Church economics

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The economics of the modern church are not far removed from their ancestors. Today the ROC stands on three whales, and the disappearance of any of them is catastrophic. These whales are believers, the resale of church paraphernalia and the support of the state.

RKKTs - Workers 'and Peasants' Red Church

27 years ago, when the Soviet empire collapsed and the religious revival began, there were about 6,500 parishes in the Church, two-thirds of them in Ukraine. It was then that the fundamental problem of the modern ROC arose: there was essentially no one to revive religion and its institutions. After all, all the churchmen were exterminated as a class, and the phrase "Religion is opium for the people"quoted by all citizens of the USSR with a knowing smile. A favorite question in the church was: "Why didn't Gagarin see your god?"

Today, the Russian Orthodox Church has more than 36 thousand parishes, of which about 25 thousand are in Russia. The number of monasteries has exceeded a thousand - there was no such number before the revolution. And there is no end in sight for this: every day three new parishes are opening.

“The growth rates are colossal. But I want to say - how cancer tumor, - considers former priest Father Nikolai, a former priest who left the Church after a scandal caused by an attempt to tell the truth about its structure.- Because the internal environment is not prepared or provided with anything. First, the living tradition of that old Church has been destroyed. And we are not dealing with restoration, but with reconstruction. We - those who stand at the leadership and parishes, the episcopate and even the Patriarchate - are not from the families of the clergy. And not even from families of believers.

The current speed of the spread of the ROC is not provided either intellectually, or cadres, or traditions - nothing. Only by desire - let's make another monastery, let's make another parish. And we'll put him at the helm - he sings painfully loudly. Accordingly, what are the personnel - such are the consequences of this.

In the early 90s, during the period of reconstruction of the Russian Orthodox Church, a tragic utopianism was superimposed on book Orthodoxy: the world is falling into tartaras, it will not exist for long, the third world war is ahead, it is necessary to be saved - and a mass of destitute people from collapsed families poured into monasteries in search of, if not a better life, then with the thought of where to save their children from debauchery, from alcohol, from drugs, from prostitution.

Then the monasteries were still such utopian communities of Tommaso Campanella (the author of The City of the Sun, according to V. I. Lenin, is one of the predecessors of scientific socialism) and represented not so much Orthodoxy as military communism. People all left the Soviet Union, having a collective farm before their eyes as a model. This is it, and not the apostolic community, and they built it.

Therefore, it was not God's houses that were obtained, but the same collective farms, only with the Gospel in their hands. - The people from Bessarabia and from the south-east of Ukraine were especially appreciated. And by itself it turned out that out of all possible Orthodoxy we began to build a peasant one. Again, with all the ensuing consequences - with the promotion of natural economy and peasant culture, as well as with the rejection of urban life. Why do the peasants need passports? TIN? Books? Cards? Overseas trips? The peasants have always lived off subsistence farming! Well, that is, such a peasant practicality.

It was then that the roots of the current troubles of the ROC were laid - it so happened that monastic, black clergy in Russia is traditionally the least educatedthan the white clergy. This is our specificity, in contrast, for example, to Catholics: their monks are more educated than parish priests.

Since then, from the moment of the revival of the Church, people who have taken monastic vows have been making a frenzied career. Lightning fast. Where a white priest has to plow and plow, serve and serve, the blacks could in two years decorate themselves with everything they can, and take such positions that an ordinary priest never dreamed of.

Accordingly, from rags to riches, without education - without the appropriate length of service - forward. These are again Stalin's falcons, non-commissioned officers who became generals of the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army, who studied according to the principle of "take off - landing - ready to fight."

This in itself is sad, but even worse is that these Stalinist falcons themselves began to teach new priests - in the massively opening seminaries, there was nowhere to take clever teachers with religious convictions, and parish priests were sent there, who were themselves students of "reenactors" - says the father Nikolay.

The result is sad.

“Most of today's priests do not feel half-tones,” says the priest, Father Mikhail. He served in different churches for 17 years, disillusioned with the Russian Orthodox Church and quit the ministryreturning to the world. - Their educational qualification is extremely low, and there is no higher secular education, and the higher church education is of a very low quality. These people do not understand the difference between discouragement and depression. They do not understand that mental illness should be treated with pills, that only Prayer cannot cure alcoholism and drug addiction.

