Byzantium and Putin's Russia

[Nictoshek]

Father Tikhon Shevkunov, Putin's Confessor

A Byzantine sermon

The drawing of inaccurate historical parallels with Constantinople

The Economist moscow | from the print edition

WHEN Nikolai Patrushev, head of Russia's federal security service (FSB), spoke to his staff to mark the 90th anniversary of the Soviet secret service last year, he made an odd historic diversion. “Those who study history know that security existed before. Sophia Paleologue married Ivan III, and being a niece of the last Byzantine emperor, paid close attention to questions of security.” Few understood what he was talking about.

The mystery was cleared up a few weeks later, when Russia's state television channel aired an hour-long film, “The Destruction of the Empire: a Byzantine Lesson”. It proved so popular that the channel repeated it and added a 45-minute discussion concluding that Russia could exist only as an Orthodox empire. The author and narrator of the film is Father Tikhon Shevkunov, reputedly the confessor of Vladimir Putin. In recent weeks the film has become one of the most talked-about in Moscow.

Russian rulers often appeal to history to justify their actions. Mr Putin revealed his interest in history from the start of his presidency, when he restored Stalin's anthem as a national hymn. Last year he promoted a school textbook justifying Stalin's brutal rule as a necessary evil. When other ex-Soviet republics commemorate Soviet brutalities, Russia treats this as a distortion of history. This week the foreign ministry held a meeting behind closed doors on the subject of “Counteracting the falsification of history aimed against Russia: a task of national importance”.

In the minds and language of the ex-spooks who dominate Russia, history is a powerful tool. The television film seems to be in that genre. In it, Father Tikhon is transported in full attire from a snow-swept church to Istanbul and Venice, where he exposes the West as a “genetic” hater of both Byzantium and its spiritual heir: Russia. The Byzantine empire's rich and cultured capital, Constantinople, was the envy of dark and aggressive barbarians from the West, who looted it during the fourth crusade in 1204. Modern Western capitalism, argues Father Tikhon, is built on Byzantine loot and Jewish usury.

In this version, Byzantium's first mistake was to trust the West (represented in the film by a cloaked figure in a sinister, long-nosed Venetian mask) and surrender the commanding heights of the economy—trading and customs collection—to Western entrepreneurs and greedy oligarchs. Using a term from today's The Destruction of the Empire: a Byzantine Lesson talks of some “stabilisation fund” when describing the achievements of one Byzantine emperor, Basil II, godfather to Russia's Prince Vladimir, who crushed separatists and sent oligarchs to prison. But even great emperors could have weak successors. (The film was made before Mr Putin chose Dmitry Medvedev as his successor, to be endorsed by voters in the election on March 2nd.)

The film's usage of modern words and imagery is so conspicuous that the moral cannot escape a Russian viewer. Instead of sticking to its traditions, Byzantium tried to reform and modernise, as the West demanded, and it paid the price. Worst of all, the West infiltrated Byzantium with harmful, individualistic ideas, which destroyed the core values of the empire—so the people lost faith in their rulers.

Sergei Ivanov, Russia's leading scholar on Byzantium, says all this lumps together a 1,000-year history of Byzantium and crudely extrapolates the result to today's Russia. In fact, the film has little to do with the true history of Byzantium. But neither history nor the values of the Orthodox faith are its real object. In the absence of any new ideology, it manipulates a story of Byzantium to justify Russia's anti-Westernism and xenophobia in a 1,000-year history. The film also carries an implicit message to Mr Putin: do not listen to the West, stay in power, close off the country.

It is of little concern to Father Tikhon, or to Russian state television, that the Russian empire gained most when it opened up to the West, not when it fenced itself off. Byzantium was always the source of Orthodox faith for Russia, but few Russian tsars looked to Byzantium as a political model. It was for good reason that they called Moscow a third Rome, not a second Constantinople. It fell to Stalin to revive Byzantine studies, along with the idea of imperialism, says Father Tikhon, approvingly. “He knew whom to learn from.” But the danger of manipulating history in this way is that its tragedies may recur.

The message is clear: Like tsarist Russia and the USSR, the Russian Federation is the heiress to Constantinople’s spiritual riches; today’s Russia is equally and eternally the Third Rome, subject to the same Western hatred as its chronological territorial predecessors and original Byzantine source.
The story of Byzantium is explicitly presented as a warning for Russia’s contemporary rulers: they are exhorted to rein in the oligarchs, fortify the ramparts against the West, or face destruction.

Saving the Third Rome. “Fall of the Empire”, Byzantium and Putin’s Russia

The most joyful thing in the spiritual life is discovering something new. Call to mind the joy with which you got up on Sunday morning to go to the Liturgy; how eagerly you read the Holy Fathers, constantly discovering something new. If the Gospel does not open anything up to us, then that only means that we have shut ourselves off from having anything new opened to us. Call to mind the words of Christ to the Church in Ephesus: “Remember thy first love” [cf. Revelation 2:4].

bit.ly/O3y36z

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[Nictoshek]

The wooded island of Valaam, in a large lake in northern Russia, is a beacon for Russian Orthodox believers - among them President Putin.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20041504



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[Nictoshek]

First Meeting of Pope Francis and Patriarch Bartholomew

Russian Church pins high hopes on Pope Francis

March 18, 2013 Pavel Korobov, Kommersant

With Pope Francis's impending inauguration, Russian Orthodox believers are eager to develop their relationship with Catholics.

The election of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio to the papal throne has been warmly greeted in Moscow. Representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church believe that administrative disagreements between the Orthodox and Catholic churches might now be overcome. Russian Catholics are even expressing the hope that Pope Francis “will be close to contemporary Russian spirituality.”

“The new pontiff is a very distinguished church leader,” said Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, head of the Department for External Church Relations of the Russian Orthodox Church, commenting on the pope’s election. “It’s probably no accident that he is the first pope to take the name of Francis – undoubtedly in honor of Francis of Assisi, who is revered in the Roman Catholic Church as an example of Christian poverty, humility and service to the poor.”

The metropolitan said that service to the poor and needy is a priority for churches today, and the Russian Orthodox Church has a major focus on this.

“We see a big area here where we can work together with the Roman Catholic Church,” said Hilarion. “I hope this alliance between us will develop under the new pontiff.”

“We hope that Francis will give a boost to the development of the relationship between our churches, which started under his predecessor,” said Archpriest Dimitry Sizonenko, secretary for inter-Christian relations of the synodal Department for External Church Relations. “He [Bergoglio] once said that he loves Dostoyevsky, and one would like to hope that he also loves the spiritual traditions of Russian Orthodoxy.”

People who know the new pontiff personally say that an improvement in the relationship is quite possible.

“When he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Jorge Mario Bergoglio regularly visited the Orthodox church on Christmas Eve,” said Bishop John of Caracas and South America, whose seat is in Buenos Aires. According to the bishop, this shows that “the new pope has a very good attitude toward Orthodoxy and Orthodox believers.”

Russian Catholics also think that Orthodox–Catholic relations can expect substantial progress under Pope Francis.

“The newly elected pope knows the Byzantine Christian tradition well, since he had members of the Greek Catholic Church in his care in Argentina and is therefore very familiar with Orthodox–Catholic relations,” said Father Igor Kovalevsky, general secretary of the Conference of Catholic Bishops of the Russian Federation.

According to Igor Baranov, who works on the editorial staff of The Catholic Encyclopedia, Pope Francis “is close to the Orthodox position on matters of public morality (marriage, abortion, euthanasia).”

“Just as the character of Francis of Assisi was close to Russian culture, so too the character of Pope Francis will be close to modern Russian spirituality,” said Baranov.

The tension in relations between the Vatican and the Moscow Patriarchate arose at the beginning of the 1990s, when Greek Catholics in Ukraine seized Orthodox churches. Despite the positive forecasts, both sides still note that it is too early to talk about the possibility of a meeting between Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill.

“A meeting between the new pontiff and the patriarch is likely to happen on neutral territory and only when the Russians are ready for it,” said Kovalevsky.

“I think such a meeting is possible, but the time and place will depend most of all on how quickly we can overcome the conflicts that occurred in the late 1980s and early 1990s,” Hilarion said.

The metropolitan acknowledges, however, that “the [newly elected] pope has more than once testified to his spiritual sympathy with the Orthodox Church and his desire for close contacts with it.” Hilarion’s first meeting with Pope Francis will be in the Vatican, where the new pontiff will be inaugurated on March 19.

First published in Russian in Kommersant.

The leader of the Orthodox world took part in the installation Mass for Pope Francis, a first since the Great Schism in 1054. ‘The alienation of old times has disappeared,’ Patriarch Bartholomew says

bit.ly/ZrWnlz

[Nictoshek]

Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin (RIA Novosti / Vladimir Astapkovich)

Snowden deals blow to ‘global electronic prison camp’ – Russian Orthodox Church

RT
Published time: July 30, 2013


Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin has praised Russian authorities for not caving in to pressure from abroad, saying granting asylum to US whistleblower Edward Snowden would help prevent the establishment of a ‘global electronic prison camp’.

“It is encouraging news that Russia is demonstrating its independence in this case as it has in many others, despite the pressure” said the head of the Holy Synod’s Department for Relations between the Church and Society.

Vsevolod Chaplin added that the Snowden saga has been broadly discussed both on the domestic and international level, with Russia’s position potentially bolstering its image as a country upholding “the true freedom of ideals.”

The Russian cleric further argued that Snowden’s revelations confirmed the existence of a pernicious problem discussed by Orthodox Christians for many years – “the prospective of a global electronic-totalitarian prison camp”.

“First they get people addicted to convenient means of communication with the authorities, businesses and among each other. In a while people become rigidly connected to these services and as a result the economic and political owners of these services get tremendous and terrifying power. They cannot help feeling the temptation to use this power to control the personality and such control might eventually be much stricter that all known totalitarian systems of the twentieth century,” Interfax news agency quoted Chaplin as saying.

The church official added that in his view true democracy remained an unreachable ideal.

“Any political system fixes the domination of a few over many. In the twentieth century the harshest forms of such political power used brute force, but now they are using soft power, through total data collecting and through soft persuasion of people, first through slogans but then through legal acts,” Chaplin explained. He noted that currently the soft power system was promoting such topics as declaring the western political system as the only viable option, making religion a marginal trend, and sidelining both criticism of market fundamentalism and leftist political platforms.

Chaplin urged Russian authorities to defend “real freedom, the freedom from the global ideological dictate and from the electronic prison camp.”

The cleric also offered a possible solution – the development of its own electronic communications system that would be independent from foreign-based mediums. “The nation has the brains for this and I hope we will also have a will,” Chaplin declared.

Russia is currently considering Edward Snowden’s request for temporary asylum and the former NSA contractor still remains in the transit zone of the Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport.

The Russian Justice Ministry on Tuesday sent a formal response to a letter from US Attorney General, who assured Moscow that Snowden would not face the prospect of death or torture if handed over to the United States.

The Russian ministry did not provide the details of its reply to the press.

[Nictoshek]

A woman holds a Christian Orthodox icon of the Virgin Mary as pro-Russian activists break into the regional administration building in the eastern Ukraine city of Lugansk, on April 29, 2014

[Nictoshek]

Putin Strives to Harness Energy of Russian Pilgrims for Political Profit

By NEIL MacFARQUHAR AUG. 2, 2014


SERGIYEV POSAD, Russia — The pilgrims tramped toward the storied monastery by the thousands — chanting prayers, singing and embracing the kind of nationalist fervor that President Vladimir V. Putin seeks to harness as his own.

The official reason for the trek to the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius, the seat of the Russian Orthodox faith and the country’s original monastery, was to commemorate the 700th birthday of its founder and namesake.

But amid that tide of pilgrims — official estimates hovered around 30,000 — swirled diverse political and religious currents related to Mr. Putin’s effort to cast himself as the defender of traditional values, a campaign that has become more pronounced since Russia’s involvement with Ukraine.

The birthday celebrations in Sergiyev Posad emphasized St. Sergius’s role in shaping a unified Russia, a narrative that dovetails with the nationalism and conservative morals that Mr. Putin espouses.

Some historians and church figures are crying foul, however, over what they say are the Kremlin’s efforts to reshape the saint’s legacy to enhance political goals, fostering what one critic called “an official cult.”

“They are creating a myth around St. Sergius, making him out to be an obedient servant of the Russian state, which he was not,” said Irina Karatsuba, a historian who often aligns herself with unpopular causes. “He is one of the important embodiments of what was and is the best in Russia. But the way they are trying to link him to the Russian state is nonsense; it’s political manipulation.”



People gathered before the start of their pilgrimage, honoring the 700th anniversary of the birth of St. Sergius.

The pilgrimage illustrates one way Mr. Putin is trying to use Russian Orthodoxy as a tie that binds Russians together, analysts said, fashioning a fresh ideology for his continued rule after 14 years as either president or prime minister. His participation in the St. Sergius celebration last month was broadcast live nationally.

Church officials said they wanted St. Sergius to serve as an example of spiritual hope for Russians in their daily lives.

The Russian Orthodox Church was resurrected after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, ending 70 years of often brutal Communist repression. The church seems only too happy to hitch its halting rebirth to Mr. Putin’s fortunes, hoping to attract more adherents. Although 80 percent of the 140 million Russians identify themselves as Russian Orthodox culturally, the number who actually attend church is tiny. The church says it is nearly 10 percent, but experts say it has long hovered around 3 percent.

Another reason for St. Sergius’s elevation is the current crisis in Ukraine.

The birth of the Russian Orthodox faith dates back to Vladimir the Great, grand prince of Kiev, and the mass baptisms performed at his behest there in 988, bringing Christianity to what then became Holy Rus.

But now that Russia and Ukraine are locked in a proxy war, the government and the church realize that the physical link to an important religious symbol is being severed, noted Geraldine Fagan, author of “Believing in Russia — Religious Policy After Communism.”
Continue reading the main story

Because those roots — not to mention the relics of St. Vladimir himself — are in the territory of an estranged neighbor, Russia appears to be casting St. Sergius as his replacement, Ms. Fagan said.

In the late 14th century, aside from founding the first monastery, St. Sergius of Radonezh persuaded the Russian princes to stop their murderous, internecine fighting and concentrate on throwing off the Mongol yoke.

“St. Sergius was the beginning not just of Russian monasticism or the Russian spiritual tradition,” said Vladimir Legoyda, the head of the information department for the Holy Synod. “In many ways he is the source of Russia itself.”

The saint has long been revered as a humble figure, content to spend his days in prayer and dressing like a beggar. He turned down the job of leading the church, but was given the unique title of abbot for all Russia.

“He is a great personality in Russian history,” said Margarita Popova, a 48-year-old English teacher who traveled 17 hours by bus with her teenage son from their home near Volgograd for the anniversary. “Russia before Sergei Radonezh and Russia after was perhaps two different Russias.”

Ordinary people, Ms. Popova said, do not have the time to pray for themselves, for Russia and for the world constantly. The monks who do so are following a tradition started in the Russian Orthodox Church by St. Sergius. He is often identified as the original staretz, a Russian word that means a monastic spiritual leader, one who has achieved tangible experience in the future kingdom of God.

Beyond spiritual matters, the crowd at the birthday commemoration at the monastery here, 45 miles north of Moscow, was unquestionably in the Putin camp. Many compared him to a czar, and meant it as a compliment.

“He has just not been anointed,” said Vladimir Bubelev, 60, an officer in the naval reserves wearing a brass pin showing the profile of Nicholas II, the last czar, on his lapel.

“But his powers are greater than those of Nicholas II,” Mr. Bubelev said. “On many questions he acts like a monarch — he makes correct, willful decisions. This is very good. Plus he is a believer!”

As it happens, the birthday of St. Sergius and the anniversary of the death of Nicholas II fall within a couple of days of each other in July. The church made Nicholas II and his immediate family saints in 2000. The czar’s 1917 overthrow was for many Orthodox faithful the last time that a man anointed by God governed Russia.

When the czars ruled, Mr. Bubelev persisted, Russia evoked both nobility and morality. The Romanovs deeply revered both St. Sergius and a later, 19th-century monk, St. Seraphim of Sarov, also worshiped by the Russian Orthodox.

“They helped the czars rule Russia in the right way — they made Russia rich,” Mr. Bubelev said. The czars “went to their relics and asked for God’s help, and they succeeded. Thank God Mr. Putin is asking for their help now.”

But Ms. Karatsuba, the historian, pointed out that the Romanov rulers also tried to elevate the concept of Holy Rus as a national ideal in their campaign to stall political reform in the 19th century. That turned out badly for them in 1917, she noted.
Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story

Still, the Slavic nationalism prevalent among the faithful makes them a natural base of support for Mr. Putin’s policy that all ethnic Russians are worthy of protection wherever they are. That has been his stated reason for championing the cause of anti-Kiev insurgents in southeastern Ukraine.

“We are all one people, we are all part of Holy Rus,” said Dmitry Markov, 28, a buyer for a cellphone company who attended the St. Sergius commemoration. “Any person, regardless of where he lives, if he is Russian in spirit, he must be defended by his president, by his country, because he is an indivisible part of the nation.”

Mr. Putin, who attended the anniversary celebration less than 24 hours after a civilian plane disaster in Ukraine that many blamed on Moscow, addressed the faithful for only about five minutes. He lauded the “patriotic, national and moral resurgence” inspired by the monk, including his campaign to build monasteries as both spiritual centers and real fortresses to protect Russia.

“His wise and solid words as a mentor and guide were a spiritual pillar and support during a difficult time of foreign invasion and internal discord,” Mr. Putin said.

“It was then that he spoke his prophetic words: ‘Our salvation lies in love and unity,' ” Mr. Putin said. “This appeal, filled with unshakable faith, helped to unite Russia’s lands and stamped itself forever on our people’s soul and in our historical memory.”

The commemoration, planned for years, provoked some quiet grumbling within the church itself, however, that it was too elaborate. With a war raging next door, the money could have been spent on better things, critics said.

Patriarch Kirill I himself led the 10-mile procession that started the commemoration, beginning from the monastery at Khotkovo, where the saint’s parents are buried, to the St. Sergius monastery. The patriarch walked under a white umbrella carried by a younger priest, and during a break in the march closeted himself away from the adoring throng in an air-conditioned mobile home.

“Faith without deeds is dead,” said Michael Storojinsky, 53, a religious music producer, explaining why he was walking for five hours under the relentless summer sun. “I was a Communist in the days when the Communist Party said it was battling religious superstition,” he said. The party “placed itself on the pedestal that was meant to be occupied by God.”

[pieter]

The Russian orthodox church has always been a powertool in the hands of the Russian authorities in Moscow. Both the Czars used the church and the Sovjet authorities too. Stalin used the Orthodox church to create Russian Patriotism during the Second World War, called "The Great Patriotic War" in the SovjetUnion and the Russian Federation. Today Putin uses Russian Orthodoxy to create a climate of Russian Nationalism and an ethnic Russian identity for his political causes. His regime and maintainance of power and in his conflict with Ukraine, and in the New Cold War with the West (Europe and the USA).




History of the Russian Orthodox Church


The Trinity Cathedral of Troitse-Sergieva Lavra

The Russian Orthodox Church (Russian: Русская Православная Церковь) is traditionally said to have been founded by the Apostle Andrew, who is thought to have visited Scythia and Greek colonies along the northern coast of the Black Sea. According to one of the legends, St. Andrew reached the future location of Kiev and foretold the foundation of a great Christian city. The spot where he reportedly erected a cross is now marked by St. Andrew's Cathedral.

Christianization of the Rus'

Constantinople's greatest mission outreach was to areas known as Kievan Rus that later became the states of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. Christianity was introduced into Kievan Rus by Greek missionaries from Byzantium in the 9th century. In 863–869, Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius translated parts of the Bible into Old Church Slavonic language for the first time, paving the way for the Christianization of the Slavs. There is evidence that the first Christian bishop was sent to Novgorod from Constantinople either by Patriarch Photius or Patriarch Ignatios, circa 866-867 AD.

By the mid-10th century, there was already a Christian community among Kievan nobility, under the leadership of Greek and Byzantine priests, although paganism remained the dominant religion. Princess Olga of Kiev was the first ruler of Kievan Rus to convert to Christianity, either in 945 or 957. Undoubtedly influenced by his Christian grandmother and by a proposed marriage alliance with the Byzantine imperial family, Olga's grandson Vladimir I (c. 956-1015) prince of Kiev, from among several options, chose the Byzantine rite. Baptized in 988, he led the Kievans to Christianity. This date is often considered the official birthday of the Russian Orthodox Church. Thus, in 1988, the Church celebrated its millennial anniversary.



15th century

During the 15th century the Russian Church was pivotal in the survival and life of the Russian state. Such holy figures as Sergius of Radonezh and Metropolitan Alexis helped the country to withstand years of Tatar oppression, and to expand both economically and spiritually.

