ANNOTATION: After receiving entreaties from the Vatican, U.S. leaders, and human-rights groups, Russian president Boris Yeltsin in July 1997 rejected a bill that would limit religious freedom in Russia. Then, in September, he stunned foreign observers by signing the legislation, which recognized only the "traditional religions" of Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Judaism. Wholeheartedly supported by the Russian Orthodox Church and the heavily nationalist Duma, Russia's ruling legislative body, the law was supposedly instituted to protect against dangerous cults. It would also allegedly protect the religious freedoms of non-Orthodox Christians, but many critics maintained that its purpose was to consolidate the power of what was once Russia's state church...

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