But what today's priests understand very well that this is the financial benefit from the opening of the next parish. After all, it becomes a new link in a complex chain of relationships, from which the economy of the church is formed.

"At the butt's change of nem …"

In Russian folklore, since the 16th century, a significant part has been assigned to priests. And the part is not the most pleasant. Suffice it to recall "The Tale of the Priest and His Worker Balda", which, like many works of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, is rooted in peasant legends. No wonder in the XXI century The Church has practically achieved a census of this immortal work - on "The Tale of the Merchant and His Worker Balda."

Collections of folk proverbs contain dozens of sayings like “To the priest - a marten, to a deacon - a fox, to a sexton-bitter - a gray hare, and a mallet-cracker - hare ears”, “The belly of a priest is bottomless, you cannot fill it”, “Who fights from the living and from the dead ? Pop!"

The economics of the modern church are not far removed from their ancestors. Today the ROC stands on three whales, and the disappearance of any of them is catastrophic. These whales are believers, the resale of church paraphernalia and the support of the state.

The ROC, like any religious organization officially registered in Russia, has benefits, but every one of them is key. It is completely exempt from the payment of value added tax (VAT) and income tax (part 3 of article 149 of the Tax Code of the Russian Federation), property tax (part 27 of article 251 of the Tax Code of the Russian Federation) and land tax (article 395 of the Tax Code of the Russian Federation), as well as state duties (Article 333.35 of the Tax Code of the Russian Federation). That is, in fact, the ROC does not pay anything to the budget at all

The Tax Code of the Russian Federation clearly stipulates: exemption is only from religious activity, and all commercial, even those carried out by the Russian Orthodox Church, are subject to compulsory taxation. Therefore, according to reports, the church does not carry out any commercial activities at all. And it is useless to argue with this. True, according to a high-ranking Russian official, in fact, they simply do not want to get involved with the church.

“The priests are now included in absolutely all elected bodies of all levels of power, from local parliaments to various kinds of public councils and supervisory commissions - up to ministerial and federal. This, of course, is correct, but it opens doors for them to leaders of any rank, where they can simply cry in order to recall the commission or close their eyes to the identified shortcomings. And believe me - the churchmen take advantage of this. Moreover, on the direct instructions of his management,”he explains.

As paradoxical as it sounds, but government support makes the entire economy of the ROC black. Or gray - after all, no parish is accountable to anyone. Nobody checks them, except for the Church itself. And here, as many years of experience show, the hand washes the hand. Moreover, both in the world and in the Church, everyone is convinced: the authorities know everything, and everything that happens is done with their (the authorities') blessing.

For example, when in 2017 the study commission of the Moscow Patriarchate arrived at the Vladimir Theological Seminary for a check, it almost accidentally found out that out of a dozen reputable professors, only two were formally employed - the rector and the first vice-rector. And the rest worked for many years without registration, work books and deductions to the Pension Fund. They received their salary in envelopes and thought that it should be so. Having learned the truth, we went to bow to the Patriarchate. And there they said: the pension will be paid by those whom you have just trained. In fact, the case was let down on the brakes. People have quit, but no one will make up for the missed years - neither in seniority, nor in compulsory deductions. And these teachers have nowhere to go - the ROC has a monopoly on spiritual education.

“The whole church economy is very specific,” says Father Nikolai. - It is organized according to the sectarian principle. You know, there is such a saying: "the priest has the change of nem." Our brethren do not like to pay for work. Therefore, this is all - a blessing, for Christ's sake, bring a present. The system of economic relations is deliberately criminal - with black and gray salaries. This is a scam of people for free work, and people quickly get used to it. You don't have to pay: you are not working for me - you are working for the Lord God. Why do you need a vacation, why do you need registration, why do you need a salary?

Russians will be very surprised when they find out that priests have absolutely no rights. Yes, work books were nevertheless forced to issue them, but not everyone still has them - in every church, in every monastery they were assigned to the required minimum of clergy. But no one has employment contracts. Even a standard form was not developed. In addition, the ROC is governed by the principle of hierarchy. This is the same as autocracy in the army. That is why there is not a single labor conflict in the ROC - the boss is always right. And the guilty one is always guilty.

The salary of a Russian priest ranges from 20 to 40 thousand rubles a month. Some say that they are withholding personal income tax, some - that they are completely exempt from taxes. The abbot receives much more, but the size of his salary is a mystery, shrouded in darkness. In addition, the abbot can put his hand into the treasury - they say, this is for gasoline, because I go on church business, and this is on my mobile, I’m talking about the problems of the parish even by phone. And no one can argue with him.

