Kristina Stoeckl
The Russian Orthodox Church's Approach to Human Rights
Kristina Stoeckl - Fellow of the Austrian Program for Advanced Research and Technology (APART), Fellow of the Austrian Academy of Sciences at the University of Vienna, Department of Political Sciences (Vienna, Austria). kristina.stoeckl@eui.eu
This article looks at the ways in which the Russian Orthodox Church has approached the international human rights regime from the moment of its foundation - the 1948 "Declaration of Human Rights"- until the adoption of the "Teaching on Human Dignity, Freedom and Rights" by the Bishops Council of the Russian Orthodox Church in 2008. It is argued that within this period, the attitude of the Church has changed from outright rejection to critical acceptance. The article analyzes the political background for this shift and sheds light on ambivalent dynamics inside the Moscow Patriarchate during the last two decades.
Keywords: Russian Orthodox Church, religion in the USSR, human rights, religion and modernity.
In this article, we analyze the Russian Orthodox Church's approach to human rights from the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 to the publication of the Fundamentals of the Russian Orthodox Church's Teaching on Human Dignity, Freedom and Rights in 2008. From our point of view, the position of the Russian Orthodox Church has shifted over the past half-century from resolute denial to critical acceptance. Today, the Moscow Patriarchate uses the concept of human rights to achieve its own goals and defends a conservative understanding of human rights in a polemic with the liberalism and individualism of the international human rights system.
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1948 - the year of the signing of the Universal Declaration-can be considered a starting point for discussion of both convergence and disagreement between the position of the Russian Orthodox Church and the traditional concept of human rights, since it was then that international legal norms on human rights were formed. Knowing the ideological background of the position of the Russian Orthodox Church towards the very idea of human rights, which emerged during the French Revolution, one could go even further into history, during the Napoleonic Wars, when the ideas of the French Enlightenment began to influence the minds of the inhabitants of the Russian Empire. But I reject this perspective in advance, although I am aware of the need to take into account this history of thought development and remember that some of the Church's arguments against the concept of human rights (rights are the fruit of the anthropocentric and anti-religious pathos of the Enlightenment) were born in the XIX century as a result of intellectual battles between Slavophiles and Westerners1.
The article consists of three parts. In the first part, I will try to examine the issue of human rights from the point of view of the Russian Orthodox Church during the Cold War. In the second part, I will analyze the Church's approach to the issue of rights in the post-Soviet period, paying special attention to the" Fundamentals of the Social Concept " published by the Russian Orthodox Church in 2000. Finally, the third part will be devoted to the development and content of the aforementioned document entitled "Fundamentals of the Teaching of the Russian Orthodox Church on Human Dignity, Freedom and Rights", which is currently the most complete formulation of the Moscow Patriarchate's approach to human rights.
The Russian Orthodox Church and the concept of human rights during the Cold War
On December 10, 1948, at the UN General Assembly, during the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Soviet Union and its satellite states refrained from signing the document. The delegates from the U.S.S.R. were critical of the document, especially of articles 18 to 21 of the third part, which, in their opinion, should have been better " aligned with the interests of the workers
1. Bowring, B. (2013) Law, Rights and Ideology in Russia. London, New York: Routledge.
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classes and be used to strengthen socialism"2. However, twenty years later, in 1968, the Soviet Union signed two important international instruments regulating human rights and translating the principles of the Declaration into the language of current law, namely the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ratified in 1973). In 1975, the USSR also signed the Helsinki Final Act of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe. The Helsinki Accords did not legally bind the participating countries, but required political recognition of human rights. The" Principles Governing relations between Participating States " listed in the Final Act implied that participating States would have to "respect human rights and fundamental freedoms, including freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief" and "act in accordance with the purposes and principles of the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights" (Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe, 1975) 3.
At the time of signing the Universal Declaration, the Russian Orthodox Church was not ready to react to this event or imagine the possible impact of the document on the life of the Church. In the late 1940s, the Russian Orthodox Church was just recovering from three decades of severe harassment that had almost completely destroyed its institutional structure, and was beginning to gradually recover, albeit under strict state control. Throughout the Cold War, the Church remained silent on the issue of human rights, neither reacting to the signing of three international agreements by the USSR, nor to the constant violations of the rights of believers. The agreement between the Soviet government and the Church implied the latter's release from repression in exchange for an unconditionally loyal attitude to the Soviet state. It is this loyalty that has led to silence on human rights issues and violations, including religious persecution. In the 18th article of the General
2. Glendon, M. (2001) A World MadeNew. Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, p. 184. New York: Random House.
