Will Russia survive as a sovereign federal state in the 21st century, or will it fall apart into several independent states, possibly coming under the control of Russia’s present neighbors? This may seem like a fantastic supposition of some kind, but let us recall that a mere fifteen to twenty years ago, the prospect of the Soviet Union disintegrating looked equally improbable.

The Russian Federation, as the official successor to the Soviet Union, has retained the Soviet nuclear arsenals, yet it is inferior in its military and industrial potential – as well as in many other crucial features – to its former rival of the Western world. Not only have other countries lost the fear of our might (this is a good sign in itself, though); they simply disregard us as an equal partner, and must be persuaded to heed our views when considering any particular international issue. Quite obviously, Russia does not have the same type of visible external threats now as in the past.

However, recently there has been a rise of new domestic threats. These grave threats intertwine with each other, and each may represent extreme consequences for the future of the Russian state. The most immediate were listed in a newspaper interview with Nikolai Kovalyov, deputy chairman of the State Duma Security Committee. Kovalyov, a former chief of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) singled out eight threats: domestic and international terrorism, including the Chechen problem; drugs trafficking; crimes against individuals, opposition between society and the state; external threats to economic dependence; corruption; refugees and displaced persons; manmade disasters and natural calamities; and parental neglect of children.¹

Kovalyov made no mention, however, of another factor, the significance of which he definitely underestimated. In the Soviet era, the role of religion was replaced by state ideology; today, the religious factor has moved to the forefront of internal threats these days.

It is readily known that religion can have a constructive or destructive role in society’s life. Three thousand years ago, for example, Judaism laid down the principles and foundations of a judiciary system that was independent from all other branches of power; Christianity greatly contributed to the rise of European civilization that gradually evolved toward the recognition of the priority of common human values; Islam was behind the rise of the Arab Caliphate, a strong Mediterranean power that was famous for its religious tolerance, as well as its achievements in the sciences and culture; oriental religions had huge influences on the destiny of Asian nations.

It should be admitted at the same time that the slogans of faith have, in different historical periods, covered up some of the most heinous crimes. Let us recall the Crusades that Western Christians organized against the Moslems, or the methods that Spanish inquisitors applied within its homeland, as well as in South America, or the religious wars in Europe. At the end of the 20th century, the frontlines of religious conflicts in regions as diverse as the Middle East, Ulster, the former Yugoslavia, Nagorno-Karabakh, Chechnya, and the Indian sub-continent, clearly coincided with the spread of different faiths.

In Russia, Eastern Orthodox Christianity played a big role in shaping an ethnically monolithic state and bringing the people together to defend against foreign invaders. This happened within a period of 500 years after the christening of two major cities of Kievan Rus – Kiev and Novgorod. By assisting the formation of a centralized state, the Church overwhelmed the resistance of the feudal princes who preferred a more feudal republican style. Finally, Eastern Orthodoxy gave rise to an authentic Russian culture.

Russia’s territory kept growing in the subsequent period and spread far beyond the original areas inhabited by Eastern Slavs. It encompassed new lands reaching to the South Caucasus, Central Asian deserts, and continuing on to the Pacific coast in the Far East. Russia transformed from a mono-ethnic and mono-religious country into a multi-ethnic and multi-religious one, but the ethnic and religious equality of the sovereigns of the Russian monarchy never made itself felt in latter-day state policy. More than that, the state machinery fully absorbed the institute of the Church and, according to the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Alexii II, any more or less significant shifts in the upper echelons of power would turn the Russian Church into a “political widow.”

The Bolshevik revolution of 1917 unleashed a literally mortal fight against religion. Stalin, however, introduced appeasements during the intense battles against Nazi Germany during World War II (1941-1945) in a bid to win over the support of the religious hearts. But genuine freedom of consciousness remained the plot of a dream both during Stalin’s rule and after him. The authorities immediately trampled under their control the religious associations they had recently permitted.

It is not accidental that right after his accession to the Patriarch’s Office in 1990, Alexii II made unequivocal statements in favor of a real separation of the church from the state, formally proclaimed since the times of Vladimir Lenin. While making public this position, the Russian Orthodox Church, as well as the other denominational organizations, had no plans of separating from society. This principled stance was reflected in the 1993 Constitution of the Russian Federation, as well as in the official documents of the Moscow Patriarchate.

