Controversy Surrounding the New Russian 1,000-Ruble Banknote: Religious Outrage and Nationalist Criticism

Dnevnik Express

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On October 16 The Russian Central Bank presented new banknotes of one thousand five thousand rubles. Unlike the 5,000-ruble banknote, which features the “uncontroversial” landmarks of Yekaterinburg and the Ural Federal District, the layout of the 1,000-ruble note has drawn vociferous criticism from some Russian Orthodox Church clerics and vocal Russian nationalists.

On the obverse side of the 1000 ruble banknote, dedicated to Nizhny Novgorod and the Volga Federal District, the Nicholas Tower of the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin, as well as the confluence of the Oka and Volga, the Syuyumbike tower on the territory of the Kazan Kremlin, the Museum of Archeology and Ethnography in Ufa and the palace church in the Kazan Kremlin, built in the 17th century.

It is the former church that today houses the Museum of the History of the Statehood of the Tatar People and the Republic of Tatarstan and whose dome does not have a cross, as it was removed by the Soviet authorities, in combination with the Syuyumbike Tower in the Kazan Kremlin, which is crowned with a crescent moon, unleashed a wave of criticism of the RCB. Russian clerics, including some representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church, were among those who expressed their outrage at the banknote’s layout.

According to Pavel Ostrovsky – priest of the Russian Orthodox Church, TV presenter, author of books, Instagram blogger, Internet missionary with more than 170,000 followers on Twitter, most Russians who will use the banknote “don’t know the history of the Kazan Kremlin. About them there will simply be a temple without a cross and a minaret with a crescent,” he wrote in “Telegram”.

Really only this shot could be taken in all of Kazan and it was impossible to find anything that would bring peace and harmony and not discord, especially on religious grounds. There are two possibilities. The first is the stupidity of the designers who “just didn’t think”, which is completely unacceptable at such a high level. The second is a deliberate provocation, which has been encountered before by followers of Islam from Tatarstan.

Pavel Ostrovsky

“I send them all to burn in heaven”reads the short slogan on Ostrovsky’s Telegram profile.

His outrage find the support of the Russian nationalist propaganda publication Readovka. “It gives the impression that someone is trying to remove national symbols wherever possible.”

The Deputy Chairman of the Synodal Department for Relations of the Church with Society and the Media of the Moscow Patriarchate, Vakhtang Kipshidze, stated that depicting church buildings without crosses is a form of blasphemy, but in the case of the new banknote “no problem“, because the building depicted on the bill is not a church. It is a museum. And there is no cross on it.

“So this is not a church, this is a museum. Why speculate when it is clear that this is not a church? Our position is quite understandable and clear. If somewhere there are images of those monuments of ours, existing churches, bell towers, etc. n., which are iconic Orthodox buildings and which have a cross, but are depicted without crosses, in our opinion, this would constitute a form of blasphemy. But since in the case of this banknote it is not a church building, there is absolutely no problem that it doesn’t have a cross. Why should there be a cross there, if in fact there is none,” said Kipshidze in an interview with Govori Moscow radio.

The head of the same department, however, called for a more careful approach to the selection of images on the banknotes, so as not to create tension where “there is no need at all”.

Vladimir Legoida received support from the chairman of the commission on constitutional legislation and state building of the Federation Council Andrey Klishas, ​​according to whom it is necessary to hold a public discussion on issues of this nature with the participation of representatives of religious denominations. Klishas finds the image of the temple without a cross provocative, as it “recalls the dark period of atheism”.

Efforts were made by the Museum of the History of the Statehood of the Tatar People and the Republic of Tatarstan itself to explain, that the church has been gone for more than a hundred years. It was built as a palace church of the governor’s family and functioned throughout the 19th century until the coming of Soviet power, when it was converted into a warehouse, then an archive, then a canteen. The museum opened its doors in 2006, but the church ceased to be a church long before that – even with the coming of Soviet power. Then her cross was also dismantled.

On the same day it unveiled the new 1,000-ruble banknote, the Russian central bank announced it was halting the process of putting it into circulation because its design was not final and needed to be completed. On both sides of the 5,000 ruble banknote, which did not cause any passions, the memorial monument “Europe – Asia” on the bank of the Urals in Verkhneuralsk in Yekaterinburg is depicted, and on the reverse side is the composition “The Tale of the Urals” from Chelyabinsk.

The new banknotes will enter into circulation in stages, at the same time as the 1997 banknotes RCB explainthat replacing one banknote with another takes a long time, and they have a large stock of old banknotes, “so, above all, we use them to replenish the payment circulation”.

2023-10-18 07:32:26
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