3. It goes without saying that the signing of these international agreements did not prevent the Soviet Government from restricting individual rights and freedoms. The most glaring discrepancy between the obligations assumed under international law and actual actions was the harassment and arrest of members of the Moscow Helsinki Group, formed in 1976.
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Declaration of human Rights.: "Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change one's religion or belief and freedom to manifest one's religion or belief, either alone or in community with others, in public or private, in teaching, worship and performance of religious and ritual practices." Given the state of the Church in the late 1940s, such guarantees seemed an impossible dream. But there was also an internal ecclesiological side to the Church's denial that religious freedom was being violated in the USSR: before and during World War II, some parts of the Russian Orthodox Church declared their independence from the Moscow Patriarchate. In particular, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church4 and the Russian Church in Western Europe. After 1945, Patriarch Alexy, with the support of the Soviet government, did everything possible to bring the breakaway groups back under Moscow's jurisdiction.
In short, at the time of signing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Russian Orthodox Church found itself in a deeply paradoxical situation: at a time when major international organizations were asserting religious freedom as one of the core values of the post-war world order, including in order to put an end to religious persecution by communists, the Russian Orthodox Church, itself, and the entire suffering from the harsh restrictions of the Soviet regime, she tried to deny the persecution of religious beliefs in the USSR by all possible means. There were two reasons for this denial: first, the Church remained silent out of fear of reprisals, and second, the interests of the Moscow Patriarchate, in the context of the aforementioned separation of Orthodox Churches, often coincided with the interests of the Soviet government. The individual right to freedom of religion could not be sincerely recognized by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1948, both for political and pragmatic reasons and for internal ecclesiological reasons.
This paradoxical situation took place throughout the Cold War, and it was this situation that caused open clashes between the leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church and those believers who demanded freedom of religion and recognition
4. Miner, S.M. (2003) Stalin's Holy War: Religion, Nationalism, and Alliance Politics 1941 - 1945, p. 101. Chapel Hill, London: The University of North Carolina Press.
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of human rights. The most famous example is the story of father Gleb Yakunin. In 1975, Gleb Yakunin and Lev Regelson wrote an appeal to the delegates of the Assembly of the World Council of Churches, which was then meeting in Nairobi. In their letter, they accused the Soviet Union of religious persecution, and also accused the Russian Orthodox Church of inaction and complicity with the Soviet regime. It is not surprising that the official delegation of the Russian Orthodox Church tried to divert attention from this appeal and condemn its authors, but the Assembly of the World Council of Churches considered the letter and proposed a resolution in which it demanded " that the issue of religious freedom become a topic of serious discussions with representatives of Churches of the states that signed the Helsinki5. This event is of great importance, since it was then that the Moscow Patriarchate first encountered the issue of the human right to worship as an international legal norm.
During the Cold War, the Church did not express its position on human rights, which established themselves as independent international legal norms. Until 1929, the only official comments made by representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church on the issue of human rights were Metropolitan Nikodim's statement in 1963 and Alexey Osipov's article "Theological Aspects of Human Rights" published in the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate in 1984. Both of these examples are very clear.
During his first speech at the "Christian Peace Conference" in Prague in 1963, Metropolitan Nicodemus uttered the following words: "Every civil right [ ... ].. it has true value only if it is used for the benefit of society, one's home country, and all of humanity, and not to protect the interests of a selfish individual or a privileged class."6. Webster, the author of the book in which this quote is quoted, calls Nicodemus ' words "a socialist version of human rights." Indeed, the Marxist background in Nicodemus ' speech can be seen with the naked eye, especially in his understanding of the relationship between human rights and property: "Is it possible, from a Christian point of view, to consider it true freedom to protect the indisputable rights of the individual to the means of production-
5. Kelly, D. (1976) "Nairobi: A Door Opened", Religion in Communist Lands 4 (1): 5.
6.Cit. по: Webster, A. F. C. (1993) The Price of Prophecy. Orthodox Churches on Peace, Freedom, and Security, p. 51. Washington: Ethics and Public Policy Center.
