KIRILL CRONIES BENEFIT FROM RUSSIAN ORTHODOX

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 MOSCOW 001034

SENSITIVE
SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PGOV PHUM PINR PREL KIRF SOCI RS
SUBJECT: KIRILL CRONIES BENEFIT FROM RUSSIAN ORTHODOX
RESTRUCTURING

REF: A. MOSCOW 106

B. MOSCOW 546


1. (SBU) Summary. On March 31, Russian Orthodox Church
(ROC) Patriarch Kirill presided over the first meeting of
Church leaders since his enthronement, introducing
significant personnel and structural changes to the ROC.
Kirill appointed faithful supporter Bishop Ilarion as the new
Chairman of the Department of External Affairs, promoted his
former deputy Vsevolod Chaplin to lead ROC relations with
societal groups, and demoted his former rival Metropolitan
Kliment. Recognizing the importance of public relations in
his drive to grow the Church, Kirill appointed a layperson to
head the ROC's Department of Information while lambasting the
harmful influence of the Russian media on youth. The
Ministry of Justice placed Aleksandr Dvorkin, an Orthodox
priest and self-appointed expert on sects, to head its
commission on religious expertise, eliciting an outcry from
minority religious organizations. The presidential
administration and Moscow mayor's office also appointed new
leaders of respective departments that deal with religious
organizations, suggesting Kirill's deep political influence.
End Summary.

Friends of a Feather...
--------------


2. (SBU) Kirill successfully promoted several close
confidantes in his "personnel revolution" by making
significant structural changes to the Church hierarchy,
ultimately creating several new positions and new
departments. Kirill presided over the first meeting of the
ROC's highest decision-making body, the Holy Synod, on March
31, during which the nine leaders unanimously approved
Kirill's appointment of his former deputy Bishop Ilarion
(Hilarion) of Vienna and Austria as the Chairman of the
Department for External Church Affairs (DECA). A fixture in
the department since 1995, Ilarion's functions will include
relations with Orthodox and non-Orthodox churches, state
institutions, and civil society institutions outside the
former Soviet Union. In an Interfax press conference on
April 10, his comments on the ROC's outreach efforts to
Russian youth resonated with his predecessor's, Patriarch
Kirill, recent statements. Ilarion said that "since Orthodox
believers go to discotheques and rock concerts, if the Church
could attach some kind of Orthodox significance to these
gatherings, then why couldn't our priests go out and say a
few words to the youth as well?" He also repeated the
precondition for a meeting between Kirill and Pope Benedict
XVI: renunciation of Roman Catholic Church missionary
activity in Russia.


3. (SBU) After Ilarion's appointment, the ROC sent Acting
Chairman of External Affairs, Bishop Mark of Yegoryevsk, to
serve as Moscow Patriarchate Secretariat for Institutions
Abroad. Bishop Mark will be directly accountable to
Patriarch Kirill in this role. The decision to send Bishop
Mark overseas did not constitute a lack of Kirill's
confidence or a demotion; rather, it demonstrated
appreciation for Mark's support during Kirill's rise to power
and excellent service to the ROC immediately after Kirill's
enthronement, according to Kirill supporter and religious
analyst Archdeacon Andrey Kurayev (Note: Kurayev also
received a small promotion for his support of Kirill). The
patriarch rounded out his DECA staff by naming Priest Georgiy
Ryabykh (Acting Secretary for Liaison Between the Church and
Public) and Archpriest Nikolay Balashov (Patriarchate
Secretary for Relations with other Orthodox Churches) as
deputy chairmen of the DECA.


4. (SBU) The patriarch named his former deputy in the DECA,
Vsevolod Chaplin, as the Chairman of the newly created
Department for Cooperation between Church and Society,
responsible for associations with political parties, unions,
legislative bodies, and civil society institutions in the
former Soviet Union. While Chaplin primarily will deal with
the same set of issues that he handled before, his new
position commands greater authority. Experts have long
considered Chaplin to be an influential protectionist who has
spoken out against the negative influence of non-Orthodox
groups. Chaplin, known in the highest Church circles as a
"walking encyclopedia" and for his language proficiency (high
fluency in English and German),will also coordinate with
party officials on proposed legislation. Even though the ROC
does not have any power to introduce legislation, Chaplin
noted at an April 10 press conference that "the Church's
voice should be heard." In discussions on the separation of
secular and religious spheres, he commented in September 2008
that "if we consider the church as an institution, then yes,
it is different from the state... but if we consider the

MOSCOW 00001034 002 OF 003


church as a community of believers, then it's simply
impossible to separate these concepts. A social partnership
is a natural development."

Ousted Rival
--------------


5. (SBU) Kirill's heated electoral campaign against
Metropolitan Kliment for the throne produced the expected
fallout on March 31, when Kirill announced that he would
remove Kliment from his position as Administrator of the
Moscow Patriarchate and appoint him as the Chairman of the
ROC's Publishing Department. Not only did this decision
deprive Kliment of his permanent seat in the Holy Synod (the
Metropolitans of Kyiv, Minsk, Chisinau, St. Petersburg, and
Krutitsk, plus the Chairman of DECA also have Synod seats
ex-officio),it also essentially sidelined him since the
ROC's publishing department no longer performs as vital a
role as it did in the propaganda days in the Soviet Union.
First Vice President of the Center for Political Technologies
Aleksey Makarkin commented in Russian daily Yezhednevniy
Zhurnal on April 3 that Kirill's decision to remove
Metropolitan Kliment from his post signified that Kirill
would not rule the ROC with a deputy, a first in the
post-WWII era. In fact, he noted that the Synod selected
little-known Archbishop Varsonofiy of Saransk and Mordovia as
the temporary administrator for the Moscow Patriarchate.

