Rusia . Step by Step back...Long regarded as Russia’s liberal window to the west JR news

Few years ago maybe we wont have read this article. Today a new wave its coming. What can it be behind it.. JR

Russia in grip of clean-living orthodoxy

By Charles Clover in Moscow

©AP

President Vladimir Putin with Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church, which is starting to play a greater social role

Dog owners, late-night fornicators and the obese beware. Billed as allowing Russia’s second city a good night’s sleep, St Petersburg’s legislature is cracking down on noise after 11pm. The list of prohibited night-time acts will now include “yelping”, “moaning” and “stomping”.

The bill is championed by Georgy Poltavchenko, the conservative governor who this year banned gay and lesbian “propaganda” from the city.

Long regarded as Russia’s liberal window to the west, St Petersburg nowadays seems to be the testing ground for a new wave of conservative, Orthodox church-going, pro-Kremlin patriotism that has gripped much of Russian officialdom.Thanks to a new law on protecting children from “harmful information”, the St Petersburg Philharmonic announced last week that a performance of Rachmaninoff’s 2nd symphony was restricted to those aged over 16.

The city’s Museum of Contemporary Art was forced to cancel a performance at the weekend of a play based on Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita because of objections from a citizens’ group.

The trend highlights a quirk of Russian politics – since Soviet times, the country’s elite have grown adept at picking up on vague signals that emanate periodically from the Kremlin to mark significant ideological shifts.

Many officials who spent the past four years under relatively liberal President Dmitry Medvedev repeating his mantra of “modernisation” of government and a “reset” in relations with the US are dusting off their crosses and Cold War-era rhetoric following the arrival of Vladimir Putin for a third term as president.

“Putin has started to give signals that are being heard – they are an invitation to the apparat [officialdom] to go a few steps further,” says political consultant Gleb Pavlovsky, who worked for the Kremlin for nearly two decades until last year.

The governor of Krasnodar province in the west, for example, has deployed Cossack “patrols” as an auxiliary police force, ostensibly intended to help keep order but also to burnish his credentials as a nationalist.

Mifi, the National Atomic Research University, has just installed an Orthodox priest as head of a new department of theology. As of this month, Moscow train stations now feature Orthodox chapels and “missionaries” on hand to “consult in religious matters” if travellers find it necessary.

Through the previous 12 years of his hegemony, Mr Putin observed a balance between liberals and conservatives in the ranks of the elite, catering to each group in an effort to play one off against the other.

Putin has tapped the aspects of conservatism that seem to be prevalent in society – a certain kind of nationalism, militarism and xenophobia, a kind of macho culture

- Roberto Foa, Harvard University

Today, that balance appears to have been jettisoned after liberals deserted him, with protesters taking to the streets last December and high-ranking figures – such as his finance minister – joining the dissenters.

The Kremlin has turned to the more conservative elements of society. More rural, older and less educated, they respond well to Mr Putin’s nationalist and slightly paranoid rhetoric as defender of the Orthodox faith from blasphemers and protector of the nation against foreign plots.

The Kremlin has signalled its backing for a new conservative discussion forum, the Izborsky Club, which gathers prominent conservatives and nationalists and is led by Alexander Prokhanov, editor of the far-right newspaper Zavtra (Tomorrow).

“Putin feels the coming of a catastrophe, of the domination of liberal forces which threaten him with the fate of Muammer Gaddafi,” says Mr Prokhanov. “He is fighting back by restoring the balance between the various ideological groups. In this way, he supports us.”

Populist conservative rhetoric is a sure vote winner in Russia, where 65 per cent of the population say they would object to having gay or lesbian neighbours while 33 per cent would object to having foreign neighbours. This compares with 20 per cent and 14 per cent, respectively, in the US and 4 per cent and 3 per cent in Sweden.

But this research, conducted by the World Values Survey, a multi-university academic project, finds strong but slightly quirky conservative beliefs, according to Roberto Foa, a Harvard University researcher who works with the survey.

“Russians are exceptionally conservative on some issues, notably nationalism, environmental scepticism and homophobia. However, at the same time they are also fairly to highly liberal on a very wide range of social issues from abortion to divorce, to sex before marriage, to prostitution,” he says.

“Putin has tapped the aspects of conservatism that seem to be prevalent in society – a certain kind of nationalism, militarism and xenophobia, a kind of macho culture.”

I don’t think that anyone in the Kremlin thinks for three seconds that Orthodoxy is a viable ideology for Russia

- Geraldine Fagan, author

Mr Putin has championed this agenda since coming to office again, with speeches about Orthodox values as the bedrock of a society. He also supported the prison terms handed down to Pussy Riot, the feminist punk rock group jailed for “religiously motivated hatred” after performing a protest song in Moscow’s Christ the Saviour Cathedral. Mr Putin’s United Russia party is pushing legislation through parliament that would prohibit blasphemy.

One important signal to the political elite, according to experts, was the appointment of Vladimir Medinsky as minister of culture. Mr Medinsky is a historian and publicist who is highly regarded in nationalist and religious circles for his debunking of liberal “myths” of Russian history in his positive treatment of authoritarian rulers from Ivan the Terrible to Joseph Stalin.

“Medinski was a very positive choice, painted in very bright ideological colours and is a very clear signal to the elite,” says Yevgeny Nikiforov, head of Radio Radonezh, a radio station devoted to promoting the Orthodox Church. “Everyone knows who he is and what his appointment means.”

However, most believe there is a limit to how far the Kremlin will go in promoting conservative counterweights to the liberal movement. While the church is keen for more power, few are under any illusion that the Kremlin wants to share any.

“I don’t think that anyone in the Kremlin thinks for three seconds that Orthodoxy is a viable ideology for Russia,” says Geraldine Fagan, author of a new book on religious policy after communism.

“The Kremlin wants the symbolism of the church without having to actually create Orthodox institutions, but the church is trying to get into areas of the state where the state really doesn’t want [it] to be.”