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properties that belong to society as a whole?"7.The fact that the representative of the Church in his speech referred to Article 17 of the Universal Declaration (the right to own property) indicates that Nicodemus recognized the communist ideological requirements for the role of the Russian Orthodox Church. However, in the light of the massive requisitions of church property organized by the Bolsheviks in the midst of the struggle against the "privileged class" of the clergy, the last rhetorical question of the metropolitan sounds especially bitter and cynical. At a time when property ownership rights were gaining international legal status, and church property in the USSR had recently been almost completely confiscated, that is, when the Russian Orthodox Church itself felt like a victim of a violation of Article 17, its representatives supported the idea of collective property. Of course, this is also part of the general paradoxical situation that the Russian Orthodox Church found itself in during the Soviet period. Once again, however, Nicodemus ' motives for attacking the idea of human rights were twofold. On the one hand, he had no choice as a representative of the Church under the heel of the Soviet regime; on the other hand, the socialist state and the Church were equally afraid that individual rights would increase people's selfishness.
Alexey Osipov's article published in the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate in 1984 makes the theological argument more explicit. In this article, Osipov noted that freedom is a relative, not an absolute right and can be considered "good" only if it contributes to the development of good qualities of a person and society. From this point of view, he criticized the philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev: "And N. Berdyaev was profoundly wrong in asserting the primacy of freedom. Freedom, understood as an unlimited right to act, is not just a positive reality, but a temptation that overcomes the first man and overcomes his descendants."8. Leaving aside the legitimacy of Berdyaev's criticism, we note that Osipov connects the concept of freedom with sin - a person can use freedom to satisfy their own interests. For this reason, freedom in society should always be "limited": "Freedom, for example,
7. Ibid., p. 52.
8. Osipov A. Bogoslovskie aspekty prav cheloveka [Theological aspects of human rights]. Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate, 1984, No. 5, pp. 56-60.
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words, seals, and the like are unquestionably a normal phenomenon in a democratic society. However, it remains so as long as it does not exceed its positive limits, that is, as long as it serves the good of man. When this freedom is turned into its opposite, that is, into the preaching of lies, slander, pornography, propaganda of violence, war, and so on, it becomes an evil and can no longer be called a human right and have the right to exist in society."9
About halfway through his article, Osipov mentions the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Helsinki Agreement. He calls these agreements "authoritative international documents", but notes:"...Here we touch upon another theological aspect of the problem of human rights-the limits of those rights that are truly necessary for a person. " 10 Osipov writes that "there is a tendency for such an unlimited expansion of rights, which are quite positive in themselves, that they turn into their opposite "11. This emphasis on" borders " anticipates the current arguments of Orthodoxy, as well as Osipov's other idea that the level of "maturity" of society should be taken into account in human rights issues: "Human rights in it should develop, and not be immediately and unconditionally given, that is, their boundaries (we are talking about generally accepted rights) should expand and deepen as the moral and spiritual growth of society" 12. In his article, Osipov not only distinguishes between positive and negative freedom and insists on limiting individual human rights (both thoughts are characteristic of the discourse of the Russian Orthodox Church in the 1990s and 2000s), but also emphasizes the original theological (and not exclusively political) background of the issue of human rights. Until 1991, it was inconceivable that the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church would be able to argue with the Soviet government about human rights, but after 1991, something else became clear: the Church was not going to accept the idea of human rights with open arms. Nicodemus ' 1963 speech and Osipov's 1984 article made clear the Church's doubts about the very concept of human rights.
9. Osipov A. Bogoslovskie aspekty prav cheloveka [Theological aspects of human rights].
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid., p. 59.
12. Ibid.
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The Russian Orthodox Church and Human Rights after 1991, Osnovy Sotsial'noy Kontseptsii, 2000
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Church was completely freed from political and ideological clutches, but it soon became clear that liberal democracy and the concept of human rights were unlikely to gain a passionate ally. Two factors contributed to the deterioration of the Russian Orthodox Church's attitude to international human rights norms: first, the contradiction of these norms with the position and self-understanding of the Russian Orthodox Church as the majority religion in matters of religion; second, the Church's concerns about the liberalization and pluralization of Russian society.
