MARK R. ELLIOTT

I Increasing State Restrictions on van Smirnov, I will call him, is originally from one of the western republics of the former Soviet Union, but presently studies at a provincial Russian Protestant seminary that authorities have attempted to close. There, he has specialized in the study of the Old Testament and Hebrew, “so naturally the OT books of the Bible have had an impact on me.” Ivan believes it is providential his training has been able to continue: “Our God in His infinite grace has allowed our school to go on as an institution of higher education.” By early 2020, courts had ruled three times that the Russian Ministry of Education and Science “did not have any credible evidence which would give warrant to the state to Russian Protestant Seminaries shut us down.” At one point the seminary’s license was revoked but later reinstated, for which Ivan is thankful: “Praise the Lord for His mercy and protection!”1 

Since 2018, a string of flagship Protestant seminaries in Russia have been experiencing trial by state inspection that places their very existence in doubt. To date, three have been stripped of their educational licenses, while at least two are fighting similar efforts in the courts. Others also report heightened government scrutiny.

Lost Licenses

Moscow Theological Seminary

At the very least, precariousness characterizes the current status of the Moscow Theological Seminary (MTS), the leading pastoral training program of Russia’s Evangelical Christian-Baptist (ECB) Union. Successor to the correspondence course permitted by Soviet authorities beginning in 1968, its residential instruction commenced in the Union’s Moscow headquarters in 1993, shifting in 2002 to its own facility in a renovated elementary school building. At the beginning of 2020, MTS was instructing some 375 students in Moscow and another 555 in eight additional distance learning centers across Russia.2 

After an inspection of the seminary in October 2018, Russia’s education inspectorate Rosobrnadzor cited MTS for “gross violation of the requirements and conditions of a special permit (license),” leading to court proceedings. During 2019 the seminary’s educational license was twice suspended for 60-day periods.3 In mid-February 2020—perhaps in anticipation of a worst-case scenario—Rector Peter Mitskevich wrote in a communication to the entire ECB denomination: “We want to be obedient to God here. It is all in His hands. We will train people to be gospel servants whether it is unofficial in the church, or in an official seminary context.”4 Word then came on 27 February 2020 of a Moscow arbitration court’s revocation of the MTS license. The seminary’s stunned Vice-Rector for Academic Affairs Aleksei Markevich later observed, 

We do not know who is or isn’t behind these unfair decisions regarding our seminary. As I have already written many times, I personally see that the reason for this is the unbridled Russian bureaucracy, which does not act for the sake of any lofty goals, but simply fulfills the commands: “catch” and “forbid.”5

Moscow-based religion scholar Roman Lunkin concurs: “The misdemeanors of which the Moscow Theological Seminary stands accused are purely bureaucratic.”6 A higher arbitration court upheld the revocation of the seminary’s license on 10 June 2020. Meanwhile, under the new name of Theological Seminary in Moscow (TSM), MTS was able to obtain a lowerlevel license for “additional professional education” on 28 May 2020. It resumed instruction using that license in September 2020.7 Rector Mitskevich reports ongoing efforts in 2021 for the seminary to regain its higher education license but concedes, “If it will happen—it will be a miracle.”8

Eurasian Theological Seminary

In a nearly identical scenario, the Eurasian Theological Seminary (ETS) was also hamstrung by Russia’s educational inspectorate. ETS serves the country’s largest Pentecostal Union—the Russian Allied Union of Christians of the Evangelical Faith (Pentecostals), headed by Bishop Sergei Ryakhovsky. Following an inspection over several days in February 2018, Rosobrnadzor ordered the seminary to correct cited violations by 22 March 2018. Forum 18’s Victoria Arnold observed: 

According to the record… on Rosobrnadzor’s website, most of these related to how the seminary was run day-to-day, including an apparent lack of consultation with student representatives, lack of provision of sporting and cultural activities, and the absence of particular documents on its website.9

Dissatisfied with ETS responses, Rosobrnadzor took the seminary to court, leading to the issue of a fine equivalent to $2,300 on 25 April 2018. An unplanned, multiple-day inspection occurred the following week, leading to the suspension of student admissions on 1 June. This was followed by the suspension on 9 August and annulment on 23 November 2018 of ETS’s educational license, at which point the seminary was “obliged to stop offering certificated courses.”10 

