Category Archives: Geopolitics

The World That Was Lost in 1917

Tell them that the evil that is in the world will grow, but it is not evil that will triumph, but only love.

Holy Tsar-Martyr Nicholas II

The Emperor and Empress thought that they were dying for their Homeland. In fact, they died for all mankind.

Pierre Gilliard

Introduction: 1917 the Turning Point

It is often said that the world was lost with the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. This is not accurate. In fact, the world was lost in 1917 and since then has been plunged into suffering and continual warfare. For the real aim of the First World War, the aim of the Satanic Manipulator behind all the petty aims of his human puppets, was not to find a solution to the tribal, territorial disputes of kindred but rival peoples at the tiny, western end of Eurasian Continent, but to destroy the vast Eurasian Russian Orthodox Empire and its Tsar. This Heartland-Empire stood for the averting of wars, spiritual life, unity and balance; therefore it had to be slandered so that it could be destroyed. It alone stood in the way of what the technologically advanced but spiritually dwarfed Western peoples chose to describe as ‘universal progress’. This ‘universal progress’, since 1917 unchecked by the Russian Empire and its Tsar, is the history of all the wars and catastrophes of the last 100 years.

Above East and West

The symbol of the vast Russian Orthodox Empire, the double-headed eagle, combined East and West. This was and is the symbol of Christ worldwide. Thus, with its western borders peaceful and stabilised for many years, the Tsar and the Empire embarked on the Great Asian Plan to secure the Pacific coasts of Siberia, ensuring the security of Mongolia, Manchuria, Korea and fragile China against rapacious Japan with its British and American financed military machine and British-built Navy. It was this Japan that stabbed the Empire in the back, as, ironically, it later did America and Britain. Elsewhere in Asia the Empire supported the sovereignty of Afghanistan, Tibet and Siam (Thailand), and in Africa, Ethiopia and South Africa. And, most importantly, it supported the Orthodox Christians of Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the Middle East and especially the Holy Land. The Empire stood above and united East and West; it was universal, which is why our own salvation is in her salvation.

Above Left and Right

The Sovereign Monarch towered above the petty combats of self-interested political parties and the vainglorious personality politics of corrupt parliamentarianism. Only the Anointed Sovereign had a vision beyond left and right and saw the whole. Only he was strong-willed and independent enough to reign and responsible to God for the well-being of the Empire. He had to fight both against leftist terrorists and decadent and hugely wealthy aristocrats, including members of his own extended family. These latter, because they already had immense riches which their hard hearts would not give to the poor, wanted the power of the Sovereign for their own futile and vainglorious ends, and so overthrew the whole Empire, whose destiny was also that of the betrayed Tsar. Thus, they handed all to the ruthless and terroristic atheists, who thought that they could create a paradise on earth if only they could seize power by violence, however many millions they might have to kill in the process.

Above Provincialism and Degeneration

The best of the Church of the Russian Orthodox Empire was international, stretching around the world into the Americas and Western Europe. It stood above petty Balkan nationalism and its provincial Greek phyletism, not to mention the warring tribalism of Western Europe, which the Empire had tried to overcome with peace-making at the Hague. The Orthodox Rus’ of the Empire was international. The aims of the First World War that had been imposed on the Empire became to free others, Germans, Poles, Czechoslovaks and Serbs, from centralised tyranny, and to gather all the Orthodox Christian lands, including Constantinople and Carpatho-Russia, together. The Royal Family, European and Orthodox, stood above such provincialism and the spiritual and so moral degeneration linked to it. The family life of the Sovereign was exemplary and showed elegance, purity and beauty, a model for family life today; they prayed together, they became saints together, an icon of the family.

An Unbalanced World led to the ‘Balance of Terror’ of Left and Right

In 1917 the traitors took Russia out of the First World War and so the world became unbalanced. The old hope of Nicholas II of allying Russia, Germany and France in peace was for ever lost. And the immediate results were the USA entering the war, taking over decadent Europe, and Zionism triumphing with the support of the bankrupt British government. This has since ensured permanent warfare between the West and the Muslim world. The result was then the disaster of Versailles, which directed its vengeance against the misled German peoples, who had lost their homelands, instead of the centralising Prussian elite. Europe did not learn the lesson of its attempted suicide and so the Second World War was made inevitable. The world became divided between Left and Right, East and West, Communist and Fascist, and even after the Second War, it went on to live for almost another fifty years in terror of being obliterated by nuclear warfare, the costs of which were bankrupting.

Provincialisation and Degeneration

Two sayings state that ‘united we stand, divided we fall’ and ‘divide and rule’. The ‘Balkanisation’ of division has been exactly the policy of today’s anti-Orthodox Powers. Thus, Constantinople, like other ancient but tiny Patriarchates, has since 1917 become a Western-controlled puppet and the once Orthodox or partly Orthodox Greece, Cyprus, Romania, Bulgaria, Baltic States, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland have now lost their sovereignty and enslaved themselves to EU colonialism and economic, spiritual and so moral degeneration. Today the heavily Polonised, heavily Uniatised, Galician-centred westernmost borderlands, the western 20% of the ‘Ukraine’, for the moment belonging to the real Europe of Orthodoxy, seek slavery to the same, false, anti-Orthodox ‘Europe’ of the US-founded ‘European Union’. The broken family life of the provincial and degenerate EU is anti-exemplary and shows vulgarity, impurity and ugliness; it is an anti-icon of the family.

Conclusion: Treason and Cowardice and Deceit

The Tsar-Martyr, from whom the elite and then the people abdicated, said: ‘All around – treason and cowardice and deceit’. These are the anti-Trinity that destroyed the Russian Empire and led to his triumphal martyrdom and that of millions of Russian Orthodox Christians. Tsar Nicholas faced the treason and cowardice of unprincipled, anti-Orthodox aristocrats, who had lost their faith, and of left-wing terrorists, and the deceit of the Western Powers who, Allies on paper, rejoiced at his downfall. However, all have been punished: the left-wing terrorists betrayed and killed each other; the faithless, anti-Orthodox aristocrats were shot, exiled and chose schism; and the Western Powers, colonised by their colonies, deceived themselves and are now dying powerless. None of the above three groups has so far been able to recognise the Tsar as a saint, for to do so would mean repenting for all their errors and lies of the last 100 years and more – and they are too proud to do that.

On the Importance of Sobriety (2)

Edited E-mail Correspondence Following the Questions and Answers of 17 September

Q: In your answers in the correspondence in ‘On the Importance of Sobriety’ (17 September) you seemed to be defending ROCOR as a Church of moderation, which is why the extreme Greek and convert old calendarists left it between 1986 and 2007. But surely there were extremists among the Russians in ROCOR, for example, people who actually seriously believed that there was no grace in the rest of the Russian Orthodox Church? And they did not leave in 1986.

