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The Russian Orthodox Church may be the dominant and most visible religious group in the Russian Federation, but its performance in different regions of the country has been patchy. Even in regions that share common features - geographic, ethnic, economic and social - the Church has made a big impact in some, but little headway in others. Here we look at how the Church has fared in the postsoviet era in four Russian heartland provinces - Astrakhan', Yekaterinburg, Saratov and Omsk.1 In all these regions the Orthodox Church has failed to take advantage of the opportunities presented by the end of restrictions on religious activity a decade ago and it is now suffering because of what many perceive as the authoritarian and backward-looking leadership offered by the local bishops. The article looks at what common features the Orthodox Church in these regions has and examines the consequences of failure to present a dynamic witness.
Saratov2
Saratov had a vibrant circle of Orthodox intellectuals by the end of the 1980s, thanks in part to the benign influence of the local hierarch, Archbishop Pimen (Khmelevsky). Consecrated bishop in 1965 and appointed to the diocese of Saratov and Volgograd (as it was then), Pimen had had a chequered career, joining the Zhirovitsy Monastery in Belorussia during the Nazi occupation. In the 1950s - in a sign of trust from the Soviet authorities - he served in the Russian Spiritual Mission in Jerusalem. On his return to Russia he served in the Trinity-St Sergius Monastery in Zagorsk, for some of the time as deputy head. The internal Council for Religious Affairs assessment of the Russian Orthodox bishops, drawn up in the 1970s by Vasili Furov, placed him in the third, least-loyal category. He retained contacts with many of the dissident artistic community, including the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich and the opera singer Galina Vishnevskaya (he officiated at their wedding), and the writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. He also devoted great attention to the local intelligentsia in Saratov, inviting many for supper every two weeks at the height of the Brezhnev era, when such contacts were frowned upon. He also conducted a concerted campaign to raise the intellectual level of his local clergy, inviting men with higher secular education to serve as...