c. 1999 Religion News Service
MOSCOW _ Religious organizations are playing a vital role in cushioning the impact of one of the leanest winters Russia has witnessed since the end of the Soviet Union. But in the process, accusations are flying back and forth that food aid is being used to win souls and line pockets.
At a news conference here last month, a dissident Orthodox priest, predicting an orgy of theft and corruption, used fiery language to attack the plans of the dominant Russian Orthodox Church to distribute thousands of tons of U.S. food aid.”They are the goat in the garden of humanitarian aid,”said Father Gleb Yakunin, a veteran of Soviet labor camps who has been defrocked by the Russian church and accepted by a Ukrainian Orthodox church.”These are the new Orthodox Taliban. They repress minority religions and yet the U.S. Government is giving them aid.” While the Russian Orthodox Church will use its vast infrastructure to assist the Baltimore-based International Orthodox Christian Charities (IOCC) to give out a portion of the 100,000 tons of food from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, church officials insist the aid will be used honestly and neutrally. “We are not going to distribute this food just through the parish churches but also through secular organizations like orphanages, prisons and hospitals,”said Andrei Kravchenko, who works under the archbishop heading the church’s charity and social services department.”This has nothing to do with what denomination or religion people are.” A spokesman for IOCC in Baltimore declined to comment until details of the agreement with the USDA were finalized.
One of the clauses in the contract signed by each of the five non-profit groups giving out USDA food prohibits distribution on the basis of religion or ethnicity. The groups were chosen from some 47 applicants for their ability to effectively send shipments of wheat, flour, oil and salmon throughout the world’s largest country.
The 100,000 tons of food being handled by the non-profit groups pales in comparison to the 3 million tons from a variety of sources headed to the Russian government in an attempt to offset the country’s worst grain harvest in 40 years and the plunge in the value of the ruble.
Similar Western humanitarian aid programs in Russia several years ago were roundly criticized for lack of oversight and the speed with which food intended for poor people ended up on wholesale markets.
Despite Russia’s dire economic straits, in Moscow there is a lively debate over whether the food aid is needed at all or whether it is a way to buoy sagging agricultural prices in Europe and the United States. Russian agriculture minister Viktor Semenov, in an interview with the Moscow-based Expert magazine, attributed the talk of food shortages and starvation to those eager to play a role in distributing humanitarian aid.”Basically, Russia has all it needs to provide for itself,”Semenov said.
Antonio Santi, a seven-year veteran of the Roman Catholic charity Caritas in Russia, is a relentless critic of material aid being given to Russia. Santi argues that when large amounts of food are dumped in Russia at below-market costs it destroys local producers and retards the development that would allow Russian farmers to compete with imports.”There is pressure from outside to export to Russia. This is not the solution,”said Santi, an Italian citizen.”Our first step is to fight against humanitarian aid from abroad. It is impossible to think that a simple wave of humanitarian aid can solve the problem.” All the same, Santi said he recognizes the need for something to be done to help people survive at a time”when the number of people below the poverty line was between 20 and 30 percent six months ago and now it is from 30 to 60 percent; and when the average salary is about $50 dollars a month and the average pension about $20 dollars.” This winter Caritas Russia is spending about $150,000 _ contributed from Western European Caritas programs _ to buy local produce and distribute it to Russia’s needy. As representatives of a minority faith making up less than 1 percent of Russia’s 146 million people, Roman Catholic charity workers assist more people than just their own _ in keeping with Caritas’ policies.
This leaves the organization open to charges, especially by hardline Russian Orthodox leaders, of using material incentives to win converts.
Generally, when compared to their Protestant counterparts, Roman Catholic aid workers operating in Russia are more wary of the perception of proselytizing.
During a recent lunchtime in a cafeteria in southern Moscow, Rev. Stephen Park, a Presbyterian from California, surveyed the dozens of elderly people sitting down before steaming bowls of cabbage cream soup.”About 65 percent of them convert to Christianity, so this is an effective ministry,”said Park, who serves 150 people six days a week.”Their (Orthodox) faith was more cultural and historical. Now, it is more practical.” Park’s soup kitchen is funded by the Northside Fellowship, a Presbyterian church in Columbus, Ohio, which pays about $20 to $25 a month for each person’s meals. Park contrasted his relatively small-scale operation with the program bringing millions of tons of food which he doubted would be distributed effectively. One of Park’s clients, 70-year-old Anna Ivanovna, was also skeptical. “They helped us before in 1991, the Americans, and that help never made it to us. It went somewhere else,”said Ivanovna, a retired transport ticket seller who attends Park’s church on Sundays.”I don’t know what will happen this time,”she said, shaking her head.
One religious group renowned in Russia for its effectiveness is the Chabad Lubavitch, the Brooklyn-based Hasidic Jewish denomination. Despite their relatively small numbers worldwide, the Lubavitch effectively dominate the former Soviet Union’s religious Jewish landscape which numbers about 500,000 people. Of the five non-profit groups distributing U.S. food, the Lubavitch won the biggest chunk _ about 26,000 of the 100,000 tons.
Mendel Goldshmid, director of the Manhattan office of the Lubavitch Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia, said the aid will be given out through a network of over 80 Jewish groups, many headed by Lubavitch rabbis.
Goldshmid pledged to be evenhanded. Were they to apply, even controversial groups like Jews for Jesus _ who convert Jews to Christianity _ would be given equal consideration for food aid, he said. “We will have the American government looking over our shoulder,”Goldshmid said.
All the same, Goldshmid said, there are undoubtedly benefits to be had for Jews from winning the contract to give out humanitarian aid. “We hope that by distributing this aid we can help alleviate some of the anti-Semitism in Russia to show that Jews are being helpful to non-Jews,”he said.”They will look at us as people who are willing to help everybody.”
DEA END BROWN
