A.P. - 1.17.2002

 

Associated Press

Russia Probes Church Anti-Semitism

By Alexei Vladykin

YEKATERINBURG, Russia - After years of complaints by a Jewish group, Russian prosecutors have opened a criminal inquiry into the sale of anti-Semitic texts by a Russian Orthodox Church diocese in the Ural Mountains region.

The case marks a rare effort to prosecute anyone on charges of inciting religious intolerance in Russia, and is the first time federal authorities have challenged the country's majority church over alleged anti-Semitism.

The inquiry began last month after prosecutors received a protest from 16 non-governmental organizations in the Sverdlovsk region. They objected to the Yekaterinburg diocese's sale of a book by a czarist-era priest, Sergei Nilus, and diocese newspapers containing allegedly anti-Semitic material.

Church officials in Yekaterinburg have said Nilus' writings do not target Jews.

The case was initiated by Mikhail Oshtrakh, founder of the Atikva Jewish cultural organization in Yekaterinburg, about 900 miles east of Moscow.

"Nilus openly calls Jews the Anti-Christ and enemies of Christianity. And believers take this literature as religious teaching, as doctrine,'' Oshtrakh said.

Anti-Semitism was widespread in the former Soviet Union. There is no official anti-Semitism in today's Russia, but prejudices persist, and virulently anti-Semitic newspapers are sold by street vendors.

Oshtrakh said law enforcement officials ignored dozens of appeals he and others filed over pamphlets and newspapers. But in November, Oshtrakh attended the Kremlin-organized Civic Forum in Moscow, where he found a sympathetic Kremlin official.

Three weeks later, the Russian prosecutor-general's office opened a criminal case under statute 282 of the Criminal Code: incitement of ethnic, racial and religious hatred.

Nilus' book was put out by an Orthodox Church publishing house in St. Petersburg and bore the blessing of a Russian archbishop.

"Nilus, a well-known Christian publicist, tried to warn his colleagues in the faith of a threatening, mortal danger and at the same time spoke of the impermissibility of seeing the entire Jewish people, misled by their rulers, as the enemy,'' said Boris Kosinsky, spokesman for the Yekaterinburg diocese.

"The calls to prohibit Nilus' book are more likely to have the opposite effect: Interest in it will grow.... We need to learn how to build ties between religions, to come to agreements, and not to appeal to the prosecutor as an arbitrator,'' he said.