In Europe’s poorest country, young people are turning to occult religious practices—even exorcisms—to escape everyday life.
REZINA, Moldova—Northern Moldova is one of the poorest regions in the
poorest country in Europe. Two decades after the hardly-remembered War of Transdnistria, the battered region stands on little more than dust and remittances. What it does have—in ample quantity—is religion.
As in other former Soviet republics, spirituality has filled the
material void, and the Orthodox Church is thriving. According to the
Moldova Foundation, roughly 98 percent of Moldova’s population belongs
to a church. But in Moldova one must ask—what kind of church? Is it
European? Russian? Something else? You will find a smattering of
Catholic churches, a handful of Sunni mosques, a few groups of Mormons,
and of course the Moldovan Orthodox Church, which is dominant. On this
particular summer night in early August, as the sun
darkens the Dniester River, the country’s intense religiosity is the
main event. It is Thursday evening, and like every Thursday, the Saharna Monastery,
one of the most well-known monasteries in the country, opens its
cloister gates to allow the public inside to attend a mass exorcism.
| The Saharna Monastery |
As Moldova enters its third decade of independence since the collapse
of the Soviet Union, religion may be the only social force that is as
rampant as the corruption that has swallowed the public and private
sector. University students, almost without fail, must bribe professors
to pass courses. Malls and shopping centers, such as the one in the
heart of Balti, Moldova’s second-largest city, undergo abrupt, massive
expansions—not in the name of commerce, but in the pursuit of money
laundering. Even those organizations and offices that were set up to
combat the country’s corruption are accused of being part of the racket.
Amid this sea of corruption, the Orthodox Church has become one of the
few remaining institutions with something approaching respectability.
“What you have is [the Orthodox Church] standing up and apart from a lot
of institutions that aren't respected, emerging within this illiberal
democracy,” says Tanya Domi, a researcher at Columbia University.
“Sergey!” A black-robed priest with a scraggly beard bellows out the
names of the faithful who have come to the exorcism. “Natasha! Igor!
Andrei! Natalia! Ekaterina!
Vyacheslav-Aleksandr-Daria-Ivan-Anatoly-Viktor-Veronika-Ksenyia-Vladimir!”
The candles flutter. A shriek arises from somewhere deep in the crowd.
Then, 10 feet from me, a woman screams: Davaite dyavoli! Davaite dyavoli!
The crowd around her jumps. A man, presumably her boyfriend, muffles
her mouth with his hand and sways her back and forth. I look at my
watch. It was already 1 a.m., and half a dozen women are screaming. A
girl, who looks to be about 20, writhes and presses herself into her
boyfriend’s shoulder. Someone hands him a bottle of silt taken from the
pool of holy water. He dumps the murky mix into his mouth, swirls it
around, and spits it in his girlfriend’s face before pulling her back.
And then he smiles.
 |
| Courtesy of Casey Michel |
This stark and superstitious religiosity stands in contrast to the
image Moldova has recently attempted to cultivate. A few months ago, the
residents of the Moldovan capital of Chisinau held their first-ever Gay Pride parade.
Unlike in neighboring Georgia and Russia, where priests and religious
thugs brutally beat gay-rights supporters in the streets, Orthodox
Moldovans left the LGBT parade alone. The tiny country was praised as a
progressive bulwark against a reactionary regional slide.
But experts say that the notion that a highly religious Moldova is
becoming more tolerant is a ruse, mainly intended to please the European
Union, which is considering the country for membership. Moldova has
feinted to the left on social and societal issues, while lagging on both
judicial and media reforms. And with gay rights, Moldova—under the
heavy influence of the Orthodox Church—still largely follows Moscow’s
lead, which has become increasingly repressive. Indeed, the religious
yoke of Moscow has a long history. In 1812, the Russian Orthodox Church
seized the Moldovan church, and the latter has remained subservient ever
since. And so, a few months after currying favor with Brussels, the
Moldovan parliament passed a law that was nearly identical to Russia’s much-maligned anti-gay statute. The U.S. State Department noted that the Orthodox Church had “welcomed” the local ordinances the new law was based on.
At the Saharna Monastery, after hours of chanting and screaming, the
exorcism ends at 2 a.m. The teenagers, divided in their various cliques,
filter out into the night. These kids clumped together, standing in
packs, murmuring to one another as they left. Of course, a few had
attended for the sheer spectacle, to participate in a voyeuristic way in
this bizarre mix of religion and the occult. When a scream erupted from
the writhing mass of teenage churchgoers, it was often met by a handful
of giggles from different corners of the crowd.
But even if they come for pure entertainment, it is because Moldova’s
youth have plenty of reasons to seek an escape. The country’s young
people are the first generation to grow up without the security of the
old Soviet safety net—and nothing has replaced it. Job prospects are
incredibly bleak. According to the World Bank, unemployment for young
men surpassed 20 percent in 2010. Most of the work that is available is
low-wage. The International Monetary Fund’s most recent report on the country’s wealth disparity put Moldova’s overall poverty rate at 26.3 percent. As a result, many head abroad in search of work, sending their earnings back home to take care of family and loved ones. (As the UNDP reported, nearly 40 percent of Moldovans working abroad were under the age of 30.)
And so, they come to this exorcism. If the government can’t help,
then perhaps the church can fill the vacuum. “It’s just a pretty dismal
situation for young people [in Moldova], thinking about the future,”
says Domi. “Can you can imagine being a kid in Moldova?”
For now, there is little sign that Moldova’s secular society is ready
to do much to tamp down the country’s massive graft, and, in the
meantime, the church’s power, especially among the youth, will build. It
seems the issues that the church can’t fix—unemployment, graft,
hopelessness—are the real dyavoli of Moldova, demons these exorcisms were never intended to stop.
Casey Michel is a graduate student at Columbia University’s Harriman Institute, and a former Peace Corps Kazakhstan volunteer.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment