Orthodoxy’s Ultimate Warrior
Dmitry Babich Russia Profile 07/27/2004
But Do His Activities Fall Within the Bounds of Civil Society?
After a three-hour morning service in July at Moscow’s Church of St.Nicholas in Pyzhy, a group of about 20 parishioners were waiting at the entrance for an opportunity to talk to the church’s rector, Archpriest Alexander Shargunov. Some of them were simply seeking his blessing or asking him to pray for ailing relatives.
But most were activists from “For the Spiritual Rebirth of the Fatherland,” an organization formed by Shargunov in 1994 to battle the “moral degradation” of Russian society.
Following a classic civil action strategy, Shargunov urges those upset by indecent television advertising or pornographic images in the print media and on billboards to file complaints with the Federal Media Agency and Anti-Monopolies Ministry.
“Modern society tries to convince us that sin is the norm,” Shargunov said, sternly addressing his flock. “But we will never agree with this. We will pray, but we will also act.”
His idea is to flood the government with complaints. Sooner or later, he believes the government will have to take action. The group says the idea is working.
According to the organization’s website, www.moral.ru, it has already succeeded in having “thousands” of indecent images removed from Moscow’s streets. Shargunov’s group calls on members to look for such examples and report them to the movement’s headquarters or directly to state officials. The website includes the mailing and E-mail addresses, as well as the telephone numbers of the appropriate officials.
Fighting against the government for his beliefs is nothing new for Shargunov. During the Soviet era, he was close to a number of dissident groups.
But his real notoriety as a social crusader has only come in the past 10 years, over which he became the leading force behind a small but active group fighting against the slide in public morality they say has accompanied the post-Soviet liberalization of Russian society.
During the 1996 presidential elections, Shargunov supported Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov, causing friction with Church leadership, which ostensibly backed the incumbent, Boris Yeltsin.
He drew much more attention when, in 1998, his group was at the fore of protests against the showing by NTV television of Martin Scorcese’s controversial film “The Last Temptation of Christ” (this time, the protests were backed by the head of the Church, Patriarch Alexy II).
Exhibit A
The group drew the most attention, however, in January 2003, after an exhibition of modern art entitled “Caution: Religion” opened at the Andrei Sakharov Museum and Social Center in Moscow. The venue, which is named after the Soviet-era political activist and Nobel laureate, has been a center of activity for human rights activists and liberal opponents of the Russian government since it was opened in 1996. The exhibition featured works such as an advertisement for Coca Cola with Jesus Christ’s face and the words “This is my blood” on the bottle, an icon cover with a hole in the center in which people could place their own faces and another piece depicting three figures being crucified: one on a cross; another on a red star; and the third on a swastika.
Four days after the exhibition opened, six men, members of Shargunov’s movement, vandalized the exhibit, spray painting some of the works with the words “blasphemy” and “devils”, while tearing up others. Two were ultimately charged with hooliganism, but a Moscow court threw out the case in August 2003, saying that there was no indication that they had committed a crime.
Shargunov and State Duma Deputy Alexander Chuyev, who has been active in lobbying for the interests of the church in the State Duma, then filed a complaint with the Prosecutor General’s Office, calling for charges against the Sakharov Museum in line with article 282 of the Russian Criminal Code, against “inciting national and religious hatred.”
Charges were ultimately brought by the prosecutor general against the museum’s director, Yury Samodurov, its exhibitions organizer, Lyudmila Vasilovskaya, and Anna Mikhalchuk, a member of the Literary Union of Russia who helped set up the exhibition.
The case is still before a Moscow court and has become the focal point for questions about the balance between, and the very definitions of, freedom of expression and freedom of conscience.
A number of human rights organizations have come out in support of the museum, labeling Shargunov and his group “extremist.” While not questioning Shargunov’s right to campaign for his beliefs or that there is public support for his position, they have serious questions about his methods.