A: On the ROCOR side I knew of only two Russians (admittedly very senior figures) who asserted that the Patriarchal part of the Russian Orthodox Church had no grace. But I met hundreds, if not thousands, of ordinary ROCOR clergy and laity who believed otherwise, freely gave the sacraments to anyone from Russia and indeed were scandalised by such an absurd thought of gracelessness. So let us look at all this in proportion. You will always find a few extremists in any group of human-beings, but that does not mean that the vast majority are extremists. By definition they are not.

However, it is also true that a few members of ROCOR at that time (I am speaking about the Cold War period before 1991) appeared to be more interested in anti-Communism than in Christianity. However, the members of that generation have either died out or else have left ROCOR since 1991. The problem for them after the fall of Communism was that they no longer had any motivation to be active in Church life. You cannot be anti-Communist when Communism is no more. They had lost their raison d’etre, and so they gradually disappeared from Church life. This was most regrettable for them, but on a human level it was a great relief to us because they had put us ordinary ROCOR laity and clergy under pressure, trying to politicise the Church, which we resisted.

And I would like to add to all this very important qualification. Those few who previously claimed that there was no grace in the Patriarchate after 1991 received several clergy from it without ordaining them, let alone baptising them! And they gave the sacraments to Patriarchal laypeople without dreaming of baptising them. So it had all been empty words, rhetoric, political propaganda and not actions. In reality, they full well knew that the Patriarchate preserved apostolic succession. They rejected their own absurdity, which had only ever been a purely political ploy. I seriously think that the ludicrous concept of a graceless Church inside Russia may even have been invented by the CIA. It is simply not theological, but purely secular.

Q: You have said before and also in ‘On the Importance of Sobriety’ that all Russian Orthodox parishes outside Russia will eventually come under ROCOR administration. But why should not all, including ROCOR ones, come under the administration of the Church inside Russia instead?

A: There are three reasons why not. First of all, the agreement of 2007 was crystal clear: all parishes outside Russia will come under ROCOR, all parishes inside Russia will come under the Church inside Russia. Secondly, there is the name, ROCOR. It is only logical: only ROCOR is the Church Outside Russia, it is absurd to have parishes outside Russia that belong to the Church inside Russia. It is literally inside out or, if you prefer, outside in.

However, there is a third and moral reason. During the Cold War period (I mean, after 1945 and until well after 1991) the Church inside Russia was under KGB administration and there appeared outside Russia very many unworthy representatives of the Patriarchal Church, at best Soviet bureaucrats, at worst liars and renovationists, politically or morally compromised or just plain corrupt. (The notable exception was Archbishop Basil (Krivoshein) of Brussels). And I am afraid that the Church inside Russia lost all the trust of the world outside Russia at that time. In a word, it shot itself in the foot and ever since it has had to pay the price for the distrust that it created.

As a result, even today, I cannot think of a single person in ROCOR who would go under the Patriarchal administration outside Russia. Even today, virtually the only people under the Patriarchate outside Russia are those who have come out of the former Soviet Union over the last 20 years

I mentioned Archbishop Basil (Krivoshein) of Brussels as an exception, but it must also be said that his integrity was wasted, as that of other sincere people. He had the nominal title of Archbishop, but his diocese consisted of little more than two priests, two deacons and about a dozen laypeople. And in general, until 1991, the Patriarchate only had tiny churches outside Russia. Russian Orthodox outside Russia would have nothing to do with a KGB-sponsored organisation. That is not a secret and not a theory. It is simply a fact of history.

An example of such corruption is the case of the late Archbp George (Wagner), who was a victim of it. A priest of the Patriarchate in 1950s Berlin, he was asked by it to become a Soviet spy. To his credit he refused and left for the Paris Jurisdiction. He was just one in a very long series of sincere people who left the Patriarchate because of its corruption. Another even more striking example is the present Metr Hilarion of ROCOR, who was brought up in the Patriarchate in Canada and left it when he realised that it was not free.

And that was all a great loss of talent for the Patriarchate. But it was their own fault; they did it to themselves. In general, the Patriarchate, whether in Paris, Berlin, Vienna, London or New York, lost many people, the best friends of Orthodox Russia in the West, because of its unworthy representatives, with their political and moral compromises and corrupt personality cults. It lost the best friends of Orthodox Russia precisely because its representatives were not the best friends of Orthodox Russia. This is why ROCOR is an autonomous part of the Russian Church. If ever, things go badly in Russia again – as they could, the situation is still relatively fragile – ROCOR will retain its independence. That is very important.

Fortunately, virtually all such unworthy representatives had died out before the reconciliation of 2007, sometimes well before. Now we are waiting for a new generation. The Patriarchate outside Russia has been expanding with the new emigration. We believe that the majority of the new representatives are and will be more worthy, will at least be up to the standard of ROCOR and so prepare the Patriarchal churches outside Russia for their transfer to ROCOR.

Q: Do you feel bitter about this waste during the Cold War due to the captivity of the Patriarchate at that time?

A: Of course not! A Christian cannot feel bitter because he believes in Divine Providence, the ever-present, intervening love of God. This makes all mistakes into opportunities, all negatives into positives.

Q: What is your view of the murder of Fr Pavel Adelheim in Pskov last August

A: On average one priest a year is murdered in Russia and every murder is a tragedy and a crime, including that of Fr Pavel. I saw a Russian programme about the murder. His matushka appeared and spoke of the tragedy with great dignity.

However, Fr Pavel Adelheim himself was a well-known dissident and controversialist, a marginal figure and in that sense a bit like the late Fr Alexander Men, who is believed by many to have been a Catholic. The latter is a hero to all those who are anti-Orthodox, especially since he asserted that ‘it is better to be a Hare Krishna than to be like Fr Seraphim Rose’. (By the way, under the old regime the London Patriarchal Cathedral on Ennismore Gardens refused to sell his books, just as they refused to put up icons of the New Martyrs; that has changed now). Murder is a tragedy, but it is does not absolve anti-Church views. I am not saying that Fr Pavel was like Fr Alexander Men, he was not pro-Catholic, but nevertheless he was very much a fringe personality. It is very interesting that although deaths like that of the late Orthodox priest Fr Daniel Sisoev are hardly mentioned in the West, Fr Pavel’s was widely reported and by two groups.

The first group was the freemasons of the Russophobic Rue Daru with their Western supporters and the second was the equally Russophobic old calendarists. It is disgraceful that such anti-Russian-Church groups opportunistically and self-justifyingly try and make capital of a tragic murder, which was carried out by a satanist. You cannot justify schism. What such sectarian groups as Rue Daru and old calendarists, two sides of the same coin, do not understand is that the Church is not an exclusive club for those with eccentric views, but it is for all who believe in Christ. The fact that Fr Pavel had peculiar views and was then tragically murdered does not for one moment mean that those views are justified.

Q: Russophobia has been in the international spotlight recently. What would you say about the civil war in Syria and President Putin’s recent intervention that averted US missile attacks?