At the Council of Florence 1439, a group of Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Church leaders agreed upon terms of reunification of the two branches of Christianity. The Russian Prince Basil II of Moscow, however, rejected the concessions to the Catholic Church and forbade the proclamation of the acts of the Council in Russia in 1452, after a short-lived East-West reunion. Metropolitan Isidore was in the same year expelled from his position as an apostate.

In 1448, the Russian Church became independent from the Patriarchate of Constantinople when the Russian bishops elected their own patriarch, Metropolitan Jonas, without recourse to Constantinople, and the Russian church was thenceforth autocephalous.


Russian Orthodox Cathedral of St Nicholas in Nice. (I have visited it. It was a wonderful, rich and beautiful decorated church)

Metropolitan Jonas was given the title of Metropolitan of Moscow and All Rus'. He also received the fifth rank in honour after the patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. Five years later, Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks. From this point onward the Russian Orthodox Church saw Moscow as the Third Rome, legitimate successor to Constantinople, and the Patriarch of Moscow as head of the Russian Orthodox Church.


Tsar Alexis praying before the relics of Metropolitan Philip


17th century

The beginning of the 17th century proved to be a hard time for Russia. The Poles and Swedes invaded Russia from the west. At this time of trouble the Russian Church fulfilled its patriotic duty before the people with honor, as it did before. Patriarch Germogen (1606–1612), the leader of an insurrection against invading Poles, and later starved to death imprisoned, was the spiritual leaders of the mass levy led by Minin and Pozharsky. The defense during the siege of Trinity-St. Sergius Lavra from a Polish-Lithuanian irregular army between 1608 and 1610 has been inscribed forever in the chronicle of the Russian state and the Russian Church.


Patriarch Germogen (1606–1612), the leader of an insurrection against invading Poles


Expansion

In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, the Russian Orthodox Church experienced phenomenal geographic expansion. In 1684, Moscow Patriarchate requested Constantinople that the Metropolia of Kiev be made subordinate to Moscow but the request was declined. Eventually, in 1686 after patriarch Parthenius IV was succeeded by Dionysius IV it was agreed to subordinate the Metropolia of Kiev to Moscow. But just a year later in 1687 such subordination was denounced by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and those in charge were defrocked because of the bribe.

In any case this brought millions of faithful and a half dozen dioceses under the pastoral and administrative care of the Russian Orthodox Patriarch. In the following two centuries, missionary efforts stretched out across Siberia into Alaska, then into the United States at California. Eminent people on that missionary effort included St. Innocent of Irkutsk, St.Herman of Alaska, St. Innocent of Siberia and Alaska. They learned local languages and translated the gospels and the hymns. Sometimes those translations required the invention of new systems of transcription.



Russian revolution

In 1914 in Russia, there were 55,173 Russian Orthodox churches and 29,593 chapels, 112,629 priests and deacons, 550 monasteries and 475 convents with a total of 95,259 monks and nuns.


Holy Sobor of 1917, following the election of Saint Tikhon as Patriarch of Moscow


Newly elected Patriarch Tikhon presides at “All-Russian” Church Council in Moscow, 1917.

The year 1917 was a major turning point for the history of Russia, and also the Russian Orthodox Church. The Russian empire was dissolved and the Tsarist government - which had granted the Church numerous privileges – was overthrown. After a few months of political turmoil, the Bolsheviks took power in October 1917 and declared a separation of church and state. The government seized all church lands. Thus the Russian Orthodox Church found itself without official state backing for the first time in its history. One of the first decrees of the new Communist government (issued in January 1918) declared freedom of "religious and anti-religious propaganda". This led to a marked decline in the power and influence of the Church. The Church was also caught in the crossfire of the Russian Civil War that began later the same year, and many leaders of the Church supported what would ultimately turn out to be the losing side (the White movement).

The Russian Orthodox Church supported the White Army in the Russian Civil War (see White movement) after the October Revolution. This may have further strengthened the Bolshevik animus against the church. According to Lenin, a communist regime cannot remain neutral on the question of religion but must show itself to be merciless towards it. There was no place for the church in Lenin's classless society.

Even before the end of the civil war and the establishment of the Soviet Union, the Russian Orthodox Church came under persecution of the Communist government. The Soviet government stood on a platform of militant atheism, viewing the church as a "counter-revolutionary" organization and an independent voice with a great influence in society. While the Soviet Union officially claimed religious toleration, in practice the government discouraged organized religion and did everything possible to remove religious influence from Soviet society.

The Russian Orthodox Church supported tsarist Russia, therefore creating another reason the Bolsheviks would attempt to diminish their influence on the Russian people and government.


Priests, archbishops and a metropolitan imprisoned in the Solovetsky labor camp (1926). Solovetsky, a thriving monastery before the Bolshevik revolution, was returned to the Russian Church in 1990. Photo source: Tomasz Kizny

Anti-religious campaign and persecution in the 1920s and 1930s

The main target of the anti-religious campaign in the 1920s and 1930s was the Russian Orthodox Church, which had the largest number of faithful. Nearly all of its clergy, and many of its believers, were shot or sent to labor camps. Theological schools were closed, and church publications were prohibited.

The sixth sector of the OGPU, led by Yevgeny Tuchkov, began aggressively arresting and executing bishops, priests, and devout worshippers, such as Metropolitan Veniamin in Petrograd in 1922 for refusing to accede to the demand to hand in church valuables (including sacred relics). Some 20,000 people executed just outside Butovo a good percentage of which were Orthodox clergy, ascetics and laymen.