“I consider Shargunov to be a part of civil society, although he stands on its fringes,” said Yevgeny Ikhlov, the head of information for the movement “For Human Rights,” one of 20 organizations that signed an open letter calling on the prosecutor general to throw out Shargunov’s complaint. “What I object to is the fact that he expresses his views using illegal methods, including vandalism.”
“If he got on his knees and asked people not to buy tickets for this exhibition, the way some Catholic groups in the West asked people not to watch ‘The Last Temptation of Christ,’ it would be fine with me,” he added. “But Shargunov is too aggressive.”
In his writings, Shargunov says that the country’s long history of aggressive atheism requires an aggressive response and that turning the other cheek to the inheritors of this tradition is tantamount to surrendering before evil.
“Our fathers begged the Bolsheviks on their knees to spare our churches”, Shargunov wrote in his book “The Ultimate Weapon,” which was published this year. “That just made the Bolsheviks more violent.”
In a Sorry State
His view of the present situation in Russia is just as scathing.
“In Soviet times, the words ‘shame’ and ‘conscience’ still had positive meanings,” Shargunov said in an interview with Russia Profile. “In Stalin’s times, part of the population was destroyed physically. Now, the whole population is under moral attack. We moved from state atheism to state Satanism.”
Shargunov’s calls for limits or outright bans on soft-core pornography, television reality programs, and sex education in schools appear to resonate with a broad audience. A recent poll by state-owned public opinion research firm VTsIOM found that 36 per cent of Russians favor censorship of graphic sex and violence in the media.
“The public clearly wants the media to maintain higher moral standards,” said Vladimir Petukhov, chief researcher at VTsIOM. “That is a change in comparison with late 1980s and early 1990s, when people were still thirsting for all things exotic after the gray Soviet days. This does not mean, however, that people will support Shargunov’s idea of legislating morality. What the majority wants is moral self-censorship, not political control.”
In his comments, Shargunov hasn’t shied away from politics, openly siding with the political groupings on the left that tried to topple Yeltsin during the 1993 constitutional crisis and attacking the present government on questions of social policy.
But experts close to the Orthodox Church warn that his activities shouldn’t be identified with mainstream Orthodoxy.
“Any attempt to use the bulk of Orthodox believers for political ends is doomed,” said Alexander Shchipkov, a sociologist and the editor of the Religion and Media website (www.religare.ru). “Orthodox believers include liberals and communists, pacifists and militarists. It is too large a body to be manipulated at will.”
The point is born out by Shargunov’s complicated relationship with The Union of Orthodox Citizens, another Orthodox Church-inspired civil group. Despite finding common ground on moral issues, such as support for the traditional family, lobbying against laws that presently permit marriage at the age of 14 and protesting against sex and violence in the media – Valentin Lebedev, the Union’s chairman, says he does not support Shargunov’s “exclusivist” politics.
“Our movement is modeled after the Catholic movements in Europe,” Lebedev said. “We have members in just about all of the big political parties – United Russia, Rodina (Motherland) and even Yabloko. Our aim is to make politics Christian, instead of turning all Christians into politicians.”
Lebedev’s Union claims to have several thousand supporters, while Shargunov says that his group includes “hundreds,” but support is difficult to gauge, as neither organization operates on the basis of official membership.
Comments by Shargunov have led to accusations that he favors a sort of Orthodox Russian exclusivity. His movement opposes the activities of, in particular, the Church of Scientology, Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church and the Hare Krishnas. His own language in these cases could be considered offensive. In his book, for example, he labels Scientologists as “cannibals.”
Shargunov rebuffs accusations of xenophobia, saying that he is not hostile to foreign culture in general, but only in its contemporary, global incarnation. After the morning service, he chatted in English with a guest, David Gill, an Orthodox priest from Nottingham, United Kingdom.
“I am not a xenophobe. God has his people everywhere, in every country,” Shargunov said. “You just have to find them. After all, this is what the church has in common with civil society. We must help the good people to find each other.”
© Russia Profile, 2011