In the mid-1990s, however, the relationship between the state and religious denominations produced a big public stir again and split society into two camps. It happened in the course of the drafting and adoption of the 1997 Law on the Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations, destined to replace the 1990 Law on the Freedom of Conscience. The new law introduced a permissive mechanism for setting up religious organizations and their activities, as opposed to the previously effective declarative mechanisms, and envisioned their complete re-registration. It mentioned, among other things, a possibility of liquidating some of the previously registered communities under a whole range of conditions, mentioned neither in the Constitution nor in the 1990 law.

The initiators of the Law on the Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations made it quite clear that they aimed to reduce the numbers of officially registered religious communities by crossing some of them out of the state register on the pretext that they were not “integral parts of the historical heritage of the peoples living in Russia.” But the Constitutional Court impeded the attempts to make the law retroactive, and the lists of centrally and locally registered religious associations continued growing as a result. That was a remarkable victory for the proponents of free conscience in a nascent state: the victory of an open Russian civic society.

COUNTRY OF REAL PLURALITY OF BELIEFS

The religiosity of one half of Russian society has ebbed markedly, while the other half is demonstrating a clear trend toward a great diversity of religious convictions. The chart below shows this denominational plurality as reflected in the official data on the registration of nationwide and regional religious associations as of January 1, 2002, released by the Russian Ministry of Justice. (The “Protestants” category features religious associations of all the denominations related to Protestantism; the “Moslems” category includes organizations affiliated with all Moslem Boards in Russia).

Federal Districts	Russian Orthodox Church	Old Believers	Catholics	Protestants	Moslems	Jews	Buddhists	Other	Total
Central	4,030	74	30	1,056	54	82	26	433	5,785
North-West	1,026	18	39	561	15	24	8	111	1,802
South	1,154	27	42	673	860	30	47	166	2,999
Volga	2,570	83	28	642	1,755	34	11	146	5,269
Urals	584	17	12	282	254	23	3	78	1,253
Siberian	834	29	90	557	89	31	90	156	1,876
Far-Eastern	317	13	21	409	11	19	10	108	908
In all	10,515	261	262	4,180	3,038	243	195	1,198	19,892

This data puts the Russian Orthodox Church into the lead among Russian religious denominations, accounting for over 50 percent of all the registered religious communities across Russia. Its presence in different parts of the country is uneven, however. The summarized number of Russian Orthodox communities is greater than that of all the other denominations taken together in the Central and North-West Federal Districts. The Orthodox Church is also ahead of other communities, although it does not exceed the level of 50 percent in the South, Volga, Urals, and Siberian Federal Districts. As for the Far-Eastern Federal District, the Russian Orthodox communities ranked second after the Protestant churches, although it is worthwhile noting that the Protestants in Russia, like everywhere, do not have a centralized governing body and act as several autonomous religious organizations.

Islam has given up its former second position to the Protestants, yet it remains a powerful and dynamic force with impressive potential capabilities (partly explicable by the higher birthrates among the Moslems, and by the inflow of refugees from conflict zones in the Caucasus and Central Asia). Another three major world confessions, the Roman Catholic Church, Judaism and Buddhism, have smaller numbers of followers.

Overall, the list of organizations officially registered and re-registered in Russia under the Law on Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations contains about 20,000 communities representing almost 70 confessions. Their followers, including representatives of new religious movements, stress their abidance by the law, call for moral purification, and denounce terror and violence.

The adepts of some creeds, like Jehovah’s Witnesses, reject participation in political life or service in the armed forces, but their position does not contradict the laws of the Russian Federation. The Constitution makes participation in government affairs a right for the citizen, not a compulsory duty (Article 32). It also empowers those men who are eligible for army service to opt for an alternative civil service, if military occupations contradict their religious convictions (Article 59).

RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE AND EXTREMISM

Naturally, there are groups of people who are intolerant of those who think or believe in God differently, while groups inclining toward extremism may surface within any religious organization, be it on the fringes of society or a respectable mainstream denomination. Russia is certainly no exception in this sense. Apart from new religious groups (for example, of the Aum Shinrikyo type), such people are found, for instance, in Russian Orthodoxy and Islam. Their number includes the outspoken and aggressive “rescuers of Orthodoxy” like the notorious Dr Alexander Dvorkin, the head of the ‘Sect Research Department’ at the Moscow-based

St. Tikhon Orthodox Theological College, or the leaders of the movement called “Orthodoxy or Death.” There are also Moslem activists, of whom the warlord Shamil Bassayev is a primary example, who perpetrate and practice terror despite the sacred texts of the Islamic religion.

