Category Archives: Orthodox Rus

The Restoration of Orthodox Christianity in Europe and Russia

Foreword: European Orthodoxy and Russian Orthodoxy

On my almost daily travels through Suffolk, I regularly see flying in gardens the Suffolk flag, the golden crown crossed by the two arrows of St Edmund on a blue background. It refers to the martyrdom by arrows of St Edmund, the last King of East Anglia, in the Year 869. This was part of European Orthodoxy, the England which was defending itself against paganism because it was in communion with, and part of, the Orthodox Christian world. This is just the opposite of today, when England has gradually returned to paganism because it has for nearly a millennium been out of communion with, and not part of, the Church.

In writing these words about the love for St Edmund, I am reminded how just over 14 years ago I sat with our own Suffolk Count and Countess Benckendorff in that oasis of culture, the Munnings Museum in Dedham, Essex. Then we discussed my recent visit to our Russian Orthodox ‘catacomb’ community in Old York and next fell to discussing the poetry of Masefield, a great friend of Sir Alfred Munnings, which we compared to that of Hoelderlin, de Vigny and Tyutchev. This is Russian Orthodoxy, not brash and alien, modern American or European anti-culture, which Sir Alfred used to mock. After that conversation the Benckendorffs returned to Church life, reassured that the Church at least locally survives.

On 5 April this year we and the Benckendorffs met again, at the Cock Inn in Polstead. This time we discussed a recent visit to our mutual friend, Baroness Olga Tiesenhausen, in Surrey, to whom I gave confession and communion. The daughter of a White Russian noble, turned seamstress in exile in Paris, she loved the old parish in Meudon outside Paris, where she grew up, and our then rector, Fr Alexander Trubnikov, who was one of us who love the Tradition and therefore hate extremism of both sorts. She had recently been made very unwelcome in both Russian churches in London; the one a political extension of the post-Soviet embassy; the other under the control of pathological crazies, fanatical and culture-less converts who hate all who are not schism and sect like themselves. Tragically, through their schism they missed the great opportunity to become a canonical, but also politically free and multinational part of the Russian Church, working with others in Catholicity. They have zero understanding of the real Russian Orthodox Tradition and Russian Orthodox culture.

They ‘defrock’ conscientious and principled Orthodox pastors of integrity and of the Tradition. This imaginary punishment, as it comes from schismatics, is worn by them as a badge of honour and makes them even more popular among ordinary Orthodox and proves that they are not unprincipled bureaucrat-clerics and careerists. It is all so different from the beloved real Russian Church and its European culture in which we were all brought up, like our parishioners in Old York too. With the Benckendorffs we fell to discussing the post-Soviet nightmare, which began in 1991 and continues today. We concluded that the solution can only be in the coming Tsar and the complete cleansing of Church and State of the pre-Soviet diseases of bureaucracy and corruption (as portrayed for example by Gogol), of the Soviet diseases of centralisation and persecution (as portrayed for example in the late Soviet film The Irony of Fate), and the post-Soviet diseases of (US-imposed) militarisation and nationalism.

Introduction: The Restoration of Russian Orthodox Culture

Just before the 1917 palace revolt in Russia, falsely known as the ‘Revolution’, British spies murdered Gregory Rasputin. It was the ‘first shot of the Revolution’. His name means ‘the parting of the ways’, whereas the name ‘Putin’ means ‘the way’. His way is not the way we want to take, but we believe that it will, by the paradox of Divine Providence, lead to where we need to be. This is a quite different place from now. We have far greater aims than post-Soviet deviations. These include the cleansing of the fringes of the post-Soviet Russian Church from American schism and hate-filled sectarianism, and of the post-Soviet Russian Church itself from politicking, financial corruption, careerism, moral decadence and the extremism bred by them.

Together with all our dear friends in the Patriarchate of Romania, gathered over the last three decades and who have welcomed us as refugees from the vicious persecution by Russian schismatics and hysterical converts, as well as with our dear friends all over Europe, in Russia, Moldova, the Ukraine, Greece, Cyprus, the Baltics, Belarus, Poland, Finland, Slovakia, Hungary, Albania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Czechia, in the cleansed St Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Paris and our friends in the churches in Geneva and Baden-Baden, we will see the Russian Church restored to what Tsar Nicholas II wanted it to be. That is what the whole mainstream Orthodox world also needs it to be. The Orthodox world has been patiently awaiting this restoration for generations. The now very isolated Local Church of Russia has not yet taken up in the spirit of Catholicity the place waiting for it in the concert of the sixteen Local Churches, of which it is only one, albeit by far the largest in number. Only together can they be the voice of God.

Instead, it isolated itself by its refusal to turn the other cheek when uncanonically attacked by US-financed and homosexualised Constantinople in the Ukraine. Then it imposed on itself the further isolation of cutting of communion, followed by uncanonical revenge in Africa, and nationalistic and militaristic politics. The martyred Tsar’s vision of the restored, pre-Imperial Church, like the church of the Fyodorovsky Icon which he built in Tsarskoe Selo and which was restored over a decade ago, is also ours. It is like our church, also free of the decadence that began with Peter I, free of its decadent iconography and Italianate opera singing, its theatrical ritualism, bureaucratic clericalism, anti-pastoral, Statist rigidity, money-grubbing and love of luxury, nationalistic and militaristic phariseeism, hatred for others, and practice of rare communion – at best once a year.

The whole Orthodox world, not least here in Western Europe, awaits a restored, post-post-Soviet, broad and benevolent Russian Church, a Church of European culture, not of convert fanaticism or of narrow, nationalistic and militaristic post-Soviet politics, without sympathy for others and without mission. And we are the majority, the mainstream, representing all the free Local Churches, fourteen votes against two. This is the future of European Orthodox culture, though not of modern Europe. Modern Europe, for all of us heirs to Tsar Nicholas II, is like someone intent on committing suicide, both economic and moral, by hating Russia. Russia is poised to become the fourth largest economy in the world, overtaking Japan. (Russia has already overtaken Germany, indeed the latter is about to be overtaken by Indonesia). Let us look at the example of Great Britain to find the roots of this suicidal bent.

British Establishment Hatred for Imperial Russia

Emperors Paul I (+ 1801) and Nicholas II (+ 1918) of Russia were both removed and then murdered as a result of plots hatched by the British ambassadors in the Saint Petersburg of their times. As John Gleason points out in his 1952 book The Genesis of Russophobia in Great Britain, systematic and institutionalised British Establishment hatred for Russia began after the liberation of Paris by Russian troops in 1814, which had shocked Britain. This Russophobia was ‘an artificially manufactured product’ of ‘a campaign of a relatively small number of men’ who ‘won acceptance for their views by force of repetition’. In other words, if you repeat the lie often enough, it will stick. It was all about the British elite’s fanatical ambition for world hegemony. No rivals could be allowed.

Thus, the British ruling caste, ‘the Establishment’, engineered wars in which European countries destroyed one another, thus destroying any rivals. It was the same divide and rule policy of the pagan Romans, whom the British elite so admired. Thus, the Victorian Age became that of the purely British Establishment-invented ‘Great Game’, of which the Russians had never heard. In this the British Establishment obsessed itself with its deluded idea that Russia wanted to liberate British-occupied India. This self-delusion led the British Establishment to invade Afghanistan and lose three wars there, to occupy Cyprus (from where it now feeds the Israelis with bombs to genocide Palestine), to help finance the Suez Canal, to arm Japan to the teeth and get it to invade Russia, and then to invade and massacre in Tibet. All unnecessary.

Such British Establishment-orchestrated Russophobia was even reflected in the 1905 children’s book by Edith Nesbit, called The Railway Children. It came as no surprise, for London has long been a centre for plotting and exiled Russian traitors like Herzen, the murderous anarchist Bakunin and then the genocidal and Christ-hating Lenin. Even the evil Trotsky-Bronstein was later sent from arrest to Canada to foment revolution in Russia by the British elite. Today London is again the welcoming centre for anti-Russian oligarchs.

