On orders from parliament, prosecutors are preparing to bring a group of artists to trial for allegedly "inciting religious strife" by lampooning the Russian Orthodox Church.
The defendants, who face up to five years in prison if convicted, say the criminal investigation against them heralds the return of Soviet-style thought control. In place of the former Communist party, they say, the Russian Orthodox Church is becoming the Kremlin's guardian of ideological purity.
The church, backed by conservative politicians, insists the case is about protecting the sensibilities of religious believers from deliberate, public mockery.
"Any provocation that insults the feelings of the faithful and stirs up religious discord must be classified as a crime," Metropolitan Kirill, chair of the church's department of external relations, said in an official statement.
Yury Samodurov is the chief defendant and director of the Andrei Sakharov museum, which staged the "Caution: Religion" exhibit last year.
"I had no idea what I was starting when I authorized that exhibition," Samodurov says.
"But I'm grateful, in a way because it's made me aware of what's really developing in this society ... And it is scaring me."
The trial of Samodurov and two artists, Lyudmila Vasilovskaya and Anna Mikhalchuk, opened in mid-June with the official charge sheet declaring the defendants had entered "into a conspiracy with the intent to inflict humiliation and offence upon the Christian faith as a whole and the Russian Orthodox Church in particular."
The trial was postponed until September to give prosecutors a chance to complete their investigation.
The display, held in February 2003, featured works by 42 artists on the theme of religion and church institutions.
Controversial exhibits included an oversized icon with a vacant space where the viewer could insert his or her own face in place of the usual holy figure. A sculpture of an Orthodox church made entirely of vodka bottles may have been a dig at the church's profitable tax-free alcohol trade in the 1990s. A photo triptych depicted three men being crucified -on a cross, a red star and a swastika. And a stylized Coca Cola ad had Christ's face superimposed and the words: "This is my blood."
The show lasted just four days and was seen by only a few dozen people before being shut down after a group of slogan-shouting vandals defaced several of the works. They were followers of a local Orthodox priest, Alexander Shargunov, who hailed them as "heroes" and "righteous Orthodox citizens of Russia."
"Everywhere in the world there are people who will react violently against controversial art," Samodurov says. "We were dismayed by the attack, but not discouraged."
After being brought to trial, the six alleged art-desecrators who were apprehended by police at the scene were acquitted by a Moscow court.
Then Russia's State Duma, the lower house of parliament, passed a resolution directing prosecutors to open a criminal investigation of the Sakharov Museum.
"We thought the organizers of that exhibit were inciting religious hatred, which is a crime," says Alexander Chuyev, a nationalist Duma deputy who helped author the resolution. "Freedom of artistic expression ends where freedom of other people begins."
Chuyev says the Duma pressured the Moscow court to acquit the alleged vandals. "It wasn't easy to get those people freed, but we managed it," he says.
Prosecutors say they were spurred on by thousands of letters from people all over the country demanding the artists be punished.
This exhibit "really insulted the religious sensitivities of the people," says Nadezhda Bekenyova, head of the department of ancient Russian art at the Tretyakov Art Museum and a key witness for the prosecution in the Sakharov trial.
She says she doesn't approve of vandalism, but: the artists "assaulted the feelings of believers, so it is no surprise that, in a backlash, their works were attacked."
Critics of the Sakharov trial suspect the hand of the Orthodox Church was at work.
"Though our constitution stipulates Russia is a secular state, the church's influence over our federal authorities is growing every year," says Lyudmilla Alexeyeva, head of the Moscow Helsinki Group, Russia's oldest human rights organization.
"If Samodurov and the others are convicted, it means we have returned to the middle ages."