Three months ago, as he was heading towards his fourth term as Russia’s president, then-prime minister and puppeteer-in-chief Vladimir Putin wrote an essay in which he outlined a vision of a moderate, multicultural society predicated on the tolerance of various beliefs and ethnicities. You know, sort of like a Western democracy.
So how’s that working out? Not that well, according to the Vatican Insider, whose Marco Tosatti chronicles various instances in which the Kremlin has moved to ban or confiscate religious literature it deems extremist. One doesn’t want to be alarmist (and I’ve been called just that), but it seems that the Kremlin is resorting to some of its bad old bearish ways.
For example, Tosatti reports that in the southern republic of Dagestan, which has a population that is 90% Muslim, some 1,000 books of theology were seized from “local Muslim Ziyadin Dapayev.” (AP Photo/RIA Novosti, Alexei Nikolsky)
Among these were the works of the early 20th century Turkish theologian Said Nursi, who is widely considered to be a moderate on religious questions.
No matter – a local judge ordered “dozens of copies of the translation of fifteen Muslim books” by Nursi to be destroyed. The other Muslim texts have not been returned to their owner, leading Dapayev’s lawyer to complain, “It is blasphemy. I have not witnessed any episodes of destruction of religious literature prior to this, in Russia.”
Nor are Muslims the only ones who have lately felt the force of the Kremlin’s intolerance. In the central Russian city of Tomsk, March saw the conclusion of a lengthy and entirely senseless trial on the merits of the Bhagavad Gita, partly based on an official distaste for Hare Krishnas.
In fact, some in the Russian Orthodox Church went so far as to brand the Hindu deity Krishna “an evil demon, the personified power of hell opposing God.” For now, the charges of “extremism” against the Bhagavad Gita have been dropped, but the Vatican Insider says that another appeal is possible.
If the Kremlin is democratic in any respect, it is in the prevalence of its prejudice. Jehovah’s Witnesses are routinely arrested or harassed in Russia for distributing their literature, which is also deemed “extremist.” For example, in late 2011, a judge in the Altai Republic found Aleksandr Kalistratov guilty of anti-Catholic sentiment for distributing a Jehovah’s Witness tract that had the following passage:
“We went to the [Catholic] church in Seattle, but that was a pure formality. Religion had no important place in our life until Jamie, a joyful young pioneer and preacher of the Good News rang our bell. She was such a pleasant person that I agreed to study the Bible.”
And in January, David Matas, a leading Jewish lawyer from Canada, was banned from entering Russia because he wrote a book critical of the Chinese abuses of Falun Gong. His book was called by the Russians – you guessed it – “extremist literature.”
Reports Canadian Jewish News: “As to why a negative report on China should be banned in Russia, Matas said that he can’t explain the Russian thinking. ‘I don’t think the Russians can explain themselves,’ he said. ‘It may be a matter of authoritarian solidarity. Non-democratic governments tend to stick together.'”
One book that has enjoyed popularity in Russia? A short volume that praises Josef Stalin, of whom Putin is an avowed admirer.
“A large Moscow bookstore that specializes in textbooks ran out of the Stalin notebooks by Wednesday afternoon and was awaiting a new shipment,” reported USA Today earlier this month. “The Stalin notebooks ‘sell extremely well,’ said Yelena Shurukova, an employee at Pedagogical Books.”
I bet it does.