Moreover, under the conditions of the hierarchy, the issues of prestige are manifested especially clearly. So an ordinary priest will never buy a car more prestigious than that of the prior; the abbot will not appear in public in a watch more expensive than the bishop; and the bishop will not have a rarity that the patriarch does not. Therefore, the desire to stand out manifests itself in a different way.

A small example: in June 2018, one of the recruiting agencies was looking for a personal chef for the abbess of the holy monastery. The salary was promised at 90 thousand rubles. According to the agency's employees, the abbess was going to pay her own money. It is easy to assume that a high-ranking clerk of a personal chef will not give her last pennies.

“The state simply does not consider either the conflict or the deviation from the law in the Russian Orthodox Church,” Father Nikolai explains. - Therefore, the salaries are black. In Soviet times, this was justified by the fact that there was a godless government. And now everyone is just used to it and turns a blind eye to it. The authorities do not go into these issues. They do not even try to climb, because they understand: if you touch, so much shit will turn sour!

The second pillar of the Russian Orthodox Church's economy is the resale of church paraphernalia. This includes a lot: from products that are sold in temples and monasteries to entire industries that conclude agreements and government contracts. The cost price of such products is minimal - they are produced either by free workers or completely powerless people who cannot even complain anywhere.

And if they complain … In the public councils of all departments, including the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the National Guard and the FSB, there are many people in robes who not only inform about complaints, but can also influence decisions. Often - the lowest requests. And almost no one refuses these requests.

In the criminal case on the death of the girl Tanya in Moseitsevo, seven farms were recorded working for the local Nikitsky monastery. According to the investigation, those same workers worked in them - this is the name of those who perform obedience free of charge. However, according to operational data, the monastery has other farms in the Moscow and Ivanovo regions. Some of them are engaged in the manufacture of industrial goods.

The data obtained in an operational way can not always be verified. For example, in the village of Grigorkovo, which is a few kilometers from Moseitsevo, there is an Orthodox community. According to local residents, the blacksmiths living there sold goods in the markets and made them to order. They were engaged in agriculture and animal husbandry, and all surplus food and money went to the monastery. But no legal or financial traces of this could be found.

This is not surprising, because the Orthodox do not record transactions. The economy of the Russian Orthodox Church, in principle, remains black. Or gray. This means that it is almost impossible to calculate its real volumes. And Orthodox clergymen are in no hurry to "get out of the twilight." On the contrary, it is beneficial for them to be in the shadows.

The village of Grigorkovo was given to the Orthodox community many years ago, and blacksmiths live there. They work for the benefit of the parish, and their products are well known in the region and beyond: high-quality, beautiful, reliable … During the preparation of the material, I happened to be in this village.

None of the children I met differed in any way from the inmates of the orphanage in Moseitsevo: brilliant knowledge of Orthodox literature and Domostroi, as well as a complete inability to solve any problem from the third grade textbook in mathematics. Complete ignorance of classical Russian literature, even to the questions “Who is Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin? Who is Mikhail Lermontov? I never got an answer. But - long, half-length clothes and a good belief that the world is ruled by the Antichrist. As well as old and fresh festering wounds on the arms and legs.

So - there is simply no village of Grigorkovo in any tax statement.

Many have heard about the Orthodox production in the village of Sofrino - it is there that candles, icons, crosses are made … And the vast majority of Russians believe that everything sold in churches is made in Russia, in monasteries and in factories …

Alas, this is a delusion. As in virtually all other segments of the global market, in the production and sale of church utensils, the People's Republic of China is in the lead. In the province of Zhejiang there is the city of Yiwu, and in it there is a huge wholesale center selling religious goods, and more than half of them are Orthodox. A wholesale batch starts from the conditional 100 icons or 1000 crosses, but buyers in black robes are not embarrassed by this volume, especially since customs officers and border guards quickly and joyfully respond to a request to clear the sacred items out of turn. They don’t have to wait - you won’t collect the duty.

In the same market, Catholic priests from various countries are overstocked. And from Russia too. According to experts, 100 percent of the rosary, 80 percent of Catholic icons and most of the candles - and for Catholics they are special, in special plastic cups - are made in the Celestial Empire.

