The children of perestroika: Two sociologists on religion and Russian society, 1991 – 2006

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Notes

1 The author wishes to thank the Office of the Vice-Provost and the University Research Committee at Baylor University for their generous support of the research on which this article is based.

2 Following Peter Berger, I define religion in terms of its substance, not in terms of its functions, nor in terms of what it does for individuals or for society. Religion involves a transcendent vision that gives meaning to life, to society and to human beings. This transcendent vision, to a great many people, is important in defining existence, in interpreting the world, and in understanding the nature of man and of history. ‘Ordinary life’, Berger writes, ‘is like sitting and moving within a well-lit house, with familiar fellowmen, in an atmosphere of warm security. Religious experience takes place in the night outside.’ Religion thus adds another dimension to everyday reality, transcending the material world and, for many people, endowing it with purpose. While there have been many efforts to suppress, domesticate or deny the existence of this other dimension, its eruption in the Third World today and in the former Soviet Union, as Berger observes, ‘is downright astounding’ (Berger, 1974, pp. 125 – 34; 1999, pp. 6 – 7; 2002, pp. 7 – 20; 2005, pp. 112 – 19; see also Martin, 1969, pp. 3 – 6, and Bruce, 1996, pp. 6 – 7).

3 The first survey, in 1990, was conducted in Moscow, Pskov, Khar'kov and other cities in these regions, and included a sample of 1855 people. The 1991 survey interviewed 2000 people and covered 12 cities in Russia and Kazakhstan. In 1992 the sociologists expanded their work to 15 cities in Russia and Kazakhstan, and involved 2250 people. Filatov's colleague, Lyudmila Mikhailovna Vorontsova, also played a large role in the analysis of the survey materials. Vorontsova is head research fellow at the Sergiyev Posad Museum Complex and a specialist in Russian medieval art and medieval utopian communities in Russia. She also serves as deputy director of the Centre for Sociological Research of the Russian Scientific Foundation (Sotsiologichesky tsentr Rossiiskogo nauchnogo fonda).

4 Filatov and Furman (1992), p. 3. An English translation of this article is Vale (1993). In 1990 the percentage of religious believers in Moscow amounted to 27 per cent of the population and, in Russia as a whole, 27 per cent. In 1990 in Moscow the percentage of atheists amounted to 20 per cent and in Russia 26 per cent.

5 The economist Sergei Aleksandrovich Vasil'yev has described a ‘non-Soviet subculture’, which emerged in the early 1980s, an ever-growing segment of the population who read critical literature, samizdat, and western publications and who were ‘not simply non-Soviet’, but ‘anti-Soviet’. This subculture ‘paved the way for perestroika and the downfall of socialism’. When Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika encouraged the free exchange of ideas and information, this group's influence spread rapidly throughout Soviet society; according to Vasil'yev, ‘representatives of the non-Soviet cultural elite had dominated the mass media during perestroika’. Members of the group would overlap, in age, with those who are referred to here as the ‘children of perestroika’, those reaching adolescence and young adulthood in the late 1980s and 1990s (Vasi'lev, 2001, pp. 96 – 97; Topolev and Topolev, 2001, pp. 193 – 201).

6 Furman (1998) is an English translation by Michel Vale of Furman's original article. Furman and Kimmo Kääriäinen also published a similar, revised study (Furman and Kääriäinen, 1997).

