ABSTRACT
The end of communist rule and of the USSR itself brought an end to the restrictions upon freedom of worship with which Russian religious believers had previously been obliged to contend. In a Russia-wide urban survey conducted in early 1992, for example, respondents were asked what feelings were evoked by the word ‘Christianity’. The position of religious belief in late communist Russia was nonethless a complex and contradictory one. The Protestant churches, like the Russian Orthodox Church, adopt a more formal definition or membership involving enrolment in a local group and at least some frequency of attendance at religious ceremonies and gatherings. The amendments made clear that the rights and freedoms of the individual were of the ‘highest value’ in postcommunist Russia, and that the practice or propagation of a religion was an inalienable human right. The evidence certainly suggested that, at least in the early postcommunist years, religion and the churches were held in high public esteem.