The difference between them is that the Islamic extremists mastermind and carry out terrorist acts citing the name of the Almighty Allah, while the Russian Orthodox extremists do not organize acts of terror as such – they confine their own efforts to fanning religious strife in newspaper articles and public speeches, distinguishing between superior and inferior people on the basis of their affiliation or non-affiliation with the Russian Orthodox Church. They usually travel in different parts of the country giving lectures that urge the audiences to fight against the ‘sects,’² and after their departures, unlawful actions are often committed. The incensed clergy has been known to set fire to various buildings of the sectarians, and beat up – or even kill – religious figures. Leaders of the victimized religious communities have often filed their complaints with the top state officials. Preventive action against these crimes requires concerted efforts on the part of law enforcers, as well as the scholars of religions.

Lately, many religious figures and politicians have been saying it is important to have a close look at the environment where extremism is budding. The worse the living standards, or the less confidence the people have in their future, the smaller the value of human life and the easier to find potential persecutors, who will stop short of practically nothing in the name of a religious or a political idea implanted in their heads. Nor will they stop short of criminal acts, even the ones which must be paid for with their own lives. In light of the situation, no one can give a guarantee that we will manage to avoid a suicide bombing that will pale out all the acts of terror we have seen so far.

Antiterrorist operations of the Russian special services must go hand in hand with systemic and scrupulous activities to isolate the extremists – in the first place, among their religious brethren. It is equally important to create an appropriate political, economic, and social situation that will impede the concealment of extremism that is camouflaged by religious phraseology. While carrying out our initiatives, we must ensure that the remedies prescribed are not more hazardous than the disease they are supposed to treat. Patriarch Alexii II said in December 1994, after the start of combat operations in Chechnya, that the use of violence to subdue violence holds no promise for success, because it breeds violence in response.

CONSOLIDATION OR SPLIT?

The consolidation of all religious communities and the state is essential for counteracting the new challenges of our time, of which international terrorism – with its ability to disguise itself as a reaction of the poor nations to globalization – emerges as the major threat. Coming next on the list is the ‘clash of civilizations,’ as foretold by Samuel Huntington. The world’s top statesmen and religious leaders realize the need for concerted efforts perfectly well. Russian President Vladimir Putin has maintained the Council for Interaction with Religious Associations, set up in 1995 during Boris Yeltsin’s presidency. A number of inter-denominational and public organizations, including the Russian (renamed into Eurasian in 2002) branch of the International Association for Religious Freedom (IARF) also continue their operations during Putin’s term of office.³

In reality, however, the screen of normal relations between the state and religious confessions conceals the disengagement of forces which have extremely adverse viewpoints on the role and place of religion in modern Russian society. The vast schism separating them exists not only between the state machinery and the religious communities, but also inside government institutions and religious organizations. A certain part of the Russian political elite and Russian Orthodox clergy make little secret of their willingness to turn Orthodoxy into a new state ideology.

Most politicians in Russia today have a rather unclear vision of the essence of Eastern Orthodoxy, although one may find some genuine believers among them. A number of people in power seem to have placed their trust in the idea that a monolithic Russian society can be recreated under the banners of the Russian Orthodox Church. They attach the role of “guardians of ideological purity” to the Orthodox bishops in Moscow and in the regions in the same way as ideological guardianship would  be attached to the Communist Party committees back in the Soviet times. Moscow-based and regional mass media contain many samples of this.⁴Those people do not seem to be dismayed by the unconstitutional nature of such moves as they close their eyes to Article 13 of the Constitution, which says: “1. The Russian Federation shall have ideological diversity. 2. No singular ideology shall be proclaimed government-supported or mandatory ideology.”