A: First of all, this is not a civil war. The original legitimate protests against the dictatorial Syrian government were hijacked by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey (all Israeli-backed). 1200 murderers, rapists and bandits were released from Saudi prisons, armed and trained by Western Special Services in camps in the Jordan and Turkey and paid over $1000 dollars a month to murder, maim and cannibalise innocent Syrians. Together with them there are tens of thousands of fanatical foreign mercenaries, Chechens, Tunisians, Libyans and many Muslims from Western countries like Britain, France, Belgium and Germany. (These terrorists, who use chemical weapons in Syria, are the same people who prepare chemical weapons in Somalia). The war in Syria is a war between Syrian patriots on the one hand and foreign-financed traitors and foreign mercenaries on the other hand.

As regards the intervention of President Putin, the man who is so hated by Rue Daru and the old calendarists, what is remarkable is that for the first time, someone has stood up to resist the New World Order, that will lead to the enthronement of Antichrist in the rebuilt Temple on Zion. (Speaking of Russia, called the ‘Heartland’ in geopolitical science, Zbigniew Brzezinski said that the ‘New World Order’ would be built on its ruins). President Putin may even have averted a Third World War and certainly deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, unlike President Obama who should be stripped of his.

It was not a billion-peopled China or India or Africa, representing half the population of the planet between them, but Russia that stood up to the New World Order. President Putin has played the role of the Orthodox Tsar, of ‘him who restrains’ (2 Thessalonians 2, 6). This is remarkable on the part of a mere politician. Moreover on 19 September the President went on in his Valdai Speech to explain that the role of Russia is in Orthodoxy and that this is her Christian civilisational role against the secularist and suicidal West which has opted for Sodom.

The West has two great enemies in Russia today. The first is President Putin, the second is Patriarch Kyrill. It will do its utmost to bring them both down, as it has already done.

Q: Why?

A: Because the secularist West knows that if either of them is successful or both of them are successful, they will with time be replaced by even more powerful Orthodox figures in Russia. They will not only resist the New World Order even more successfully, but will actually reverse it, restoring the Russian Orthodox Empire in Eurasia and worldwide Orthodox unity. That will be the end of the Antichristic, unipolar global project, of Orthodox countries eternally indebted and enslaved to the European Union, the end of absurd new calendarism and masonic puppet Orthodox bishops, the beginning of freedom for Orthodoxy in China, financial support for the Orthodox missions in Latin America, Africa and Asia, the building of tens of thousands of churches there and, if God wills and the world lasts long enough, the foundation of new autocephalous Churches. In a word, this will be the great gathering of all Orthodox Christianity before the end.

Q: It is 20 years since the attempted coup of October 1993 in Moscow, with the bombardment of the White House and the Yeltsin era. What are your thoughts?

A: The 1990s were a disgraceful period, when Russia went from Communism to Consumerism, from lies to theft. Russian public assets were stolen by those whom we now call oligarchs through so-called ‘privatisation’. These oligarchs, international criminals, now live in asylum under British government protection in London and elsewhere in the Western world that so adored their stolen billions that so impoverished Russia. This was massive, State-sponsored theft. In the 1990s the West tried to dismember and destroy the Russian Lands, just as it had tried to do under the seven months of the Provisional Government of 1917. It is said that these new Kerenskys, Harvard-educated privatisers, the cowboys of the ‘Wild East’, actually rigged the election of 1996 so that the drunkard Yeltsin could win. It is possible. The CIA has plenty of experience in rigging elections all round the world. In 1917 the decadence lasted seven months; in the 1990s it lasted seven years until the Jubilee Council of August 2000 and the canonisation of the New Martyrs in Moscow.

Q: Some conservative convert Orthodox, especially under the Patriarchate of Antioch in the USA, would perhaps be shocked by your words. They think that privatisation is good. What would you say to them?

A: Conservatism is not the same as the Tradition. To use American vocabulary, neoconservatives or ‘neocons’ (unprincipled Money Tories or economic liberals in Britishspeak) worship God and Mammon against the Gospel. Indeed, monetarism is just another word for Mammon. And even the so-called Paleoconservatives (High Tories, UKIP, noblesse oblige, the Patriarchal) are not the same as Orthodox. Firstly, paleoconservatives have a tendency to racism. Secondly, unlike Orthodox, they have little sense of social justice. (If socialism exists, there are reasons). And thirdly, the paleoconservatives tend to attract a lunatic fringe, people who are obsessed with conspiracy theories, hate the Jews, admire Hitler and other such nonsense

Q: What are your hopes and fears for the revival of the Russian Church in Russia today?

A: We must understand that the revival of the last 25 years, although spectacular, has only just begun. As Patriarch Kyrill said last week, at the present rate it will take 100 years just to build enough churches to catch up with the number of churches that existed in the Russian Empire before the Revolution. Instead of building 1,000 churches a year, over the next ten years 14,000 churches need to be built every year. That is what would be happening if Russia were not nominally Orthodox, but actually Orthodox. Another example: at the Synod in Moscow on 5 October seven new bishops were nominated. That is very good and it should bring the total to more or less 300 bishops. But if Russia and the Church’s canonical territories were actually and not nominally Orthodox, there would be 200 times more bishosp being nominated – 1,400 new bishops. Then any future Inter-Orthodox Conference (falsely called a Pan-Orthodox Council by the Phanariots) would be Orthodox

Q: One last question. Earlier you mentioned Fr Seraphim (Rose). Do you think he will one day be canonised?

A: God makes saints, not men. It may be that one day God will reveal Fr Seraphim to have been a saint. It is quite possible, judging from his life. But, before this, the monastery at Platina will first have to return to ROCOR. That is what Fr Seraphim would have wanted. That would be justice correcting the historic injustice of Platina leaving ROCOR, something carried out after Fr Seraphim’s repose. I would even say that the main impediment to Fr Seraphim’s canonisation is precisely the fact that Platina has not yet returned to ROCOR. Then everything will fall into place.

Q: Would Fr Seraphim have agreed with the reconciliation between ROCOR and the Church inside Russia?

A: Of course, he would. He was a deeply anti-sectarian person, as you can see by the way in which the proud ‘super-correct’ persecuted him in the 1970s. He was a genuine monk who had no pathological complexes, like many of the super-correct converts at that time. He suffered greatly from them, especially when they insisted on being photographed with him – photographs that they now display in their self-justification! ‘Look at me, I’m standing next to Fr Seraphim, I’m a saint’. That is what they proclaim and yet in his lifetime they were his worst enemies. It was the same with St John of Shanghai. Some of his worst persecutors during his lifetime, those who put him on trial, proclaimed after his canonisation how much they had supported him!

Q: When you see what is being introduced in the Western world, what has been called ‘Eurosodom’, are you pessimistic or optimistic about the future

A: It is a strange fact that all empires end in sodomy because they lose faith, they no longer have any self-belief and so they commit suicide. It happened in Ancient Greece and Rome. And today we are seeing not the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, but the decline and fall of the Western Empire. It is a tragedy. And it is the duty of Orthodox to try and save the best of Western culture before it disappears altogether under the tidal wave of atheism.

