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Friday September 6, 2002

Russian Jews ponder benefit of land restitution bill

LEV KRICHEVSKY
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

MOSCOW -- Jews and other minority religions may benefit from a Russian lawmaker's controversial initiative to return land confiscated from the Russian Orthodox Church 80 years ago.

According to a plan proposed by Ivan Starikov, a member of the Federation Council, the upper house of the Russian Parliament, the Russian Orthodox Church could receive up to 3 million hectares of farmland and other land that was confiscated under the 1918 Bolshevik decree that nationalized church property.

But the Orthodox Church will not be the only beneficiary of the initiative if it ever becomes law.

Starikov, who chairs the chamber's agrarian committee, said other established religions should also get their share of property lost in the communist nationalization. Russia's religions law explicitly lists Orthodox Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Judaism as faiths with a long history in Russia that therefore have a privileged status.

Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexei II welcomed the initiative during a meeting with top members of the Federation Council. The initiative resulted from lobbying efforts on behalf of Russia's largest faith.

Before the 1917 Russian Revolution, the Orthodox Church was among Russia's biggest landowners. The church already has regained ownership of hundreds of churches, monasteries and other properties since the fall of communism.

But the proposed bill would not mean full restitution of land once owned by the Orthodox Church and other faiths, according to Starikov. Rather, it is designed to fill in a blank spot in a new land law that comes into force in January 2003.

That law, signed by President Vladimir Putin in late August as part of a push to liberalize the economy, allows the sale of farmland for the first time since the czarist era.

In addition, the new law says religious groups can rent or buy land they currently use. In contrast, current law allows religious groups to use land occupied by religious buildings for free or for a nominal rent, but does not allow them to own land.

The new land law that Putin signed will mean that all religious organizations will begin to pay for the land they currently use, including the plots where churches, mosques and synagogues are located, said Zinovy Kogan, executive director of the Congress of Religious Communities and Organizations and a member of the government's Interfaith Council, a consultative body.

Leaders of minority religions, including Muslims, Catholics and Jews, say they are more concerned about the fate of the land occupied by their temples rather than the possibility of acquiring farmland.

Responding to these concerns, the Interfaith Council is now preparing amendments to the new land law that would allow religions to retain the status quo without paying for the land where houses of worship and other religious facilities stand.

If the amendments are not approved, many congregations, especially smaller ones, will go bankrupt, Kogan said.

The fate of the bill is hard to predict.

Unlike churches and mosques, Russian synagogues "never in their history owned land," said Alexander Lokshin, a leading historian of Russian Jewry from Moscow.

The only kinds of land the Jewish communities could own were cemeteries and plots under synagogues, and Jewish religious institutions were not involved in agricultural production, Lokshin said.

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