Once, in a private conversation with me, a monk from Sergiev Posad, boasting, said that in Russia there are more than ten thousand Orthodox communities working for the good of the Church. And he mentioned that some of them even went international: trade timber with China. And they learn accuracy from the Chinese. Even with the money we got from work on our own weekend, they bought special equipment in Finland and now they are driving it to their region. Alas, I did not find any confirmation of this. Unofficially, I was told that there are indeed several Orthodox communities among the smugglers who drive the forest to the Celestial Empire. Each of them owns a small mobile sawmill and never causes trouble for law enforcement - unlike hundreds of others.

But a lot of things are also produced in Sofrino. This enterprise (the official name is the art-production enterprise of the Russian Orthodox Church "Sofrino") still occupies a leading, although not the first, place in the system of making paraphernalia and is a monopolist in many respects ("Who will give the Chinese prayer books or fonts?" - says Father Nikolai.

Its turnover is great, but, alas, it is decreasing. And the point is not only in the competition with the Far Eastern neighbor - the impoverishment of the people leads to a decrease in income. Nevertheless, in 2017, the income of the enterprise amounted to 2 billion 325 million 275 thousand rubles. Meanwhile, in 2007, according to official figures, Sofrino's annual income exceeded 60 billion.

On July 28, 2018, Patriarch Kirill, by his decree, dismissed Evgeny Parkhaev, the permanent director of the KhPP ROC Sofrino for 40 years. Formally, the reason for the dismissal is not named, semi-formally they say that the patriarchy commission recognized his work as unsatisfactory. And quite informally, they note that Parkhaev was too carried away by personal affairs, having ruined Orthodox production. At the same time, he held several posts at once, in fact, being the chief manager of the Russian Orthodox Church, and in all areas he failed work, for which he paid.

In any case, Sofrino's turnover fell, and disproportionate to the fall in income of the parishes. Parkhaev himself told reporters that he agreed with the patriarch's decision: “I am 77 years old, I have been serving the church for 55 years, and I have been a director for 40 years. I'm already tired."

But there is a small detail: immediately after the signing of the Decree, the representative of the Patriarchate asked the Moscow Region Rosgvardia to take Sofrino under protection - "until the appointment of a new director." He explained this by the desire to preserve material and technical values and fixed assets. That is, the director was not simply removed from office - they immediately began to defend themselves against him. This does not sound like voluntary withdrawal.

“Parkhaev did not want to leave, he strongly resisted any attempt to limit his powers,” says a source in church circles. - In an amicable way, it should have been spent on a well-deserved rest in 2014, if not earlier. But he played a significant role in the election of Cyril and enjoyed his support. Although, in fact, he worked the old fashioned way. On the one hand, this is good - because the canons were strictly observed. On the other hand, such work is not for the current economic conditions. And Parkhaev, moreover, was increasingly striving to get involved in the political activities of the church."

In other words, the second pillar of the Russian Orthodox Church's economy has slightly lost weight in recent years, but still continues to generate stable income.

Finally, the third pillar of the Russian Orthodox Church's economy is believers. Almost every visitor to the church, not necessarily a believer, leaves at least one hundred rubles in the church. The believer is more. These are candles, notes for health and peace, buying icons … Getting baptized and getting married also costs money, and besides, you have to buy books with prayers.

- A small temple in the city has a monthly revenue of about a million- says Father Nikolai. - We give 25 percent to the diocese, another 30 percent - our daily expenses. The rest - for the church … True, now they say that in the diocese they began to demand more - up to half. More precisely, each parish was given a plan, and if you do not fulfill it, you will fly out. And if you do it, then no one will see that the priest changes his car every year.

Churches in villages, of course, earn less - well if 200 thousand a month. There are fewer parishioners here, and they themselves, to put it mildly, are not rich. Prayer rooms have low turnover in transport - 300-400 thousand per month. But the temples in cottage settlements and near them … The priests themselves say that the average revenue here is tens of millions.

The statement of Patriarch Kirill at one of the church councils is well known. Criticizing the princes of the Russian Orthodox Church, he said that many peripheral parishes contributed only 200-300 thousand rubles to the general church treasury - that is, the same as the poorest churches in the capital. And in fact, he accused his subordinates of greed. In the same speech, figures were sounded: up to 22 percent of the temple's income goes to the general treasury. This allows us to draw some conclusions about the general wallet of the Russian Orthodox Church.