Proponents of clericalist trends within the Russian Orthodox Church have their own calculus, as well – they want to make the secular authorities instrumental in their efforts to bring more potential believers to the realm of Orthodoxy. While being unready for truly Christian missionary activity, they want more opportunity to attain their aims by using ‘special relationships’ with the agencies of state power and, most importantly, by reducing the freedoms of the other beliefs.⁵   

This idea is obviously unacceptable for those who do not want a re-emergence of the old state model where a combination of Russian ethnicity and Russian Orthodoxy was the standard tradition. This category includes non-believers in the first place, followed by those who belong to the approximately 100 non-Russian ethnic groups. Lastly, there is a fairly large number of followers of non-Orthodox creeds. Also, very many Russian Orthodox believers remember very well the Soviet-era persecutions of the Church; they do not want to turn into persecutors themselves.

‘FRIENDS’ AND ‘ALIENS’ AMONG RUSSIANS

Motions by government agencies that have tried to restrict the rights of ‘alien’ non-Russian Orthodox religious associations at the insistence of the Russian Orthodox quarters, or by their own initiative, have given rise to the following problems:

• adoption of discriminatory acts contradicting the Constitution and Russian legislation, including the Law on the Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations (in the form it was interpreted by the Constitutional Court);
• a use of purely formal criteria for refusal to register or re-register religious associations, which the bureaucrats consider to be ‘alien’. This practice is particularly rife in the municipal law departments of Moscow;
• attempts to impede the normal activity of non-Russian Orthodox religious associations through banishing trips to Russia by foreign clerics – most commonly Roman Catholics and Protestants – who were invited to and arrived in Russia on absolutely legitimate grounds;
• a wave of refusals to prolong agreements on the lease of government-owned premises, where the religious communities deprived of their own buildings during atheism had prayer gatherings before the start of this campaign;
• the use of advanced information technologies to paint the non-Russian Orthodox believers as villains; the dissemination of unverified or even false information about their doctrines and everyday practices, which some officials believe to be ‘untraditional.’

A campaign to classify the religious communities into ‘friends’ and ‘aliens’ was summarized in a document that was put together by certain authorities. It cast a shadow over almost all religious organizations, except the Russian Orthodox Church. That document was a draft report on counteracting religious extremism, presented by a workgroup of Russia’s State Council Presidium on October 30, 2002.

It interpreted in derogatory terms the very fact that non-Russian Orthodox denominations had grown in number over the previous decade. Its authors explained the situation by “the growing religious expansionism on the part of foreign countries,” which they said was “upsetting the ethnic and confessional balance in Russia.” The document listed among the threats to this country the Roman Catholics, the Protestants, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Reverend Moon’s Unification Church, the Church of Scientology, and “certain Islamic religious associations.”

The authors of the text were apparently too overwhelmed by the search for foes. They listed among the totalitarian sects many of the creeds that had received official recognition in the Russian Federation following a religious expert study under the auspices of the Russian Justice Ministry, as well as other organizations, whose leaders were invited by President Putin to join the presidential Council for Interaction with Religious Associations.

The document proposed, among other things, to produce “maps of peoples and religions” of all the seven federal districts.⁶ It also specified measures to support “the traditional religious organizations” (which it did not name, though), and an additional inclusion of an “inter-departmental expert council” in “the list of state agencies authorized to control activities of religious organizations” (the latter proposal suggested that the list of the kind had existed before).

The publication of a brief version of the document in newspapers, followed by the full version on an Internet web site, produced all of the effects of a bomb. It caused open protests by the leaders of the religious communities who felt that someone had a desire to end the freedom of confession and to return to the millennium-old tradition of official uniformity of creed under the guise of fighting with ostensible ‘religious extremism.’

ISLAM IN RUSSIA

The Council of Muftis of Russia, set up several years ago and chaired by Sheikh Ravil Gainutdin, has leveled criticism at the “de facto” transfer of power to decide on the fate of non-Russian Orthodox believers to the Orthodox clergy in the territories of the Russian Federation.

 “Russian Moslems have earnest respect for the Russian Orthodox Church, but we cannot coordinate each project of building a mosque or creating a new Moslem community with its officials; nor are we required to do so under law,” the muftis said in a letter to the leaders of the country.

They cited a number of cases when the Moslems were denied an opportunity to register their communities or build mosques under the pretext that “traditional Russian territories” would be affected. This kind of practice might trigger reciprocal actions on the part of those who live on “the traditional Tatar, Bashkir, Balkar, Uzbek, Azerbaijani, Dagestani or other territories,” the muftis warned.

