guardian.co.uk,
Associated Press in Moscow, Wednesday 28 September 2011
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| Russian priest Father Vsevolod Chaplin, spokesman for the Moscow patriarchate, called for novels by Nabokov and García Márquez to be banned. Photograph: Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP |
A senior
Russian Orthodox official claimed that novels by Vladimir Nabokov and Gabriel
García Márquez justify paedophilia and said they should be banned in the
nation's high schools.
Father Vsevolod
Chaplin's demand that Russia's government investigate and limit the use of the
books was his church's latest attempt to impose religious norms in a country
that once rejected religion altogether.
Chaplin,
who heads the public relations department for the Moscow patriarchate,
discussed Nabokov's Lolita and García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude
on Ekho Moskvy radio, accusing both of "justifying paedophilia".
The priest
later elaborated in comments carried by Interfax, saying the authors' works
should not be included in high school curriculums as they "romanticise
perverted passions that make people unhappy".
"Obviously,
the popularisation of these novels in schools will not make our society more
morally happy," he was quoted as saying.
Mikhail
Shvydkoi, a Kremlin envoy for international cultural co-operation, disagreed,
saying such action by authorities would badly hurt Russia's image.
Nabokov,
who left his native Russia shortly after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution,
published Lolita in English in 1955. The book, which describes a relationship
of a middle-aged intellectual with his 12-year-old stepdaughter, was briefly
banned in several European countries, Argentina and South Africa – as well as
several library systems and public schools in the US.
Nabokov
translated the book into Russian in 1967, but that work – along with the rest
of his writings – was banned in the Soviet Union as pornography.
Unlike
Lolita, García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude was published in the
Soviet era – despite numerous references to incest and sex with minors.
The
Colombian novelist was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1982.
The Russian
Orthodox church has called for tighter controls on the content of television
and radio broadcasts and said Russian women should observe an "Orthodox
dress code" by wearing longer skirts and non-revealing clothes.
The church
has experienced a revival since the collapse of the officially atheist Soviet
Union in 1991. It now claims more than 100 million followers in Russia and tens
of millions elsewhere, but polls have shown that only about 5% of Russians are
observant believers.
Church and
state are officially separate under the post-Soviet constitution, but Orthodox
leaders seek a more muscular role for the church, which has served the state
for much of its 1,000-year history.
Some
non-religious Russians complain that the church has tailored its doctrine to
suit the government, which has justified Russia's retreat from western-style
democracy by saying the country has a unique history and culture.
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