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of their adopters, Deputy Dmitriy Gudkov, citing data of the Ministry of Education and Science, said.

The protest against the bill has created a unique situation. First, this appears to be a re-run of the December 2011 protest, but at a different level. This being when the most diverse political forces, but, most importantly, society from below, on its own initiative, rebelled against the falsifications at the elections for members of the State Duma. Now the target of the protest is a "children's law," which leaves practically no one indifferent: this is precisely the occasion when a problem proves extremely sensitive from the moral, ethical, not the legal, perspective. There has been a division even in so conservative and hierarchical a structure as the ROC. On the one hand Archpriest Dmitriy Smirnov, head of the synodal Department for Interaction With the Armed Forces and the Law- Enforcement Authorities , came out in support of the ban: "We can't tarry while dozens of Russian children are being killed," he explained. "This attitude of the Americans toward Russians has been fostered by propaganda, this is their mentality, there's nothing that can be done about this," he hastened to acknowledge before the news conference at which Vladimir Putin, specifically, spoke very flatteringly about the Americans themselves who adopt Russian orphans. Putin made it clear that the bill is not directed against them and that the majority of them are conscientiously honoring their commitments. The bill was supported also by Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, head of the synodal Department for Interaction of the Church and Society, who said that foreign adoption creates a risk of the children falling away from Orthodoxy.

On the other, Panteleimon, bishop of Smolensk and Vyazma and chairman of the synodal Department for Ecclesiastical Charity and Social Ministry, said that a law is needed which makes it possible to decide in each specific case what is more important for the child and guards against the adoption of decisions concerning the children "based on the political situation." "It is necessary when adopting such a law to proceed not from shocking stories and not from the rules of diplomacy and symmetrical or asymmetrical responses but from the interests of the children. Of course, there are dangers in overseas adoption, of which we are all aware, there are definite problems, but we need to resolve them in normal fashion, not make hasty decisions," the ROC representative added. The bishop believes that all laws enacted in the state "should proceed from people's interests" and that "even the prestige of the state may be sacrificed" for this.

Novaya Gazeta, meanwhile, has managed to collect 100,000 signatures, which should be sufficient to sponsor a bill banning the adopted provision. And although high-volume protest demonstrations are not an issue as yet, literally the entire cultural and journalistic elite of Russia is against the Duma initiative.

Second, the split within Russian power has assumed a unique nature--under conditions where, moreover, the bill has officially been initiated by deputies, but it is clear that the Kremlin is behind it, and it could not have failed to have been preliminarily approved by the president (the speed of its adoption also points to this theory). Observers are used to a counterpoise of the State Duma