The Russian Moslems were particularly disappointed by a campaign to introduce Orthodoxy on a massive scale in the law enforcement agencies, which began a few years ago. “We are strongly concerned by the actions of certain officials at the Defense Ministry, who put Russian Orthodoxy in opposition to all other creeds, thus shaking the foundations of the Armed Forces and splitting them along ethnic and religious lines,” the Council of Muftis said in a comment on the exclusive cooperation of the Russian Orthodox Church with the law enforcement agencies.

The government’s cooperation with the Russian Church is really gaining momentum, especially in the military-strategic area. The Moscow Patriarchate, the Defense Ministry, the Interior Ministry, and several agencies that had been affiliated with the KGB in the Soviet times – all signed a range of exclusive agreements in the mid-1990s. The Armed Forces newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda published a notification for all the servicemen on April 29, 1997, that any interaction between the army and religious organizations could only be done via a department of the Russian Church’s Holy Synod in charge of communications with the Armed Forces and law enforcement agencies.

In the meantime, it is worth recalling Alexii II’s saying: “All the religious associations registered in Russia – Christian, Moslem, Buddhist, Judaic, or others – must enjoy an opportunity to organize services and exercise spiritual guidance [of their followers] in military units.”⁷ It looks like the decision-makers at the law enforcement agencies think different.

A recent document on the Islamic social doctrine said the Moslems hope the state will create an atmosphere where everyone would feel that they are full-fledged Russian citizens, so that he or she would understand that defense of state interests means defense of his or her family, native land, city, village, faith, and customs. Its authors stressed the importance of consistency of state policy and state symbols (the national emblem and the national anthem) with the multi-ethnic and multi-denominational makeup of the country.⁸

Even Alexander Solzhenitsyn, known for his pro-nationalistic moods, mentions the absence of a sober reckoning with the present realities in Russia. One of his latest works says: “A multi-ethnic country in the times of trial must be bolstered by the support and inspiration of all its citizens. Each nationality must have the conviction that it, too, stands in need of a concerted defense of common state interests. This is the type of state patriotism that is totally unseen in Russia of today.”⁹

WHITHER WILL RUSSIA MOVE?

Few people can have any doubt that the prospects of civic peace in Russia are contingent on whether a real multi-ethnic and multi-confessional Russian identity will emerge (like it is taking shape in present-day Europe), or on whether we will be trying to adapt the traditional combination of Russian ethnicity and Orthodoxy to the 21st century, pretending that the two notions are congruent. To all appearances, future developments will take either of the two routes described below.

Option 1. Government organizations will observe the Constitution, other laws and Russia’s international commitments. In this case:

• the state will remain secular, and no singular religion or ideology shall be adopted as the official state religion or ideology, while all the religious associations shall enjoy real equality before the law (Constitution, Articles 13-14);
• the state shall guarantee genuine equality of the rights and freedoms of man and citizen, regardless of religious views; any restrictions of civil rights along the criterion of religious affiliation shall be banned (Constitution, Article 19);
• each citizen shall have the right to espouse any religion individually or in assemblies with other citizens; to choose freely or disseminate any religious convictions; also, citizens shall have the right to have no religious convictions.

The Russian Orthodox Church will also observe in practical terms the provisions of the Basic Social Concept which its Council of Bishops endorsed in August 2000. They stipulate that:

• the Church shall not assume the functions typical of government agencies (Concept, III. 3);
• clergymen and canonic clerical structures shall not cooperate with the state in political struggle; civil wars or external wars; direct involvement in intelligence operations or any other activity that requires safeguarding of state secrecy (this means even through confessions or reports to the Church hierarchs (Concept, III. 8);
• clerics shall abide by the canons precluding their engagement in government activity (Concept, III. 9).

It would seem that the above is an axiom. However, far from all state officials and high-ranking Russian Orthodox Church officials adhere to those principles. If the state and Russia’s largest religious organization translated into life what their representatives say in public that would be a complete turnaround from the present policy of a very influential part of Russia’s political elite and influential Orthodox bishops.

