Moscow’s Decision Not to Put Pictures of Religious Sites on Bankntes Infuriates Moscow Patriarchate

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 9 – The Russian Central Bank’s announcement that it will no longer put pictures of churches or the religious shrines of other faiths on banknotes because Russia is a multi-national and poly-confessional country has infuriated the Moscow Patriarchate which says that this decision will have a negative impact on relations among the country’s faiths.
    Sergey Belov, the deputy head of the Central Bank, announced that institution’s decision in the course of an interview in Izvestiya, clearly in the hopes of stilling a controversy that has been roiling Russia over the last year (iz.ru/1803971/anna-kaledina/bank-rossii-ne-vidit-osnovanii-dla-nacala-diskussii-ob-otmene-nalicnyh).
    At that time, the Bank issued and then immediately withdrew a 1000-ruble note showing  a mosque with a crescent but a former Orthodox church without a cross in Kazan, a display that outraged many Russians (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/10/russian-central-bank-pulls-new-banknote.html).
    Rather than simply adding the cross, which is what the Orthodox wanted, the Central Bank decided it would change the way decisions were made about what would be shown on Russian currency. From now on, it said, there would be a nationwide poll allowing Russians to vote on such decisions.
    But the bank has limited the range of their choices to non-religious facilities and personalities, likely in the hope that such a limitation will make Russian money more modern and less controversial among the faithful of various denominations. That hope, however, has proved illusory.
    Following Belov’s announcement, Vladimir Legoyda, head of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Sinodal department for church-society relations, lashed out at the decision on his telegram channel and warned that what the bank had done will in fact make relations between the faiths of Russia worse (rusk.ru/newsdata.php?idar=119243).
    According to the churchman, the Central Bank’s decision “opens the door ote to a very dangerous logic” because “it is strange to believe that there is a connection between the achievement of interreligious peace and the exclusion of religious symbols from public life.” In fact, one does exist, he argues. But it is “the reverse” of what the Bank says.
    In reality, Legoyda argues, “the more symbols of traditional religions are removed from the public space, the more likely conflicts will become. Indeed, the intensity of discussions about the new banknote has already shown this. “Why should anyone pretend they don’t exist and then decide to exclude them from public symbolism?”