Russia Official Media Goes Negative on Russian Orthodox Church, Akhilla Portal Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, August 16 – Independent media in Russia have always been critical of the Russian Orthodox Church for its obscurantism and slavish obedience to the state, but in the last three weeks something remarkable has occurred: state-controlled media have begun to take the same line, attacking an institution that the Kremlin has long portrayed as a major supporter.

            Akhilla commentator Yegor Vladimirov says that this period is “unique for the Russian media space” as for the first time in three decades in official Russian media … the tone of reports about the Russian Orthodox Church have become at a minimum objective and at a maximum, openly negative (ahilla.ru/pochemu-rossijskie-ofitsialnye-media-razlyubili-mp/).

            It is not yet clear what this means, Vladimirov acknowledges. It may be a shot over the bow of Patriarch Kirill to remind him that he has no choice but to do exactly what the Kremlin wants or it may be something more, a shift in regime policy away from an institution that has been causing it problems. But it is striking.

            The change in official coverage began with reports about the retirement of the head of a church corporation in Sofrino and the decision of the Patriarchate to turn to the interior ministry for help in ensuring that past corruption in that corporation would not be allowed to continue. (See diak-kuraev.livejournal.com/2085917.html.)

           

            But judging from the reports, Vladimirov says, the leak came not from the Patriarchate but from the interior ministry, an indication that the government rather than the church was behind the crackdown at Sofrino. Additional evidence of that was provided by a TASS report that government agents had moved in to conduct searches there (tass.ru/proisshestviya/5413196).

            Further, the church affairs analyst says, the government was clearly behind the selection of a new head for the church corporation. His biography shows that he has never worked in church structures as has been the case earlier but rather comes out of the GRU, Russia’s  military intelligence arm.

            “The most probable variant” is that the Patriarchate was forced to swallow this insult because Sofrino and the Patriarchate had been involved in taking funds from a bank that failed, angering many people with ties to the upper reaches of the regime who lost money as a result – including Putin’s friend Anna Kabayeva, Vladimirov continues.

            Stealing from the population is standard operating procedure for the Putin regime, but stealing from regime stalwarts is another thing altogether.

            But the Sofrino events were not the only ones which produced new and more negative coverage of the church during this period, the analyst says. Among the others was a report that the Yekaterinburg bishopric had diverted more than a billion rubles (16 million US dollars) from a contract for the military (rbc.ru/society/03/08/2018/5b62c2ec9a79473bd5833af8).

            Yet another news item about the church were a series of reports about an accident involving one of the Patriarchate’s hierarchs (5-tv.ru/news/214954/, 5-tv.ru/news/214962/, and 5-tv.ru/news/214969/), the kind of story the all-Russian media has typically passed over in silence up to now.

            And most dramatically was the release by the Lenta news agency of a three-part series on the inner life of the Moscow Patriarchate, its financial operations, and its personnel decisions (churchslaves.lenta.ru/; cf. windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2018/08/explosive-growth-of-russian-orthodox.html).

            According to Vladimirov, there was nothing in the Lenta series that experts did not already know; but what was striking was the tone. Its articles treated the Moscow Patriarchate in much the same way the Russian media talk about the Jehovah’s Witnesses rather than deferring to it as “’the state-forming religion.’”

            That hasn’t been the case in government media since “at a minimum, 1988.”

            If this conjunction of events is more than a simple warning to Patriarch Kirill – and that conclusion seems likely given its extent – there will soon be a more powerful propaganda campaign against the Russian Orthodox Church, one that will affect not just the hierarchs but ordinary priests and parishioners as well.

            The church will find it hard to withstand such an attack especially as it has become used to the idea that the state will treat it like a recently deceased friend or relative, as someone about whom one either speaks only the good or nothing at all.  Now, the Russian Orthodox Church risks the kind of attacks other religious denominations in Russia have been suffering.