RUSSIAN FAITHFUL, VISITORS FIND CHANGES REVOLUTIONARY.

Byline: Associated Press 

The sight of a rabbi, a priest and a minister walking down the streets of downtown Moscow turned heads when Rabbi Arthur Schneier first visited Russia in 1965.

There were few active synagogues, many churches were converted to other uses and the official view was religion would disappear with time.

Recently, he made his 51st trip, this time as an observer for the presidential elections. And the changes were obvious.

There were 25 rabbis serving Jewish communities, a 10,000-seat Russian Orthodox cathedral being rebuilt in the heart of the city and religious groups were offering services once limited to the state, from feeding the hungry to providing chaplains in hospitals and the armed forces.

President Boris N. Yeltsin was the overwhelming favorite of religious leaders, but all those seeking office sounded almost like American politicians when it came to matters of faith.

``The most remarkable thing was all the candidates wanted God on their side,'' said Schneier, president of the Appeal of Conscience Foundation and spiritual leader of the Park East Synagogue in Manhattan.

Back in 1964, when Schneier first started taking up the cause of Russian Jewry, he encountered some skepticism even among Jewish leaders in the United States. Why bother, they would say: Some of them are Communists anyway.

But the next year, he would help found the Appeal of Conscience Foundation to promote religious liberty and harmony worldwide. Slowly, over the years, the organization would be successful in drawing concessions from the Soviet government, from speeding up Jewish emigration to making available thousands of prayer books.

He recalls in 1975 offering to pay for 10 students to study for the rabbinate in the United States, then return to the Soviet Union. When officials said they would not send people to a capitalist country, he had a backup plan in place to allow them to study in Hungary.

One of those students that Schneier then went out and recruited - an engineer, Avraham Shayevich - is now chief rabbi of Russia.

Today there are three Jewish day schools in Moscow. Emigration has stabilized and the approximately 2 million Russian Jews are not only permitted to leave the country, but to retain their Russian citizenship.

``One thing is clear. . . . There will always be a Russian Jewish community,'' Schneier said. ``This idea of the vanishing Russian Jew is out of the question.''

There are still concerns for minority religious communities, however.

Some ultranationalist political leaders have scapegoated Jews for the economic hardship many have endured as the country moves away from a socialist economy. And as new religious groups have begun missionary work in the nation, there have been attempts to curtail religious freedoms.

But as one who has monitored religious freedom for the past three decades in Russia, there is no overlooking the revolutionary gains made, according to Schneier.

On a personal level, he remembers meeting on his first trip the vice chairman of the Council on Religious Affairs, who would ask why he was bothering to visit since religion was ``only for old people. It's dying out.''

On his last visit, Schneier said, Patriarch Alexy II, leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, filled him in on what had happened to Peter Makartsev.

``Last year, this old Communist who controlled religion came to the Russian Orthodox church, was baptized and about six months ago was buried a Christian.''