And RBC journalists calculated that only direct subsidies of the ROC (for example, for the restoration of old churches that had gone to the Church) exceeded 14 billion rubles in 2012-2015. This is despite the fact that almost all the temples, it is said, were rebuilt with the money of donors and the state is usually not among the donors.

Besides each temple has its own sponsor - a private enterprisethat helps with money. As a rule, this is based on personal contacts of the abbot. The head of this enterprise often becomes the head of the church or the chairman of the community council and receives awards at the earliest opportunity - after all, the ROC has its own orders and medals. If you see such an award on the chest, for example, Yakunin - do not hesitate. This is for state zeal, for sponsorship.

“It is this kind of money that makes priests forget the laws of God and cheat with church books,” says Father Nikolai. - Someone spends money on their development, and someone - on personal welfare. There are, of course, few of them, but they exist … It is especially offensive for those priests who came to church after Afghanistan or Chechnya - they left the worldly life precisely from this scum. And here - the same profile.

Be that as it may, but in January 2017, a grandiose scandal became public knowledge: in the Krasnoyarsk diocese, the priest, who recreated the temple from the ruins and served in it permanently since 1995, was fired. According to the priest Victor (Pasechnyuk) himself - for the fact that he could not collect 150 thousand rubles for the Metropolitan's birthday and transfer them to the diocese. At the same time, they started talking loudly about the "planned" nature of voluntary donations. But … the priests who are members of the public councils of the TV channels, as well as the confessors of the leadership of regional and federal media, very much asked not to pedal the topic - and a bloc was put on it.

Wherein, According to the registers of legal entities, the Russian Orthodox Church is registered as a company with fewer than 100 employees, with Kirill Gundyaev designated as CEO.

But this does not prevent the growth of the number of parishes. In mid-2017, the thousandth monastery was opened in Russia, and as of January 1, 2018, there were already 1010 of them. For comparison: before the Khrushchev persecutions in the USSR there were only 14 monasteries (most in the Ukrainian SSR), in the 80s - four (Trinity-Sergius and Pskov-Pechersk Lavras, Riga Hermitage (female) and the Assumption Monastery in Pyukhtitsa, Estonia).

But every monastery is also a subsidiary farm. At least one, and in the Nikitsky Monastery near Moseitsevo, seven of them were found. Farms, although focused on the maintenance of the inhabitants, produce surpluses, and they quickly turn into surplus value: the laws of economics are the same for everyone.

There are more than 36 thousand parishes in Russia. Another 600 churches have already been formally transferred to the Russian Orthodox Church, but either lie in ruins or are under construction. In the entire Soviet Union there were less than 6.5 thousand parishes. Of these, 891 parishes and 56 monasteries are located outside the country. And of the remaining, about half - behind the Ural Mountains.

Almost 40 thousand elders, more than 5 thousand deacons and almost 400 bishops serve in the ROC. Already, in the structure of the ROC there are 356 dioceses and 79 metropolises - more than the constituent entities of the Russian Federation.

Knowing the number of parishes, imagining the amount of money passing through them and having operational data on the work of workers and on the gray exports to which the ROC is involved, it is easy to roughly estimate its budget. Its revenue side is almost equal to the expenditure side and amounts to about 92 billion rubles in 2017 prices. It does not take into account the indirect subsidies of the state and the income that the ROC receives from the securities it owns, since this part, even supposedly, cannot be calculated. Moreover, the facts of the ROC's investment in the construction of luxury real estate and business centers, as well as in the import of cars, are known. But this activity of the Church lies entirely in the black zone.

A year ago, while on a business trip to the Baikal region, I had an informal conversation with a general of one of the power structures. It was about the withdrawal from the illegal zone of small industrial enterprises, primarily sawmills and timber processing companies, consumers of the main wealth of that region.

“The command passed, and ordered to massively legalize them,” the general told me. “We don't count them - send patrols along any route, and everyone will find five or six mobile sawmills or two or three sheds that make boards. But they will not be legalized - taxes are such that it is cheaper to close. This means that five to ten men will be left without work, which will cause an increase in social tension. To put it mildly. Yes, and now to communicate with the church is more expensive. But for them, even for a ration and a couch, the freed ones work. Left without work, they spoil my statistics in a second. No, I will not take sin on my soul."