An official with the Church of God (Cleveland), with which ETS is affiliated, reports that the seminary “did face some extreme inspections on short notice along with just about every other evangelical seminary in Russia.” Fortunately for ETS, on 7 November 2019 the seminary received a new license— as in MTS’s case, issued by the Moscow City Department of Education and Science and covering “additional professional education.” “Again, terminology is different, but we are still in operation,” the Church of God official notes. “ETS currently gives training to about 850 people, including residential, extension, and online [programs].”11

Theological Institute of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Ingria

Following a July 2019 inspection, Rosobrnadzor similarly cited the Theological Institute of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Ingria—located in Kolbino near St. Petersburg—for insufficient detail on its website. A fine on 26 November 2019 for the same infraction followed. A second unfavorable inspection in May-June 2020 led to the suspension of the Theological Institute’s educational license on 23 July 2020, followed by its court annulment on 13 November 2020, effective 6 April 2021. According to Forum 18, teaching may continue informally, but the Institute “is unable to issue certificates or admit students to diploma courses.”12

Fighting to Retain Licenses

Theological Seminary of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Russia

The Theological Seminary of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Russia—in the process of moving from the village of Novosartovka into St. Petersburg—fears a similar fate. Rosobrnadzor barred new admissions from 11 December 2019, fined Rector Anton Tikhomirov on 5 February and 11 March 2020, and suspended the school’s license on 7 April 2020. A court order restored the license, only to see it suspended again on 10 December 2020. Court decisions have twice blocked Rosobrnadzor’s moves to annul the license—most recently on 18 March 2021—but it remains suspended, and the state educational inspectorate may yet again seek to have it annulled. 

Rector Tikhomirov characterizes Rosobrnadzor’s allegations as “absolutely far-fetched and false, for example: that there is no information on the website about the organization (there is), or there is no information about the deputy director (we simply do not have such a position).” In addition, a citation for a lack of gymnasium and cafeteria are nonsensical, “since we conduct only distance education.”13 

North Caucasus Bible Institute 

The Evangelical Christian-Baptist (ECB) North Caucasus Bible Institute—located in the town of Prokhladny in the southern Russian republic of Kabardino-Balkaria—has also been subjected to questionable state-imposed penalties. A Rosobrnadzor inspection in June 2018 alleged that the Institute “lacked… proper teaching and assessment tools” and necessary provisions for “sanitation, first aid, and fire safety.” This resulted in a fine equivalent to $2,300, along with a ban on student admissions from November 2018 to November 2020. As of April 2021 the Institute was awaiting a court decision prompted by a renewed state educational inspectorate effort to revoke its educational license.14

Further Pressure

Moscow Evangelical Christian Seminary

The interdenominational Moscow Evangelical Christian Seminary (MECS) is also no stranger to close state oversight. Founded by One Mission Society (OMS), a U.S.-based evangelical mission agency, MECS was briefly shuttered by Rosobrnadzor in the summer of 2007 for alleged “fire violations and for failing to offer a quality education.”15 MECS recouped and reopened, but it has continued to be the object of Rosobrnadzor inspections, most recently in October 2018. Being one of the last Protestant seminaries to face inspection in 2018, MECS drew lessons from the experience of others. According to MECS President Sergei Chervonenko, “Observing the results of the audit at one of the Moscow seminaries, we understood that the process would be difficult and tried to prepare as much as possible.” Harold Brown, OMS missionary and MECS board chair, characterized the most recent lead inspector as “tough,” but one who in the end chose not to recommend sanctions.16

Tyumen Biblical Seminary

In December 2020 Rosobrnadzor reportedly issued a notably egregious order requiring the Pentecostal Tyumen Biblical Seminary to spell out in writing its procedures for interactions with parents of students under the age of 18, even though the school has no minors enrolled. This “failure,” along with the seminary’s lack of provisions for a student food service and sports—even during the pandemic when authorities have suspended in-person, group instruction—was enough to generate an order for Rector Yevgeny Shestakov to halt new student admissions.17

Justified Regulation or Repressive Measures? 

