c. 1999 Religion News Service
NOVGOROD, Russia _ In this ancient city rich in Russian history, Mikhail Ryabinin, an earnest 20-year-old Scientologist, has publicly declared to the local draft board that”serving in the army is against my conscience.” Ryabinin’s move has won him little support _ much less understanding _ in a country where serving in the faded superpower’s once mighty military machine is an unquestioned rite of passage. Just as dubious to some is Ryabinin’s membership in the Church of Scientology, labeled a”totalitarian sect”by its opponents in Russia. “I am not scared because I am right,”said the cleancut Ryabinin, a mathematics student at Novgorod State University and one of four young men to seek an alternative to military service in this city of 250,000.
Until recently, Ryabinin was a relatively solitary figure exercising a constitutional right few Russians are even aware of.
That changed this winter when Ryabinin was joined by conscientious objectors from throughout the former Soviet Union as they convened in Novgorod for a conference organized primarily by Quakers affiliated with a number of peace organizations.”There are many people who have never heard of these issues and are not open to them. That is all the more true in Novgorod,”said Bonnie Grotjahn, 32,an American staff member at Friends House Moscow, where about 25 people attend weekend meetings for Quaker worship.”It is crucial to spread information that people have the right to choose for themselves how to live.” The three-day International Seminar on Conscientious Objection, the first of its kind in Russia, featured young men who have refused to serve the two-year stint required of every Russian male over the age of 18. Under Russia’s 1994 Constitution, citizens can refuse military service if their conscience forbids it.
However, Russia’s parliament has failed to pass enabling legislation, thus leaving conscientious objectors with a right but no means to exercise it. In October, the Communist-dominated parliament voted down a measure saying the proposed alternative to military service was insufficiently harsh. A stint in the Russian military itself is legendarily severe, with brutal _ sometimes fatal _ hazing, lack of food and widespread use of conscripts as unpaid laborers.
Such horrors were cited by some of the conscientious objectors in Novgorod as being factors in their decision, but most, like Ryabinin, cited strongly held beliefs, whether philosophical or religious.”The aim of Scientology is civilization without criminality, insanity and war,”said Ryabinin, recalling how reading”Dianetics,”by Church of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, helped him make his decision. Ryabinin said if his alternative service case goes to court, he anticipates having a harder time than most because of widespread anti-Scientologist sentiments.
A Scientologist spokeswoman in Moscow said the church has no official position on the issue and does not compile statistics on how many members have sought conscientious objector status.
Russia’s Defense Ministry does not keep figures but activists say less than 1,000 young men have exercised the right. Each year tens of thousands of conscripts desert, or dodge induction by purchasing fake medical discharges for between $3,000 and $5,000 each.
At the Novgorod seminar, the only formal religious presence was from two members of Pax Christi Poland who came as observers. Grotjahn said it was a deliberate decision by the organizers not to needlessly inflame local authorities.”Sometimes there can be a danger with bringing in other religions,”said Grotjahn.”You’ve already got a radical theme.” Most minority faiths in Russia tiptoe around the issue because of its sensitivity. Nationalist politicians already frequently accuse foreign-based faiths _ Mormons and Roman Catholics, for example _ as serving governments hostile to Russia. Indeed, after the conscientious objector seminar, one Moscow newspaper wrote that the participants were”teaching Novgorod youths how to escape conscription.” The Jehovah’s Witnesses, who claim 250,000 members in Russia, are the denomination whose adherents most frequently claim their right to alternative service. Although the group does not compile statistics, a spokesman said”most”draft-age members opt not to serve.
Artur Leontyev, a Jehovah’s Witnesses lawyer who specializes in the issue said local Jehovah’s Witnesses congregations typically raise money themselves to hire a lawyer to defend conscientious objectors in the courts.
Since the end of the Soviet Union in 1991, Leontyev estimated five Jehovah’s Witnesses have been jailed for choosing alternative service and refusing the draft. The most recent case was a 19-year-old man released in September after serving a six-month term in a southern Russian jail.”We try to help them as much as we can,”said Leontyev, who complained of local judges’ refusal to abide by the Russian constitution.”By law there is no reason they need to sit in prison.” One reason cited for the Russian parliament’s inability to pass alternative service legislation is the opposition of the politically powerful, 80-million member Russian Orthodox Church. Church officials have said Russian Orthodox believers do not need alternative service. A few meters from the site of the conscientious objector seminar is Russia’s oldest church, the 12th-century St. Sophia, whose rector is a teacher of moral theology at the St. Petersburg Theological Academy. “It is a very complex question but it is necessary to clearly state that it is not a problem for the Russian Orthodox Church because it has always been the tradition of the church to defend the necessity of citizens’ fulfilling their obligations to the fatherland,”said Father Alexander Ranne, 46, of St. Sophia.”Myself, I served in the army before I went to seminary.” Orthodox young men in his parish are fortunate, Ranne said, because the local bishop has worked out an arrangement with a local Orthodox military commander to give the exceptionally devout a chance to preach and minister to soldiers in lieu of other tasks.
Ranne acknowledged the right of minority faiths like the Baptists to opt for alternative service. Whether an adherent to Scientology, which is not universally recognized as a legitimate religion, should be granted conscientious objector status, is a”difficult, subtle question,”said Ranne.
One of the leading Russian organizations fighting for an alternative service law is the Soldiers’ Mothers of St. Petersburg, a grassroots group that helps draft-age men avoid service legally and illegally. Co-chairman Yelena Vilenskaya, 48, said she has been disappointed at the lack of support by religious institutions. “Individual priests, both Orthodox and Catholic, praise our work, but even they don’t play an active role,”Vilenskaya said.
The Russian Orthodox Church’s role as a defacto national church complicates the issue for believers, just as it has in Poland, said Dominika Kurek, a 32-year-old member of Pax Christi who attended the Novgorod seminar. “We haven’t done much with (this issue) in Poland and we really should do more,”said Kurek, noting that young Polish Roman Catholics are expected to serve.”Right now it would be much easier for a (Polish) boy not to go to the army if he had a disease than if he were a religious believer.” Kurek, a student at Warsaw University, acknowledged that for foreigners to be attempting to shape public policy on an issue affecting national security is touchy anywhere. Even viewed as purely a human rights issue, conscientious objection is thorny, especially in a country like Russia that straddles East and West. “In Asian countries,”Kurek said with a smile,”they say human rights are just Western values.” DEA END BROWN