Moscow, July 14
A Forbidden Art organizer Yury Samodurov admitted his intellectual impotence before the Russian Church he has criticized.
"The cycle of public struggle seems to be over. ROC has won it. Chaplin (head of the Synodal Department for Church and Society Relations - IF) has probably defeated me, moreover he did it with his intellect. His article is much more powerful than that address signed by many, but I believe I haven't sent it to you," Samodurov said in his letter to litterateur and human rights advocate Vadim Belotserkovsky as its copy was conveyed to "Interfax-Religion" on Wednesday.
Most likely Samodurov mentions his open address to the Patriarchal Council on Culture and Fr. Vsevolod's article published in early June by the NG-Religia paper.
Samodurov believes that "our state, following the way suggested by Chaplin will become even more hypocritical and disgusting and the ROC will become even more monstrous."
"How to prove it - I don't know. Though I will think about it," the letter reads.
The Tagansky Court in Moscow has ordered former Sakharov Center director Yury Samodurov to pay a 200,000 ruble fine this Monday.
The second defendant in the Banned Art case, former head of the Tretyakov Gallery's division of contemporary movements, Andrey Yerofeyev, has been ordered by the court to pay 150,000 rubles as a fine.
The indictment says that the exhibit displayed works "carrying humiliating and insulting images hostile to the Christian religion and believers." The criminal case against the organizers was initiated according to Article 282 (inciting hatred or enmity).