Conversely, the Suffolk Benckendorffs had a relative, Count Paul Benckendorff, who always remained faithful to the Tsar, as he recorded in his book The Last Days at Tsarskoe Selo. As the martyred Tsar’s noble sister, Olga Alexandrovna, who knew Count Paul, somewhat naively wrote: ‘My best friends and so many of my relations are British and I am devoted to them and to much in the English way of life….It has never been possible to discuss with them the utterly vile politics of successive British Parliaments. They were nearly all anti-Russian – and so often without the least cause. So much of British policy is wholly contrary to their own tradition of fair play’ (The Last Grand Duchess, Vorres, P. 240).

British Establishment Hatred for Soviet Russia

Through meddling in Russia in 1916 and 1917, the British elite inadvertently set up the USSR. They had imagined that they would remove the Tsar and then a group of selected oligarchs (that is, British-style aristocrats and ‘liberals’ like the transgender murderer Yusupov – there is nothing new in LGBT) would set up a British-style ‘constitutional’, that is, oligarchic, monarchy. It was clear to anyone outside the West that this would never happen in Russia. So the deluded British indirectly ended up imposing an evil Tsar, called Stalin. And then they sent Hitler to destroy the USSR. Only once again, it all went wrong. Instead of the Nazis destroying the USSR, the USSR defeated the Nazis.

Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz and the other horror camps of Western anti-Semitism, despite Churchill who unnecessarily genocided Leipzig civilians as a warning to Soviet troops. Yet they still arrived to liberate Berlin from the Western dictator Hitler, just as they will soon do when they liberate Kiev from the Western dictator Zelensky. The shock of 1945 Berlin was a repeat of 1814, when Russian troops liberated Paris from the Western dictator Napoleon. And so in 1945 Churchill thought up his ‘Operation Unthinkable’, in which the US, Germany and the UK would invade their supposed ‘Ally’, the USSR, and destroy it. Only nobody wanted that, though the Americans did drop nukes and kill 250,000 Japanese civilians as a warning to the USSR and began the ‘Cold War’, proclaimed by Churchill soon after.

After World War II the half-American Churchill reluctantly handed over the tattered remnants of the British Empire to the Americans and the British Empire became the American Empire. However, the latter had no colonies, it was a rogue-state which camouflaged its hypocritical asset-stripping greed behind the excuse of bringing ‘freedom and democracy’. So it brought the debilitating slavery of poverty and the corrupt tyranny of capital to the banana republics it created. Who cares about freedom and democracy, when you have nothing to eat and drink? As in Latin America, Africa, Italy, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and Gaza.

Even in 1956, when the US abruptly shattered British delusions of empire at Suez, and the British Establishment finally began to admit that it was only a US satellite, the British flattered themselves that they still had ‘a special relationship’ with the US. It is special, like every master and slave relationship. However, such a relationship also infects the master, for he too becomes vain, just as emperors, including those who have no clothes, become vain when they are constantly flattered by yes-men courtiers like the British Cameron and court jesters like the British Johnson. Thus, when the USSR fell because of its economic failure, because, as they said at the time, its Marxist centralised economy could not even supply its women citizens with hygiene products, the US imagined that it had defeated Russia. It is as delusional as the British imagining that they still have an empire.

British Establishment Hatred for the Russian Federation

After 1991, the British took part in the general triumphalist contempt felt by the Western world for Russia, and in the rape of Russian assets, inviting thieving oligarchs to come and live in London. The West failed to understand that Russia had not been defeated. Certainly, in 1991 the Soviet system collapsed, just as in 1917 the Imperial system had collapsed. But a temporary political system is not a country, especially it is not the largest country on earth with its millennial civilisation. The transformation of the Russian Empire into the Soviet Empire and then into the Russian Federation did not persuade the West that the real Russia could survive the failed Western political and economic systems imposed on it.

This age-old Russophobia has been summed up in the recent book of the perceptive Swiss author, Guy Mettan, now translated into English: Creating Russophobia: From the Great Religious Schism to Anti-Putin Hysteria. When Britain finally began to understand that the West had not defeated Russia in the 1990s, it invented or took part in various sad conspiracies to frame and discredit the new Russia. First, there was Litvinenko, then the Skripals, then MH17, shot down by Ukrainian Nazis, then the plot to destroy the Russian Federation through helping to arm and train the Neo-Nazi Kiev regime in British military camps, the terrorist attack on Nordstream, the deployment of British Special Services to the Black Sea and British PR companies to the propaganda department in Kiev, with their invented ‘Bucha’ narrative myth and such like.

The British Establishment has shown itself to be the most aggressive of all the Western Establishments for absurd propaganda rhetoric during the US proxy war in the Ukraine and in the ‘Cancel Russia’ campaign. It is a fact that even at the height of Nazidom, there was never any ‘Cancel Germany’ campaign. Indeed, the British theme tune for the liberation of Western Europe from the German Nazis consisted of the opening notes of the German Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. The British Establishment took a zealous part in applying the 16,500 illegal and backfiring sanctions against Russia in order to destroy it. They failed and made Russia even stronger. It tried to regime-change Putin, quite possibly the most popular leader in Russian history. It failed and made him even more popular. It sent Kiev regime Nazis against the Ukrainian people. It failed and Ukrainians defected to Russia. It decided the only way of winning was through creating terrorist attacks such as that on Crocus City Hall. It failed and made tens of thousands of Russians volunteer to fight against the West in the Ukraine. Today the British MI6 continues to supply Neo-Nazis with weapons in the Ukraine and the Baltics, just as it did throughout the 1950s. In their vain imagination they are working for ‘the Anglosphere’. In fact, the reality is that they are slaves to the Americanosphere.

Russia will not disappear as a reality, whatever the wishful thinking of Hitler or Thatcher, who both equally wanted to reduce Russians to a few millions of people to be herded onto ‘reservations’ for the natives in Siberia, as they openly declared. Millennial Russia will always continue in one form or another, for the moment as the tripartite Union State of East Slav Rus. In the face of the new reality of the rout of its Kiev regime proxies and the cleansing of the Ukraine from Nazi tyrants, the USA will make peace with the Union State. After seeing the US abandoning its failed Ukrainian tool and with NATO and the EU collapsed, the Western European war party, including the British Establishment, if it is not first overthrown by the English, the Scottish and the Welsh who yearn for basic health care, schools, roads and social justice, will be replaced by real leaders. They will be the peace-party, who will make peace with the Union State of Rus, because they look eastwards to the future towards Eastern Europe and Eurasia, and not westwards to the past across a vast and empty ocean.

Conclusion: The End of Western Superiority

The Western war against Russia in the Ukraine is existential for Russia. It is in fact a repeat of the 1962 Turkish missile crisis, (known absurdly in the West as the ‘Cuban’ missile crisis) which the USSR won, when the US was forced to withdraw its missiles from the Turkish-Soviet border. However, this Ukrainian war is not at all existential for Western people, only for the Western ruling class, because it has invested everything in its superiority complex, of which this war is its expression. For the British and the Western Establishment in general, the war is existential because the mere existence and survival of Russia challenges its delusion that it is exceptional, superior and indispensable to all others.

American and Western European elites declare: ‘It is essential that the Ukraine win’. But it is not essential for the peoples of the West or for the peoples of the Ukraine, only for the Western and Ukrainian ruling class, so that they can cling on to their stolen power and stolen money a little longer. Western Europe is certainly not indispensable to Russia, though Russian culture, like Russian gas, is indispensable to Western European peoples. Russian gas can give physical energy back to Europeans. And real Russian culture, which is still largely buried beneath the weight of present post-Soviet Russia, is that of Europe. It is far more European than the modern, Americanised, cultureless Europe of today’s elite. Real Russian culture, once fully revealed, can give spiritual energy back to European people.

After Russia has discredited ‘Western values’ (= orders from the Washington elite), the Western millennium will be over. The time is over, when the American elite arrogantly tells the Central Asians, the British elite tells the Chinese, and the French elite tells the Africans, how to live their lives. Nobody wants to live in the decadence of the modern West. Today the USA has accumulated 34 trillion dollars of debt, which is increasing unsustainably by one trillion dollars every 90 days, 10 trillion dollars every 30 months. It is estimated that it will take 800 years to pay the debt off. Who wants to join bankruptcy? Geopolitical and geostrategic problems and the existence of real European Orthodox and Russian Orthodox culture are ultimately geotheological. It is all about spiritual values. One day the modern West will understand this. Only by then it may be too late.

In the meantime, we of Orthodox Europe will hold on to our European Orthodox and Russian Orthodox culture. One day, once all the post-Soviet extremes in the Russian Orthodox Church, both shrill, hysterical and homosexual American convertitis and Soviet careerism, militarism and financial corruption, have gone, Russian Orthodox culture will find its rightful place in the mainstream of the great conciliar symphony of multinational Orthodox culture. This is not a place of domination or of intimidation of the fourteen free Local Churches by politicised Greeks or politicised Russians, but a place of international co-operation and diplomacy, of the Catholicity of the Church, of the Word of God, not of the CIA or of Papal-style personality cults. Then the real Russia will be restored – after over 300 years of erring along the torturous paths of Imperialism, Marxism and post-Sovietism, imposed by Western hatred for Russia and accepted by the anti-patriotic inferiority complex of Russian traitors.

Ideology Versus Faith and the Post-Ukrainian Russian Church

Introduction: Ideology versus Faith

Ideology and Faith are opposed to one another. As an example, I will describe the exact church situation in a small provincial town in eastern Russia today, where there are two churches and which I know well. This situation is very symbolic of my fifty-one years of experience of the Russian Church in Russia, the Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia and of the Russian Diaspora in Western Europe, the USA and Australia and how that situation has radically degenerated in recent years.

Those who knew and lived in the Russian Church before the last few years of decadence and who for generations had venerated the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia are shocked and disappointed by the unthinkable events that have happened since. The Church was purified by the blood and suffering of those new saints. Now there are those who are trying to sully the Church once more. This is the result of a Church administration which has, purely voluntarily, applied the dead hand of the State with its ever-corrupting ideology of power, money and careerism, to itself, under no obligation whatsoever from the State.

A Church of Ideology

The first church in this small provincial town in eastern Russia is a large, beautifully restored church with frescoes and golden domes. It looks like a picture postcard, a Russian church as it should be and as is portrayed in countless coffee-table books and tourist brochures. It attracts rather well-off people who want to be in such a church; it makes them feel that they are in a ’proper church’ and that they are doing everything ‘correctly’. Thirty years ago, the church was still a ruin, abandoned there by the atheists who had wrecked it and desecrated it before World War Two. Now the church is prosperous, there is an emphasis on donating money, it is frescoed and led by Fr Gennady, a priest who hands over a lot of money to his bishop, seems rather like a businessman, has many awards, is well-off, lives in a nice house and has a smart car. At the end of every Sunday service he preaches about politics in a way which he believes to be patriotic, but which in fact is nationalistic. He repels the few Non-Russian Orthodox (mainly Ukrainians) who live in the town. It is also rather depressing, certainly for anyone who wants to get away from the oppressive spirit of this world and expects some uplifting words from the Church.

There is no parish life, in the sense that there is no unity among the ‘parishioners’, even the priest’s wife does not attend church because of her depression. The wife of the second priest, aged 33, left him for another man. These are just groups of people who attend the church, fewer in number than in the heady and idealistic days of Patriarch Alexij II and restoration twenty-five years ago. These people do not work together, for there is no sense of community. This church is the fruit of the ideology of ‘The Russian World’. Although the basic ‘Russian World’ ideology had evolved by the Year 2000 and then found favour with the State, it was only in 2009 that it was officially adopted by certain politically-minded Church hierarchs. Since then it has been promoted, has filtered down and some have adopted it, like the priest in this town. It is essentially an aggressive, even militaristic, self-righteous, Stalinistic Russian nationalism, as symbolised by the controversial Cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces, recently opened outside Moscow.

This ‘Russian World’ nationalism is an exact parallel to the equally self-righteous, political and aggressive Greek nationalism, or ‘Hellenism’, promoted by some in the US-backed Greek Patriarchate of Constantinople and other Greek Church institutions. Ultimately, the Russian World ideology goes back to the nationalistic ‘Moscow the Third Rome’ ideology, which gradually developed after the fall of Constantinople, ‘the Second Rome’, in 1453. Now, Hellenism was rejected by the Apostle Paul in the first century who described how the Cross is foolishness for the Hellenes (1 Cor 1, 23), that is, a form of paganism. As for ‘The Russian World’ ideology, it too has been rejected by the very eminent confessor of the Faith, Metr Onufry of Kiev and all the Ukraine. He has quite rightly said that we should not be aiming at creating a ‘Russian world’, but ‘God’s world’. https://spzh.media/en/news/79477-decr-uoc-comments-on-decree-of-the-25th-world-russian-peoples-assembly

A Church of Faith

The other church in this place is much older, on the edge of town, looks poorish and is really rather plain. There are no golden domes. Inside there is a great number of icons painted on wood and relics. Fr Leonty, the priest, is an older pastor and spiritual father and is ignored by his bishop. He does not have a car and never asks people to donate money. He is not interested in money. His sermons concern the Gospel and he never mentions politics in church, but speaks of repentance and a change of life for the better. He is very traditional in his faith, but is kind and open to everyone. Parish life is strong and people feel united. They love their pastor, as he loves them. The emphasis is on the spiritual, on confession and communion.

The second church is the fruit of the Faith of ‘The Orthodox Christian World’. This Faith goes back to the Resurrection of Christ in Jerusalem in the Year 33 and its Incarnation in the world as a way of life, and not some nationalist ideology or political philosophy, for it is not nationally exclusive. Indeed, on the Day of Pentecost in the Year 33, the apostles spoke in different languages, so that all could understand. No national or racial exclusivity here, for the Orthodox World is multinational and international, the expression of Catholicity.

This Faith has always been expressed by the Church and is lived by all who are devoted to the Church, as seen most obviously in the communion of the saints. In today’s world we could give this Faith the name of ‘The New Jerusalem’. This is simply another word for Orthodox Christianity, which is outside all petty nationalism and concerned with the spiritual and ascetic. It opposes ‘Moscow the Third Rome’ with what has in Russia since the seventeenth century been called ‘Moscow the Second Jerusalem’.

Faith Always Wins

The essential problem with the Third Rome ideology is that the ideal of Rome always degenerates into nationalism. For example, the ideal of the First Rome degenerated into what was at first a Germanic or Frankish-led Western ideology and superiority complex of infallibility in the eleventh century. Passing through Spanish, Dutch, French and then British nationalist leadership, a millennium on, this ideology is now US-led. The ideal of the Second Rome (Constantinople) also clearly degenerated – into a Greek nationalist ideology. The multinational ideal of Moscow the Third Rome has equally been degenerating into Russian nationalist ideology for a long time. This is why in the seventeenth century the then persecuted Russian Patriarch counterbalanced the ideal of the Third Rome with the ideal of the Second Jerusalem. This is the only way.

For the moment some in the Russian Church have rejected Non-Russians, thus rejecting centuries of missionaries and missionary activity outside itself and have degenerated the Christian Commonwealth ideal of the Third Rome into a mere nationalist ideology. Whether in the Ukraine, Latvia, England or elsewhere, all too many in the Russian Church have turned their backs on Non-Russians. Those who love the Church of God are at present often forced to look outside the Russian Church for spiritual life.

