Epilogue

Abstract

As far as religion and antireligious Soviet policies are concerned Gorbachev’s second year in power has been rather inconclusive. On the positive side was the new law permitting teenagers to assist at church services (as acolytes, psalmists and choir singers, presumably — in the past there have been multiple cases of persecution of young people for such activities) and children to be present at them. The law, as mentioned in vol. 1 of this study, also granted for the first time a legal person status to the lay religious associations, permitting them now to buy, build and own church property, including the temples. This status has not been extended to the hierarchical side of the Chucrh (to the clergy, that is). But besides the January 1986 issue of the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate the law has not appeared in any Soviet official law books, not even in the Supreme Soviet Herald. Moreover, life in the Soviet Union is governed not so much by published laws, as by unpublished secret instructions on how to interpret and apply (or ignore) the law. At the time of writing (February 1987) not a single case of a church passing into an ownership possession of a religious society has been heard of. High level internal Church sources, on the other hand, have confidentially stated that since the Gorbachev’s coming to power there has been neither improvement, nor deterioration in the real position of the Church, but that Christians ought to be ready to expect the worst.