ABSTRACT
In 2004 Eastern-rite Catholic Pavel Parfentyev wrote:
We do not agree with considering ourselves ‘guests’ in Russia.… I am Russian and a Russian citizen [rossiianin], and also a Catholic. I love my Church and am faithful to her. I also love my country and my people. And there is no contradiction here. There are many people like me in this respect. We are just as much ‘bosses’ in Russia as believers of the Moscow Patriarchate. And we have no less right and feel no less duty before God and other people to witness about our faith. No one can free us from this responsibility, and no one can deprive us of this right. 1
His words are entirely in accord with the 1993 Constitution's pledge that ‘religious associations … shall be equal before the law’. 2 Yet barely a decade after its adoption, they pointed to an already diverging reality. Pondering the same constitutional provision in 2005 reminded Old Believer website editor Irina Budkina of Orwell: ‘There are those who are more equal than others.’ 3