However, there is the same situation for those inside Russia who seek the spiritual. In the provincial town I know, they go to the second church, not to the first one. That is why we too have had to go elsewhere, still hopeful that certain Russian Church clergy can cast off the nationalistic and militaristic ‘Russian World’ ideology. Although it is clear that the Russian State is the great winner in the Ukraine, it is the Russian Church that is the great loser and although it is clear that the Ukrainian State is the great loser in the Ukraine, it is the Ukrainian Church that is the great winner. The need is to return to ‘God’s world’, as Metr Onufry of the Ukraine has said.

Conclusion: Towards the Future

This New Jerusalem Faith, the Faith of ‘God’s World’, is also that of the free Metr Hilarion of Budapest and Hungary. He stands out as an exception among the episcopate of the Russian Church. Principled, speaking Western languages and with connections all over the world, he occupies the high moral ground and has not compromised himself in ‘Russian World’ politics. He is surely to become the next, non-political and pastoral, Patriarch and Archpastor of the cleansed Russian Church. Indeed, his first act may have to be to reverse the appalling injustices and persecution committed inside the Russian Church against its faithful pastors in the last three years for their rejection of sectarian schism, greed and politicisation, which have so utterly discredited the Russian Church.

He will also have to stand up to the absurd and novel demands of sectarians and schismatics, who claim to be ‘Russian Orthodox’ and claim that Non-Orthodox Christians, including Catholics, must be rebaptised to be received into the Orthodox Church. Then he can include more Western Orthodox saints into the Russian Church calendar. He will have to decentralise the Russian Church, granting autocephaly or autonomy to the Churches in republics outside the Russian Federation. Above all he will have to re-establish good relations with all the other Local Churches in the spirit of Catholicity and so move towards settling the century-old canonical irregularities within the Orthodox Diasporas through a politically free Council of the whole Church.

Why the Kiev Dictatorship has not been able to ban the Ukrainian Orthodox Church

https://spzh.media/en/zashhita-very/79475-why-hasnt-the-authorities-banned-the-uoc-yet

Why haven’t the authorities banned the UOC yet?

28 March 14:01

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Author: Kirill Aleksandrov

The campaign to ban the UOC has entered a new stage. Journalists are jailed, MPs can be sanctioned, and the West made the first anti-church publication. What’s going on?

After the attack on March 12, 2024, on UOJ journalists and church rights activists by the SBU, it was expected that this would catalyze the adoption of the anti-church bill 8371 banning the UOC (along with the final seizure of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra). With the journalists being silenced and rights activists intimidated and detained, it should be painless to vote to ban the Church, according to the logic of the orchestrators of these events.

However, something went awry. The vote, slated for March 20, 2024, had to be postponed. MP Yaroslav Zheleznyak announced on his Telegram channel that bills were being removed from the agenda altogether. There are several reasons for this.

Firstly, many deputies, including those from the presidential faction “Servant of the People”, simply sabotage meetings and do not come to work in the Verkhovna Rada. Secondly, the Rada has accumulated quite a lot of unpopular, controversial, and scandalous bills. As IT specialists say in such cases, applications begin to conflict with each other.

In other words, using administrative resources, you can push through a vote on one scandalous bill, but not on all at once. Therefore, administrative resources have to prioritize bills, while parliamentarians calculate which bill’s vote could cause them more tangible troubles.

As it turned out, Bill 8371 banning the UOC is the biggest trouble, not only to the country as a whole, but also to each individual deputy personally.

Amsterdam’s warning

On March 15, 2024, UOC lawyer Robert Amsterdam wrote a letter to the parliament speaker and members of parliament, not for the first time explaining that bill 8371 is unconstitutional and unlawful, and its adoption will not only tarnish Ukraine’s image as a non-democratic state but also expose the MPs who vote for it to certain packages of Western sanctions. Moreover, this applies not only to the vote in the Verkhovna Rada but also to other persecutions against the UOC: seizures of churches, beatings of believers, and so on.

One of the most well-known sanction packages of this kind is the so-called “Magnitsky List”. But in many countries, there are similar lists that include officials and public figures who violate fundamental human rights. According to R. Amsterdam, these lists include individuals for much less significant human rights violations than those committed against UOC believers in Ukraine.

Amsterdam’s warning caused a very nervous reaction in the Verkhovna Rada, which the lawyer himself described as apoplectic.

This means that the deputies took the warnings seriously and had second thoughts to the effect whether it was worth playing with fire, as sanctions may involve entry bans to EU countries, the USA, asset freezes, and other dismal consequences.

In view of Amsterdam’s warning, an emergency meeting of the Committee on Humanitarian and Information Policy was convened in the Verkhovna Rada on March 18, 2024, and they were so outraged by the activities of the American lawyer that they called his warnings threats and decided to complain to the SBU. MP from the party of former President P. Poroshenko’s “European Solidarity” Iryna Herashchenko called the warnings fake, while pressure on deputies – interference in the work of state institutions. She even wondered if sanctions should be imposed on R. Amsterdam.

However, Mrs. Herashchenko did not consider that, firstly, imposing sanctions against human rights defenders for their legitimate human rights activities is akin to authoritarian, not democratic countries. Secondly, by her excessive reaction to the warnings, she (like other MPs) actually indicates that these warnings sound quite serious and authoritative. Well, and thirdly, if, for example, adults warn a child not to put nails in the socket because it will shock them, does it mean pressure on the child and an infringement of their freedom?

They will take a different path

Apparently, Amsterdam did make an impression on the Verkhovna Rada MPs, as the authorities decided to first prepare Western public opinion for the adoption of the anti-church bill 8371, and only then put it to a vote.

The head of the Committee on Humanitarian and Information Policy, Mykyta Poturaev, suggested sending a delegation of MPs and representatives of the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches to the US to try to explain to the American establishment that violating the right to freedom of conscience is not considered a violation as long as it is directed against the UOC.

One might assume that this attempt will be unsuccessful, since both the US and European countries are perfectly aware of what human rights are and what constitutes their violation. However, there is still a certain hope for success, as it was the Americans who lobbied for the creation of the OCU and subsequently provided it with active support and assistance. Moreover, this support was demonstrated by representatives of both the Republican and Democratic parties. However, in our opinion, American lobbyists for the OCU did not anticipate that it would come to the point of forcible seizures of churches, mass violations of legislation during the re-registration of communities, and now to the prohibition of the UOC at the legislative level.

On March 21, 2024, Ukrainian political analyst Kostiantyn Bondarenko announced on his Telegram channel that the Office of the President had ordered several Western editions to publish articles against the UOC, in defense of the anti-church bill 8371, justifying the persecution of the Church, as well as discrediting lawyer R. Amsterdam and his human rights activities. K. Bondarenko also mentioned the considerable budget for such an order – over $2.5 million in March and April 2024.

No sooner said than done – and on March 22, 2024, the first customized article appeared in The Wall Street Journal titled “Is Religious Liberty ‘Under Attack’ in Ukraine?” Its author, a certain Jillian Kay Melchior, believes that liberty is not under attack in Ukraine, but “the country faces a dilemma in how to deal with an Orthodox church controlled by Russia” and with R. Amsterdam, who spreads fakes about persecution of the Church.

The text of the article itself gives the impression that it was written by poorly talented authors in Ukraine, offering blunt narratives and unsubstantiated claims. If Jillian Melchior is indeed an American journalist, why didn’t she even bother to edit the following paragraph: “Five years ago, the Patriarch of Constantinople recognized the fully independent, self-governing Orthodox Church of Ukraine. But the ROC and the UOC-MP refuse to recognize the OCU”?

