Law on Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations
The Law on Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations (Russian: «Закон О свободе совести и о религиозных объединениях»), also known as the 1997 Law (Russian: «Закон 1997 года») is a Russian law passed and signed by President Boris Yeltsin on September 26, 1997. The law redefined the state's relationship with religion, as Soviet general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev had defined in on the Law of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic on Freedom of Worship passed on October 25, 1990, commonly known as the 1990 Law. After the fall of Communism, Gorbachev had given much-needed breathing room to the practice of religion in Russia, whose culture's heart is Eastern Orthodoxy, but had also opened the door indiscriminately and generally to the practice of religion. The Russian Orthodox Church believed that a new law was needed to preserve Russia against what they considered to be the corruption of Orthodoxy. The law was formulated and pushed by the Russian Orthodox Church, secular nationalists, and communists alike, with such determination that though Yeltsin vetoed the bill once, he could not legitimately do so a second time. Written in the law was the upholding of separation of church and state, as well as an interdiction