Russia's Dead End: An Insider's Testimony from Gorbachev to Putin

by Andrei A. Kovalev

  The circumstances of the disturbances in Tbilisi (April 1989), when Soviet troops attacked and killed nineteen unarmed Georgian demonstrators, resulted in particularly strong pressure. Hot on the heels of these events we proposed strictly regulating any resort to force. Naturally, despite the minister’s support, the law enforcement departments blocked this proposal. An enormous amount of work to elucidate what special means had been employed “to restore order,” including nerve gas, ended in failure. Officials in the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Procuracy who had passed highly classified internal instructions and other documents to me had put themselves at risk to no avail.

  All our work to promote order in the sphere of human rights took place amid the ongoing bitter political struggle. The period when the Central Committee exercised absolute power was particularly complicated and protracted. Everything became much simpler after the creation of the Congress of People’s Deputies of the USSR (March 1989) and the election of Mikhail Gorbachev, who systematically deprived the party and the Central Committee staff of power.

  In general, pushing things to a decision point was a science in itself. Notwithstanding the myth of a monolithic Soviet state and Communist Party structure, the state and party bureaucracies were actually extremely heterogeneous. A paradoxical situation often arose in which diametrically opposed decisions were forthcoming from one and the same ministry, department, or office of the Central Committee. All one needed to know was which buttons to push and what questions to submit to precisely which persons in order to achieve a positive outcome.

  In the USSR the presumption of innocence was proclaimed in principle but disregarded in practice. This naturally promoted a sense of personal insecurity. In reality a presumption of guilt existed, and it tilted any criminal investigation and legal proceedings in favor of the prosecution. For example, defense attorneys were allowed to participate in a criminal case not from the time of detention but only after the conclusion of the preliminary investigation. The presumption of innocence, stipulated in the UN International Treaty on Civil and Political Rights guaranteeing the right not to be compelled to give evidence against oneself or to confess guilt, was honored in the breach.

  Nonjudicial forms of persecution were widely employed. Among them Andrei Sakharov listed dismissal from work, obstacles to receiving an education, exile abroad, conditions that compelled persons to emigrate, and revocation of citizenship for Soviet citizens who were abroad.

  In drafting the acts relating to human rights, we always insisted firmly on openness. Stereotypical disputes often arose. “This cannot be published.” “That means it can’t be adopted.”

  Paradoxically, depriving the CPSU Central Committee and its apparatus of its plenary powers for a certain period significantly complicated our work. Many opponents of change hastened to take advantage of the breakdown of the mechanism for making and implementing decisions. We were deprived of the effective assistance that liberal staff members from the Central Committee had previously rendered. However, opposition from the reactionaries in this same organ of power now ceased. Unfortunately, the power that the party reactionaries lost was more than compensated for by that of the reactionaries from the state bureaucracy.

  Freedom of Religion

  The fate of religious freedom in Russia was no better than that of freedom of speech. Prior to the Bolshevik coup, Russian Orthodoxy was the state religion; soon after the coup all religions were in effect virtually tabooed and placed under the strictest control by the secret police. Many Russian Orthodox priests, including the upper ranks of the church hierarchy, were simply KGB officers in cassocks. During Gorbachev’s reformation, however, an initially successful attempt was undertaken to promote religious freedom and normalize church-state relations.

  The early work on rectifying this situation typified the romantic period of perestroika. Clearly there was a problem, and how to deal with it was also fairly clear. Nonetheless, for a long time nothing happened. To be sure, the USSR managed to celebrate the thousandth anniversary of the baptism of Rus’ and publish a massive edition of the Bible, a natural decision that seemed hardly worth noting. But before then even possessing a Bible made one criminally liable.

  That we failed to secure permission for Pope John Paul II to take part in celebrating the millennium of the baptism of Rus’ is still a matter of shame. The KGB, the Russian Orthodox Church, and those members of the Central Committee of the CPSU who supported the reactionary Yegor Ligachev, then number 2 in the hierarchy, were adamantly opposed. Following the disintegration of the USSR, their replacements hardly differed from them and perhaps were even worse. During the Soviet period there was not such open hostility, such hysteria, and other dubious mental displays toward the Vatican as what came afterward.

  The core issue we faced during perestroika was what to do about legislation codifying the lack of religious freedom in the USSR. This issue became so prominent that from the depths of the law enforcement establishment, draft legislation emerged that would have permanently consigned the church—already slavishly dependent on the state—to something like a ghetto. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs exercised its veto and sent a note to the Central Committee of the CPSU demonstrating the need to pass a democratic law on freedom of conscience in conformity with the USSR’s international obligations. As in other cases, we grounded the international obligations of the USSR in what was then called Leninist norms, which we sharply contrasted with Stalinist ones. The classics of Marxism-Leninism spoke eloquently of religion. Therefore, even in “materialist” and “atheistic” Russia, their words imparted a kind of truly mystical significance.