After 1991, the Patriarchate did not change its Cold War - era view that religious freedom leads to the destruction of canonical and territorial cohesion rather than to the flourishing of church life. In the first half of the 1990s, the Moscow Patriarchate was concerned about the activities of the Catholic and Protestant Churches aimed at proselytizing (the conversion of people of other faiths to their faith). The Russian Orthodox Church did not present the issue in terms of personal choice of a particular denomination at its own will, but in terms of the risk of the emergence and flourishing of "totalitarian sects" and the erosion of "Russian Orthodox identity" .13 The 1997 Law on Freedom of Conscience, which somewhat restricted the activities of new religious groups in the Russian Federation, was in line with the desire of the Moscow Patriarchate. religious pluralism "under control" 14.
But in 1997, the legal situation in Russia was different from what it was in Soviet times, and the Moscow Patriarchate had to constantly respond to disputes over religious freedom. In 1996, the Russian Federation became a member of the Council of Europe. The Russian Federation has ratified the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms-
13. Papkova, I. (2011) The Orthodox Church and Russian Politics, pp. 74 - 93. New York, Washington DC: Oxford University and Woodrow Wilson Center Press; Shterin, M.S. (1998) "Local laws restricting religion in Russia: precursors of Russia's new national law", Journal of Church and State 40 (2).
14. Gvosdev, N. K. (2002) "'Managed Pluralism' and Civil Religion in Post-Soviet Russia", in Christopher Marsh and Nikolas K. Gvosdev (eds) Civil Society and the Search for Justice in Russia, pp. 57 - 87. Lanham: Lexington Books.
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aml and became accountable to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. It soon became clear that international legal legislation would have a direct impact on church life. Let us recall the case of St. Michael's Parish, which was brought before the court in 2001 and resolved in 2007. This is a parish in Kiev, which was founded in 1989 as a parish of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, and ten years later they wanted to reassign it to the Kiev Patriarchate. This issue of changing denominations led to a split within the parish and disputes over which of the patriarchates the church building itself belongs to. Local authorities supported the position of the Moscow Patriarchate and refused to recognize the new status of the parish. Then supporters of the Kiev Patriarchate appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, which found a violation of Article 9 (freedom of religion)in the actions of the Ukrainian authorities.15. Thus, international human rights norms have shown that they can really destroy the canonical territorial integrity of the Moscow Patriarchate. The second of these factors is the liberalization of Russian post-Soviet society. The 1990s are seen by many in Russia as a period of disorder and lawlessness, but it was also a time of unprecedented cultural and social pluralism. From the Church's point of view, this pluralism was not a positive phenomenon. Two areas of particular suspicion were freedom for homosexuals and the proliferation of art and show business. The Church strongly condemned homosexuality as a sin, and considered freedom of artistic expression fraught with the possibility of offending the feelings of believers. Controversy surrounding the organization of gay parades in Russian cities and the public outcry caused by the exhibition " Beware of Religion!" in the Center of them. Sakharov Street in Moscow are just two examples of the human rights controversy that took shape between secular liberal human rights activists and representatives of religious institutions in the mid-2000s. For artists and human rights activists, accusations and criticism from the Church meant that individual freedoms in Russia were under threat, and politics was becoming more and more clerical. Representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church, on the other hand, say-
15. ECHR (2007) "Case of Svyato-Mykhaylivska Parafiya v. Ukraine", European Court of Human Rights, Strasbourg no. 14 December 2007 (Application no. 77703/01).
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They talked about the decline in public morals and warned against a return to Soviet "militant atheism", presenting themselves as victims.
