The project concepts are connected with the issues of religious and interconfessional dialogue. In particular, one of the most important problems for Belarus is the relations between the Russian Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches: it is obvious that there is a necessity of elaboration of a joint interchurch mechanism of the establishment not only of the church and administration structures but also of a wide interchurch dialogue including the development of new joint projects aimed at achieving better mutual understanding. The common rules should be not controlling or limiting but based on coordination and agreement.

The Belarusian Orthodox Church appointed Professor A.V. Danilov and G.A. Dovgiallo, First Vice-President of the Centre as heads of the Institute.

The most important direction of activities of the Institute is the study of influence of confessional policy and national myths on the origin and settlement of the conflicts in the Eastern European region (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus). An analytical Centre has been created for the implementation of the institute objectives, its staff consists of prominent theologians in religious studies, tutors, students and undergraduates of the theology faculty. The practical result of the work of the analytic center is planned to be development of conceptual recommendations in the fields of strategy and basic principles of prevention and settlement of ethnic and confessional conflicts in the post-communist area. Besides, the analysis of confessional policy specific features will be carried out, the reasons and factors of national myths origin will be revealed, the conditions leading to the transformation of national myths and confessional policies into conflicts are to be explored.

The results can be used during the formation of the EU policy in its further expansion to the East. In these countries the ethnic and confessional factor influences greatly the state policy thus it should be taken into consideration during the development of strategy of the EU relations with those states.

        The results of the research will be published in a special book and will also be available via internet, the intermediate results will be also available in special editions.

One of the important problems that significantly restrain the Institute development is the lack of special literature: religious periodicals published by other confessions and religions and also various ethnic and confessional groups in the post-soviet area, research on social psychology and anthropology, ethnic psycholinguistics, history and ethnography, ethnic culture, political sciences and other special literature.

Availability of required amount of special literature will allow deeper understanding of the processes of inter-religious and interconfessional cooperation and conflicts, will facilitate the task of preparation of not practical recommendations only but also of fundamental monographs which will make the Institute’s experience available for other centers and specialists. At present the institute staff prepares publishing several such books. One of them is the “Unity and Variety of Religion”, analytical religion studies and theology of the dialogue is almost completed and will be published soon.

The author is one of the prominent contemporary Orthodox theologians professor A. Danilov, co-director of the Institute, head of the Chair of the Religious Studies at the EHU. The book has 450 pages and the number of copies is 100.

The publication of the book will not only present the unique information but will also b an effective PR-action positioning the Centre new perception by colleagues, specialists and sponsors to make possible expanding support in future.