atmosphere in which there is no burden of choice, and hence no responsibility to one's own conscience and to people. ''Authorized freedom'' frees us of responsibility. If it is said that ancient orthodoxy is bad then there is no need to think or doubt: ''cutting the ground from under one's feet'' (the very phrase is not only symbolic but also ominous and factious--it is common knowledge that during the period of repression the believers shared totally in the fate of their own people). 36. A proclaimed 'truth' about the reactionary nature of 'the clergy' was not necessary for many in their arguments. B. Pasternak spoke very accurately about the self-proof of truths proclaimed by the revolution. It is amazing, but violence in the sphere of spiritual life is also a unique manifestation of freedom of thought (again Pasternak: 'The man who is not free always idealizes his bondage' ), and at the same time a fetishization of 'the people.' Instead of roughly drawn democratic decorations we have ochlocracy and domination by those dark forces that deprive people of their
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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.