It is not surprising that in the light of what was said above about the Russian Orthodox Church, its first dogmatic document dealing with human rights - "Fundamentals of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church", adopted by the Council of Bishops in 2000 - was negative in nature. In the fourth section (Christian ethics and secular law) of this document, human rights are called a product of secularism and self-sufficient humanism:
As secularization progressed, the lofty principles of unalienable human rights were transformed into the notion of the rights of the individual outside of his connection with God. At the same time, the protection of individual freedom was transformed into the protection of self-will (as long as it does not harm other individuals), as well as the requirement from the state to guarantee a certain material level of existence of the individual and family. In the system of modern secular humanistic understanding of civil rights, man is treated not as an image of God, but as a self-sufficient and self-sufficient subject.16
The "Foundations of the Social Concept" presented the very issue of human rights as fundamentally alien to theology and the life of the Church. Those who developed the "Foundations of the Social Concept" made it clear that the Church entered this alien legal dispute only with the soteriological task of answering the question: What should an Orthodox Christian do if legislation based on the concept of human rights contradicts his Christian beliefs?17. The "Foundations of the Social Concept" provides a radical answer: if the state starts passing laws that contradict Christian beliefs, the Church will call for civil disobedience 18. Thus, the document left the Russian Orthodox Church in a position of open confrontation with the concept of human rights.
16. Fundamentals of the social concept of the Russian Orthodox Church. 2000. IV. 7.
17. Agadjanian, A. (2010) "Liberal Individual and Christian Culture: Russian Orthodox Teaching on Human Rights in Social Theory Perspective", Religion, State and Society 38 (2): 97 - 113.
18. Fundamentals of the social concept. IV. 8.
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However, in 2000, the Moscow Patriarchate issued another text stating that the fourth paragraph of the "Fundamentals of the Social Concept" is not the final position of the Church on the issue of human rights. On February 16, 2000, Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, the current Patriarch, wrote an article for Nezavisimaya Gazeta that began::
The fundamental contradiction of our era and at the same time the main challenge to the human community in the XXI century is the confrontation of liberal civilizational standards, on the one hand, and the values of national cultural and religious identity, on the other. The study of genesis and the search for possible ways to overcome the contradictions between these two decisive factors of modern development should, as it seems, occupy an important place in Orthodox theological studies. Since we are talking about a problem whose solution can largely determine the future shape of human civilization, it is clear that the very statement of this problem and the attempt to determine its primary definition [ ... ] causes not only sincere interest, but also no less sincere anger. Angry are those who, for certain ideological reasons, reject the very idea of posing such a problem, fearing a possible correction or even revision in the future of the liberal ideas on which the attempt to shape the image of the human community in the "melting pot" of civilizations and cultures is based today. They are also angry with the zealots of religious and cultural fundamentalism, who have long solved all the problems for themselves and are deeply convinced that the only way to save themselves is to close the door of their home tightly. 19
Kirill concludes that critical and creative interaction with liberal values is one of the most important tasks of Orthodox theology.20 It is very symbolic that Nezavisimaya Gazeta published reproductions of a 19th-century woodcut print by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, a German romantic artist, under the titles "Is-
19. Kirill, Metropolitan of Smolensk and Kaliningrad. The norm of faith as the norm of life. Part 1 / / Nezavisimaya gazeta. 16.02.2000; Kirill, Metropolitan of Smolensk and Kaliningrad. The norm of faith as the norm of life. Part 2 / / Nezavisimaya gazeta. 17.02.2000.
20. Ibid.
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healing of two blind men " and "Jesus and the Apostles in the storm". Both illustrations and their symbolism represented the theme of the article, namely, the conflict between two parties who were "blind" in their zeal, as well as the statement of the fact of the crisis in the Church. Kirill tried to distance himself from both types of "blindness": he did not call, like liberal secularists, for unconditional acceptance of modern secular values of the West, but neither did he take the side of fanatical adherents of the Church who refuse to even discuss the issue of human rights and reject the rationalism that, by the way, gave rise to them. Kirill also calls for the search for a third way. This" third way " initially deviated from the dogmatism of the "Fundamentals of the Social Concept" and, as I will show below, led eight years later to the appearance of another document-the "Fundamentals of the teaching of the Russian Orthodox Church on Human Dignity, Freedom and Rights".
