Religion in Russian Society: State Policy, Regional Challenges, and Individual Rights Conference Proceedings Edited by F. Joseph Dresen Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars OCCASIONAL PAPER #298 KENNAN One Woodrow Wilson Plaza 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW INSTITUTE Washington, DC 20004-3027 Tel. (202) 691-4100 Fax (202) 691-4247 www.wilsoncenter.org/kennan ISBN 1-933549-35-1 The Kennan Institute is a division of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Through its programs of residential scholarships, meetings, and publications, the Institute encourages scholarship on the successor states to the Soviet Union, embracing a broad range of fields in the social sciences and humanities. The Kennan Institute is supported by contributions from foundations, corporations, individuals, and the United States Government. Kennan Institute Occasional Papers The Kennan Institute makes Occasional Papers available to all those interested. 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The views expressed in Kennan Institute Occasional Papers are those of the authors. 2008 Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, D.C. www.wilsoncenter.org ISBN 1-933549-35-1 WOODROW WILSON INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR SCHOLARS Lee H. Hamilton, President and Director BOARD OF TRUSTEES Joseph B. Gildenhorn, Chair David A. Metzner, Vice Chair PUBLIC MEMBERS: James H. Billington, Librarian of Congress; Allen Weinstein, Archivist of the United States; Bruce Cole, Chair, National Endowment for the Humanities; Michael O. Leavitt, Secretary, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; Tamala L. Longaberger, Designated Appointee of the President from Within the Federal Government; Condoleezza Rice, Secretary, U.S. Department of State; Cristián Samper, Acting Secretary, Smithsonian Institution; Margaret Spellings, Secretary, U.S. Department of Education PRIVATE CITIZEN MEMBERS: Robin B. Cook, Donald E. Garcia, Bruce S. Gelb, Sander R. Gerber, Charles L. 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Religion in Russian Society: State Policy, Regional Challenges, and Individual Rights Conference Proceedings Edited by F. Joseph Dresen Washington, D.C. OCCASIONAL PAPER #298 Religion in Russian Society: State Policy, Regional Challenges, and Individual Rights Co-sponsored by the Henry M. Jackson Foundation June 8–9, 2006 Washington, D.C. CONTENTS PANELIST BIOGRAPHIES 1 CONFERENCE ORGANIZERS 5 PREFACE 7 WELCOMING REMARKS 9 Blair A. Ruble, Director, Kennan Institute Neelima Shah, Program Officer, Henry M. Jackson Foundation PANEL 1: RUSSIAN STATE POLICIES AND PRACTICES ON RELIGION 11 Chair: David Abramson, Analyst for Russia and Eurasia, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, U.S. Department of State Alexey Malashenko, Scholar in Residence and Program Co-Chair, Religion, Society, and Security Program, Carnegie Moscow Center Robert Crews, Assistant Professor, Department of History, Stanford University, and former Research Scholar, Kennan Institute Nancy Hewett, Senior Adviser on Eurasian Affairs, Office of International Religious Freedom, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, U.S. Department of State Elizabeth Sewell, Associate Director, International Center for Law and Religion Studies, Brigham Young University PANEL 2: THE REGIONAL CHALLENGE: 31 MANAGING RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY Chair: Margaret Paxson, Senior Associate, Kennan Institute Sascha Goluboff, Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Washington and Lee University, and author, Jewish Russians: Upheavals in a Moscow Synagogue Alexander Bogomolov, Vice President, Association of Middle East Studies, Ukraine Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer, Research Professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Georgetown University PANEL 3: INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM OF FAITH IN RUSSIA 51 Chair: H. Knox Thames, Counsel, Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (U.S. Helsinki Commission) Nikolas Gvosdev, Editor, The National Interest; Senior Fellow, Institute for Strategic Studies, The Nixon Center; and Senior Fellow, Institute for Religion and Public Policy Catherine Cosman, Senior Policy Analyst, U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom Firuz Kazemzadeh, Professor Emeritus of History, Yale University; former Vice Chairman, U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom; and Senior Adviser, Office of External Affairs, Baha’i Faith Discussant: Kate Brown, Associate Professor of History, University of Maryland, Baltimore County FINAL OBSERVATIONS 71 Panelist Biographies David Abramson is an analyst on Central president of the Kyiv-based Association of Asia in the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Middle East Studies (AMES), of which he is Intelligence and Research. Previously, he also a founder. AMES is a nongovernmental worked in the State Department’s Office of think tank engaged in research and policy analy- International Religious Freedom, where he sis focusing on the Middle East, Central Asia, promoted religious freedom in the Middle East the Caucasus, ethnic conflicts, minority issues, and contributed to U.S. outreach efforts toward and Ukraine’s domestic and foreign policies. the Muslim world, including the American Bogomolov is the author of Islamic Identity in Muslim community. Abramson received a doc- Ukraine (2005), which was declared the nation- torate in cultural anthropology from Indiana al Book of the Year 2005 in humanities in University, specializing in community and con- Ukraine. He is a regular contributor to major flict in post-Soviet Uzbekistan. He spent four Ukrainian media (TV, print, radio) on the years as a research fellow at Brown University’s Middle East and Muslim minority issues. Watson Institute for International Studies before heading to Washington. Abramson has lectured Kate Brown is an associate professor of histo- and written on Islam and secularism in ry at the University of Maryland, Baltimore Uzbekistan, the politics of civil society assis- County. She is the author of A Biography of No tance in Central Asia, and the role of religion in Place: From Ethnic Borderland to Soviet Heartland U.S. foreign policy. (Harvard University Press, 2004), which won the American Historical Association’s George Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer is a research Louis Beer Prize for the best book in interna- professor at Georgetown University in the tional European history, the Heldt Prize from Department of Sociology and Anthropology the Association of Women in Slavic Studies, and and the Center for Eurasian, Russian, and East an honorable mention for the American European Studies (CERES). She is editor of the Association for the Advancement of Slavic M. E. Sharpe journal Anthropology and Archeology Studies’ Wayne C. Vucinich Prize for 2005. She of Eurasia and of the books Shamanic Worlds: holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Rituals and Lore of Siberia and Central Asia (1997), Washington and has received fellowships from Culture Incarnate: Native Anthropology from Russia the Social Science Research Council, the (1995), and Russian Traditional Culture (1992). International Research and Exchanges Board, She is author of The Tenacity of Ethnicity: A the Davis Center of Harvard University, the Siberian Saga in Global Perspective (Princeton National Council for East European and University Press, 1999). Her fieldwork since Eurasian Research, and the Eurasia Foundation. 1986 has focused primarily on the Turkic- speaking Sakha [Yakut] of the Russian Catherine Cosman joined the staff of the Federation, and in the 1990s she helped organ- U.S. Commission on International Religious ize exchanges of Native American and Native Freedom in late 2003 as senior policy analyst for Siberian leaders. She is editor of a forthcoming the region embracing the member states of the volume, Religion and Politics in the Russian Organization for Security and Cooperation in Federation (M. E. Sharpe), and