Am I pessimistic or optimistic? True, it is quite possible that only very little of my above hopes for the future restoration of Orthodox Russia will be realised. I have no illusions. But even so, even despite all this, I remain optimistic because, although man proposes, God disposes, and God has already won, ‘trampling down death by death’. The worst that can happen is that we die. And if, I repeat if, we die repentant, and I underline repentant, we will go to Paradise! Who can be a pessimist? Fear not, little flock!

The Struggle Against EU Tyranny

As we know, first new calendar Greece, then new calendar Cyprus, Romania and Bulgaria all fell victims to the EU and became victims of its debt colonialisation, from which they will never escape – unless they make the geopolitical choice to join the Eurasian Union (at present Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus), thus freeing themselves from their self-imposed slavery. Moreover, at the present time the EU is extending its tentacles to the Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia and Serbia.

Since the NATO genocide of 1999, the Serbian government has been under the thumb of Western elites, who, typically, have been trying to force Serbia to allow ‘gay-parades’ against mass public opinion. The EU considers that ‘gay parades’ show that Serbia is ‘civilised’ (!) and has ‘European values’. They will be accompanied of course by all the other compulsory aspects of EU ‘civilisation’ – the destruction of the traditional family, compulsory sex education in schools, compulsory euthanasia, and zombification of the public by EU-programmed media, exactly as we have seen in Great Britain over the last forty years.

All this was very well explained by President Putin, now nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for restraining Arangeddon by averting the massacre of Syrian people by American missiles, in his Valdai Speech on 19 September:

‘We can see how certain Euro-Atlantic countries are in the process of rejecting their roots, including Christian values which constitute the basis of Western civilisation. They reject moral principles and all traditional identities: national, cultural, religious and sexual also. They are implementing policies which put large families and same sex unions, belief in God and belief in Satan on the same footing. The excesses of political correctness are such that people are talking seriously about allowing political parties whose aim is to promote pedophilia. People in certain European countries are embarrassed or frightened to mention their religion. Religious holidays are abolished or called by different names: their essential meaning is concealed, as is their spiritual foundation. And they are trying to export this model all over the world. I am convinced that this opens the direct oath to degradation and primitiveness, which will result in a profound demographic and moral crisis’.

Syria: A Watershed

It is now clear that the brutal war in Syria has become a watershed in twenty-first century history. 2013 is becoming an acid test, just like the events of 1913 in twentieth-century history. Thus, the elites of some countries have adopted a most hostile view towards the Syrian government and supported the terrorists; others, however, have supported the government and denied the terrorists. The same is true of all countries and institutions, from South Africa to the Vatican, from China to NATO, from Sweden to the Establishment BBC. More relevantly to us, the leaderships of various Local Orthodox Churches have also had to define their attitudes towards Syria and the merciless war there.

For example, the Arab-speaking Antiochian Orthodox Church is now drawing ever closer to the Russian Orthodox Church as a result of the Syrian crisis. On the other hand, there is the deafening silence of the US-backed Patriarchate of Constantinople – like the city of Antioch, the Patriarchate of Constantinople is in Turkey, the last remnant of the Ottoman Empire, and so is not free. Even more shocking are the anti-Christian and Russophobic criticisms of Russia by members of the immature OCA group is North America. However, unlike these, most Local Orthodox Churches are now realising that they have only one true friend – the Russian Church. They are leaning towards us and away from their pro-Western regimes.

As for the two parts of the Russian Church, the small Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) and the enormous Church Inside Russia (which we may here call ROCIR) are also drawing together. We have come a long way from our reconciliation of 2007. Since 2007 ROCOR has drawn closer to the Church Inside Russia, losing its politicised, Russophobic elements, whereas ROCIR in turn has been losing its old Soviet tinges. The two parts have been coming together, recognising how much we have in common. The same is true of individuals. Thus, one notable personality inside Russia, previously a pro-Western critic of the Tradition of his Church, has intelligently made a 180 degree turn and now fully supports his own Church.

It is indeed time to come together. A great question is now facing all the Local Orthodox Churches and, for that matter, all conscious Orthodox: whose side are we on? Previously, it was possible to dither and hesitate, to put off. Previously, it was possible to ‘be open’ and not take sides. But the opportunity for indecision is now rapidly coming to an end. The fact is that all who have not yet decided will have to make a decision – and soon. The Western elites have opted for the suicidal devaluation of marriage and at the same time support for Islamic terrorism. What do we do? Are we on the side of the Russian Church and Jerusalem – or are we on the side of the Western elites and Sodom?

Tsar versus Antichrist: What Lies Behind

You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.

Abraham Lincoln

Imperial Russian Armies have now crossed the Caucasus and are heading in a two-pronged attack towards Constantinople and through Turkey and Syria towards Jerusalem.

‘It’s Later than You Think’ (July 1991) in Orthodox Christianity and the English Tradition

The sabre-rattling by chemical-weapons-providing Western elites against the Syrian government has for the moment been stopped by the common sense of Western peoples. The peoples recall the recent lies that they were told about Iraq by their financially and morally bankrupt governments. As they say: Once bitten, twice shy. However, what has not been explained as yet is what the present turmoil in the Muslim world, the centre of which is Syria, is really about.

Ever since the fall of Communism, it has been clear that the next enemy of those who want to see a World Dictatorship, which will lead to the enthronement of Antichrist in Jerusalem, is Islam. This is clear from the Western creating and arming of the Taliban and Al-Qaida in Afghanistan, then from the first Gulf War, which ended even before the final days of the collapsing Soviet Union. And since then from the wave of divisive events, in Iraq, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria and elsewhere.

Only when the Islamic world has first been divided, brought back by the most barbaric violence to a primitive state, can it be ruled over. And the Islamic world can be divided most easily by pitting Sunni against Shia. This is exactly what is happening in Syria, where the oil-rich, Sunni, Saudi and Qatari dictatorships, strongly backed by the West, are financing and arming the fanatical terrorists and mercenaries who are fighting against the Shia-backed Syrian government.

Why, however, must the Islamic world be ruled over? It is because only when it has been divided and so ruled over can the Islamic shrine of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem be destroyed. And only when the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem has been destroyed, can the Temple where Antichrist is to be enthroned be rebuilt. Fortunately, there are still healthy forces in the world which consciously and unconsciously resist this movement towards a World Dictatorship.

Firstly, there are some independent Western people who still resist the movements of their own elites. The latter are desperate, as their lies show, to become paid minions of the coming World Dictatorship, which is to be centred in Jerusalem. Some Western people realise that their countries are being prepared by bankruptcy and used, so that they can be enslaved to this coming Power. Secondly, there are countries outside the Western elite’s hegemony, such as Syria, Iran, China and, now most visibly, Russia.