Yevgeny Aleksandrovich Tuchkov (1892 - 1957), head of the sixth sector of the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU; the secret police of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1934), was responsible for the death of many Russian Orthodox bishops, priests, and devout worshippers

After 1928 a mass closure of churches continued until 1939, by which time there was only a few hundred left. According to the official data of the government Commission on Rehabilitation: in 1937 136,900 Orthodox clerics were arrested, 85,300 of them were shot dead; in 1938 28,300 arrested, 21,500 of them shot dead; in 1939 1,500 arrested, 900 of them shot dead; in 1940 5,100 arrested, 1,100 of them shot dead.


Demolition of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow, December 5, 1931

The Solovki Special Purpose Camp was established in the monastery on the Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea. Eight metropolitans, twenty archbishops, and forty-seven bishops of the Orthodox Church died there, along with tens of thousands of the laity. Of these, 95,000 were put to death, executed by firing squad.[citation needed] Father Pavel Florensky was one of the New-martyrs of this particular period as well as Metropolitan Joseph (Ivan Petrovykh).

Many thousands of victims of persecution were subsequently recognized in a special canon of saints known as the "new-martyrs and confessors of Russia".

World War II rapprochement

After Nazi Germany's attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, Joseph Stalin revived the Russian Orthodox Church to intensify patriotic support for the war effort. On September 4, 1943, Metropolitans Sergius (Stragorodsky), Alexius (Simansky) and Nicholas (Yarushevich) were officially received by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. They received a permission to convene a council on September 8, 1943, that elected Sergius Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus'. A new patriarch was elected, theological schools were opened, and thousands of churches began to function. The Moscow Theological Academy and Seminary, which had been closed since 1918, was re-opened.

Glasnost

Then, beginning in the late 1980s, under Mikhail Gorbachev, the new political and social freedoms resulted in many church buildings being returned to the church, to be restored by local parishioners. A pivotal point in the history of the Russian Orthodox Church came in 1988 with the 1000th anniversary of the Baptism of Kievan Rus': Throughout the summer of that year, major government-supported celebrations took place in Moscow and other cities. The 1988 Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church met in Zagorsk; many older churches and some monasteries were reopened. An implicit ban on religious propaganda on state TV was finally lifted. For the first time in the history of Soviet Union, people could see live transmissions of church services on television.



Post-Soviet recovery


The Russian Orthodox church, which was widely persecuted under Communism, has grown in size and influence since the fall of the Soviet Union.

The Russian Orthodox Church is the largest of the Eastern Orthodox churches in the world and has seen a resurgence in activity and vitality since the end of Soviet rule. Up to 90% of ethnic Russians and Belarusians identify themselves as Russian Orthodox (although to a large degree this is a cultural identification, rather than a religious one). In keeping with other Orthodox churches, which do not place a high importance on weekly church attendance, the number of people regularly attending services is relatively low, however it has grown significantly since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In December 2006 the Church had over 27,000 parishes, 169 bishops, 713 monasteries, two universities, five theological academies and 75 theological schools in the territory of the former Soviet Union and has a well-established presence in many other countries all over the world. In recent years many church buildings have been officially returned to the Church, most of these being in a deteriorated condition.

There have been difficulties in the relationship between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Vatican, especially since 2002, when Pope John Paul II created a Catholic diocesan structure for Russian territory. The leadership of the Russian Church saw this action as a throwback to prior attempts by the Vatican to proselytize the Russian Orthodox faithful to become Roman Catholic. This point of view is based upon the stance of the Russian Orthodox Church (and the Eastern Orthodox Church) that the Church of Rome is but one of many equal Christian organizations, and that as such it is straying into territory that was already Christianized by the Orthodox Church. The Catholic Church, on the other hand, while acknowledging the primacy of the Russian Orthodox Church in Russia, believes that the small Catholic minority in Russia, in continuous existence since at least the 18th century, should be served by a fully developed church hierarchy with a presence and status in Russia, just as the Russian Orthodox Church is present in other countries (including constructing a cathedral in Rome, near the Vatican).


Pope Francis and Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill

The issue of encroachment by other Christian denominations into Russia is a particularly sensitive one to many members of the Russian Orthodox Church. They argue that the Orthodox Church now finds itself in a weakened position as a result of decades of secular Communist rule, and is therefore unable to compete on an equal footing with Western Churches. Thus, proselytizing by mostly foreign-based Catholics, Protestant denominations, and by many non-traditional sects can be seen as taking unfair advantage of the still-recovering condition of the Russian Church. On the other hand, many of these groups have argued that the position of Russian Orthodoxy is today no weaker than that of most Western European Churches.[citation needed] Smaller religious movements, particularly Baptists and members of other Protestant denominations, that have become active in Russia in the past decade claim that the state provides unfair support to the Orthodox Church and suppresses others, referring to the 1997 Russian law, under which those religious organizations that could not provide official proof of their existence for the preceding 15 years were seriously restricted in their rights and ability to worship. The law was formally presented as a way to combat destructive cults, but was condemned by representatives of other religions and human rights organizations as being written in a manner that explicitly favored the Russian Orthodox Church, as the Soviet Union had prohibited the establishment of other religions. Consequently, this law gave full rights only to a small number of "first-rank" religions, such as Orthodox Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Judaism. The situation is expected to normalise as the 15-year window starts to slide over the post-Communist period.