  When we began working on the issue of freedom of religion, existing restrictions limited the teaching of religious beliefs. Churches and religious societies had no right to own property, including buildings and liturgical objects. Thus, the door was wide open to arbitrary official actions. The position of religious groups and organizations was minutely regulated by the state; in force were numerous prohibitions and restrictions affecting believers and religious associations. The only books permitted in places of worship were those required by the ministers. People were denied the Bible, the Koran, and, consequently, access to their own history and culture. The approach to believers, who were treated as a special class of citizens, reflected the bonfires of the Inquisition and ideological racism.

  Shevardnadze established a working group in the Foreign Ministry under the leadership of Deputy Minister Vladimir Petrovsky to deal with the whole set of church-state problems. Along with Deputy Chief of the Directorate of International Organizations V. Sidorov, we were supposed to establish contacts with the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church and other denominations. Parenthetically, it should be noted that this work too was illegal. Without exception, all contacts with religious leaders were supposed to take place exclusively through the Council on Religious Affairs. In practice, this meant it was inconceivable. If any government official, no matter what rank, wanted to explain something to members of the clergy or reach agreement on some matter, he or she had to address the Council on Religious Affairs. If this body approved, council officials would contact someone from the clergy and, at their own discretion, communicate the response. Under such conditions true dialogue was impossible. Thus, the Foreign Ministry broke with the existing practice and established direct contacts with religious leaders.

  Making personal acquaintance with the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church was an interesting experience. For example, I paid a visit with my then direct superior, Yury Reshetov, to Metropolitan Yuvenaly to inform him of the results of the Vienna meeting of the CSCE member states. I naively supposed that the Orthodox Church would be very satisfied with the agreements under which Russian Orthodoxy, like other religions, would receive unprecedented freedom in our country. Was I ever wrong! We entered Yuvenaly’s rooms in the Novodevichy Monastery, where the metropolitan was reading the text of the document in Izvestiia. He saw us and instead of saying hello, he
flung down the paper: “So now we have to recognize the Uniates?”3

  Reshetov was dumbfounded. Taking a deep breath, I coolly confirmed this supposition and said something about what the Russian Orthodox Church would receive. I did not fail to make spiteful mention of the separation of church and state and the equality of all religions before the law.

  With that our conversation concluded. This was my second meeting with Yuvenaly. The first time, when I went to see him with Sidorov, he had been extremely pleasant and impressed us as an inspirational and well-educated person.

  Realizing it was useless to speak with Yuvenaly, we paid a visit to Filaret (of Minsk), who proved to be rather different. Convincingly, he cursed at length the obtuseness, sluggishness, and alcoholism of those who should be “removing” obstacles to the Uniates. Filaret’s joie de vivre was more becoming than that of his higher-ranking colleague. Parenthetically, I should note that at different times both of them were involved in external church relations.

  Their successor, Metropolitan Kirill, who later became patriarch, was cut from different cloth. He was a consummate diplomat and master of protocol. At the time, he was already no less ambitious than Yuvenaly, who had pretensions to the patriarchate. Kirill thought that any Russian should become Orthodox, and if the person didn’t like the church, then he or she could leave it. His was an enlightened position. The closest contact I made was with Metropolitan Pitirim. He was an interesting conversationalist, a very worldly man. To observe Lent with him was unbelievably tasty.

  Naturally, there were also meetings with religious leaders from other denominations. At one of them we heard: “How good that you have finally come. Now we shall know what to do.”

  These contacts convinced me of the complete absence of spirituality on the part of my religious interlocutors. My experiences also persuaded me to form my own opinions about church-state relations and intra-church problems.

  The working group drafting a new Soviet law on freedom of conscience assembled in a house belonging to the Council on Religious Affairs and then in the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. The positions of the group’s participants were clear and diametrically opposed. An overwhelming majority were strongly opposed to any liberalization in this sphere. What passions raged during the drafting of the bill! The ideological fanatics even tried to prohibit the churches from engaging in charitable activities by including provisions in the draft that, for example, would have made it impossible for them to open hospitals.

  Passage of the Law on Freedom of Conscience and of Religious Organizations on October 1, 1990, not only thoroughly liquidated the old order but also established a new political and legal framework that guaranteed the sovereignty of the individual in questions of faith and in relation to religion. Until the law was adopted, directives from the Council on Religious Affairs were in force that categorically forbade “the registration of religious societies and groups of Jehovah’s Witnesses, Pentecostals, True Gospel Orthodox, Orthodox Christian, the True Orthodox Church, Adventist Reformers, and Murashkovites.”4 But the list was not comprehensive, since it contained an “etc.” at the end. Thus, the directives prohibited just about any religious group.

  The new law precluded such arbitrariness. It specifically stipulated that documents defining religious teachings and deciding other internal matters of religious organizations were not subject to registration. Government departments of religious affairs no longer possessed plenary powers and could no longer interfere in the internal affairs of religious organizations. As far as the law enforcement organs were concerned, holding religious beliefs could no longer in and of itself be seen as a violation of the law.