At present post-Communist Russia is ruled by a Russian politician. Like all politicians, he is liked by some and disliked by others. This is inevitable because he is only a politician. A Russia ruled by politicians will always be mixed and divided. However, as the respected Athonite Hieroschemamonk, Fr Raphael (Berestov), has prophesied: ‘There will be a Tsar in Russia’. And it is only then that the Coming of Antichrist will be truly resisted and systematically opposed.

Lourdes and Fatima: True or False?

And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun…

Rev. 12, 1

We will not dispute the miraculous character of the original appearance of the Mother of God (in Fatima), as we will not cast suspicion on the authenticity of some similar if less striking appearances…

Archimandrite Konstantin Zaytsev (1)

Introduction

Visions of the Mother of God granted to individuals are characteristic of recent, especially eighteenth-, nineteenth- and twentieth-century, Roman Catholic piety. Some of these visions can be doubted as spiritual delusion, hallucinations, and others as money-making frauds. Thus, the controversial ‘apparition’ in Knock in 1879 in Ireland seems strange, and the more recent and highly profitable ‘apparitions’ in Medjugorje since 1981 in ex-Yugoslavia are dismissed by the local Roman Catholic authorities as fraudulent. However, to dismiss all such visions seems not only uncharitable in relation to genuinely-felt piety, but also simply wrong.

The fact is that genuine heavenly visions do commonly take place outside the Church to Non-Orthodox. We know this, for example, from the vision of the Jewish rabbi Saul (later the Apostle Paul) on the road to Damascus (Acts 9). Some 900 years later, the pagan envoys of Vladimir of Kiev had a vision of heaven on earth in New Rome. Some 900 years after this we read how the future preaching of St Innocent of Alaska had been foretold to local pagan Alaskans through a vision of the Archangel Michael. How was all this possible? Because though outside the Church, all these people were touched by grace, for ‘the Spirit bloweth where it listeth’ (Jn 3, 8). The Church has all the generosity of the Sun, giving out rays of light and warmth to the outside world.

Lourdes

As regards appearances of the Mother of God inside the Church, the Russian Church calendar commemorates over 600 of her wonderworking icons, many of which first appeared to individuals in visions. As for the Roman Catholic world, there are the famous visions of the Mother of God to a peasant girl in Lourdes in south-western France in 1858. As we have written elsewhere over the decades, there are four reasons why these visions may have been real. Firstly, they happened to an innocent and pious peasant girl, Bernadette Soubirous (1844-1879), who had no clerical axe to grind. Secondly, when Bernadette was asked about the exact outward appearance of the Mother of God and was shown a catalogue of images, she innocently but truthfully at once chose not the resemblance of a Roman Catholic statue, but that of an Orthodox icon.

Thirdly, there are the well-documented and numerous miraculous healings in Lourdes, which cannot be explained by modern medicine. Finally, and most importantly of all, as the French-based Patriarchal Russian Orthodox religious writer, A. Merzlyukin described in 1960 (2), at a time when the Vatican machine was intent on finding support for its unOrthodox dogma of the Immaculate Conception of 1854, the message received by Bernadette was fully Orthodox. The words she allegedly heard from the mouth of the Mother of God were, ‘I am the Immaculate Conception’, not, ‘I was born by an immaculate conception’. This plainly contradicted the novel and recent Vatican dogma. It is precisely the Conception of Christ by the Mother of God which is ‘Immaculate’, that is, Most Pure, which is why we call her ‘Most Pure’. This is the age-old belief of the Church – not a nineteenth-century invention.

Orthodoxy has nothing to do with the unfortunate exploitation of this statement by the Vatican to support its novel dogma. By this, I refer to the authorities’ deliberate deformation of the message of Lourdes to make out that it was the conception of the Virgin Herself that was ‘Immaculate’. This myth-making has taken place to such an extent that many simple Roman Catholics today actually believe that the Virgin was conceived not by Sts Joachim and Anna, as Orthodox are reminded at every great dismissal, but in the same way as Christ – through the Holy Spirit and a virgin-mother.

This popular belief is not the official belief of Roman Catholicism. This is that the Virgin was conceived by human agency but with a special dispensation, relieving her of what it calls ‘original sin’. All of this is connected with ‘Augustinian’ doctrines, developed by medieval Scholasticism out of philosophical speculations in the writings of Blessed Augustine. These doctrines, ‘Augustinianism’, suggest predestination, a God Who does not love mankind, and are thus alien to the Orthodox Church and Her theology that loves mankind.

Fatima

Another example of deformation of visions comes in the case of Fatima. Here, unlike some, we believe that these original visions may also have been genuine (3). We first heard of Fatima in 1976, strangely enough from a Russian samizdat source, received by us from the late Archpriest Lev Lebedev from Kursk (4). The Catacomb belief expressed in this source was clearly that Fatima was authentic. We also tend to believe in the Fatima visions, for the seven following reasons:

1. They were granted to innocent and pious peasant children. The eldest of these, Lucia, whose name means ‘light’, is said to have spoken to the Mother of God and received messages from her. These small, illiterate children had no axe to grind, unlike the institutionalised Vatican machine. Indeed, most Portuguese clergy of the period of the visions did not believe in their authenticity and were even hostile to Lucia.

2. The visions concerned future events in Russia – a Non-Catholic country of which the Portuguese children had never heard. Again there was no axe to grind here, all the more so as it was precisely the Western world which had organised, financed and greeted the pro-Western Russian Revolution of early 1917. We must remember that all the events at the other end of Europe in distant Fatima took place months before the atheist Bolsheviks usurped power in their turn. This was long before Russophobic right-wing groups were able to take over Fatima for militant Roman Catholic and anti-Communist Cold War purposes, creating, for example, ‘the Blue Army’.

3. The events of Fatima all happened after the Russian Revolution, during the months of anarchic misrule of the pro-Western Provisional Government, in other words, neither in 1916, nor in 1918, nor in some other year, but in mid-1917. This was at the most fateful turning point in Russian history. This was just before Russian forces would most probably have been victorious in the War, freeing Vienna and Berlin and the peoples oppressed by them, and before atheist Communist persecution began.

We recall that the Mother of God had already intervened in Russian history at this time through her Reigning Icon, the appearance of which took place immediately after the so-called abdication of the future Tsar-Martyr on 15 March 1917 according to the secular calendar. (We write ‘so-called abdication’ since the documents involved have now all been shown by the Russian historian Piotr Multatuli to have been forged; the Tsar never abdicated).

4. The visions all took place on dates significant in the Orthodox calendar – then universally adhered to. This is quite overlooked by Roman Catholic authors. Thus:
The first vision was on 13 May. In the Orthodox calendar in 1917 this was the Sunday of the Samaritan Woman. This was surely a clear call to the West to repent of the Revolution that it had carried out in Russia, which would lead to the bloodiest persecution of the Church ever seen in human history. In simple terms, this vision was a call to the spiritual Samaritans to repent for their crime against the Second Jerusalem of Moscow.

