Difference between revisions of "Restrictions on religious activity and/or religious persecution in Czarist, Soviet, and contemporary Russia"

Revision as of 07:44, January 2, 2023

According to a 2006 report of CWNews: Baptists, Pentecostals and Catholics are among the Russian religious communities to complain recently of police failure to protect them from attacks or other unwarranted intrusions during services.^[1]

In addition, there were 2006 reports of police raids to prevent these groups from conducting religious activity - such as giving out religious literature- - which they regard as legitimate.^[2]

Reports of present-day restrictions on religious activity and/or persecution of Protestants in Russia

See also: Growth of Protestantism in Russia

Under Russian law, unregistered religious activity is illegal, such as public evangelism without a permit, as seen in some of the reports below:

• Russia Keeps Punishing Evangelicals in Crimea, Christianity Today, 2022

• Is Religious Persecution in Russia Escalating? Elderly Baptist Pastor Charged for 'Illegal' Missionary Work, Newsweek, April 5, 2019

• RUSSIA: Protestants targeted in Nizhny Novgorod, Church in Chains website, 2018

• RUSSIA: Alleged "missionary activity" prosecutions continue, Worldwide Religious News, 2017

• Living as a Persecuted Christian in Russia, ArriveMininstries.org

2006 report of present-day restrictions on religious activity and/or persecution of Pentecostals, Baptists and Catholics

According to a 2006 report of CWNews: "Pentecostals, Catholics and Baptists are among the Russian religious communities to complain recently of police failure to protect them from attacks or other unwarranted intrusions during services, or of police raids to prevent them conducting religious activity-- such as giving out religious literature- - which they regard as legitimate, the Forum 18 news service reports."^[3]

Russian pogroms/persecution against Russian Jews

The Russian word pogram is a Russian word meaning “to wreak havoc, to demolish violently.”^[4] Historically speaking, the term refers to violent attacks by local non-Jewish populations on Jews in the Russian Empire as well as other countries.^[5]

Historical incidences of pograms/persecution against the Jews

Contemporary Russian persecution/anti-semitism directed towards Russian Jews

• Deputies Urge Ban on Jewish Organizations in 2006, Then Retract, Union of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union organization, 2006
• Explosion of anti-Semitism in Russia, Pravda.ru, 2002

1970s and post 1970s Soviet Union aliyah

According to DBPedia: "The 1970s Soviet Union aliyah was the mass immigration of Soviet Jews to Israel after the Soviet Union lifted its ban on Jewish refusenik emigration in 1971. More than 150,000 Soviet Jews immigrated during this period, motivated variously by religious or ideological aspiration, economic opportunity, and a desire to escape anti-Semitic discrimination. This wave of immigration was followed two decades later by a larger aliyah at the end of the Soviet Union."^[6]

Articles/reports on the 1970s and post 1970s Soviet Union aliyah:

• Aliyah Rate Picks Up After Big Drop in February 1970s Soviet Union aliyah, Jewish Telegraph Agency, March 5, 1991
• Aliyah from the Soviet Union in the 1970s, ReligionWiki

Prior pograms/persecution of Jews in Russian history

Joseph Stalin's secretary Boris Bazhanov declared that Stalin made anti-Semitic outbursts.^[7][8]

Unlike the major European nations, Russia in the 19th century did not emancipate its Jewish subjects. Popular anti-Semitism (which had an anti-capitalist bias) proceeded from and flourished with the support of, anti-Jewish laws and official policies that tried either to forcibly integrate Jews into or to segregate them from the rest of Russian society - especially rural society. Pogroms – systematic slaughters of thousands of Jews in certain areas — happened in clusters, as in 1881-82 and 1905–06, and were related to severe political crises involving the issue of Jewish emancipation. The debunked "Protocols", was fabricated in Russia by the czarist secret police and first published in 1903.^[9](Was also used by Joseph Goebbels, after he spoke with Hitler about it, both acknowledging it's a forgery).

• Lenin's speech: About Anti-Jewish Pogroms (Text of the speech)
• Jewish history of the Russian Federation (through the Second World War)
• Modern History Sourcebook: The Jewish Chronicle: Outrages Upon Jews in Russia, May 6, 1881
• Jewish Virtual Library page "Pogroms"
• History of pogroms in Odessa
• The Pogrom of 1905 in Odessa: A Case Study
• Kishinev pogrom history

Militant atheism and the Soviet Union

See: Militant atheism in the former Soviet Union

See also

• Collapse of atheism in the former Soviet Union

Notes

1. ↑ Whose side are police on? Russian Christians ask, CWNews.com, 2006
2. ↑ Whose side are police on? Russian Christians ask, CWNews.com, 2006
3. ↑ Whose side are police on? Russian Christians ask, CWNews.com, 2006
4. ↑ Pograms, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website
5. ↑ Pograms, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website
6. ↑ 1970s Soviet Union aliyah
7. ↑ Ro'i, Yaacov , Jews and Jewish Life in Russia and the Soviet Union, Routledge, 1995, pp. 103-6.
8. ↑ Montefiore, Simon Sebag, Young Stalin, Random House, Inc., 2008, p. 165.
9. ↑ Steven Erlanger, Russia Court Calls 'Protocols' Anti-Semitic Forgery, The New York Times, Nov 27, 1993.