Due to its deep cultural roots, many members of the Russian government are keen to display their respect for the Church. It is common for the President of Russia to publicly meet with the Patriarch on Church holidays such as Easter (Paskha or Пасха in Russian). Meetings with representatives of Islam and Buddhism occur less frequently.

The Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (also known as the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad), based in New York, is a jurisdiction of the church which was separated from Moscow for several decades. The Russian Orthodox Church Abroad was formed in the 1920s by Russian communities outside Communist Russia who refused to recognize the authority of the Russian Orthodox Church, as they believed it had fallen under the influence of the Bolsheviks. Relations between the two churches began improving in the 1990s, and there was a formal reconciliation in 2007 through the Act of Canonical Communion with the Moscow Patriarchate This agreement made the Church Abroad a mostly self-governing branch of the Russian Orthodox Church.

In November 2013 large group of Russian entrepreneurs, public figures and scientists have called for defining a special role of Orthodoxy in the Constitution. The appeal has been submitted to the president, the two houses of the Russian Parliament and Russian regional parliaments. The petitioners say their address was the final document of the conference titled "The Triumph and Collapse of an Empire: Lessons from History". According to them "The state sovereignty of the Russian Federation is law. Our call is for backing up its spiritual sovereignty, too, by declaring the Orthodoxy’s special role in the Russian Constitution".



Source: Wikipedia

[pieter]

Russian Orthodox church

The Russian Orthodox church is the largest autocephalous, or ecclesiastically independent, Eastern Orthodox church in the world. Its membership is estimated at more than 85 million.

Christianity was apparently introduced into the East Slavic state of Kievan Rus by Greek missionaries from Byzantium in the 9th century. An organized Christian community is known to have existed at Kiev as early as the first half of the 10th century, and in 957 Olga, the regent of Kiev, was baptized in Constantinople. This act was followed by the acceptance of Christianity as the state religion after the baptism of Olga’s grandson Vladimir, prince of Kiev, in 988. Under Vladimir’s successors, and until 1448, the Russian church was headed by the metropolitans of Kiev (who after 1328 resided in Moscow) and formed a metropolitanate of the Byzantine patriarchate.



While Russia lay under Mongol rule from the 13th through the 15th century, the Russian church enjoyed a favoured position, obtaining immunity from taxation in 1270. This period saw a remarkable growth of monasticism. The Monastery of the Caves (Pechersk Lavra) in Kiev, founded in the mid-11th century by the ascetics St. Anthony and St. Theodosius, was superseded as the foremost religious centre by the Trinity–St. Sergius monastery, which was founded in the mid-14th century by St. Sergius of Radonezh (in what is now the city of Sergiyev Posad). Sergius, as well as the metropolitans St. Peter (1308–26) and St. Alexius (1354–78), supported the rising power of the principality of Moscow. Finally, in 1448 the Russian bishops elected their own patriarch without recourse to Constantinople, and the Russian church was thenceforth autocephalous. In 1589 Job, the metropolitan of Moscow, was elevated to the position of patriarch with the approval of Constantinople and received the fifth rank in honour after the patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem.


Kiev Pechersk Lavra – The Spiritual Home Of The Ukrainian People: Dormition Cathedral In Pechersk

In the mid-17th century the Russian Orthodox patriarch Nikon came into violent conflict with the Russian tsar Alexis. Nikon, pursuing the ideal of a theocratic state, attempted to establish the primacy of the Orthodox church over the state in Russia, and he also undertook a thorough revision of Russian Orthodox texts and rituals to bring them into accord with the rest of Eastern Orthodoxy. Nikon was deposed in 1666, but the Russian church retained his reforms and anathematized those who continued to oppose them; the latter became known as Old Believers and formed a vigorous body of dissenters within the Russian Orthodox church for the next two centuries.


The Sixth Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, Nikon (1652-1658)

In 1721 Tsar Peter I (the Great) abolished the patriarchate of Moscow and replaced it with the Holy Governing Synod, which was modeled after the state-controlled synods of the Lutheran church in Sweden and Prussia and was tightly controlled by the state. The chief procurator of the synod, a lay official who obtained ministerial rank in the first half of the 19th century, henceforth exercised effective control over the church’s administration until 1917. This control, which was facilitated by the political subservience of most of the higher clergy, was especially marked during the procuratorship (1880–1905) of the archconservative K.P. Pobedonostsev.


Peter the Great, Tsar Peter I (1672 – 1725) ruled the Tsardom of Russia and later the Russian Empire from 7 May 1682 until his death, jointly ruling before 1696 with his half-brother.


K.P.Pobedonostsev, the Chief Procurator of the Holy Synod, 1880-1905. Archbishop Sergy (Stragorodsky)


Tsar Nicholas II and a Russian Orhodox priest

In November 1917, following the collapse of the tsarist government, a council of the Russian Orthodox church reestablished the patriarchate and elected the metropolitan Tikhon as patriarch. But the new Soviet government soon declared the separation of church and state and nationalized all church-held lands. These administrative measures were followed by brutal state-sanctioned persecutions that included the wholesale destruction of churches and the arrest and execution of many clerics. The Russian Orthodox church was further weakened in 1922, when the Renovated Church, a reform movement supported by the Soviet government, seceded from Patriarch Tikhon’s church, restored a Holy Synod to power, and brought division among clergy and faithful.


