VZCZCXRO5841
RR RUEHDBU RUEHLN RUEHPOD RUEHSK RUEHVK RUEHYG
DE RUEHMO #1034/01 1120846
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 220846Z APR 09
FM AMEMBASSY MOSCOW
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 2999
INFO RUCNCIS/CIS COLLECTIVE
RUEHXD/MOSCOW POLITICAL COLLECTIVE

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 MOSCOW 001034 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV PHUM PINR PREL KIRF SOCI RS
SUBJECT: KIRILL CRONIES BENEFIT FROM RUSSIAN ORTHODOX 
RESTRUCTURING 
 
REF: A. MOSCOW 106 
     ¶B. MOSCOW 546 
 
¶1. (SBU)  Summary.  On March 31, Russian Orthodox Church 
(ROC) Patriarch Kirill presided over the first meeting of 
Church leaders since his enthronement, introducing 
significant personnel and structural changes to the ROC. 
Kirill appointed faithful supporter Bishop Ilarion as the new 
Chairman of the Department of External Affairs, promoted his 
former deputy Vsevolod Chaplin to lead ROC relations with 
societal groups, and demoted his former rival Metropolitan 
Kliment.  Recognizing the importance of public relations in 
his drive to grow the Church, Kirill appointed a layperson to 
head the ROC's Department of Information while lambasting the 
harmful influence of the Russian media on youth.  The 
Ministry of Justice placed Aleksandr Dvorkin, an Orthodox 
priest and self-appointed expert on sects, to head its 
commission on religious expertise, eliciting an outcry from 
minority religious organizations.  The presidential 
administration and Moscow mayor's office also appointed new 
leaders of respective departments that deal with religious 
organizations, suggesting Kirill's deep political influence. 
End Summary. 
 
Friends of a Feather... 
----------------------- 
 
¶2. (SBU)  Kirill successfully promoted several close 
confidantes in his "personnel revolution" by making 
significant structural changes to the Church hierarchy, 
ultimately creating several new positions and new 
departments.  Kirill presided over the first meeting of the 
ROC's highest decision-making body, the Holy Synod, on March 
31, during which the nine leaders unanimously approved 
Kirill's appointment of his former deputy Bishop Ilarion 
(Hilarion) of Vienna and Austria as the Chairman of the 
Department for External Church Affairs (DECA). A fixture in 
the department since 1995, Ilarion's functions will include 
relations with Orthodox and non-Orthodox churches, state 
institutions, and civil society institutions outside the 
former Soviet Union.  In an Interfax press conference on 
April 10, his comments on the ROC's outreach efforts to 
Russian youth resonated with his predecessor's, Patriarch 
Kirill, recent statements.  Ilarion said that "since Orthodox 
believers go to discotheques and rock concerts, if the Church 
could attach some kind of Orthodox significance to these 
gatherings, then why couldn't our priests go out and say a 
few words to the youth as well?"  He also repeated the 
precondition for a meeting between Kirill and Pope Benedict 
XVI: renunciation of Roman Catholic Church missionary 
activity in Russia. 
 
¶3. (SBU)  After Ilarion's appointment, the ROC sent Acting 
Chairman of External Affairs, Bishop Mark of Yegoryevsk, to 
serve as Moscow Patriarchate Secretariat for Institutions 
Abroad.  Bishop Mark will be directly accountable to 
Patriarch Kirill in this role.  The decision to send Bishop 
Mark overseas did not constitute a lack of Kirill's 
confidence or a demotion; rather, it demonstrated 
appreciation for Mark's support during Kirill's rise to power 
and excellent service to the ROC immediately after Kirill's 
enthronement, according to Kirill supporter and religious 
analyst Archdeacon Andrey Kurayev (Note: Kurayev also 
received a small promotion for his support of Kirill).  The 
patriarch rounded out his DECA staff by naming Priest Georgiy 
Ryabykh (Acting Secretary for Liaison Between the Church and 
Public) and Archpriest Nikolay Balashov (Patriarchate 
Secretary for Relations with other Orthodox Churches) as 
deputy chairmen of the DECA. 
 
