MOSCOW, RUSSIA.- In January 2003, the Andrei Sakharov Museum in Moscow held an exhibition of new art called "Caution — Religion." The show was vandalized on the third day by two Russian Orthodox believers who called the show a "blasphemy”. With this attention the exhibition became a major event. The director of the Sakharov Museum fought back with ringing defenses of freedom of art. However, in August, charges against the two attackers were dropped on the ground that the show was more than their religious sensitivities could bear. But also, on December 29, the state prosecutor advised the museum director, Yuri Samodurov, and three of the artists that they faced charges of inciting national and religious hatreds.

The right to free expression does not absolve people from responsibility for what they choose to present. That does not exclude shock as an artistic vehicle. But there is a line beyond which shock becomes offense and even anguish, and it is not one that should be casually crossed. Even so, the contents of art are none of the state’s business. A mature society should be able to tolerate even offensive art, or at least to find ways of coping with it that do not involve the police. That is especially true in a country like Russia, which is painfully emerging from 70 years of brutal state control over all intellectual and artistic life. Letting the state decide what’s good or bad for society led to the suppression of all the best Russian artists and writers in the Soviet Union.

Art had been one of the major vehicles of resistance to the Soviet dictatorship: the closing of an exhibit of avant-garde artists in 1962 by Nikita Khrushchev and the bulldozing of an exhibition of unofficial art in 1974 were among the milestones of the dissident movement. Religion had been one of the major targets of Soviet repression, especially public demonstrations of belief, or religious imagery in art or literature. No doubt these memories were in the minds of the 39 artists who presented their works in the Sakharov Museum to warn against a state that had enforced "scientific atheism" but who is now embracing a national church with the same passion. Unfortunately, the Russian Orthodox Church has become heavily identified with Russian nationalism and reaction, and some priests and believers have even found common cause with old Communists.