C00175647 Page: 22 of 53 UNCLASSIFIED Document 2 of 3 Concatenated JPRS Reports, 1989 Page 1 Classification: UNCLASSIFIED Status: [STAT] Document Date: 08 Jul 88 Category: [CAT] Report Type: JPRS Report Report Date: Report Number: JPRS-USS-89-004 UDC Number: Author(s): SOTSIOLOGICHESKIYE I SSLEDOVANI YA deputy chief editor Gennadiy Batygin; time and place not specified] Headline: 'The Time Is Favorable...' A Conversation with a Priest of the Russian Orthodox Church Source Line: 18060002 Moscow S0TSI0L0GICHESKIYEISSLED0VANIYA in Russian No 4, Jul-Aug 88 (signed to press 8 Jul 88) pp 38-49 Subslug: [Interview with Innokentiy, candidate of theology, teacher at the Leningrad Seminary for Monastic Priests, by SOTSIOLOGICHESKIYE ISSLEDOVANIYA deputy chief editor Gennadiy Batygin; time and place not specified] FULL TEXT OF ARTICLE: 1. [Text] In 1988 at the initiative of UNESCO, not only Christians but also people of various religious and political convictions mark the millennium of the Christianization of Russia (988-1988). This date is is propitious occasion for thinkin g r e al istically- about the??? problems of religious life in the USSR. As is known, the basic principles and practice of its state regulation were established in circumstances that were most unfavorable for realism. This is exactly why up to now it has been very difficult to elii.inate the "zone of silence" that has existed here and to call a spade a spade. A mutual desire to deal with this complexity was expressed at the meeting between CPSU Central Committee General Secretary M.S. Gorbachev and the Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia, Pimen, and members of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church. 2. Public interest is growing in questions of the interrelationship between religion and culture, ethics and politics. Under the conditions of glasnost and the open clash of viewpoints, a re-evaluation of the cultural-historical legacy is taking place and new hopes are being born. A dialogue on these problems is held by doctor of philosophical sciences, deputy chief editor of SOTSIOLOGICHESKIYE ISSLEDOVANIYA, Gennadiy Batygin and candidate of theology, teacher at the Leningrad Seminary for Monastic Priests, Innokentiy. 3. [Batygin] Your Reverence, first of all I would like to say a few words about why I asked you to hold this conversation, 'lien I was still a student in the philosophy faculty at the Moscow State C00175647 UNCLASSIFIED Page: 23 of 53 Concatenated JPRS Reports, 1989 Document 2 of 3 Page 2 University I, and the overwhelming majority of my fellow students, and perhaps even the teachers, had only a quite vague idea about priests in the church. The view of priests as tricksters and disseminators of spiritual narcotics, a unique kind of "spiritual raw brandy" ??? a view traditional for the proclaimed ideological stereotypes ??? could be clearly discerned in this vagueness. This idea prevented us from any dialogue with you in the press. For a long time an invisible but quite rigid line of prohibition was drawn between me, a sociologist, and you, a pastor of the Russian Orthodox Church. It also seemed to me that you were separated not only from the state but also from the usual life of laymen, or at least that you had no contact with our daily problems. Only once did I think about this line, when the now late Valentin Ferdinandovich Asmus, the teacher of my teachers, for some reason put aside his exercise books and talked to us, the second-year students, about the meaning of the words "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." The meaning of the words from the Sermon on the Mount has not been reduced and it set down roots through the millennia. And each day, including today, we face the eternal problems. One of them is the search for truth. In this regard our dialogue today is extremely topical and essential for the process of renewal, because apart from anything else, renewal also means a return to values that are eternal but subject to doubt. Dialogue is essential for joining the strength of believers and non-believers in solving urgent and vital question. And we have many believers in the country ??? from 15 percent^te-SQ-percent??? of-the. population in various regions. 4. Today, in the atmosphere of glasnost and democratization we .are learning to deal with voluntarist stereotypes that have compelled us not only to accept the inevitable as the reality but also pretend that many of the processes that do not fit into the ideological mold of the "new man" somehow do not exist at all. This also applies in full to the reproduction of religious values ??? the so-called individual vestiges. I think that we rightly talk about the coexistence of a religious culture and a secular culture in Soviet society, and a diversity of types of perceptions of the world ??? a diversity that cannot be reduced to some scheme of "the scientific and the nonscientific. " How can this very complex sociological problem be resolved? First and foremost by not dramatizing the differences in views that are well known and by seeking out what it is that unites us. And what unites us is responsibility for the future, the desire to preserve the cultural heritage, and belief in the need to renew life and general human spiritual values. 5. The restructuring is not easy. Even recently, when the editorial office of the journal SOTSIOLOGICHESKIYE ISSLEDOVANIYA asked you to enter into discussion with the well-known American Sovietologists and religious expert William Fletcher about believers in the USSR, it was UNCLASSIFIED C00175647 UNCLASSIFIED Page: 24 of 53 Concatenated JPRS Reports, 1989 Document 2 of 3 Page 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 fronPthe 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 UNCLASSIFIED C00175647 Page: 25 of 53 UNCLASSIFIED Concatenated JPRS Reports, 1989 Document 2 of 3 Page 4 testifies to the revolutionary intentions of the questioner. The trouble is that almost everyone is for perestroyka. . . Including those who are for coercive assertion of the "ideal." I have a cause for complaint: I read in one newspaper that there is no class struggle in our country, nor, consequently, class enemies, but in numerous commentaries I have been categorized as an enemy of the people, and there have been demands for my repression. Is this also today's method of polemic? Again we see how the destructive forces are growing, how some people want to find "the enemy," ho?? they try to exhume from the underground the ideology of pogrom. 10. We have become accustomed to living by creating within ourselves a wordy mythical set of scenery and we fear to look there behind the scenery bathed in artificial light, into the shadow cast by the scenery, into the unlighted and gloomy space where we find the "kitchen" of the play being performed: into the semi-darkness quite different from the nuances of the producer and the tech...
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