Kirill Forcing Government's Hand?
--------------


6. (SBU) While media outlets refrained from connecting the
dots, three more government officials notably shifted seats
in the wake of Kirill's enthronement. On April 3, the
Ministry of Justice assembled its newly-minted Commission for
the Implementation of State Expertise on Religious Science,
formed by Ministry decree on March 3, 2009. At the meeting,
Commission members unanimously elected the controversial
Russian Orthodox priest and AmCit Aleksandr Dvorkin as
Chairman of the Ministry's Commission, which was mandated by
federal law in July 2008. Dvorkin, a self-avowed specialist
on cults with close ties to Justice Minister Alexander
Konovalov, founded and has headed the Russian Association of
Centers for the Study of Religion and Sects since 2006, and
also serves as the "sect studies" Chairman of the Orthodox
Humanitarian St. Tikhon University. The Commission replaced
an earlier collection of academic experts created in 1998 to
advise the Ministry of Justice on religious questions, and
will hold extensive power to introduce and enforce
legislation on religious organizations, according to an
article written by Eurasian religious expert Paul Goble on
April 4. The Commission's ranks also included Roman
Silyantev, a bureaucrat who lost his position on the Russian
Inter-Religious Council for his attacks on Islam in 2008.


7. (SBU) The election of Dvorkin elicited an outcry from
religious experts and minority religious groups in Russia.
Religion analyst Mikhail Stinikov compared the decision to
"authorizing the donkey to guard the vegetable patch," and
Russian Academy of sciences researcher Roman Lunkin labeled
the Ministry as "on the warpath." Chief Mufti Ravil
Gaynutdin stated that the new commission would be of "no
value to Muslims," since no academic experts on Islam had
been included. President of the Russian Union of Evangelical
Christians-Baptists (RUECB) Yuriy Sipko decried the
development, as did Public Chamber member and Pentecostal
bishop Sergey Ryakhovskiy, who characterized Dvorkin as an
"importer of instability" in reference to his 20 years in the
US prior to 1990. (Note: Dvorkin has accused Ryakhovskiy of
being an "American" in the past as well). Goble noted
Dvorkin's history of criticism of Mormons, Evangelicals, and
Catholics in Russia, as well as his past exclusive promotion
of the four traditional religions (Orthodox Christianity,
Judaism, Islam, Buddhism) in Russia, a point Kirill advocated
himself in the late 1990s.


8. (SBU) On April 1, the Kremlin appointed former Molodaya
Gvardiya head Ivan Demidov as the new Chairman of the Public
Relations and Humanitarian Policy Department, a division of
the Presidential Administration's Internal Politics
Directorate. In this role, Demidov will supervise relations
with religious organizations, a theme he may have touched on
in his previous position as head of United Russia's
Ideological Directorate. Demidov also received an
appointment to serve on Dvorkin's commission in the Ministry
of Justice. On April 2, Russian newswire www.newsru.com
reported that Moscow Mayor Yuriy Luzhkov had fired Nikolay
Merkulov, the Chairman of the Moscow Committee on Relations
with Religious Organizations. Merkulov had served in the
position since 1992.

MOSCOW 00001034 003 OF 003



Layperson Takes Media Helm
--------------


9. (SBU) Kirill appointed layman Vladimir Legoyda, editor of
the Orthodox magazine Foma, as the new head for the ROC's
newly created Department of Information, demonstrating his
intent to utilize public relations specialists and media
outlets to grow the size and power of the ROC. The move
marked the first time in the Church's history that a
layperson would head a branch of the Church administration.
Legoyda noted at an April 10 press conference that he hoped
to help the Church "find its proper place in the mass media"
by ensuring that all media outlets produced reports about the
ROC which were "true to fact." Kirill also held his first
internet question and answer chat session with Russians in
March 2009, a sign that he would utilize technology to
enhance the ROC's outreach efforts. Not only has the ROC
transitioned into a new sphere of media culture, it has also
noted its disapproval of immoral television programming,
calling on the Russian government to end transmission of the
popular reality television show "Dom-2" because "people's
personal lives should not be on public display." Kirill
criticized the negative influence of the mass media on
Russian youth in a speech to the St. Petersburg Religious
Academy on April 7, saying that current programming appealed
to the youth's "animal instincts."

Comment
--------------


10. (SBU) All signs point to Kirill's growth as a political
heavyweight in Russia. Makarkin pointed to a new power
center in the Church, led by Metropolitans Yuvenaliy,
Vladimir, and Filaret, who all studied under Metropolitan
Nikodim and would help secure the Church's political ascent
(ref A). He also suggested that the current personnel
shuffle proves Kirill is 100% in control of the Church,
especially in comparison to late Patriarch Aleksey II, who
only managed to oust a few of Patriarch Pimen's cadre in 1990
after his enthronement. Concerning the Church's relationship
to other domestic organizations, the appointments of Dvorkin
and Chaplin to more influential roles bodes poorly for
Russian religious minorities, especially those deemed to be
"sects" (ref B). Considering the Ministry of Justice
Commission's new power to judge the activities of and
dissolve religious organizations, the European Court of Human
Rights (ECHR) will probably see an uptick in cases from
Russia.
RUBIN