Steve Gutterman's Week In Russia

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The Russian Orthodox Church pushes back against the pushback against the construction of a church in a Yekaterinburg park. Is it just "waving its fists after the fight," as the saying goes, or could it still overcome opposition? Either way, Russia's dominant religious organization has something to lose.

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In 2008, as Vladimir Putin was steering him into the Kremlin for a stint as a placeholder president with a more liberal cast, Dmitry Medvedev made a statement that he said should have been obvious but was worth saying out loud: "Freedom is better than unfreedom."

More than a decade later, a comparison that may capture the tenor of times in Russia is this: "Churches are better than sex shops."

That's the word from the spokesman for Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill on the standoff over plans to build a church in a Yekaterinburg park that opponents say is one of the few green spaces left in the city -- or at least, that's an Interfax headline's encapsulation of his remarks.

The comments from Kirill's press secretary, Aleksandr Volkov, were part of a pushback by the Russian Orthodox Church against the pushback against the project, which has been put on hold -- but not yet scrapped, apparently -- following days of protests earlier this month.

"What person of sound mind and adequate moral condition would be against building a church? Why aren't we hearing the same people...agitating against opening beer bars or 'shops for adults?'" Volkov said. "So many have opened, you get the feeling that all our country does is go to 'shops for adults.'"

That's an exaggeration, but his choice of examples may be apt: After the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991, churches and sex shops seemed to proliferate fast as Russia made up for lost time. In formal terms, communism had effectively replaced religion for decades and -- as a participant in a 1986 U.S.-Soviet telecast said but did not really mean -- there was "no sex" in the U.S.S.R.

Still, though, opponents of the church project might have the right to think Volkov was making the wrong comparison. Why not ask whether a church is better than a park -- particularly in a city that residents say has plenty of the former and precious few of the latter. Similar questions have been asked by residents of several Russian cities in recent years.

'Hearts And Minds'

Evidence, if gathered, would seem likely to show that the number of new openings of sex shops in Russia has fallen off since the 1990s. That may not be true of churches: Kirill, after blessing a new Russian Orthodox church in Strasbourg, France, on May 26, said: "we're building three temples a day -- I am not mistaken: every 24 hours. Thirty thousand temples in 10 years."

Kirill's math may be off: His figures suggest something closer to eight churches a day. But his point seemed to be that for Russia, no number of churches is too high.

"It's not because we have a lot of money and don't know what to do with it," the patriarch said.

"Having gone through the years of atheism, our people have understood, in their hearts and minds, that nothing is possible without God," he said, adding that "our technologically developed civilization needs places where a person can feel close to God."

Polls suggest that may not be the case -- or at least, that many Russian believers don't need to be at church to feel close to God.

According to poll results cited in a 2017 report by the Pew Research Center, 7 percent of Russians attend religious services weekly, 30 percent monthly or once a year, and 61 percent seldom or never. The same survey showed that 71 percent of Russians consider themselves Orthodox Christians.

The dispute in Yekaterinburg and Kirill's three-churches-a-day remark sparked an array of responses, including calls for the Russian Orthodox Church to do more charity and questions about the proliferation of churches in a country that needs more hospitals.

The Last Tsar

There's also been some wry commentary, like the Twitter post imagining "Yekaterinburg in 2030" as a shining sea of golden onion domes. Before the Bolshevik Revolution, Moscow was known as the city of "the 40 40s," an inexact reference to the numbers of churches it contained -- but this vision of the future would take it to another exponential level: 40 cubed.

It's all but certain that Yekaterinburg will get a church to replace St. Catherine's Cathedral, which was razed by the communist state in 1930. But it appears unlikely to be built in the park as planned.

President Vladimir Putin weighed in after a few days of protests, saying that the opinions of residents must be heeded and suggested a poll. The project was suspended after state pollster VTsIOM suddenly said it found that 53 percent of residents surveyed wanted the church built somewhere else in the city.