Option 2. Nothing changes. Encroachments on the Constitution of the Russian Federation, other laws and international commitments remain as systematic as they have been so far. The recommendations of the Councils of Bishops are buried in oblivion as if they were never adopted. As a result, the country slides into a conflict of two identities – the new Russian multi-ethnic and multi-religious identity and the other, based on the experience of medieval Muscovy, i.e. a combination of Russian ethnicity and Russian Orthodoxy. That this is a possibility has been proved by recent demands of the Russian Orthodox Church to replace Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, the head of the Roman Catholic Church in Russia; by debates on plans to introduce religion-oriented subjects at secular schools; by a decision of the lower house of parliament to make the Cyrillic alphabet mandatory for the languages of all the peoples inhabiting the Russian Federation.

After the crisis of those two identities reaches its climax, the Russian Federation may find itself on the verge of a breakup along the ethnic and religious principle. The process will be accelerated by non-religious factors – the selfish interests of local elites, crime-ridden economy, the crisis of security and law enforcement agencies (the Armed Forces and police, in the first place), the difficult problems of post-Soviet society, and great divergences in the density of the population in the European and Asian parts of the country against the background of overpopulated neighboring countries. One more factor will speed up Russia’s disintegration – during the czarist rule and Soviet power, the government expelled convicts and opponents (including religious ones) to Siberia and the Far East.

Russia’s state interests require averting developments under the second version and channeling them into the alleys specified by the Constitution of the Russian Federation, legislation, and this country’s international commitments. The Russian Orthodox Church can make an invaluable contribution to the rise of a new all-Russia cultural identity without ceding the canons of Eastern Orthodoxy, if it acts persistently upon provisions of its own social concept.

¹ Parlamentskaya Gazeta, May 22, 2003.

² The issue of sects is one of the most entangled issues in the history of world religions. It again came into the limelight in Russia and abroad at the end of the 20th century, when the mass media carried stories on several glaring crimes committed for pseudo-religious motives in America, Europe and Asia, unwinding debates among clerics, scientists and politicians on criteria for distinguishing between genuine and fake religiosity. From the semantic angle of view, a sect is part of an entity breaking away from it. Christianity itself was born out of a different religion, Judaism, and kept branching out into various denominations over centuries. Before the revolution of 1917, Russian Protestants, recognized by the government, published a magazine titled The Sectarian. They did not see anything insulting in the word.

³ The Russian (renamed into Eurasian in 2002) branch of the International Association for Religious Freedom was founded in 1992 by all the most authoritative religious organizations in the country, including the Russian Orthodox Church, as well as a large group of scholars, lawyers and public figures. Its president is always a secular scholar. It also has vice-presidents – today these are the chairman of the Council of Muftis of Russia, Russia’s chief rabbi, the chairman of the Conference of Catholic Bishops of Russia, and the top leaders of Protestant denominations (the Union of Pentecostal Christians of Evangelical Faith, the Russian Union of Christians of Evangelical Faith, and the Russian Union of Evangelical Christians-Baptists). The Eurasian branch of the IARF is headed by the Secretary General – a representative of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. The Russian Orthodox Church has been taking part in the association’s procedures in the status of observer beginning with 1997.

⁴ Parlamentskaya Gazeta (April 3, 2002) put a capital-letter headline saying “Orthodoxy Is Our Ideology” over an interview with Vyacheslav Khizhnyakov, President Putin’s plenipotentiary representative in the upper house of Russian parliament.

⁵ Numerous instances underlining the encroachments on the rights of believers are found in abundance in the documents of annual conferences of the International Association for Religious Freedom, reports by the Ombudsman of the Russian Federation, in publications of non-governmental human rights organizations, newsletters and analytic materials of the Institute of Religion and Law, group monographs of the Institute of Europe, the Institute of Comprehensive Social Studies, and other institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

⁶ The puzzling question about such a plan is how the designers of the map will reflect the coexistence of different religions and atheism occurring throughout the country. Which religion will they ascribe the “Moslem” Tatarstan to, for example? By statistics, its residents represent almost 70 ethnic groups and more than a dozen religious beliefs. Not to mention the City of Moscow, where ethnic Tatars (both religious and atheistic) almost outnumber the Tatar population of their historic motherland.

⁷ See: Blagovest, No. 1, 1992.

⁸ See: Guidelines for the Social Program of Russian Moslems. Moscow, 2001, pp. 39-40. – Russ. Ed.

⁹ Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Russia in Collapse (2nd edition). Moscow, 2002, p. 153. – Russ. Ed.