It is not surprising that an article alleging corruption in the Russian Orthodox Church would appear on the website of Garry Kimovich Weinstein, better known to the world as Garry Kasparov. The former chess grandmaster has long been an outspoken critic of the current “establishment” in Russia with the unfortunate Gorbachevian trait of having more support abroad than at home. The article, “Help in the Name of Christ!”, was written by Alexander Khramov and appeared both on Kasparov’s website and on the anti-church forum Portal-credo.ru, where Khramov is a regular contributor.
Normally, I do not respond to comments by Kasparov or Portal-credo. The former has lost credibility since his alliance with the Neo-Nazi National Bolshevik Party and his staged demonstrations in Moscow and St Petersburg, a show for Western media where he addresses crowds in English and deliberately violates laws to get arrested. As for Portal-credo, the website is run by a cult, the so-called “Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church”, organized by the convicted pedophile Anatoly Rusantsev, who calls himself “Metropolitan Valentine”. Such “ideologues” are better left unacknowledged with the hope that lack of publicity will make them go away.
What prompted this response was the article’s subsequent appearance on Mark Stokoe’s infossip website ocanews.org with the comments that “problems of accountability and transparency in the Orthodox Church, sadly, are not to be found in the Orthodox Church in America alone” and that this “Thanksgiving let us give thanks to God for helping us [i.e., the OCA] forward, and offer a prayer that the Russian Church may find its way forward as well.”
I must preface by saying that Mr. Stokoe and I have clashed repeatedly over the content of his website, which, I feel, has continued to be anti-Russian and anti-Russian Orthodox Church in particular. Just one such example was the publication of Fr. Michael Oleska’s opus in which he blamed the current problems in the OCA on its bishops’ “Russian” attitude (none of the bishops is Russian, by the way) and, among other things, accused the ROC of creating the political coup of 1917 and being responsible for the murders of the New Martyrs. The Russian Orthodox Church has nobly kept herself out of the OCA’s crisis. Why then should Mr. Stokoe get involved in the affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church?
As I am banned from commenting on Mr. Stokoe’s website, I take my response to this article elsewhere.
The article alleges that, last week, His Holiness sent a letter to President Medvedev asking for help during the financial crisis. Among measures requested, the author claims, is deposit insurance for church bank accounts and tax exemption for church property. Here is a good place to note that in Russia, unlike many jurisdictions in the United States, the church has to pay property tax. The remainder of the article accuses the Russian Orthodox Church of lacking financial transparency, lobbying the interests of “Orthodox businessmen” in the State Parliament, issuing “kickbacks”, operating an investment portfolio, owning a lot of land, including much in the center of Moscow, and other sins.
It is true that church finances are notoriously difficult to manage, as anyone who has served on a parish council (myself included) will attest. Part of it stems from the nature of church “income”, much of which comes from anonymous cash donations and goes, in the form of cash disbursements, to pay for the living expenses of a priest. Many of our clergy, especially in the Russian Church, do not receive a “salary” and largely live off such cash donations for special needs services (“treby”). In the United States, the Internal Revenue Service has waived annual reporting requirements for churches, recognizing, in part, that accurate financial tracking of cash donations and disbursements would place an undue burden on churches, many of which do not have the money to employ a full-time accountant. This has never been an issue, at least before the current OCA financial scandal.
The allegation that the Russian Church is afloat with cash could only occur to someone who visits only one parish – Christ the Saviour Cathedral in Moscow. The reality outside the Garden Ring (Moscow’s equivalent of the Beltway) and especially outside Moscow, is quite different. The fact is, that most of the so-called “church properties”, including Christ the Saviour, are not owned by the church at all. They continue to be government property, given to the church for use. Confiscated following the 1917 coup, many of these church buildings are badly damaged from years of Soviet misuse as barns, factories, skating rings, video production studios, and the like. In only very few instances do the Federal or regional authorities pay for their restoration (in the cases of “historical monuments”). While it would only seem fair that the heir of a thief would pay reparations to the victims of theft, in most instances parishes and parishioners are on their own. The natural way to raise money for such projects is, yes, to “lobby” “Orthodox businessmen”, many of whom (for example, Viktor Vekselberg) give millions every year, and to operate “banks” at the Patriarchate level, which loan money for parish projects. Think of “FA ROCOR”, only bigger and more efficient. Many parishes in the United States (and I’m sure Mr. Stokoe’s as well) routinely invest in mutual funds, bonds, and other tradeable assets in anticipation of capital projects. This has never been against the law, Canon or otherwise.
Much of the accusations of “corruption” in the Moscow Patriarchate target “HPP Sofrino”, the church goods production factory. The fact is, however, that Sofrino operates at a net loss and has to be continually propped up by the Patriarchate, largely because monasteries and large parishes have realized that Sofrino’s reputation for low quality provides them with an opportunity to produce and sell church goods as well. Such is the nature of the market.
That the church has made millions importing tobacco is an old allegation raised by Moskovskie Novosti in 1995. It has yet to be independently confirmed. Mr. Khramov has not cited any new facts or proven any illegal activity on the part of anyone in the Church’s administration. This is not surprising — he does not really care about what happens in the Russian Church; his true fight is with the current government. He writes: “[S]tate support of financial endeavors of the ROC-MP [sic] is hardly justified — we all live in a secular society. The act of providing it [i.e., the church] with more benefits and loans, is criminal. Any state help directed to this religious organization must be suspended. This also applies to not only ROC-MP [sic] but to other organizations to whom Russian government is eager to provide help (the help which is obviously provided with tax-payers money).”
The funny thing is, when the state confiscated church property, when it blew up Christ the Savior, when it converted monasteries for use as nuclear weapons facilities, when it sent priests and monks to concentration camps, when it took village churches apart for firewood — all of this was done with tax-payer money. Our self-proclaimed ideologue of “Russian disestablishment” seems to ignore these facts.
Of course, those were different times. In those days, as the state built “democracy” and “freedom”, those opposed to such ventures were “reeducated” in the GULags. Now, they get to educate us in cyberspace. And, as if their blogs were not a big enough forum, they get additional bandwith from members of the OCA. How sad.