Meanwhile, the pushback from the church took on a sharper edge in comments from another Kirill, the metropolitan who is the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church in Yekaterinburg and regions nearby. In comments after a service, he likened opposition against the church project to the killing of Tsar Nicholas II and his family by a Bolshevik firing squad in the same city in 1918.

"Today the church faces a challenge. This challenge thundered out from Yekaterinburg -- as 100 years ago the shots thundered out and the blood of the royal martyrs was spilled," Kirill said.

'RosBog'

A final decision on the fate of the project may come next week, or not. City officials said on May 31 that nearly 10,000 residents had responded to a survey conducted in recent days and submitted a total of 53 suggestions for a site, including the planned location in the park. They said a vote would be held to choose between the top five or six picks -- but gave no time frame.

Whatever the outcome, the Russian Orthodox Church stands to lose, because the dispute has underscored its involvement in less-than-spiritual scraps over property and may foster the perception that it is, at some level, just one of the interest groups vying for power and Putin's backing.

In an article published on the website Raam Op Rusland, analyst Mark Galeotti suggested that the Russian Orthodox Church could be called RosBog -- RusGod in English -- likening it to the massive and moneyed but Kremlin-dependent state corporations and security agencies with names such as Roskosmos and Rosgvardia.

By allowing itself "to become in effect another state-controlled enterprise," Galeotti wrote, the Russian Orthodox Church arguably "risks both losing its moral mandate and alienating the very power structure to which it has sold itself."

"At a time of resource-scarcity and heightened political competition, when the very future of the Putin regime is beginning to come under question, the invisible shareholders of RosBog are beginning to wonder whether it is providing value for money," Galeotti wrote.

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The showdown over plans to build a church on a rare green patch in Yekaterinburg presents a challenge for the Kremlin, but President Vladimir Putin may have something to gain. Plus, a comparative look at the optics of the inaugurations of Putin and Ukraine's new president – or at least the way they got to the swearing-in ceremonies.

Here are some of the key developments in Russia over the past week and some of the takeaways going forward.

Walking The Walk

If a picture is worth a thousand words, these two pictures are worth at least 2,000 – maybe more.

Two video clips, actually: One shows Volodymyr Zelenskiy striding to the Ukrainian parliament for his inauguration on May 20, shaking hands and high-fiving some of the spectators lining his route behind yellow-and-blue barriers and smiling as he went, a spring in his step.

The other shows Vladimir Putin stepping into an armored Mercedes and riding down the eerily deserted streets of Moscow from the government house to the Kremlin -- presumably for his inauguration in 2012, when he returned to the presidency after a stint as prime minister and ordinary citizens – protesters and passersby alike – were kept at a distance by police cordons.

Putin does shake hands, but only with the uniformed officer who holds the car door open for him. And he makes the trip alone, the black limousine escorted by five motorcycles and flanked by two big black SUVs following a bit behind and to the side – not just a single one, as often seen when bosses in government, business, crime, or a mix of those milieus ply the streets of the Russian capital.

There’s a strong element of staginess in both clips – the comic actor glad-handing supporters as he prepares to become a real president, not just a guy who plays one on TV, and the longtime leader heading back to the Kremlin to assume the burden of power once again, staring slightly downward and swinging his shoulders in a studied “gunslinger’s gait.”

Still, the difference is striking. It plays into the perception of Ukraine’s election as a more open, democratic affair than the March 2018 vote that handed Putin his current term. An election in which a political novice who was the incumbent’s most viable challenger was on the ballot and had a chance of victory is a nightmare for the Kremlin and a dream for its opponents – and many other Russians.

Like Zelenskiy’s bouncing path to his swearing-in, the footage of Putin’s lonely trip to the Kremlin is meant to portray him as a man of the people, but in a very different way – as someone assuming a great responsibility that only he alone can shoulder and that demands a serious approach, even if it means solitude at times.

Out Of Touch?

But that’s not always the message that gets across and some analysts say that Putin -- despite winning more than 76 percent of the vote in March 2018, by the official count – seems to be losing touch with the people. Or even losing interest.