During 2019-20, the author asked a range of Protestant educators and leaders the following:

Is increasing Russian state oversight of private educational institutions, including Protestant seminaries, a justifiable effort to standardize higher education and ensure quality or part of an overall government strategy to bring all sectors of Russian society under closer state supervision?18

In response, the leader of one Protestant denomination related a “tough but successful” Rosobrnadzor inspection of his church’s seminary but did not consider it to be discrimination against non-Orthodox. Rather, he viewed the thrust of the state higher education inspectorate as part of the “overall trend in all sectors of society to have more [state] control.’’19 If fighting corruption in higher education is a factor here, Rosobrnadzor has good reason to act. Corrupt practices in higher education, ubiquitous in the Soviet era, have continued unabated since the collapse of the Soviet Union.20 Elizaveta Potapova, research fellow of the Institute of World Economy and International Relations of the Russian Academy of Sciences, notes that postsecondary education “is particularly vulnerable to corruption” because most faculty are poorly paid, and many students “are willing to pay instructors for better grades, revised transcripts, and more.”21

Intrusive inspections are also not confined to Protestant institutions. Theological educator Olga Zaprometova observes that, if located outside Moscow, Orthodox theological schools often face serious challenges from Rosobrnadzor. As a result, many Orthodox, as well as Protestant seminaries, have chosen not to seek state accreditation as too burdensome a process.22 As theologian John Burgess, author of Holy Rus: The Rebirth of Orthodoxy in the New Russia, has put it, theological educators of diverse confessions dread the weight of “heavy-handed bureaucracy” that accreditation entails. Illustrating the “reality of a highly bureaucratized society,” he notes that state authorities threatened Belgorod Orthodox Seminary with a fine for a minor infraction: its website was said not to be up-todate.23 

Yet the ongoing difficulties with state inspections at a host of high-profile Protestant institutions would suggest a pattern of discrimination that goes well beyond a seminary’s purported insufficient attention to state higher education documentation requirements. This author is in receipt of too many communications from too many beleaguered Russian Protestant educators to believe otherwise. In the opinion of attorney Vladimir Ozolin, state restrictions imposed upon Protestant seminaries are part of a more comprehensive effort to exert “pressure… on the non-traditional confessions.”24 And this takes place against a backdrop of tightened restrictions on general sharing of religious ideas in the wake of the so-called Yarovaya legislation of 2016. In two typical examples from April 2021, Baptists in Belgorod and Kaluga regions were both fined the equivalent of $67 for handing out Bibles in a shopping mall and conducting Bible study in a private apartment without authorization.25 

Here is the heart of the predicament facing Russian Protestant seminaries. The Russian state has arrogated to itself sole authority over the life or death of any given institution, but it possesses neither the expertise nor the objectivity necessary to serve as honest gatekeeper.

Challenges Ahead

Soon, difficulty obtaining an educational license will not be the only constraint upon Protestant higher education. Back in August 2019, Sergei Chervonenko of MECS had anticipated that the next hurdle Rosobrnadzor would erect would be state verification of the degrees held by higher education faculty, an especially ominous prospect for Protestant seminaries: “In the future they may well introduce requirements to confirm the level of teaching staff in Russia.”26 His suspicion proved prescient, as measures in this sphere are to be introduced in October 2021. 

Some precedent exists: the experience of Moscow’s Russian-American Christian University (RACU), one of only two Russian evangelical liberal arts programs to receive state accreditation, along with Zaoksky Seventh-day Adventist University near Tula.27 (While not mandatory, state accreditation confirms that the activity of a particular higher educational institution meets federal educational standards in one or more subject areas, and grants it the right to issue corresponding government-issued diplomas.) RACU’s hard-won accreditation, awarded in 2003, was lost in 2009, in good measure because Rosobrnadzor changed accreditation requirements to no longer credit faculty with Western doctorates in calculating the number of qualified instructors.28 