Firstly, there is no UOC-MP in nature (this is an invention of the Church’s internal Ukrainian enemies), there is only the UOC. Secondly, the right to recognize or not recognize the decisions of the Patriarch of Constantinople is part of religious freedom, the right to freedom of belief.

Any community, any believer can recognise or not recognise the decisions of the Patriarch of Constantinople, just like any other religious leader, which is their constitutional right.

The content of the article contains so many unsubstantiated statements and accusations that there will be a significant workload for lawyers and human rights defenders to hold the publication accountable for causing moral harm and baseless discredit. For instance, it claims that the UOC-MP provided material support for Russia’s invasion of Crimea and the East of Ukraine in 2014. Where is the evidence? For such a statement is definitely hazardous for one’s reputation.

In the United States, as in other developed countries, there is a clear distinction between the actions of individuals and the actions of organizations. In other words, we speak about individual responsibility vs. collective responsibility. The fact that individual believers and even priests of the UOC supported Russia’s aggression does not in any way prove the guilt of the entire Church.

In this regard, we cannot ignore the recent statement by the head of the SBU, V. Maliuk. On March 26, 2024, in an interview with “Facts ICTV”, he stated that to date, the court has sentenced 23 clergymen. And a total of 37 suspicions have been announced to representatives of the UOC clergy, with more than 80 criminal cases opened. Let’s reiterate it: 23 convictions! And now let’s compare this figure with the numbers of traitors in the SBU itself. Back in 2016, the SBU published on its website a list of its former employees who defected to Russia, which consisted of 1391 (!) people, including one major general and 47 colonels.

Simon Shuster in his book “Showman” about Volodymyr Zelensky quotes former Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Oleksiy Danilov, who said that at the beginning of the full-scale war, the most desertions among the security forces were in the SBU. The exact number was not given, but it was said that “their departure depleted the ranks of the SBU.” So where are the bills to ban the SBU? Where are the accusations of undermining national security? Where are the calls to hold the entire SBU accountable for the actions of these employees?

It can be assumed that such an experienced lawyer as R. Amsterdam will certainly use these facts as arguments in support of his position.

Actions in defense of the UOC

Supporters of the UOC are also not sitting idly by, but taking vigorous actions to defend their Church. On March 26, 2024, the United Nations Ukraine website published a report from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights “On the Human Rights Situation in Ukraine”. It asserts that over the past three months, “clergymen and parishioners of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church continued to experience intimidation.”

The report describes several cases of violent seizure of temples. On the same day, an interview with the UOC lawyer, Archpriest Nikita Chekman, was published on the YouTube channel of the NGO Public Advocacy, a human rights organization. The interview discusses specific violations of the rights of UOC believers, forcible seizure of temples, searches at the Center for Legal Protection of UOC Believers, arrests of journalists from the UOJ, and so on.

These facts of violations of believers’ rights will be disseminated among international human rights organizations and will also be heard at the UN Human Rights Session.

In other words, defenders of the UOC are doing everything possible to draw the attention of the international community to violations of UOC believers’ rights. And in competition with adversaries of the UOC trying to prove the opposite, defenders of the UOC seem to have a more fair chance to win. After all, there are so many offenses committed over the past 10 years that hiding or misinterpreting them is no longer possible. Moreover, most of them are well documented and formulated as statements to law enforcement and judicial authorities of Ukraine.

In addition, the Ukrainian authorities have decided to take actions that are almost zero-tolerated in the West. We are talking about encroachments on journalistic activity and the work of lawyers. Unfounded arrests of Orthodox journalists and gross unlawful interference in legal practice are perceived extremely negatively in the West.

But relying on the assistance of the international community and the reaction of Western countries to the violation of the right to freedom of conscience in Ukraine is not enough. The most important thing is the steadfastness and fortitude of believers within the country.

The guarantee of the existence of the UOC is not the protection from American or other lawyers, but the fidelity of believers to their Church, the readiness to defend their religious beliefs despite threats and intimidation.

You can take away the temple, but you cannot take away faith. You can illegally re-register a community, but if the community confirms its loyalty to the UOC and its Primate Metropolitan Onuphry, then it remains in the fold of the Church, and people continue to be in communion with all Christians as members of the Body of Christ. This cannot be fought or overcome by any anti-church laws or prohibitions. Our strength is in the fidelity to our religious choice, fidelity to Christ, in fulfilling His commandments.

What might happen next

Most likely, the anti-church bill 8371 will be put on hold for some time. They will wait for the reaction of Western society to the commissioned articles against the UOC and its defenders. Perhaps they will send a delegation of officials and representatives of various denominations to the United States, who will try to convince their counterparts that there is no persecution for faith in Ukraine. Unfortunately, things like church raids and illegal re-registrations of UOC communities in favor of the OCU will continue. But the decisive steps of the authorities to ban the UOC (or the absence of such steps) will mainly depend on the situation on the fronts.

This is all nothing new. Any authority, in various failures, tries to redirect public anger to someone else. It has always been this way. Let’s remember the very first persecution of Christians under Emperor Nero. When in 64 AD almost the entire Rome burned down and the citizens guessed that the emperor had himself set fire to the city, then the authorities, without much thought, accused the Christians of arson.

A new religion, incomprehensible, suspicious – is a very convenient target to redirect the crowd’s anger. The same thing can happen today.

If military failures follow, the authorities may intensify persecution of the Church so that Ukrainian society sees the UOC as an enemy, shifts its focus to dealing with it, and does not ask inconvenient questions from the authorities. But this is only one of many factors that will influence the situation. The opinions of Western countries and the struggle for power within Ukraine will also have their impact, inter alia.

Anyway, the most important thing is God’s providence, which can steer the situation in ways that no one currently anticipates. “Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails” (Proverbs 19:21).

Tragedy in the Collective West and Tragedy in the Russian Orthodox Church

A mature great power will make measured and limited use of its power. It will eschew the theory of a global and universal duty, which not only commits it to unending wars of intervention, but intoxicates its thinking with the illusion that it is a crusader for righteousness.

Walter Lippman, US political thinker and journalist, Congressional Record, Vol III, Part 7, 1965

Introduction: The Rise of the Collective West

In 1066 the Papally-backed bandits of North-Western Europe, Normans, Bretons and Flemings, led by Duke William the Bastard, invaded England to oust the ‘schismatic’ English. They were greatly helped by English traitors placed there by the half-Norman King Edward the Confessor. It was one of the first acts of aggression of the Collective West, which was then being assembled and united by its ideological and infallible head, the Pope of Rome. This ‘Crusade’ was followed by other Papally-backed ‘Crusades’, which were also acts of gangsterism and thuggery by the same Collective West. Those Crusades massacred tens of thousands not only in the Holy Land, but also along the Baltic. Here knights and mercenaries of various Western nationalities took delight in murdering the ‘schismatic’ Russians and other Non-Catholics. In the following centuries Poles, Lithuanians, Swedes and Germans took part in further attacks on Russia and in Papally-backed efforts at regime-change, most notably in the Time of the Troubles at the beginning of the 17^th century.

However, the greatest examples of violent aggression against Russia by the Collective West were the campaigns of the Papally-crowned Napoleon in 1812 and of the nominally Catholic Hitler in 1941. Napoleon’s aggression was multinational and, indeed, the Russian rout of Napoleon is still celebrated there as a victory over the ‘Twelve Nations’. In 1854, the French, joined by the Ottomans, British and Sardinians, invaded Russia again, this time mainly through the Crimea, the Cardinal of Paris calling it a ‘Crusade against the schismatics’. It was another joint effort of the West. Then in 1914 Germany and Austro-Hungary also attacked Russia. In 1941, having learned nothing from Napoleon’s defeat, Hitler also invaded Russia with an Army of just as many nationalities, but whose losses were many times huger than those of Napoleon. Nearly all of them died and this time instead of troops from the Russian Empire liberating Paris as in 1814, in 1945 troops from the Soviet Empire liberated Berlin and this time stayed there for over forty years.