¶4. (SBU)  The patriarch named his former deputy in the DECA, 
Vsevolod Chaplin, as the Chairman of the newly created 
Department for Cooperation between Church and Society, 
responsible for associations with political parties, unions, 
legislative bodies, and civil society institutions in the 
former Soviet Union.  While Chaplin primarily will deal with 
the same set of issues that he handled before, his new 
position commands greater authority.  Experts have long 
considered Chaplin to be an influential protectionist who has 
spoken out against the negative influence of non-Orthodox 
groups.  Chaplin, known in the highest Church circles as a 
"walking encyclopedia" and for his language proficiency (high 
fluency in English and German), will also coordinate with 
party officials on proposed legislation.  Even though the ROC 
does not have any power to introduce legislation, Chaplin 
noted at an April 10 press conference that "the Church's 
voice should be heard."  In discussions on the separation of 
secular and religious spheres, he commented in September 2008 
that "if we consider the church as an institution, then yes, 
it is different from the state... but if we consider the 
 
MOSCOW 00001034  002 OF 003 
 
 
church as a community of believers, then it's simply 
impossible to separate these concepts.  A social partnership 
is a natural development." 
 
Ousted Rival 
------------ 
 
¶5. (SBU)  Kirill's heated electoral campaign against 
Metropolitan Kliment for the throne produced the expected 
fallout on March 31, when Kirill announced that he would 
remove Kliment from his position as Administrator of the 
Moscow Patriarchate and appoint him as the Chairman of the 
ROC's Publishing Department.  Not only did this decision 
deprive Kliment of his permanent seat in the Holy Synod (the 
Metropolitans of Kyiv, Minsk, Chisinau, St. Petersburg, and 
Krutitsk, plus the Chairman of DECA also have Synod seats 
ex-officio), it also essentially sidelined him since the 
ROC's publishing department no longer performs as vital a 
role as it did in the propaganda days in the Soviet Union. 
First Vice President of the Center for Political Technologies 
Aleksey Makarkin commented in Russian daily Yezhednevniy 
Zhurnal on April 3 that Kirill's decision to remove 
Metropolitan Kliment from his post signified that Kirill 
would not rule the ROC with a deputy, a first in the 
post-WWII era.  In fact, he noted that the Synod selected 
little-known Archbishop Varsonofiy of Saransk and Mordovia as 
the temporary administrator for the Moscow Patriarchate. 
 
Kirill Forcing Government's Hand? 
--------------------------------- 
 
¶6. (SBU)  While media outlets refrained from connecting the 
dots, three more government officials notably shifted seats 
in the wake of Kirill's enthronement.  On April 3, the 
Ministry of Justice assembled its newly-minted Commission for 
the Implementation of State Expertise on Religious Science, 
formed by Ministry decree on March 3, 2009.  At the meeting, 
Commission members unanimously elected the controversial 
Russian Orthodox priest and AmCit Aleksandr Dvorkin as 
Chairman of the Ministry's Commission, which was mandated by 
federal law in July 2008.  Dvorkin, a self-avowed specialist 
on cults with close ties to Justice Minister Alexander 
Konovalov, founded and has headed the Russian Association of 
Centers for the Study of Religion and Sects since 2006, and 
also serves as the "sect studies" Chairman of the Orthodox 
Humanitarian St. Tikhon University.  The Commission replaced 
an earlier collection of academic experts created in 1998 to 
advise the Ministry of Justice on religious questions, and 
will hold extensive power to introduce and enforce 
legislation on religious organizations, according to an 
article written by Eurasian religious expert Paul Goble on 
April 4.  The Commission's ranks also included Roman 
Silyantev, a bureaucrat who lost his position on the Russian 
Inter-Religious Council for his attacks on Islam in 2008. 
 