If that’s the case, his need to make that connection – or remake it – may be all the more urgent if he intends to retain power after his term ends in 2024 without actually holding onto the presidency.

Extending his current term or starting another one right away would require changing the constitution or possibly making a move even more drastic -- something past actions suggest Putin would prefer not to do, though there are signs the Kremlin is laying the groundwork to at least hold that option in reserve.

If he wants to stay on as something like a "national leader" – with no formal post or one that is less powerful than the presidency -- a strong bond with the people seems crucial. And in the confrontation over what now look like doomed plans to build a big Russian Orthodox Church on a rare patch of green in the country’s fourth-largest city, he may be seeking a way to strengthen it.

When protesters first came out to a Yekaterinburg park on May 13 to oppose the plan, it was their mission that might have seemed doomed: A few hundred people going up against both the state and the country’s dominant religious organization, which has been resurgent since the Soviet collapse and wants to build a new church on the site of a cathedral that was razed by the communist government of the Soviet Union in 1930.

'Devils'

Burly men in tracksuits joined security guards confronting the demonstrators, more than 20 people were detained and jailed for up to 10 days, and a prominent state TV talk-show host railed against the protesters, likening them to “devils” and denouncing Yekaterinburg as “the city that murdered the last emperor” – a reference to Tsar Nicholas II, who was killed along with his family by a Bolshevik firing squad in the basement of a house there in 1918.

When he weighed in from Sochi on the third day of protests, Putin spoke carefully and seemed to take pains to convey an air of cool unconcern. He said he had heard about the dispute “in passing,” which seems highly unlikely given its prominence.

He also called it a “purely regional story” – even though he must know that it isn’t. There have been disputes over church construction in several other cities, including Moscow, not to mention a slew of confrontations over road construction, garbage dumps, and other projects that reflect the same basic concern: that those in power, or close to it, are doing what they want at the expense of the interests, and the quality of life, of ordinary Russians.

Putin’s proposed solution -- an opinion poll to determine where people in the city of 1.5 million stand on the issue -- poses risks for the president, but also presents potential rewards.

The process that has ensued appears to be choreographed, but its exact outcome is not yet clear. Soon after Putin spoke, city authorities said construction had been suspended, and on May 22 state-funded pollster VTsIOM suddenly said a survey it conducted found that 74 percent of Yekaterinburg’s residents believe the choice of a site for the church was “unsuccessful” or “unfortunate” – and that 18 percent don’t want it built in the city at all.

Survey Says

This was not the formal poll on the issue – at least one more will apparently be conducted – but the regional governor quickly said that the park should be ruled out as a possible site for the church. The city mayor pushed back a day later, saying the existing site should be an option – but a major reversal of the result of the initial survey would be certain to be viewed with deep suspicion by already skeptical opponents of the church construction, something the Kremlin may not want to risk.

That means there’s little chance the church will be built in the park as planned.

For the Kremlin, conceding to protesters could set an unwelcome precedent. Church projects in two other cities have been put on hold in the wake of his remarks and there have been similar protests against a planned mosque in Kazan, the capital of Tatarstan, which has a large Muslim population.

An article in the newspaper Vedomosti said the result is “important and significant not just for residents of Yekaterinburg,” showing the entire country that “pressure on the authorities can force them to listen to the opinion of those who disagree with them.”

But that’s not always bad for Putin. In this case, he can stand back, above the fray, and let local authorities take the blame for the “unsuccessful” choice of a site – while taking the credit himself for a solution.

Tsar, Boyars, Priests

As journalist Maxim Edwards put it, Putin’s intervention meant that the “incredible victory” for the protesters was “to some degree, also a victory for the old ‘wise tsar versus evil boyars’ dynamic.”

All the more so because the plans called not only for a church, according to the independent Russian news outlet The Bell, but also for a commercial complex including an office building, a fitness club, and underground parking.

As for the Russian Orthodox Church, it may come out of all this with a big new temple to replace the one torn down under communism, if not in the precise location it had planned. But Putin may be able to use the dispute to let the church look more distant from the people than he is himself.