The Search for the Middle and the "Doctrine of Dignity" 2008
Since the mid-2000s, a change in the Church's attitude to human rights has become evident-from complete denial to "acceptance through denial"21. This strategy consisted of theoretically adopting the language of human rights, while denying specific forms of their practical application. A distinctive feature of this new approach is a deeper knowledge of the Western legal regime, its history, and current legal issues. This strategy was adopted from the moment Metropolitan Kirill first quoted - and then did so many more times - article 29 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
1. Everyone has obligations to society, in which only the free and full development of his personality is possible.
2. In the exercise of their rights and freedoms, everyone should be subject only to such restrictions as are established by law solely for the purpose of ensuring due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and satisfying just needs.
21. Agadjanian, A. (2010) "Liberal Individual and Christian Culture: Russian Orthodox Teaching on Human Rights in Social Theory Perspective", Religion, State and Society 38 (2): 97 - 113.
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requirements of morality, public order and general welfare in a democratic society.
3. The exercise of these rights and freedoms must in no case be contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
This "discovery" of the twenty-ninth article strongly influenced the debate over human rights within the Russian Orthodox Church, which no longer opposed itself to the Western individualistic understanding of human rights. Instead, the Church saw itself as the defender of a genuine understanding of human rights, as reflected in article 29. This understanding emphasizes the importance of morality and responsibilities to society. This strategy was made explicit in several speeches by Kirill several years before the publication of The Fundamentals of Teaching....
At a seminar held in Strasbourg from 30 to 31 October 2006, entitled "The evolution of moral principles and human rights in a multicultural society", he said: "I am convinced that concerns about spiritual needs, which are more often based on traditional morality, should return to the public sphere. The observance of moral standards should become a public matter. And it is the human rights mechanism that can contribute to this. I am talking specifically about the return of the norm, since it was spelled out in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. " 22
Metropolitan Kirill expressed the same idea in his speech to UNESCO on March 13, 2007: "The Orthodox Church today proposes to return to the understanding of the role of human rights in public life, which was laid down in 1948. Moral norms can be a real constraint on the realization of human rights in the public sphere." 23
This thesis was repeated by Patriarch Alexy II, who addressed the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on October 2, 2007. He mentioned not only the Universal Declaration, but also the European Convention on Human Rights:
22. Kirill, Metropolitan of Smolensk and Kaliningrad. The norm of faith as the norm of life. Part 1 / / Nezavisimaya gazeta. 16.02.2000.
23. Speech of Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad at the UNESCO International Seminar. Paris, 13-14 March 2007 [http://pravovrns.ru/? p=439. accessed from 27.10.2010].
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However, today there is a disastrous break in the relationship between human rights and morality for European civilization. This is evident in the emergence of a new generation of rights that contradict morality, as well as in the justification of immoral acts through human rights. In this regard, I would like to remind all of us that the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms includes a reference to morality, which should be taken into account in human rights activities. I am convinced that the authors of this convention included morality in its text not as a vague concept, but as a well-defined element of the entire system of human rights.24
This position was confirmed by the words of Metropolitan Hilarion two years after the publication of the Fundamentals of the Teaching of the Russian Orthodox Church on Human Dignity, Freedom and Rights:
It is worth noting that the post-war documents establishing the concept of human rights really reflected the link between freedom and moral responsibility. The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 1950 European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms link human rights to morality. But in more recent documents, such as the European Union Charter on Human Rights, morality is not mentioned at all. Thus, freedom is completely separated from morality.25
What do all these quotes tell us? It is obvious that during the development of the "Fundamentals of Teaching", the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church was already well versed in modern political and legislative aspects of human rights. In particular, the Moscow Patriarchate has found and learned to use those parts of the modern concept of human rights that are associated with the legal possibility of restricting rights in order to maintain public morality. The Church has now abandoned the position of outright denial evident in the 2000 Fundamentals of the Social Concept.
24. Speech of His Holiness Patriarch Alexy at the regular session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. October 2, 2007 [http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/301 775-html, accessed from 27.10.2010].
25. Fundamentals of the Russian Orthodox Church's teaching on human dignity, freedom and Rights. 2008.
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In 2006, the Moscow Patriarchate issued another document related to human rights. To be precise, the "Declaration on Human Rights and Dignity" of the World Russian People's Council was not a church document. But the chairman of this non-governmental organization is the Patriarch, so the document was undoubtedly created with the direct participation of the Church. It is now clear that this Declaration was the first step towards the formulation of the"Fundamentals of Teaching". However, when the Declaration was released in 2006, its strong anti-Western and anti-liberal pathos was perceived as a continuation of the course taken in the Fundamentals of the Social Concept six years earlier.