The second vision was on 13 June, the eve of the feast of St Justin the Philosopher of Rome, who came from Palestine to preach the Orthodox Christian way of life, the only true Philosophy, to the Rome.

The third vision was on 13 July, the Feast of the Twelve Apostles, who had converted the then known world to Orthodoxy. This is symbolic of the universal significance of Fatima.

The fourth vision was on Sunday 19 August (not on 13 August, since the three children were then being held prisoner and threatened by a prominent local freemason who had political power). 19 August is of course the Feast of the Transfiguration, the Transfiguration to which the Mother of God was calling the Western world, which was then embroiled in the slaughter of its own youth and the youth of countries of Eastern Europe, of Russia and of distant colonies.

The fifth vision was on 13 September, the eve of the Orthodox New Year. Surely the Mother of God was calling the Western Powers to a new beginning, a new year of peace.

The sixth and so far final vision was on 13 October, the eve of the Feast of the Protecting Veil of the Mother of God. In this vision, Lucia was told that ‘the war is going to end and the troops will come home soon’. This was indeed the case since, as a result of elections held the very next day, on 14 October, the Feast of the Protecting Veil, the 40,000 Portuguese troops who had first entered into action in France on precisely 13 May 1917, the date of the first vision, were brought home to Portugal early, in April 1918.

5. The essence of the words of the Mother of God was each time a call to prayer and repentance. These were the very words which Western Europe needed at a time when it was engaged in a suicidal war, which because of modern technology was by far the bloodiest in the history of mankind. The fact that the visions occurred in Portugal, rather than in a country that had originally or directly been involved in the War, showed neutrality. Indeed, the socialistic Portuguese government did not exploit the visions for propaganda purposes, as governments with large Roman Catholic populations, like France, Germany, Austro-Hungary and Italy, would certainly have done.

6. The events at Fatima, always coming down from the sky from east to west, always included several inexplicable atmospheric phenomena which were witnessed by many. These phenomena were witnessed by dozens, then thousands, and on 13 October, by tens of thousands of people, among them atheists and freemasons. This last vision, already foretold by the Mother of God on 19 August and 13 September, included the famous ‘dance of the sun’, witnessed by some 70,000 people. It is very difficult to reject the fact of this event, explaining it away in a facile manner as a ‘mass hallucination’, as atheists (and two Orthodox converts) have unconvincingly tried to do. Here is a key difference with other visions – at Fatima they were accompanied by inexplicable phenomena witnessed by crowds.

7. The message of the Mother of God was couched in a way that small Roman Catholic children could understand, but which is not necessarily in contradiction with Orthodox teaching. This especially concerns the details of the vision of 13 July.

For instance, the Mother of God did not mention souls in Purgatory on 13 July – that version of the message was based on a clear mistranslation, which was later corrected. As regards the mention of Purgatory in the part of the vision on 13 May regarding the soul of a peasant girl called Amelia, we would suggest that this is only a reflection of Lucia’s Roman Catholic conditioning. The Mother of God may well have said that the girl needed prayers, but this would have been interpreted by the child Lucia as meaning that her soul was in Purgatory.

On 13 July, the Mother of God foretold chastisement, ‘by means of war, famine and persecutions against the Church and the Holy Father’. There is no reason why this should be taken to refer to a pope of Rome; it surely refers to St Tikhon of Moscow, the Holy Father installed as Patriarch in November 1917. He reposed in 1925 after the terrible civil war, probably martyred by poisoning, after which there was artificial famine in the Soviet Union and the terrible persecutions of the 1930s. Roman Catholicism was not persecuted at this time – the Spanish Civil War came later. Rather it was Roman Catholicism that from the 1920s on persecuted, whether in Ireland and especially on territory occupied by Poland, or later in Nazi Slovakia and Vichy France.

Similarly, the prophecy on 13 July that a worse war would break out under Pope Pius XI (1922 – February 1939) after the appearance of ‘an unknown light’ in the sky, surely cannot refer to the Second World War, which began in September 1939 for most European countries. Nor need it refer to the aurora borealis of January 1938. The aurora (northern lights) occurs every eleven years and it was after the appearance in 1927 that the atheist war against Orthodoxy in Russia that worsened considerably.

In the vision of June 1917, the Mother of God referred to ‘My Most Pure Heart’ which, seen ‘surrounded by thorns’, ‘will be your refuge’. In the vision of July 1917, the Mother of God spoke of ‘sins against the Most Pure Heart of Mary’, she said that ‘to save sinners’ God wanted ‘to establish devotion to my Most Pure Heart’, she demanded ‘the consecration of Russia to my Most Pure Heart’ and she said that ‘in the end’ her Most Pure Heart would ‘triumph’.

These references to the heart, typical of rather sentimental ‘Sacred Heart’ Roman Catholic pietism, are alien to Orthodox teaching. Some Orthodox therefore dismiss the vision out of hand. However, the Mother of God was speaking to Roman Catholic children, to whom such language was familiar. From an Orthodox viewpoint, could such phrases mean something? Is there an Orthodox interpretation of such references to her heart?

Since the Church is the Body of Christ, why can we not take the Roman Catholic expression ‘the Sacred Heart of Jesus’ and translate it into Orthodox terminology as meaning ‘the essence of the Orthodox Church’? Similarly, since the Mother of God is the Mother of the Church, why can we not take the Fatima expression ‘the Most Pure Heart of Mary’ to mean ‘the essential teachings of the Church’, i.e. the purity of Holy Orthodoxy? What else would be in the heart of the Mother of God, if not the purity of Holy Orthodoxy? Surely, after all, Holy Orthodoxy is our ‘refuge’, the establishment of devotion to Holy Orthodoxy will ‘save sinners’, Russia must be ‘consecrated to’ Holy Orthodoxy and ‘in the end’ Holy Orthodoxy will ‘triumph’? Is this not what we all believe?

It was precisely sins against the Orthodox Church and Holy Orthodoxy that had been caused by anti-Orthodox Western attitudes towards them, most clearly at the Russian Revolution. This event was greeted with enthusiasm by the Papacy. It would then co-operate with atheist Bolshevism throughout the 1920s under the Roman Catholic ‘missionary’ D’Herbigny in a futile and treacherous attempt to convert Russia to Roman Catholicism. And all this during the vicious persecution of the indigenous Church, whose lot the Vatican did nothing to ease.

These anti-Orthodox attitudes had been present in Western Europe ever since the time of the judaising iconoclasm and anti-Trinitarian heresy of the mass murderer Charlemagne (768-814 – called ‘Blessed Charlemagne’ by the Vatican). This was the very set of attitudes which dissented from and then took over the Church in Western Europe. By a process of despiritualisation, they evolved into Roman Catholicism in the eleventh century, into Protestantism in the sixteenth century and finally into modern secularism.

