Duma Protests and the Russian Orthodox Church

The general sense this week is that something has changed in Russia. The people definitely feel it, as demonstrated by the protests. Investors feel it, and some are pulling their money out of Russia's stock market.

Now the Russian Orthodox Church has chimed in, albeit in a somewhat oblique way.

"It is evident that the secretive nature of certain elements of the electoral system concerns people, and there must be more public control over this system," said Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, the most prominent spokesman for the church, in remarks to a widely followed Orthodox news Web site. "We must decide together how to do this through civilized public dialogue."

That's a very convoluted way of saying "We're not sure what just happened, but we think we may not like it. Also, stay calm everybody."

The Russian Orthodox Church is a notoriously conservative institution, in the sense that it is truly ancient, and change has not been good to it. The church has also repeatedly been labeled as either a partner or puppet of the Putin/Medvedev administration. I've expressed concerns about its close cooperation with the state before too. At left is the Patriarch and the Prime Minister with a descendant of imperial nobility.

Still, the Moscow Patriarchate has denied such criticism in the past, and now the Church is the one giving the criticism. The same NYT article linked above [and again here] also quotes an unnamed Orthodox priest:

Falsification of the choice of the people is a grievous sin. There can be no justification for it.

The article then goes on to quote the editor of a popular Orthodox website, who says

A Christian has to protest against lies, especially lies to millions...

A particularly outspoken priest has an article on that same website comparing the Ruling Powers to the Pharisees in the Gospels. He gets pretty impassioned, and ends with this plea:

This election is a very rare model of lies and hypocrisy. And Christians should not and cannot tolerate it.

Precisely which external measures should be taken to counter this blatant lie is not really for me to say. But just to give up and pretend that everything is fine – this is, in my opinion, a sin against one’s conscience, against one’s country, and against our past and our future.

This quote probably does not reflect the official opinion of the Russian Orthodox Church. But, if its clergymen feel safe throwing this kind of criticism at the ruling powers, then maybe something really has changed.