Today the USA, of which NATO is only a puppet, continues to try and dominate Eurasia. However, the USA island, like Britain before it, is only a maritime power and cannot fight on the Eurasian landmass, but can only attempt to divide and rule it. This is why US allies are on islands like Britain, Japan and Taiwan, on coastal strips like Israel and on peninsulas like South Korea and Western Europe. As soon as it tries to penetrate the Eurasian landmass, it is resisted by huge land-based forces, like those of Russia and China. And because the USA is trying to weaken and destroy Russia through the Ukraine and China through Taiwan, both those countries have now allied themselves to defend each other from the USA.

Some modify the statement that ‘history repeats itself’ and declare rather that ‘history echoes’. Whatever the case, geography does not change. Land-based Russia dominates Northern Eurasia and the maritime island empires, Britain and after it the USA, are still trying to destroy Russia from the sea, whether from the Baltic Sea, the Arctic Ocean, the Black Sea or the Pacific Ocean. The Western ideology of superiority and indispensable exceptionalism remains just as jealous as ever of those who have lived for up to a millennium and a half in the eastern half of Europe. These are the lands of the East Slav peoples, of ‘Rus’, represented above all by the Russians, with their rich agricultural land and abundant mineral resources. Today the Collective West continues, as before, to attack Russia along its northern and southern flanks, with the fantasy of making ‘NATO lakes’ in the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea, but also in headlong frontal warfare in proxy warfare with bloody consequences for the hoodwinked Ukrainians, who are simply being used and abused.

However, even the very unpopular elites of the Collective West (Macron and Scholz at about 17%, and Sunak at 9%) are increasingly divided on this issue. This division is very complex, as the forty nations of the western half of Europe are divided by different views and experiences. But all those elites have committed suicide because they have invested so heavily in the lost Ukraine project. Now the US is abandoning the Ukraine and ultimately Europe too. There only ambition now is to stretch out the Ukrainian tragedy until after the US elections. The situation is like that in Britain in the Year 410. Then the Roman Emperor Honorius replied to a request for assistance from Britain against pagan attacks, telling the Roman cities to see to their own defence. It was a tacit acceptance of British self-government. No forces could be spared to protect distant Britain. Roman control of Britannia was entirely lost. So too the declining and bankrupt USA is abandoning Western Europe. Like a pet dog abandoned by his master, the pet dog no longer knows what to do.

NATO – Today’s Collective West

Europe is divided. Apart from the fact that a few European countries are not even members of the US NATO organisation, that is, of today’s Collective West, or else are not members of its political and economic wing, the US-controlled EU, there are those in the western half of Europe who simply want good relations with Russia. Here there stands out Hungary and it has been joined by Slovakia. Remarkable is the aggressive, colonial attitude of the very unpopular Czech regime of Pavel (now more ferociously anti-Russian than even the Americans – perhaps overcompensating for his Communist past?) towards Slovakia. This is why the Slovaks divorced from the patronising Czech elite over thirty years ago. These two countries will not get on until the that elite is removed by the Czech people. More or less openly, Serbia and minorities in every country in the western half of Europe, from Moldova to Germany, from Cyprus to Montenegro, from Bulgaria to Italy, from Austria to Portugal, from Ireland to Sweden, also have pro-Putin attitudes and want to oust their highly unpopular elites.

NATO Romania will become pro-Putin, if he gives it back its land stolen by Stalin in the south of the Ukraine and if it gets back the Romanian parts of Moldova. Many other countries near Russia will also change their attitudes, if their small and unpopular US-elites are removed and, of course, if they can make favourable agreements with Russia about supplies of oil and gas. These include Bulgaria, Greece, Cyprus, Macedonia, Slovenia, Croatia, Italy, Spain, Portugal and above all Germany. I would also include Poland, Finland and the Baltics, whose aggressive Russophobia exists only because their elites believe that they have US backing for it, which for the moment they have. However, Poland is already changing its attitude and its workers are blockading the Ukrainian border. As for Switzerland and Ireland, they too could return to real neutrality. As for Finland and Sweden, they never asked their peoples in a referendum if they wanted to join NATO because they knew that the peoples would have rejected it. Indeed, even their corrupt elites have already declared that they will have no NATO bases in their countries. Their NATO membership is therefore meaningless and unnecessary.

In any case, what is NATO? NATO Turkey does what it wants and NATO Greece arms against Turkey. Denmark has virtually no military equipment left, Slovakia has no air force left, Hungary has no tanks, the Baltics have minute armed forces, France has no howitzers left, Britain has a navy with submarines and aircraft carriers that have become an international joke, is unable to recruit enough sailors to man its small fleet of boats, has had to scrap one third of its operational planes because it has no pilots for them, has no self-propelled artillery left, only 40 tanks that actually work and has to recruit soldiers for its underpaid army in Nepal. In France the mere mention of conscription is greeted by rioting. Could France supply even 15,000 troops to invade the Ukraine? In any case, they would be killed within two weeks. As for deindustrialised Germany, it has little left to give and what it gave, like Leopard tanks, has been shown to be useless. Its increase in military spending does nothing for its own forces, all the increase is given to prop up the Ukraine.

The End of NATO and of the EU

NATO is going to collapse into the grave it has dug for itself by ‘poking the bear’. Its elitist sister-organisation, the EU, will follow NATO, all the quicker if Trump is elected in eight months’ time, but, in any case, it is inevitable. Western Europe is utterly divided, as we saw with Brexit. True, the British elite which hates the English, Scottish, Welsh and most obviously Irish peoples, has refused to implement Brexit. This is because it wants to continue to line its pockets with EU money, which is why it has always loved the EU. Germany, under its much-disliked US puppet Scholz, and France, under its deluded and detested Emperor ‘Jupiter’ Macron, are also divided.

The ‘Big Three’ pygmies, Germany, France and the UK, are at each other’s throats. The cat (USA) is away, so now the (three) mice play. The three are still respectively obsessed with their need to dominate (Scholz), imperialist superiority (Johnson etc) and delusions of grandeur (Emperor of Europe Macron), they are today irrelevant and squabbling clowns. The German elite still dreams about Lebensraum in the east, its tanks are still burning on the steppes of the Ukraine. The proud and arrogant British Establishment still thinks it rules an Empire and is a race apart (which it is, but not in the way it thinks, for no-one has yet told them the sun has set on them). As for preening and pretentious members of the French elite, they are still as narcissistic, self-important and therefore as petulant as ever. However, the last statesman in Europe, De Gaulle, overthrown in the CIA operation of 1968, died soon after. Now, after the US has destroyed Europe, especially since 2022, there are left only European political midgets, all suffering from megalomania.

Unlike in 1914, in 2024 Russia has the biggest economy in Europe and has by far the most powerful military with invincible arms. Russia was forced by the West into liberating the Donbass. NATO then forced Russia into liberating all the Ukraine and the EU. Russia was forced by the West into demilitarising and denazifying the Ukraine. NATO then forced Russia into demilitarising and denazifying NATO. The irony of all this is that the split and unwieldy 32-nation NATO alliance, most members of which refuse to spend more money on their inadequate armed forces, is fighting against Non-Communist Russia. And yet, during the Cold War, NATO never fought a war against the ‘evil empire’ of the Communist Soviet Union. Today Soviet Imperialism is long since dead inside Russia, though not, ironically, in Kiev.

What is alive, however, is the nationalism of democratic Russia, which is a millennial Civilisation. So is the ultra-nationalism of anti-democratic and autocratic Ukraine. But Ukrainian nationalism is artificial, without historical roots, as the Ukraine has no deep historical past, and now exists in a half-Russian country. Moreover, pro-Nazi Ukrainian nationalism, which the West despises as it also despises the failed state of the Ukraine and despises Ukrainians. It has been artificially revived only as a tool of Russophobia for purely political and military reasons, financed with hundreds of billions of dollars, trained and armed by Western Imperialism only in order to weaken and then destroy Russia through ‘regime change’ and to die ‘to the last Ukrainian’.