This latter is based on essentially atheistic nineteenth and twentieth century ideologies, of Marx, Darwin, Nietzsche, Freud etc. These thinkers did not in fact write about mankind, but only about their own spiritual emptiness, that is, their loss of faith and non-belief in the existence of the human soul, thus reducing human beings to animals. In this way, their ideologies dehumanised human beings through ‘class warfare’, ‘the survival of the fittest’ and ‘eugenics’ into ‘intelligent animals’, ‘naked apes’, in fact, pieces of meat. In turn, these resulted in World Wars – surplus men reduced to cannon fodder, in the abortion holocaust –surplus babies reduced to incinerator fodder, and in modern global consumerism – surplus human-beings worldwide reduced to debt fodder.

On 13 July and other occasions, the Mother of God referred to the rosary, as well as peace and the end of the war through prayer. The rosary is a vestige of Orthodox prayer-knots or beads, inherited by Roman Catholicism from the Orthodox West of the first millennium. Although the details of the contemporary Roman Catholic practice of the rosary are at variance with Orthodox practice, there is nothing unOrthodox about the use of prayer-beads in itself. Sincere prayer is always answered.

On 13 July the Mother of God said that the errors of Russia would spread worldwide, if the Western world did not listen to her. The errors of Russia were to adopt Western materialism (at the time of Fatima not in its Communist form, but in its bourgeois Capitalist form). It is indeed precisely this materialism, exported to Russia in 1917, that was since spread worldwide throughout the twentieth century, not so much in its inefficient and failed Communist form, but in its highly efficient Capitalist form.

On 13 July the Mother of God said that ‘the Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me and it will be converted’ and then will follow ‘a time of peace’. Is this not exactly what happened in 2000 when the Russian Patriarch at last confirmed the glorification of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Lands and since when conversion has been hastened?

Thus, we can see from the above interpretations of the visions of Fatima that there is nothing in contradiction with Orthodox teaching in them. In this light, these visions can be seen in an Orthodox spirit. The simple people of Western Europe are not to be blamed for the heresy of Roman Catholicism. A fish rots from the head, not from the tail. A heretic is by definition one who is consciously opposed to the Church. Portuguese peasant children one hundred years ago who knew nothing of Orthodoxy cannot be accused of being heretics. Only those who consciously reject Orthodoxy and teach heresy can be accused of heresy. This is clearly visible in pastoral practice today, where Non-Orthodox come to the Church for the first time, discover Orthodoxy, and say, ‘This is what I have always believed’, never having accepted the teachings their formal denomination.

Neither is there anything in the ‘third secret of Fatima’, revealed to Lucia in July 1917 and allegedly made public by the Vatican in June 2000, which contradicts Orthodoxy (5). Although it is possible that full details of the third secret have not been revealed, for lack of proof we must leave this possibility to conspiracy theorists. Nevertheless, it is remarkable that in the first appearance on 13 May, the Mother of God said that she would appear six times and then, ‘after six times, I will come back here a seventh time’. Is it possible that the Mother of God will again appear in Fatima, for a seventh time, and that another revelation will take place concerning the West’s present and future relation to Russia and Russian Orthodoxy?

Conclusion

Between 1992 and 1997 I was parish priest of the first Russian Orthodox parish in Portugal which we founded in February 1992. We dedicated it to the Protecting Veil of the Mother of God, whose feast falls on 14 October in the secular reckoning, the day after the last and sixth appearance at Fatima, the dance of the sun, exactly 75 years before. At that time it was suggested that I celebrate a liturgy in the Uniat church at the Roman Catholic shrine at Fatima. I categorically rejected this suggestion, as I did not wish then, and do not wish now, to lend credence to that later, superimposed interpretation of the Fatima events. However, I do believe that there is an Orthodox interpretation of the events of Fatima.

I believe that those events may well concern a Russia that is at this moment in the process of being converted. This process began when the prayers of the New Martyrs and Confessors began to destroy atheism after their glorification by the free Church Outside Russia in New York in 1981. This was most significant, since, according to the historian Piotr Multatuli, great-grandson of one of the martyrs, it was precisely from New York that the order to martyr the Royal Martyrs went forth in 1918. This 1981 glorification, which reversed the 1918 condemnation, was finally confirmed and upheld in the freed Church inside Russia by Patriarch Alexis II in Moscow in 2000. It is now for the increasingly atheistic Western world to heed the urgent and highly relevant message of post-atheist Russia to it, which is that atheism does not work, but that devotion to Orthodoxy does work.

Archpriest Andrew Phillips
Colchester, England

Notes:

1. Pastoral Theology, Part II, P.41, Jordanville, 1961

2. See Merzlyukin A., On the Catholic Dogma of 1854. (In Russian, 1960, in French, 1961).

3. Naturally, if an official Synodal statement were issued against the authenticity of Lourdes or Fatima, we would obey it and retract any of the above observations and tentative views that contradicted it. Our thoughts are only tentative suggestions which we hope will provoke thought and prayer on the subject. They are certainly not some kind of opinionated, dogmatic statement. The above suggestions seem to the author to be true, but we remain open to new and contradictory ideas on the subject.

However, we cannot help noticing that older Russians like Metr Evlogy (Georgievsky), as well as those whose Orthodoxy was beyond reproach, believed in Lourdes and Fatima (see A. Merzlyukin, also in his Russian book ‘The Star Who Gave Birth to the Sun’ (Paris, 1967), and Fr Konstantin Zaytsev above on Pp. 38-42). The only two sources known to us in recent decades suggesting that the Mother of God cannot appear to Non-Orthodox and categorically denying both Lourdes and Fatima, belonged to converts from heterodoxy. Through the extreme of an excess of zeal, zeal not according to knowledge, a desire to be ‘more Orthodox than the Orthodox’, they are now part of groups which are outside the Orthodox Church. Thus, we see how one extreme, ‘Super-Orthodoxy’, leads to the opposite extreme, being outside the Church.

4. In the mid-1980s we sent the samizdat source in question to Bishop (now Metr) Hilarion (Kapral). Fr Lev was then a priest of the Patriarchal part of the Church. Like many Patriarchal priests inside Russia he was also involved with Catacomb Christians, as I realised on meeting him in 1976. It is a modern myth that the two parts of the Church inside Russia in the Soviet period, the vast Patriarchal part and the minute Catacomb part, were completely separate.

5. See Orthodox England Vol 4 No 2 (December 2000)

What will happen to the Patriarchate of Constantinople once Russia has freed Istanbul?