7 Such alternative models, according to Filatov, stressed the capacity to organise creatively, often in opposition to or independently of state power. They included: the ancient trading republics of Novgorod and Pskov; the debates of the boyar duma; the deeds of Mstislav Udaloi, the thirteenth-century Novgorod prince elected by the people who saved the city twice during times of attack; the primitive, rough, frontier democracy of the Cossacks; the pioneering Russian settlers to the White Sea, the far north and the southern steppes; the individualistic, ascetic priests of the forests; the courageous opposition to autocratic power of Metropolitan Filipp and archpriest Avvakum; the Old Believers; the Russian Catholics; the religious dissidents; and the entire liberal intelligentsia from Radishchev to Korolenko (Vorontsova and Filatov, 1995, p. 65). A significant problem for the future lay not only in the restoration of earlier models and teachings, but in the question of who would interpret them. Would it be the Orthodox Church or Russia's secular institutions? Who would be the primary agents of the recovery of this heritage? Filatov's close colleague and head research fellow at the Sergiyev Posad Museum, Lyudmila Mikhailovna Vorontsova, has written insightfully about the issue. Vorontsova maintains that the ROC hierarchy aspires to reinterpret Russia's cultural-religious heritage to fit its own ideology; its views of culture are extremely conservative and self-serving, and aim to de-emphasise or remove all elements of rationalist scientific non-religious culture, elements that some of Russia's greatest nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholars have described as also part of Russia's heritage. ‘Under suspicion’, she has argued, ‘has fallen the category of people whose views do not fit the ROC's ideology: scholars of science and art – namely, the intelligentsia’ (Vorontsova, 1996, pp. 18 – 24).

8 Plyusnin is the author of more than 150 publications on Russian society.

9 According to Furman, the expectations of alternatives were already becoming apparent in Russia's presidential election in 1996. The choice of Putin as Yel'tsin's successor was made by a small, narrow group of people. In the 2000 presidential election itself, Putin appeared as an alternative to Gennadi Zyuganov, leader of the Communist Party, who offered a very different political programme. Because of these differences and what Furman called ‘the illusion of a dangerous alternative’, Putin's selection by a small group was generally accepted. In 2004 there was little doubt about Putin's re-election; people voted, even enthusiastically, because they perceived the alternative to be chaos and possibly anarchy. In the future, Furman argues, it will be difficult to find much enthusiasm for Putin without the presence of real alternatives and he believes society will demand them.

10 Filatov began his study working alone, but later received financial support from Keston Institute in Oxford, England. Keston's director, Michael Bourdeaux, provided ‘support for our costly journeys around the country, and to a significant degree reoriented our work to focusing more on problems of religious freedom, to which earlier we had not given much attention’ (Filatov interview, 1997).

11 In 1997, with funding from an American foundation, Keston Institute began working with Filatov and his team to publish an ‘encyclopedia of contemporary religious life in Russia’ based on the research. The volumes in this cooperative effort are published under the title Sovremennaya religioznaya zhizn' Rossii: opyt sistematicheskogo opisaniya. By 2006 four volumes had been published, all in Moscow by ‘Logos’ publishers. Volume 1 (the second to be published, in 2004) deals with Orthodoxy, the Old Believers, Catholicism and the Armenian Apostolic Church; Volume 2 (2003) deals with Protestantism, Volume 3 (2005) with Islam, Judaism, the Baha'i, Buddhism, Zoroastroism, Hinduism and the Sikhs, and Volume 4 (2006) with philosophical-religious societies, paganism and new religious movements. The results are also being published in the form of a survey of each of Russia's 89 administrative regions, under the title Atlas sovremennoi religioznoi zhizni Rossii (3 vols, Moscow/St Petersburg, Letni sad, from 2005).

12 The author gratefully acknowledges the assistance of Vladimir Salov in conducting the interview.

13 The Dukhobors, unofficially numbering today about 20,000 members, have settled in towns of southern Russia, having been uprooted from their former agricultural communities. The Molokans, who unofficially number between 300,000 and 500,000, have followed a similar pattern. Unable to return to their former agricultural communities, they have moved into towns, mainly in the south, trying to adapt their traditions to urban settings. Successfully recruiting young members in these conditions will be a big challenge (Bourdeaux and Filatov, 2003 – 06, 1, pp. 270 – 84; Lunkin and Prokof'yev, 2000, pp. 85 – 92).

14 The significant regional variations in religious beliefs are also emphasised by Krindatch (2004, pp. 115 – 36).

15 An English translation of this article is Furman (1996).