Execution of Orthodox priest

After Tikhon’s death (1925) the government forbade patriarchal elections to be held. In 1927, in order to secure the survival of the church, Metropolitan Sergius formally expressed his “loyalty” to the Soviet government and henceforth refrained from criticizing the state in any way. This attitude of loyalty, however, provoked more divisions in the church itself: inside Russia, a number of faithful opposed Sergius, and abroad, the Russian metropolitans of America and western Europe severed their relations with Moscow. Then, in 1943, benefiting from the sudden reversal of Joseph Stalin’s policies toward religion, Russian Orthodoxy underwent a resurrection; a new patriarch was elected, theological schools were opened, and thousands of churches began to function. Between 1945 and 1959 the official organization of the church was greatly expanded, although individual members of the clergy were occasionally arrested and exiled. The number of open churches reached 25,000. A new and widespread persecution of the church was subsequently instituted under the leadership of Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev. Then, beginning in the late 1980s, under Mikhail Gorbachev, the new political and social freedoms resulted in many church buildings being returned to the church, to be restored by local parishioners. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 furthered the spiritual progress, and in 2000 Tsar Nicholas II, the Russian emperor who had been murdered by the Bolsheviks after the October Revolution of 1917, and members of his family were canonized by the church.


Tsar Nicholas II and his family

The Russian Revolution of 1917 had severed large sections of the Russian church—dioceses in America, Japan, and Manchuria, as well as refugees in Europe—from regular contacts with the mother church. A group of bishops who had left their sees in Russia gathered in Sremski-Karlovci (Serbia), Yugoslavia, and adopted a clearly political monarchist stand. The group further claimed to speak as a synod for the entire “free” Russian church. This group, which to this day includes a sizable portion of the Russian emigration, was formally dissolved in 1922 by Patriarch Tikhon, who then appointed metropolitans Platon and Evlogy as ruling bishops in America and Europe, respectively. Both of these metropolitans continued intermittently to entertain relations with the synod in Karlovci, but neither of them accepted it as a canonical authority.


Russian church of Holy Trinity built in 1924. in Belgrade, Serbia.

After World War II the patriarchate of Moscow made unsuccessful attempts to regain control over these groups. In 1970 it finally recognized an autocephalous Orthodox Church in America, thereby renouncing its former canonical claims in the United States and Canada; it also acknowledged an autonomous church established in Japan that same year. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, discussions concerning the reunification of the churches were initiated. In 2007 the churches were reunited when canonical communion was restored between the Russian Orthodox church and the church outside Russia.


A Russian Orthodox church in the USA


St Nicholas, Russian Orthodox Church in Whitestone, a residential neighborhood in the northernmost part of the New York City borough of Queens

[Nictoshek]

The Russian orthodox church has always been a powertool in the hands of the Russian authorities in Moscow. Both the Czars used the church and the Sovjet authorities too. Stalin used the Orthodox church to create Russian Patriotism during the Second World War, called "The Great Patriotic War" in the SovjetUnion and the Russian Federation. Today Putin uses Russian Orthodoxy to create a climate of Russian Nationalism and an ethnic Russian identity for his political causes. His regime and maintainance of power and in his conflict with Ukraine, and in the New Cold War with the West (Europe and the USA).

Oh well, guess some things never change.

[Nictoshek]

Russia in Syria: Air strikes on Homs are 'holy war against terrorism' says Russian Orthodox Church

By Gianluca Mezzofiore Wed, Sep 30, 2015

The Russian Orthodox Church has backed the country's parliamentary decision to give President Vladimir Putin permission to use military force in Syria, saying the fight against terrorism is a "holy war".
The head of Synodal department for church and society, Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, told journalists on 30 September that the decision from the upper chamber of parliament, the Federation Council, to authorise air strikes in Syria was "consistent with international law, the mentality of our people and the role that our country has always played in the Middle East", according to Interfax news agency.

He added that Russia cannot be indifferent while Christians and other minority groups are being destroyed in the region. The interreligious council of Russia released a statement in support of military operations against terrorism in the Middle East. "The fight against terrorism is a holy struggle and today our country is perhaps the most active force in the world to combat terrorism," the priest said.

Under the Russian constitution, the president needs parliamentary approval to legally use the military outside of the country. Putin last sought such authorisation before annexing Crimea in March 2014.
Kremlin Chief of Staff Sergei Ivanov said the military was to fight Islamic State (Isis) militants in Syria, upon a request from President Bashar al-Assad. The Syrian presidency confirmed it required military assistance to fight terrorism. According to US officials, Russia conducted its first air strikes on rebel-held areas of Homs.

The move comes after Moscow has consistently beefed up its presence in the war-torn country. In recent weeks, Russia has shipped some of its most advanced military hardware to Syria, reportedly including dozens of fighter jets, in a bid to shore up the Assad regime, its long time and only ally in the region.

On 28 September, Putin used a speech at the UN General Assembly to portray the dictator as the only viable option to counter IS extremists in the region, also opening the door to a possible collaboration with a US-led coalition bombing the Islamist group.

However, in an interview with CBS television, he ruled out plans for Russia to immediately to take part in any direct military action in Syria. He said: "Russia will not participate in any troop operations in the territory of Syria or in any other states. Well, at least we don't plan on it right now. But we are considering intensifying our work with both President Assad and with our partners in other countries."