This opposition of nationalisms is why the conflict in the Russian east and south of the Soviet-created and NATO-defended Ukraine was inevitable. Like it or not, the reality is that Russia was always, and obviously, going to defeat the Ukraine in any military conflict, thanks to its far greater land mass, its world-respected diplomacy and backing from the multipolar BRICS, its population that is now seven times greater and far superior military technology. The self-deluded West, blinded by hubris and contempt and stuck in its bullying, arrogant, ignorant and triumphalist ‘end of history’ myths of the 1990s, lived in a virtual world, a world of wishful thinking. As a result of this fantasy, it totally underestimated the diplomatic and military might of Superpower Russia of the 2020s. As it could not even defeat Iraqi conscripts and Afghan goatherds, what chance does it have against the most advanced military equipment in the world?

Or what king, going to make war against another king, does not first sit down and consult whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him that comes against him with twenty thousand? Or else while the other is a great way off, he sends an embassy and desires conditions of peace?

Luke 14, 31-32

The Tragedy in the Russian Orthodox Church

Today, we are fighting so that it would never occur to anyone that Russia, our people, our language, or our culture can be erased from history. Today, we need a consolidated society, and this consolidation can only be based on sovereignty, freedom, creation, and justice. Our values are humanity, mercy and compassion.

President Vladimir Putin, 30 September 2022

‘Our values are humanity, mercy and compassion’. So proclaims the Russian State, whether you believe it or not. Ironically, against this background of the victorious Russian State and its reconstruction of ‘Rus’ (the Union State of the Russian Federation, Belarus and the New Ukraine), we see the defeat of the nationalistic administration of Russian Orthodox Church. What are the values of this administration? ‘Humanity, mercy and compassion’? The administration of this Church, known as the Moscow Patriarchate, has been to some extent discredited because of its militaristic and nationalistic attitude to the conflict in the Ukraine. As a result, the Moscow Patriarchate has lost the loyalty of many of the multinational faithful outside the Russian Federation and Belarus. And even inside these two countries, it has lost the loyalty of many who are not devoted to Russian nationalism, but put Christ above a nation.

The Church is not an army. However, some in the Russian Church administration is demanding that its clergy and people behave as if they were in an army. That is suicidal behaviour in what is by definition a volunteer organisation. Fewer attend Russian Orthodox churches inside Russia, especially those of the two younger generations, who did not experience the persecution and nobility of the Church in the Soviet past. They see many of today’s Russian clergy, especially the episcopate, as corrupt mini-oligarchs and anti-spiritual bureaucrats and politicians, who are incapable of spiritual values. It is not surprising. What is the origin of the tragedy, this self-imposed defeat, which is so paradoxical in view of the victory of the Russian State?

The tragedy is that after the collapse of the USSR, the Russian State desovietised itself, but the Russian Church did not. The Russian State had to face up to reality in order to survive in the real global world and so became the leader of the multinational, multicontinental and multicivilisational BRICS Alliance of black, brown, yellow and white. This reality was that Moscow, the Russian State, knew that it could no longer hold on to Non-East Slavs, as the USSR had split into 15 independent republics, let alone hold on to its Eastern European Empire, where the USSR had come to be hated. Tragically, however, the Moscow Patriarchate did not realise this and did not desovietise itself, as symbolised by its keeping of its Soviet name, ‘the Moscow Patriarchate’.

We have repeatedly suggested that it be renamed ‘the Patriarchate of New Jerusalem’, which is a monastery just outside Moscow. Instead, many in it has continued to live in the bubble and ghetto of the Soviet past, thinking it had power over all Non-Russians, over whom it still held jurisdiction. In other words, it is to some extent a remnant of Soviet Imperialism in the post-Soviet world. Leaving to one side the glory of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the real Russian Orthodox Church, the senior administration, the Moscow Patriarchate seems to have retained a centralised, Soviet-style bureaucracy with a mentality of subservience, cancelling all independent thinking. Will it really need the interference of the Russian State to desovietise the Russian Church? It would be the irony of ironies.

Nationalism and money-making, which soon turned into oligarch-style corruption, became the order of the day for many. The only qualifications to be a bishop were to be single, have an idea of the Church services and history, and to be good at raising funds, to be ‘an effective manager’. Some were pedophiles or spies, psychopaths or drug-dealers. Spirituality and morality never entered into it. Episcopal money-making means exploiting priests, who in turn are supposed to exploit the people. As the proverb says: ‘A fish rots from the head’. Such exploitation means aggressively grabbing and then micro-managing territory, property and income. The larger the territory, the more the parishes, the greater the number of parishes, the greater the income. This means misusing the canons (which such mafiosi always call ‘holy’!) for purely territorial, ideological, financial and sectarian claims.

Any Russian Orthodox pastors or spiritual fathers who disagree with the canonical deviations or just political opinions of their superiors seem to be ‘defrocked’! This includes ‘defrocking’ those who have left the persecution of the Russian Church without letters of leave, because the Russian Church refused to grant them for no good reason, though the Russian Church itself has received hundreds of clergy from other Local Churches without letters of leave, especially in Europe and Africa. The word ‘hypocrisy’ comes to mind! Such a militaristic, nationalistic, centralised and unipolar command and control system has made some in the administration of the Russian Orthodox Church, the Moscow Patriarchate, and those who imitate it, into something that scandalises. And this is in a country whose State has championed not centralisation, but the non-nationalistic and decentralised multipolar BRICS Alliance! Some claim that Moscow is ‘the Third Rome’. But Rome had the ability to unite different peoples and cultures. This is not what ‘the Third Rome’ is doing, because of its exclusivist nationalism.

The Russian Orthodox Fragments in the Emigration

Given recent events, even before the Russian State launched its Special Military Operation against NATO in the Ukraine, some have asked me if I regret helping to foster the unity of the two émigré fragments of the Russian Church, centred respectively in New York and Paris, with the Russian Orthodox Church, centred in Moscow. The answer is a resounding ‘No’, and for the reasons below:

The New York émigré group, known familiarly as ROCOR, numbering about 60,000, essentially in the English-speaking and German-speaking world, was by the 1990s turning into an old calendarist sect. Our victory was that on its reconciliation with the Russian Orthodox Mother-Church in 2007, its then hierarchy rejected its past, self-imposed isolation and its emerging status as a pharisaical right-wing sect. Indeed, as a result of this reconciliation, some 5% of the most extreme part of the New York group left it and created four different tiny and exclusivist sects, which were not in communion with any part of the worldwide Orthodox Church. If it had not been for the reconciliation in 2007, the New York group would not have survived, it would have split into two, a sect and the rest – who, like myself, would have joined the Mother-Church.

The Paris émigré group, known familiarly as Rue Daru, numbering about 15,000, essentially in French-speaking Europe, was by the 1990s turning into a modernist cult. Our victory was that on reconciliation with the Russian Orthodox Mother-Church in 2019, it rejected its past, self-imposed isolation and its emerging status as a Tradition-less, make-it-up-as-you-go-along cult. However, as a result of its reconciliation, some 43% of the most extreme part of the Paris group left it, mainly for the modernist section in the Church of Constantinople. If it had not been for the reconciliation in 2019, the Paris group would not have survived, it would have split into two, a cult and the rest – who, like my close friends there, would have joined the Mother-Church.

