c. 1996 Religion News Service

MOSCOW (RNS)-Gennady Zyuganov insists the Communist Party of Russia bears no responsibility for the crimes of the Soviet era, including the mass destruction of churches and the persecution of believers.”We’re not guilty of anything,”the stocky, balding Communist leader and presidential contender grumbled recently before an audience of rapt pensioners in the Siberian city of Perm, once a center of the gulag system of concentration camps that took millions of lives. The party has changed, he has told voters throughout Russia, and now welcomes believers into its fold.

There is no contradiction, he claims, because a comparison of Christianity and communism shows that Jesus was, in fact, the first communist, preaching the same ideals of social justice. Television interviews with Zyuganov taped in his office show a portrait of Lenin and several Russian Orthodox icons on the wall behind his desk.

Patriarch Alexii II has made it clear, however, that he wants nothing to do with the Communists, who are aiming to regain power in the June 16 presidential elections. Polls show Zyuganov as President Boris Yeltsin’s main challenger. “We are not politicians, but we cannot stay outside of politics,”the head of the Russian Orthodox Church said during an April visit to Tbilisi, Georgia.”Today in this fateful time for Russia, President Boris Yeltsin has played a great role in uniting the people. If the old regime comes back to power, the country will suffer new tremors.” In the five years since the breakup of the Soviet Union, thousands of churches have been returned to believers, Orthodox schools and orphanages have been opened, and religious education is unrestricted, all things that were tightly controlled or banned by the Soviet Communists.

Warnings about the damage wrought by 70 years of communism are the keystone of Yeltsin’s campaign, combined with free-spending populism aimed at voters disaffected by unpaid wages and disintegrating social services. He speaks of freedom of conscience made possible by reform. While the patriarch is often by his side at state events in the Kremlin, Yeltsin has not invoked the church in his campaign as blatantly as Zyuganov.

As the candidate of the People’s Patriotic Bloc, the communist-nationalist alliance that he heads, Zyuganov has visited monasteries and appealed to believers during campaign stops. On a recent campaign swing he was accompanied by a nationalist folk singer who urged people to vote for Zyuganov so Russia can once again be a”spiritual”country. To make her point the folk singer sang a song called”Orthodoxy”about the flood of Western decadence threatening to engulf”Mother Russia”and the Orthodoxy that can save it from the”deluge.” But in his direct contacts with the church, Zyuganov has shown that he is far from familiar with its traditions and not always a welcome guest.

At the famous Deveyevo monastery of St. Seraphim of Sarov, Zyuganov stood awkwardly as a nun attempted to show him how to venerate the relics of the revered saint. Metropolitan Nikolai, the head of the monastery, refused to greet him. Zyuganov went directly from the monastery to lay flowers at the base of the statue of Lenin in the center of town.

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Governor Boris Nemtsov of the Nizhny Novgorod region, where the monastery is located, said such actions had made him change his mind about Zyuganov. He had previously said there is nothing to fear if the Communist wins the elections. The two were mutually unimpressed after a personal meeting. “I asked him, `Gennady Andreyevich, you brought flowers to Lenin’s monument then took the rest and went to an Orthodox church. How can you do that?’,”said Nemtsov, a popular young reformer.”He answered, `Boris Yefimovich, let me tell you, the history of Russia is a very complicated thing.’ How can he say things like that? … How can he combine Orthodoxy and communism? These are two completely incompatible things.”(END OPTIONAL TRIM)

A small group of Russian Orthodox clergy, however, has openly declared its support for Zyuganov. Some are actually monarchists angry about the Western influence that democratic reform has brought to Russia.

Ideologues within the Communist Party of Russia have appealed to them with their promise to recognize Orthodoxy, Buddhism and Islam as”traditional”Russian religions that would have privileged status. Judaism is”somewhat alien to Russia,”said Alexander Shabanov, the party’s ideology chief. Russia must also be protected from the numerous sects that have flooded the country under reforms, he says. Protestant and Catholic groups are not distinguished from cults in this general category.

And not all Communists are as well disposed towards Orthodoxy. Viktor Anpilov, head of the radical Working Russia Party, part of Zyuganov’s bloc, has threatened that if the Communists win, the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, now being reconstructed several blocks from the Kremlin, may be destroyed again. The original cathedral was blown up at Stalin’s orders in 1931.

Aman Tuleyev, widely considered to be the heir apparent to Zyuganov in the patriotic bloc, accuses the church of being at Yeltsin’s beck and call.

Patriarch Alexii is now persona non grata even among Communists who say they support the church.”In our state, the patriarch is not the whole church. His opinion is just one opinion,”said Alexei Podberyozkin, head of the Spiritual Heritage Foundation, a nationalist group that is closely allied with Zyuganov.”The bishops and leaders of the parishes, they reflect church opinions.” Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk, head of the church’s external relations department, whom some have suspected of supporting Zyuganov, criticized clergy who openly back Zyuganov. They have a right to their personal opinion, he recently told reporters, but they must ensure that”there is no confusion in the popular consciousness between a person’s personal position and that of the church.” Priests who are against Zyuganov worry that such confusion is inevitable.”There is a popular thirst for God on top of a complete lack of knowledge,”said the Rev. Georgy Chistyakov of the Church of Saints Cosmos and Damian in the center of Moscow, known for its active social work and liberal preaching.”So it’s very easy for today’s religiosity to be used as ideology, for political goals.”

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