¶7. (SBU)  The election of Dvorkin elicited an outcry from 
religious experts and minority religious groups in Russia. 
Religion analyst Mikhail Stinikov compared the decision to 
"authorizing the donkey to guard the vegetable patch," and 
Russian Academy of sciences researcher Roman Lunkin labeled 
the Ministry as "on the warpath."  Chief Mufti Ravil 
Gaynutdin stated that the new commission would be of "no 
value to Muslims," since no academic experts on Islam had 
been included.  President of the Russian Union of Evangelical 
Christians-Baptists (RUECB) Yuriy Sipko decried the 
development, as did Public Chamber member and Pentecostal 
bishop Sergey Ryakhovskiy, who characterized Dvorkin as an 
"importer of instability" in reference to his 20 years in the 
US prior to 1990. (Note:  Dvorkin has accused Ryakhovskiy of 
being an "American" in the past as well).  Goble noted 
Dvorkin's history of criticism of Mormons, Evangelicals, and 
Catholics in Russia, as well as his past exclusive promotion 
of the four traditional religions (Orthodox Christianity, 
Judaism, Islam, Buddhism) in Russia, a point Kirill advocated 
himself in the late 1990s. 
 
¶8. (SBU)  On April 1, the Kremlin appointed former Molodaya 
Gvardiya head Ivan Demidov as the new Chairman of the Public 
Relations and Humanitarian Policy Department, a division of 
the Presidential Administration's Internal Politics 
Directorate.  In this role, Demidov will supervise relations 
with religious organizations, a theme he may have touched on 
in his previous position as head of United Russia's 
Ideological Directorate.  Demidov also received an 
appointment to serve on Dvorkin's commission in the Ministry 
of Justice.  On April 2, Russian newswire www.newsru.com 
reported that Moscow Mayor Yuriy Luzhkov had fired Nikolay 
Merkulov, the Chairman of the Moscow Committee on Relations 
with Religious Organizations.  Merkulov had served in the 
position since 1992. 
 
MOSCOW 00001034  003 OF 003 
 
 
 
Layperson Takes Media Helm 
-------------------------- 
 
¶9. (SBU)  Kirill appointed layman Vladimir Legoyda, editor of 
the Orthodox magazine Foma, as the new head for the ROC's 
newly created Department of Information, demonstrating his 
intent to utilize public relations specialists and media 
outlets to grow the size and power of the ROC.  The move 
marked the first time in the Church's history that a 
layperson would head a branch of the Church administration. 
Legoyda noted at an April 10 press conference that he hoped 
to help the Church "find its proper place in the mass media" 
by ensuring that all media outlets produced reports about the 
ROC which were "true to fact."  Kirill also held his first 
internet question and answer chat session with Russians in 
March 2009, a sign that he would utilize technology to 
enhance the ROC's outreach efforts.  Not only has the ROC 
transitioned into a new sphere of media culture, it has also 
noted its disapproval of immoral television programming, 
calling on the Russian government to end transmission of the 
popular reality television show "Dom-2" because "people's 
personal lives should not be on public display."  Kirill 
criticized the negative influence of the mass media on 
Russian youth in a speech to the St. Petersburg Religious 
Academy on April 7, saying that current programming appealed 
to the youth's "animal instincts." 
 
Comment 
------- 
 
¶10. (SBU)  All signs point to Kirill's growth as a political 
heavyweight in Russia.  Makarkin pointed to a new power 
center in the Church, led by Metropolitans Yuvenaliy, 
Vladimir, and Filaret, who all studied under Metropolitan 
Nikodim and would help secure the Church's political ascent 
(ref A).  He also suggested that the current personnel 
shuffle proves Kirill is 100% in control of the Church, 
especially in comparison to late Patriarch Aleksey II, who 
only managed to oust a few of Patriarch Pimen's cadre in 1990 
after his enthronement.  Concerning the Church's relationship 
to other domestic organizations, the appointments of Dvorkin 
and Chaplin to more influential roles bodes poorly for 
Russian religious minorities, especially those deemed to be 
"sects" (ref B).  Considering the Ministry of Justice 
Commission's new power to judge the activities of and 
dissolve religious organizations, the European Court of Human 
Rights (ECHR) will probably see an uptick in cases from 
Russia. 
RUBIN