> Right now they are spending their money on renovating churches of various
> stripes, where were grossly neglected in the Soviet era. When I saw
> that during my last year's visit to Leningrad, I thought the Soviet screwed that up.
> Neglecting these beautiful works of architecture was
> totally unnecessary. They could have simply re-defined them as products
> of human labor, which is what they actually were. They should have
> turned them into museums, as they did the Hermitage.
They did. The beautiful Kazan Cathedral on the Nevsky Prospekt was the Museum of History of Religion and Atheism. I loved it. There was a wall of photos of nationalist Belarussian Orthodox priests being convivial with Nazi officers during WWII and photos of nationalist Lithuanian RC Priests doing the same. It was captioned "Oecumenism."
john mage