  Naturally, the process of drafting and passing the law did not occur in a vacuum. The Council on Religious Affairs estimated that at the beginning of 1991, there were about 70 million believers in the USSR belonging to almost fifty different denominations, sects, and tendencies. The situation became even more strained with regard to intra-church affairs. Centrifugal tendencies became sharply evident. In October 1990 the Ukrainian Orthodox Church separated from the Moscow Patriarchate. Mutual reproaches flew back and forth between the Moscow Patriarchate and all those who disagreed with it.

  The Moscow Patriarchate believed that it was one thing if the Ukrainian Orthodox Church became autonomous in the course of normal intra-church development, but it viewed the establishment of a Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church as an entirely different matter. The Autocephalous Church specifically accused the Russian Orthodox Church of having failed to maintain control of the situation in western Ukraine and of “having retreated without giving battle in the face of Catholic pressure.” Similar processes occurred in Moldova. The Moscow Patriarchate, with no less passion, reproached the Kiev ecclesiastical hierarchy for its inertia and for its inability to cope with the evolving situation.

  Relations between the Moscow Patriarchate and the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad became strained. However, they had never enjoyed cordial relations. The Moscow Patriarchate was considerably agitated when the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad established its first legal parish in the Vladimir district in 1990.

  Hints of normalizing relations between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Vatican and the dialogue that had commenced between them, as well as the strengthened position of Catholicism in various regions of the country, caused the so-called patriotic wing of the Russian Orthodox Church to attack the church leadership and accuse it of complicity in the “Catholicization” of Russia. Similar accusations were leveled at Gorbachev, especially after his conversation with John Paul II in the Vatican in 1989. The agents of darkness and regression accused Gorbachev of “plotting with the Vatican.”

  Problems relating to the Ukrainian Greek Catholics (Uniates), who were dominant in some districts of western Ukraine, proved especially complicated for both the government and the Moscow Patriarchate. According to official data the Uniate Church had four million to five million followers. Naturally the faithful demanded that both the government and the Russian Orthodox Church grant full juridical recognition to the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and restore it as an autonomous religious organization.

  In a number of western districts of the USSR, the Uniates became a symbol of personal freedom and national consciousness. It was useless and harmful to struggle against them. At sessions of the interdepartmental working group drafting a bill on freedom of conscience, we were told of occasions when the police received reports that a Uniate service was taking place literally two steps behind a police station. A military detail would be dispatched to the scene. It would return and report that no service was taking place. The original complainant would insist that it was and that even the singing was audible! He would be told that no one else but him had heard any singing, that he was imagining things, that he needed to rest up, otherwise . . . The complainant had no recourse but to return home.

  The hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church complained about both the inaction of the authorities as well as the severe shortage of Orthodox priests capable of conducting services in Ukrainian and of religious literature printed in Ukrainian. They asserted that the Vatican was skillfully and actively filling this vacuum in order to “implant” Catholicism in the USSR. The redistribution of church property was far from the last item on the Moscow Patriarchate’s list of complaints. It did not want to lose what it had received, while the Greek Catholics tried to recover what they had lost. Unfortunately, for too long the government failed to distinguish its own position from that of the church. The process of registering the Uniate communities only began in mid-1990 after a considerable delay.

  The new patriarch Aleksei II, who was well acquainted with the activity of the USSR Foreign Ministry in defense of the rights of believers and religious organizations, attended the final meeting of the parliamentary commission drafting the law. I refused the blessing of this KGB agent even though he may have been only a “former” agent. Regrettably, this law was not in force for long. The RSFSR parliament
began feverish attempts to draft its own law. It is a curious fact that those members of our commission who had been unable to persuade the commission of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR to adopt their own aggressively atheist and KGB-type approaches later joined the RSFSR parliamentary commission.

  I must confess that while I was involved in helping to resolve these religious problems, because of my own naïveté, I failed to realize that religion could be a commercial enterprise. The churchmen themselves were not so naive. They were well aware of this potential.

  A Page from the Book of Sorrows

  In the winter of 1986–87, a classified radio transcript summarizing foreign radio broadcasts into the USSR that was intended for the Soviet leadership’s use revealed the political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union. Eduard Shevardnadze instructed us to report to him promptly on this matter. From that evening serious efforts began to reform Soviet psychiatry, work in which I was engaged for several years. Frankly none of us suspected the scale of the tragedy or the depth and complexity of the problems confronting us. We possessed only moral reference points. By acquiring information we were able to adopt a position but not to analyze the problem comprehensively and devise appropriate and, most important, realistic proposals. Everything had been done to conceal the truth from outsiders’ eyes. Although they knew more than we did, the guardians of the law were in roughly the same position. Yet the main point soon became obvious: A healthy person who landed in a psychiatric hospital could be deprived of his or her will with a single jab in the arm. A second jab and the person would go mad. Practically no one who underwent such “treatment” emerged healthy.

  Among the main preoccupations of our Western partners concerned with human rights in the USSR were their lists of the prisoners of Soviet psychiatry. These lists contained the names of about three hundred persons who had been placed under psychiatric treatment for political reasons and often held criminally accountable under political and religious articles of the Criminal Code. Some among them had never had any connection to politics.