Forced reliance upon the Russian state for faculty training was an ominous feature of the pressure experienced by another Protestant institution during the recent wave of Rosobrnadzor inspections: Kuban Evangelical Christian University (KECU) in the southern city of Krasnodar. Originally founded as Lampados Bible College under the sponsorship of the U.S. Christian and Missionary Alliance denomination, this was yet another seminary to have its license temporarily suspended in November 2018. KECU’s rector, Gennady Pshenichny, observed in late 2019 that Russian Protestant seminary faculty were beginning to be required to undergo “state-recognized advanced theological training” leading to a “diploma in theological pedagogy” from a secular university, “as absurd as it sounds.”29 Compounding this imposition forced upon KECU, the secular institute affiliated with Kuban State University that offers this new diploma has already doubled the tuition for this mandatory training.30

Pshenichny views Rosobrnadzor’s overall implementation of oversight as “a profanation of education, relegating it to a piece of paper with a stamp.” He openly critiques this state body, which holds a Damocles Sword over the life of his seminary, in a manner that is both searching and courageous:

I would say that ensuring quality is not a top priority of the Ministry of Education. …The system is set up in such a way that officials have to give account to their supervisors and so they react only as prompted. The inspections are genuinely interested only in checking off their lists and finding faults with the schools so they can report back to their respective supervisors and prove they are effective. The tendency is to stifle initiative anywhere and lay [down a] heavy burden, which creates a façade of uniformity and order. At the same time the discrimination against non-Orthodox faiths, especially evangelicals, has always been there. It is twofold. First, there are those who are ideologically opposed and purposefully malign and denigrate non-Orthodox believers through every means possible. And then there are those who are “strengthening” the hands of the first group through ignorance. The connection with the West does not help.31

New Amendments

Signed into law by President Putin on 5 April 2021, the new amendments to Russia’s 1997 legislation on religion will go into effect on 3 October 2021. From that date, would-be ministers or other religious personnel who have been trained outside Russia—including those engaged in mission and teaching—are to complete mandatory “additional professional accreditation in the sphere of the fundamentals of state-confessional relations in the Russian Federation.” This applies both to Russian and non-Russian citizens. The additional training must take place either at a religious institution of higher education that holds both state registration and state accreditation for its core study programs, or at a federal institution of higher education, such as a secular university. Further specifics are unclear.32 

Attorney Konstantin Andreyev interprets the amendments to mean that the type of license a religious educational institution must hold before it can conduct this new training is that recently stripped from MTS and ETS. The licenses more recently obtained by the leading Evangelical ChristianBaptist and Pentecostal seminaries officially characterize their instruction as “additional professional training” rather than “higher education;” in Andreyev’s understanding, this would make them ineligible to provide the “re-education” of would be faculty who have studied abroad.33 Even if in possession of a license for higher education, no non-Orthodox Christian institution in Russia appears to hold the state accreditation that is additionally required except for one: Zaoksky Seventh-day Adventist University (for courses in education and pedagogical sciences, linguistics and literary studies, and theology).34 

Editor’s note: The new amendments also potentially affect the Catholic Church’s Mary—Queen of the Apostles’ Seminary in St. Petersburg and St. Thomas Institute in Moscow. Similar to Protestant institutions in the wake of the recent Rosobrnadzor scrutiny, the educational licenses of both Seminary and Institute are for “additional professional training” and were issued by St. Petersburg and Moscow city authorities respectively. Fr. Stephan Lipke SJ, rector of the St. Thomas Institute, is nevertheless optimistic. Whether or not his institution is able to conduct the new training required of foreign-schooled Catholic personnel after 3 October, he points out that the new amendments declare their final certification to be the responsibility of relevant centralized religious organizations, “i.e. [Catholic] dioceses. So, while I am not delighted by these amendments, I think we can live with them.”*

Final Reflections

Might the de-licensing of minority theological programs, coupled with extra certification of new religious personnel who have studied abroad, be part of a design by the state to further marginalize non-Orthodox religious expression in Russia? To this point, religion scholar Roman Lunkin sees a pattern of “links on a single chain” in the “wave of cancellation of licenses” prior to the 2021 requirements for recertification  of seminary faculty who have studied abroad.35 On 24 March 2021 Slavic Center for Law and Justice attorney Stanislav Kulov spelled out these “links” in explicit terms:

In light of the adopted amendments, the earlier [Rosobrnadzor] inspections, as a result of which a number of Protestant seminaries were deprived of licences that gave the right to implement higher professional education programmes, look like part of some kind of “repressive” plan to reduce the number of religious educational institutions that have the ability to conduct re-training and re-certification for their fellow believers.36

The increasing restrictions imposed upon Protestants under Putin bear consideration in the light of the 20th century Soviet campaign against religion. Protestants were then—and to a large extent still are—popularly considered to be ignorant and uneducated—never mind their systematic exclusion from higher education for seventy-plus years. Lacking respect— but not lacking intelligence—Evangelicals emerging from the Soviet straightjacket in the early 1990s energetically pursued opportunities to educate themselves, including the institution of formal training for their pastors. Even the atheistic USSR had permitted some residential Orthodox—but not Protestant— theological education following the Second World War. 

After the end of Communist Party rule in 1991, pentup evangelical yearning for learning was therefore intense and palpable. I recall attending a February 1993 meeting in Moscow with 38 representatives of 22 new Protestant seminaries. In the context of institutions that for the most part lacked everything needful—buildings, libraries, course textbooks, and credentialed faculty—I was struck by the passion with which Russian and Ukrainian participants advocated, above all else, for the “establishment of seminary accreditation standards.”37 These evangelical seminary educators saw the need for excellence in their training programs, but they also understandably craved respect for their institutions, for their churches, and for their pastors in a post-Soviet society that typically deemed them irrelevant. Given this backstory, is it any wonder that Russian Evangelicals grieve over the reinstitution of Soviet-style measures meant to curtail or perhaps even eliminate their existence?

Notes:

1.  “Ivan Smirnov,” emails to author, 9 and 12 January 2020. Parts of this article derive from the author’s longer piece under the same title published in Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe 40, no. 4 (2020), 1-31, used with permission. 
2.  Mark R. Elliott, The Arduous Path of Post-Soviet Protestant Theological Education (Wilmore, KY: First Fruits Press, 2020), 14; Dale Kemp, email to author, 25 February 2020; https://russianleadership.org/our-ministry/.
3. Victoria Arnold, “RUSSIA: Obstructions to Protestant theological education ‘systemic, intentional’?,” Forum 18, 25 March 2019, www.forum18.org/archive.php?article_id=2465; Roman Lunkin, “Theology for a Select Few: Soviet Déjà Vu for Russia’s Protestants?,” East-West Church Report, vol. 27, no. 3 (2019), 11; Dale Kemp, op. Cit.
4. Peter Mitskevich, “Words from the President—February 2020,” 14 February 2020; https://baptist.org.ru/en/news/view/article/1539124.
5.  Victoria Arnold, “RUSSIA: Flagship Protestant colleges stripped of right to offer higher education,” Forum 18, 13 April 2021, www.forum18.org/archive.php?article_id=2651. 
6. Lunkin, op. Cit.
7.  Arnold, “RUSSIA: Flagship…”; [in Russian] “Bogoslovskaia seminariia poluchila litsenziiu,” https://mbs.ru/index.php?r=series/item&type=news&item=1593767362. 
8. Peter Mitskevich, email to author, 28 April 2021.
9. Arnold, “RUSSIA: Obstructions…” 
10. Ibid.; Elliott, 163-65. 
11. Church of God representative, emails to author, 4 and 31 December 2019. 
12. Arnold, “RUSSIA: Flagship…”
13.  Ibid. 
14. Ibid.; Lunkin, 
15. Mitskevich, email to author, 28 April 2021. 15 Hunter Baker, “Is Church Attendance Declining?,” Christianity Today, 8 November 2007, www.christianitytoday. com/news/2007/november/145-42.0.html/. 
16. Sergei Chervonenko, interview with author, 21 May 2019; Harold Brown telephone interview with author, 22 November 2019; Harold Brown email to author, 25 February 2020. 
17.  [In Russian] Olga Sibireva, “Problemy realizatsii svobody sovesti v Rossii v 2020 godu,” Sova, 31 March 2021, www.sovacenter.ru/religion/publications/2021/03/d43946/.
18.  Mark R. Elliott, emails to Russian Protestant educators and leaders, 8 and 29 October 2019; 4 and 8 December 2019; 9 February 2020. 
19.  Anonymous, email to author, 25 October 2019. 
20. Anthony W. Morgan and Nadezhda V. Kulikova, “Reform and Adaptation in Russian Higher Education: An Institutional Perspective,” European Education, vol. 39 (Fall 2007), 59; Andrei Kortunov, “Russian Higher Education,” Social Research, vol. 76 (Spring 2009), 206. 
21. Elizaveta Potapova and Stefan Trines, “Education in the Russian Federation,” World Education News + Reviews, 6 June 2017, https://wenr.wes.org/2017/06/education-in-therussian-federation. 
22. Olga Zaprometova, email to author, 9 October 2019. 
23.  John Burgess, telephone interview with author, 16 September 2019. 
24.  Arnold, “RUSSIA: Obstructions…” 
25.  [In Russian] “Zhitel’ Belgorodskoi oblasti oshtrafovan za razdachu Biblii v torgovom tsentre,” Sova, 12 May 2021, www.sova-center.ru/religion/news/harassment/ intervention/2021/05/d44197/; “V Obninske sluzhitel’ EkhB oshtrafovan za ‘nezakonnoe’ missionerstvo,” Sova, 23 April 2021, www.sova-center.ru/religion/news/harassment/ intervention/2021/04/d44107/. 
26.  [In Russian] Sergey Chervonenko, “Proverka ot Rosobrnadzora: itogi i mysli,” 23 August 2019, https:// chervonenko.medium.com/проверка-от-рособрнадзораитоги-и-мысли-b340a766ffc7.
27. Mikhail Kulakov, God’s Soviet Miracles: How Adventists Built the First Protestant Seminary in Russian History (Nampa, ID: Pacific Press Publishing Association, 1993). 
28. John A. Bernbaum, Opening the Red Door: The Inside Story of Russia’s First Christian Liberal Arts University (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2019), 90-91.
29. Gennady Pshenichny, email to author, 1 November 2019.
30.  Ibid.; Harold Brown, telephone interview 22 November 2019. In a 24 May 2019 interview, Dr. Gennady Sergienko, a senior Moscow-based Baptist pastor, also attested to Rosobrnadzor’s move toward state validation of theological faculty.
31. Gennady Pschenichny, op. cit. 
32. [In Russian] “Zakonoproekt no. 992354-7,”https://sozd.duma.gov.ru/bill/992354-7; Olga Sibireva, “Russia; New Restrictions in the Religion Law: What Should Believers Expect?;” BYU Law International Center for Law and Religious Studies, 23 December 2020, https://talkabout.iclrs.org/2020/12/23/new-restrictionsin-the-russian-religious-law/; Victoria Arnold, “How will retraining of foreign-trained clergy be implemented?,” Forum 18, 12 May 2021, www.forum18.org/archive.php?article_id=2657. 
33. Ibid.
34. [In Russian] “Perechen’ svetskikh i konfessional’nykh vuzov, gde prepodaiut teologiiu,” Sova, 1 October 2020, www.sovacenter.ru/religion/news/authorities/protection/2020/10/ d42993/; [in Russian] https://zda.zau.ru/sveden/files/ Svidetelystvo_o_gosudarstvennoy_akkreditacii.pdf.
35. Andrei Rezchikov, Artur Priimak, Andrei Samokhin, “Clergy Refuse to Retrain Over Again; Historically Clergy of Most Confessions Received Foreign Education,” Vzgliad, 18 September 2020, https://www2.stetson.edu/religiousnews/200918b.html. 
36. Arnold, “RUSSIA: Flagship…” 37 Elliott, “The Arduous Path…”, 6.

Dr. Mark R. Elliott is Editor Emeritus of the East-West Church Report.