Nearly 20
years after the collapse of the atheistic
Two decades after the collapse of the
The survey, carried out in April by the independent Public Opinion Fund
(FOM), found that 82 percent of Russians say they are religious believers,
while just 13 percent say they do not believe in any deity.
But the powerful Russian Orthodox Church will find nothing to celebrate in
the survey's details.
The church claims 70 percent of Russians as its adherents and on the basis
of that has successfully pressured the Kremlin to return most church property seized by the Bolsheviks almost
a century ago, including vast tracts of land, churches, monasteries, and
thousands of religious artifacts formerly held by state museums.
But according to the poll, just 50 percent of Russians say they are
Orthodox, while 27 percent didn't associate themselves with any particular
organized faith. Among young people between 18 and 24, the number of
unaffiliated believers was 34 percent.
"It would be correct to describe
Experts say that most Russians lead overwhelmingly secular lives and pay
little heed to the Orthodox Church's increasingly frequent efforts to influence
public morals, including a leading priest's recent call for a national dress code and a string of
Church-instigated lawsuits against artistic "blasphemy."
"There is no doubt that Orthodoxy is the traditional confession in
Russia, but only a small part of those who call themselves Orthodox actually go
to church regularly, mark the festivals, or practice the rituals," says
Vladimir Gurbolikov, deputy editor of Foma, a missionary magazine published by the Orthodox
Church. "The problem is a lack of information in society. People do not
have normal communication with the Church and are unable to establish it, and
so they do not know the Orthodox Christian faith even if they identify
themselves with it."
In another surprise, the poll found that just 4 percent of Russians are
avowed Muslims, far below the 15 percent figure most sociologists cite. One
reason, experts suggest, is that the FOM survey – which polled 1,500 people in
44 of
Under Russian law the country has four recognized "founding
faiths": Orthodoxy, Islam, Buddhism, and Judaism. The poll found that 1
percent of Russians are Buddhists and less than 1 percent are
Jewish.
But Roman Catholics, who are not recognized under Russian law and are
sometimes subject to legal harassment, number a whopping 7 percent (a figure
experts also dispute), the FOM survey found.
The FOM results contrast somewhat with a global survey of religious beliefs
conducted in April by Ipsos, an international market
research company. The survey found that 51 percent of people worldwide believe
in a "divine entity," compared to 18 percent who don't and 17 percent
who aren't sure.
According to the Ipsos poll, 56 percent of
Russians are firm believers in a "divine entity," while a further 18
percent believe "sometimes."
But that still puts
Several countries, including
"It's pretty hard to get clarity on religion, and there are a lot of
variables that can lead to an erroneous picture," says Marina Mchedlova, a religion expert with the official
Another is the lack of religious knowledge among the Orthodox Church's
superficially huge public base.
"The majority of people who position themselves as Orthodox when asked
to identify their faith cannot go on to answer even simple questions about
it," she says.