The Declaration on Human Rights and Dignity established the link between human rights and morality. The wording of this link in the document sounds a bit ornate: "it cannot but be connected" and emphasizes the essential (almost ontological) nature of the connection between human rights and morality. The authors of the Declaration distinguish between the value of a person and human dignity, stating that the achievement of the latter depends on moral life and behavior: "A person as an image of God has a special value that cannot be taken away. It must be respected by each of us, society and the state. By doing good, a person gains dignity. Thus, we distinguish between the value and dignity of the individual. Value is what is given, dignity is what is acquired. " 26
The distinction between" human worth "and" human dignity " proved to be untenable from the theological point of view. It is not surprising that two years later, in the Fundamentals of Teaching, the concept of "human values" is not used. But the very fact that such a distinction was made in the document of the World People's Russian Council shows a new-affirming-strategy of the Moscow Patriarchate in relation to the concept of human rights, linking dignity and morality.
The first chapter of the Fundamentals of the Russian Orthodox Church's Teaching on Human Dignity, Freedom, and Rights, published in 2008, is entirely devoted to human dignity as a religious and moral category. It says that from the Orthodox point of view, human dignity is related to the creation of people "in the image and likeness of God." The image of God in man is called
26. Declaration on Human Rights and Dignity. 2006 [http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/103 235-html, accessed from 27.10.2010].
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the document is a source of human dignity. It remains unchanged even after the fall, that is, human sinfulness is not able to destroy the God-given dignity. With this statement, the "Fundamentals of Teaching "corrected the not quite clear distinction between this" value "and acquired" dignity", drawn by the authors of the" Declaration on Human Rights and Dignity " of the World Russian People's Council. However, even for the authors of the Fundamentals of the Doctrine, human dignity is not something absolute: for the Church, the likeness of man to God is the source of understanding how people can overcome sin and restore human life "in the fullness of its original perfection "27:" a life befitting dignity is related to the concept of God's likeness, which by Divine grace is achieved through overcoming sin the acquisition of moral purity and virtues [...] the idea of what is worthy and what is unworthy is strongly connected with the moral or immoral actions of a person and with the inner state of his soul. Given the sin-darkened state of human nature, it is important to clearly distinguish between what is worthy and what is unworthy in a person's life. " 28 And here is how the authors of the Fundamentals of Teaching explained what " a decent life is, according to the original vocation inherent in the nature of man, created to participate in the good life of God "29:" ...the moral norms inherent in human nature, as well as the moral norms contained in Divine revelation, reveal God's plan for man and his salvation." intended use. They are the guiding principles for a good life worthy of the God-created nature of man. " 30 These moral norms are known through revelation (the example of Jesus Christ, scripture, tradition) and conscience. Human nature is an unreliable source of morality, as it is potentially sinful ("living according to the law of the flesh" 31). For this reason, the document attaches special importance to repentance: "That is why the patristic and ascetic thought, the liturgical tradition of the Church speak more about the unworthiness of a person due to sin than about his dignity."32. The first chapter ends
27. Fundamentals of teaching. I. 1.
28. Fundamentals of teaching. I. 2.
29. Fundamentals of teaching. I. 3.
30. Fundamentals of teaching. I. 3.
31. Fundamentals of teaching. I. 4.
32. Fundamentals of teaching. I. 5.
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in the following words: "According to the Orthodox tradition, a person's preservation of God-given dignity and growth in it is conditioned by living in accordance with moral norms, because these norms express the primordial, and therefore true nature of a person, not overshadowed by sin."