In the nineteenth century France and Great Britain began a war of aggression in order to stop Russia freeing Istanbul and ‘Turkey in Europe’, i.e north-eastern Greece. This event, the Crimean War (= the second unprovoked and allied Western invasion of Russia of the four between 1812 and 1941), prevented the liberation of Constantinople. Even more dramatically and treacherously, in the twentieth century the British, with French and US support, carried out the coup d’etat or so-called ‘Russian Revolution’ of March 1917, partly in order to stop this same liberation, to which the Western Powers had hypocritically already agreed

However, all the prophecies, not least those of Elder Paisios of Athos, are unanimous. The liberation of Constantinople will happen, once Turkey has been split apart by the absurd policies foisted on it by the Western Powers, above all, the USA. Then the last liturgy in the restored Church of the Holy Wisdom, Agia Sofia, will be completed. Then the Kurds, the Armenians, the Greeks and the Syrians will all see justice. And the Turkish people themselves will find their rightful place. The question therefore that arises is what will happen to the Patriarchate of Constantinople, once the City has been liberated by Russia?

Clearly, Russia will hand it and the surrounding territory over to the Greek Nation, to whom it belongs. Russia will have no interest in keeping it, since its real interest is Jerusalem and the Holy Land, where one million Russians live. Once Constantinople has been restored to the Greek people and become their capital again, the historic injustice committed by the British in 1833 will be righted. This was when, under British pressure, the Church of Greece was split away from the Patriarchate of Constantinople. In this way the Patriarchate of Constantinople will once more become what it really is – the national Church of Greece.

In this way fantasies of modernistic world jurisdiction over Orthodoxy, foisted on that Patriarchate after 1917 firstly by British and then, from 1948, by American, imperialism, will utterly fade away. Then the remaining thirteen universally recognised canonical Orthodox Churches will be united under by far the largest of them, the Russian Orthodox Church. With this, we can expect the Patriarchates of Jerusalem, Antioch and Alexandria to become internationally Orthodox, and so much stronger, and the Church of Cyprus will enter into a fuller communion with the Russian Orthodox Church, with the Russian base in Paphos.

EU Independence Movements and the Future of Europe

It seems to some that the political and business elites of many European countries have over the decades sold their souls and sold out their countries for the sake of EU lucre. Today more and more believe this and are deciding to retrieve their independence and freedom. They want no more to do with a ‘Fourth Reich’, as they call it. They do not want a Germanisation of Europe, but a Europeanisation of Germany, the latter being divided into its constituents parts, instead of dominating Europe as at present. Whether the United States, whose project the EU was and is, would allow this, is another question.

In England, where the ‘Conservative’ Party which, in this as in many other areas, has not been conservative for decades, this situation has led to the rise of a political Party called the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). A new movement in Germany, Alternatives for Germany, Alternative fuer Deutschland (AfD), also wants to escape from the straitjacket of the EU dystopia. Moreover, these movements are mirrored in new political parties, resistance movements and street protests in other countries in the EU, whether in Poland, Czechia, Greece, Spain, Cyprus, Italy or elsewhere.

All these new parties and protest movements face their problems and temptations, notably of falling into extremism or racism. For example, UKIP seems to want independence from Brussels and yet at the same time seems to refuse independence for Scotland. Brussels is after all only Westminster magnified, with the same anti-democratic and totalitarian ‘one size fits all’ mentality. Indeed, this Party’s error may well be in its very name, UKIP. It would perhaps be better if it were simply called the Independence Party (IP). Otherwise, it may simply be seen as a party of past-worshipping nationalists and racists.

Similarly, in Greece, the EU ‘Golden Dawn’ Opposition appears to have Fascist tendencies, in Germany AfD has been reproached as a party of academics and intellectuals, in Italy the protest movement has been accused of political irresponsibility, and so on. However, it has still not been explained why in 1975, when the UK was granted a referendum on possibly leaving the Common Market, as it then was, the vote counters were sworn to secrecy by the Official Secrets Act, and the majority in favour of remaining in it was astoundingly large. In any case it is easy to criticise the EU.

There is the obvious failure of its absurd euro project; its clear anti-democratic ethos; its openly admitted lack of transparency, especially of financial transparency. Little wonder it has been called a mafia superstate. In a global world, this EU customs union is surely totally out of date, a mere hangover from the reaction to the murderous European tribalism of the Second World War on the part of wealthy politicians who are now all retired – or should be. But what if the EU were to break up? What could it turn into? One possibility might be smaller groups of countries. For example:

A Northern European Confederation of some 140 million with Iceland, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

A Central European Confederation of some 165 million with the German Lands, France, Benelux, Switzerland, Austria, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Albania.

A Mediterranean European Confederation of some 185 million with France, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Malta.

A Eurasian Confederation of some 350 million with the Russian Federation, Belarus, Kazakhstan (the present Eurasian Union) and the other countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States, together with Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Greece, Cyprus, the Lebanon and Syria.

In other words we would suggest that the future of Europe may be in confederations of countries which actually have a shared history and culture, rather than in an unwieldy and centralised bureaucratic conglomerate.

Today China, Tomorrow…

The visit of His Holiness Patriarch Kyrill to China is over. He has travelled widely, celebrating notably in Beijing and in the Cathedrals in Harbin and Shanghai, remembering the work of the Russian and Chinese clergy and faithful of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia there, notably of St John of Shanghai. Thus, the groundwork is being laid for the restoration of the national Chinese Church, dependent neither on the Catholic Vatican nor on Protestant America.

Professor Yury Kosov, Dean of the Faculty of International Relations of the North-Western Academy in Russia, commented today: ‘Not so long ago I was attending the defence of a doctoral thesis at the Faculty of International Relations in St Petersburg, entitled ‘Orthodox spiritual mission in the context of global processes of modernisation’. ‘Today we see that the Orthodox mission of the Russian Church is spreading the faith not only among Russian citizens, but worldwide. The Russian Church is active in furthering the spread of Orthodox values wherever it is possible…We must understand that in our world politics and spirituality are interconnected. If we do not defend national sovereignty…it is hard to keep spirituality in a country’.

The Russian Church also has a role to play in freeing bankrupt Cyprus and Greece and NATO-occupied Serbia. It is also active in Syria. Here it seems that the attempt to seize power by mainly foreign Islamist terrorists, financed by Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and backed by Western Special Services in the Jordan and Turkey, and armed even with chemical weapons to commit their atrocities, is failing. What they achieved with Western backing and arms in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt is perhaps not going to succeed in Syria. What the Islamists achieved in Iraq, with 80% of the Christians now expelled, and what they are trying to achieve in Egypt with the expulsion and massacre of the Copts, may not work here. The Patriarchate of Antioch, its flock often in exile in the Lebanon and Europe, may be reformed under the Russian Church.

Whatever criticisms may be levelled at the Russian Church inside Russia and its unworthy representatives outside Russia for their compromises in the past, it has to be recognised that with its canonical territory of 26.2 million square kilometres, between one fifth and one sixth of the world’s land area, and with that population, 1.755 billion, exactly one quarter of the world’s population, the Russian Church as a global power must now be recognised. In the last forty years we in the Russian Orthodox Church have come a long way, even from only a few years ago, when we were still a persecuted minority, mocked, buffeted and spat upon by all and sundry, both locally and globally.