FILE - In this Monday, May 30, 2011 file photo, Russian Orthodox Church spokesman Father Vsevolod Chaplin speaks at a news conference on proposed legislation to curb abortion rates in Russia, in Moscow. Father Vsevolod Chaplin called on authorities Wednesday Sept. 28, 2011 to investigate and ban novels by Vladimir Nabokov and Gabriel Garcia Marquez for "justifying pedophilia." (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File) (AP2011)
Gabriel García Márquez's classic "One Hundred Years of Solitude," to hear one Russian Orthodox official tell it, justifies pedophilia.
That was the argument Father Vsevolod Chaplin made to the Russian government, urging it to investigate and limit the use of the landmark book. Chaplin said "One Hundred Years," as well as Vladimir Nabokov's "Lolita," should be banned from the country's high schools.
The priest later elaborated in comments carried by Interfax, saying the authors' works should not be included in high school curriculums as they "romanticize perverted passions that make people unhappy."
"Obviously, the popularization of these novels in schools will not make our society more morally happy," he was quoted as saying.
Mikhail Shvydkoi, a Kremlin envoy for international cultural cooperation, disagreed, saying such action by authorities would badly hurt Russia's image.
Nabokov, who left his native Russia shortly after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, published "Lolita" in English in 1955. The book, which describes a relationship of a middle-aged intellectual with his 12-year-old stepdaughter, was briefly banned in several European countries, Argentina and South Africa — as well as several library systems and public schools in the U.S.
Nabokov translated the book into Russian in 1967, but that work — along with the rest of his writings — was banned in the Soviet Union as "pornography."
Unlike "Lolita," García Márquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude" was published in the Soviet era — despite numerous references to incest and sex with minors.
The Colombian novelist was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982.
The Russian Orthodox Church has called for tighter controls on the content of television and radio broadcasts and said Russian women should observe an "Orthodox dress code" by wearing longer skirts and non-revealing clothes.
The church has experienced a revival since the collapse of the officially atheist Soviet Union in 1991. It now claims that more than 100 million followers in Russia and tens of millions elsewhere, but polls have shown that only about 5 percent of Russians are observant believers.
Church and state are officially separate under the post-Soviet constitution, but Orthodox leaders seek a more muscular role for the church, which has served the state for much of its 1,000-year history.
Some nonreligious Russians complain that the church has tailored its doctrine to suit the government, which has justified Russia's retreat from Western-style democracy by saying the country has a unique history and culture.
Based on reporting by The Associated Press.
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