Thus, the Russian Orthodox Church has established a direct link between human dignity and morality. At the risk of exaggerating a little, we might say that the "Fundamentals of Teaching" became the theological justification for article 29 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:"...Everyone should be exposed to [...] restrictions [... The text of the document and everything that accompanied its adoption and publication show that by 2008 the Moscow Patriarchate had begun to accept the concept of human rights and use its language, as well as the provisions of other international legal agreements, to justify its position on the issue of human rights. its own conservative position on human rights. The transition from denial to acceptance was made possible by two concepts that are necessary from the Church's point of view for considering the concepts of freedom in public life within the framework of the modern legal regime: "legal restrictions" and "morality". And if previous statements, starting with Osipov's article in 1984 and ending with the" Fundamentals of the Social Concept "in 2000, denied human rights as the fruit of an unlimited understanding of human freedom and godless "selfishness", then the "Fundamentals of Teaching" in 2008 already use the very concept of human rights in order to affirm the Church's view of social order. There is evidence that the drafters of the document were aware of this shift, and that they learned a lot from creating it. Hegumen Filaret (Bulekov), then representative of the Moscow Patriarchate in Strasbourg, said that the document was intended to destroy at least two stereotypes about Russian Orthodoxy.: that the Orthodox Church does not address the issue of human rights and that the Church is generally against human rights 33. It is very important to understand that the stereotypes mentioned by Filaret (Bulekov) existed not only outside, but also inside Rus-
33. REOR (2008) "Russkaya Pravoslanaya Tserkov sformulirovala osnovy ucheniya о dostoinstve, svobode i pravakh cheloveka", Website of the Representation of the Russian Orthodox Church in Strasbourg.
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Russian Orthodox Church. The "Fundamentals of Teaching" were created, among other things, to clarify their internal position.
A clear indicator of the tensions and ambiguities that remain within the church discourse is the pastoral address of the Council of Bishops in June 2008, in which the concept of human rights was severely condemned, although it was this council that recently adopted the "Fundamentals of Teaching": "The idea of human rights has become one of the main ones in shaping the laws and policies of states. This idea is sometimes used to justify sin and to belittle the role of religion in society, to deprive people of the opportunity to live according to their faith"34. The apparent discrepancy between the pure denial of human rights and the language of the "Fundamentals of Teaching" demonstrates the tension and ambivalence of the position of the Moscow Patriarchate on the issue of human rights. The Patriarchate's strategy, as expressed in the document just published, contradicted the point of view of uncompromising conservatives from the Church, who during the Bishops ' Council "picketed at the entrance to the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, speaking out against "heretics from the Synod", mobile phones, TIN and other "devilry" " 35.
The release of the "Fundamentals of the Doctrine of Human Rights" can thus be interpreted as the emergence of a middle, third path of resistance to liberal values, the outline of which was outlined by Kirill in an article in 2000. This path lies between those "who, due to certain ideological considerations, reject the very idea of raising such a problem, fearing a possible correction or even revision of liberal ideas in the future", and those zealots of "religious and cultural fundamentalism", who have long solved all the problems for themselves and are deeply convinced that "the only way to save themselves is to find a way out."it is to close the door of your home tightly. " 36
Conclusion
Our article reviews more than half a century of the Russian Orthodox Church's opposition to international legal human rights standards. This confrontation was caused, on the one hand, by-
34. Epistle of the Consecrated Council of Bishops to the clergy, monastics and laity of the Russian Orthodox Church. February 5, 2013.
35. Moshkin M. Rights are not a dogma / / Vremya. 27.06.2008.
36. Kirill, Metropolitan of Smolensk and Kaliningrad. The norm of faith as the norm of life. Part 1 / / Nezavisimaya gazeta. 16.02.2000.
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On the one hand, there is a political context, but on the other hand, there are purely religious reasons. In Soviet times, the Moscow Patriarchate did not accept the modern concept of human rights simultaneously for political and internal church reasons. In the post-Soviet era, the view of the Russian Orthodox Church remained generally negative, but since the mid-2000s, it has gradually begun to change from negative to accepting this concept from the standpoint of conservatism. In modern Russia, this conservative view of human rights has gradually shifted to the Church's support for an authoritarian political project. However, it should be remembered that article 29 of the Universal Declaration, which became the starting point of dialogue for Russian Orthodox theologians, says not only that human rights should not contradict public morality. It also says that public morality itself must be "fair" and"democratic." And we still have to see whether the concept of human rights in the context of article 29 becomes the Achilles ' heel of the church's argument (if there is no connection between public morality and democracy, then it turns out that everything comes down to political pragmatism) or a Pandora's box, a real engine for further democratic discussion, which Russian society so much wants.
Translated from English by Valentin Frolov
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