The Results

Some, reading the above statistics, may say that the reconciliation of the New York group, four times larger than the small Paris group, was by far the more successful. However, the story since 2007 proves otherwise. Having been cleansed of extremists, the Paris group has remained firm. And although only some 5% of the New York group abandoned it, they left behind a large number of others, perhaps about 38%, who still had a sectarian mentality. They just hid behind their paper reconciliation with the Mother-Church as a justification to continue to do exactly as before. Hypocrisy. They had never intended to repent. In other words, there had always been the same proportion of extremists in the New York group as in the Paris group (43%), but the New York group was not cleansed of them. It is this remaining extremist part of the New York group, over a third of the whole, which a decade after the reconciliation, since 2017, began to take revenge for the reconciliation, seized power and caused all the problems. Notably it has actually completely unjustifiably initiated a public schism with the Paris group, supposedly another part of the same Russian Orthodox Church! Moreover, this schism, inside itself, has passively been backed by the administration of the Moscow Patriarchate!

There are already examples of senior clergy and people exiting the New York group, either by ‘retiring’, or else by joining non-schismatic Local Churches. And there are those who have not left yet, but are still suffering the same moral torment as those who have left, seeing the disgraceful behaviour of its new hierarchy. Its pious bishops of the last century must be spinning in their graves. The new sectarian ROCOR hierarchy is reverting to the pro-Nazi or Vlasovite ROCOR mentality in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s and to the sectarian CIA-funded, Vlasovite ROCOR of the 1960s to the 1980s. Its degeneration is its own fault. You cannot blame the corruption of individuals in the Moscow Patriarchate for your own corruption. You must take responsibility for yourselves. Individual corruption is a personal choice, not something forced on New York by Moscow, even if New York episcopal corruption follows exactly the same pattern, falling to exactly the same corruption of accumulating territory, property and income. The larger the territory, the more the parishes, the greater the number of people, the greater the income. Power has gone to all their heads.

This pathological micro-management, popularly known as control freakery, also means misusing the canons (which they always called ‘holy’ as part of their absurd self-justification!) as weapons for uncanonical political and territorial claims. Any clergy who disagree because they are Christians are ‘defrocked’ by the corrupt, not least in Non-Russian Moldova, where large numbers of parishes are leaving the Russian Church for their ancestral Romanian Church. Homosexuality and love of money and luxury, living as ‘princes of the Church’ and not as servants of the people, is their choice. Don’t blame Moscow for that. The proof of this is that the Paris group, however naïve some may say that it is, has not followed this path of episcopal and clerical corruption and has no desire to do so. The Paris group has not left to one side the glorious victory of the New Martyrs and Confessors over atheism. It has in no way a centralised, Soviet-style bureaucracy with its mentality of subservience, cancelling all independent thinking. On the contrary, Paris has retained the multinational Russian Orthodox missionary vision. Here is the tragedy of the New York ROCOR group. It has, purely voluntarily, abolished its heritage in suicidal acts of self-destruction.

Conclusion: Quenching the Spirit

Thus, the heritage of multinationality and catholicity of both the Moscow and New York parts of the Russian Orthodox Church have been rejected by their clerical administrations, with the ensuing isolation of the Russian Church. The senior hierarchy of both parts has shut itself off from concelebration with other Local Churches and promoted those of Russian nationality above all others, whom it treats as second-class citizens. Interestingly, the Russian State did not impose any of this. The senior Church hierarchy, acting like a Stalinist Soviet Politburo, did. And quite freely. This has been suicidal. Essentially, the Holy Spirit is being replaced by the human spirit.

The tiny Paris group alone has not chosen that path. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Divine calling of the émigré fragments of the Russian Orthodox Church was firstly to reunite with the freed Mother-Church in Moscow and secondly to call its administration, the ‘Moscow Patriarchate’, to repentance after the nightmare of Sovietisation, by witnessing to Russian Orthodoxy, and so desovietise it. The New York group did the opposite of this. It not only remained silent on desovietisation. It actually imitated and sovietised itself, making itself too into a ‘Soviet tank’. It opposed baptism with the heresy of rebaptism, Christian love with phariseeism, and catholicity with right-wing sectarianism. It could all have been so different, it was all so unnecessary. New York, like Moscow, chose suicidal self-destruction and the living forces of the Russian Orthodox Church are deserting it, as its hierarchy quenches the Spirit.

After reconciling with Moscow, the New York hierarchy copied the worst of it, also becoming corrupt – financially, ideologically and morally. The errors of both Moscow and New York can be measured in the destinies of those who have left them, seeing the unrighteous life lived by bishops and priests and therefore their inability and unwillingness to proclaim Christ. Whatever you think of the inevitable outcome of Russian military victory, the profoundly tragic inter-East Slav war in the Ukraine is Divine punishment for the sins of the hierarchies of both Moscow and New York. The Russian Orthodox Church, let alone Orthodox Rus, let alone Holy Rus, has been torn by civil war and the deaths of hundreds of thousands. This is not pleasing to God. This is hardly the Triumph of Orthodoxy, let alone the Triumph of Orthodox. But it is what happens when there is no repentance for all that went before and when the Russian Orthodox Faith is dominated by corrupt and highly centralised clerical administrations, which compromise everything. However, after the resurrection of the Russian Orthodox Church, we remain convinced that it will shed the bloody graveclothes with which it is still wrapped from the Crucifixion and be cleansed of the unworthy and corrupted.

I tell you, No: but unless you repent, you shall all likewise perish.

Luke 13, 5

Church of St John of Shanghai and Western Europe,

England

The Triumph of Orthodoxy, 24 March 2024

Our Common Battle for Holy Rus

The Church is a space of love, freedom and Truth in Christ, rather than an administrative, bureaucratic and punitive apparatus.

https://spzh.news/en/zashhita-very/77938-banning-uminsky-as-a-temptation-by-orthodox-papism

Moscow and New York: The Dual Tragedy of Modernists and Sectarians

Fr Alexei Uminsky is a well-known liberal-modernist priest in Moscow, typical of many former hippy idealists who were ordained priests in Russia after the fall of the USSR in the 1990s. We have met several of them and first heard about his activities some fifteen years ago. He is a sincere pastor, nobody could doubt his sincerity, though he has some strange views, which are the fruit of his heady intellectualism. A few days ago, the Moscow Diocesan Court agreed that he should be defrocked, though the paper confirming this decision, which seems very harsh to many, has not been signed by the Patriarch. It is our personal belief that Fr Alexei is not a bad man, just a very naïve man, who has let himself be abused over and over again by the enemies of Russia, including the many US-financed agents there.

His latest error is to refuse to pray for the victory of Holy Rus over its enemies. Like the other very naïve disciples of the late Metr Antony Bloom and of other Russian Parisian liberals such as Fr Alexander Schmemann, in Amsterdam, Madrid, Antioch (via Lisbon, where that one called his faithful ‘Orthodox witches’ and was sacked as a result) and elsewhere, who have mainly left the Russian Church and gone to the US-backed Greeks, Fr Alexey does not understand what Holy Rus is. A pacifist, he imagines that Holy Rus means the temporary political entity of the Russian Federation, which is not at all the case. Although conducting an operation to protect Russians who live in the Ukraine from Nazi genocide, the Russian Federation has never declared war on the Ukraine. However, the West did declare war on Russia through the Nazi proxies it installed and armed to the teeth there, and who created the tragedy. The Russian Church hope is that with the uniting of Rus, the ideal of Holy Rus can be reborn.

However, Fr Alexei and others like him are not the only ones who misunderstand Holy Rus. Today, large parts of the New York-based Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia have been taken over by sectarians. These are the spiritual descendants of those of that same fragment of the Church who openly supported the Nazis in World War Two – those selfsame Nazis who took over the Ukraine. Those traitors were known as Vlasovites and the new Vlasovites have the same views as them and so openly express American support for Nazism in the Ukraine. Whether eighty years ago or today, the treachery remains the same. Whether belonging to the Nazi Party or to the CIA (which was largely staffed by ‘former’ Nazis when it was founded in 1947), those who took and take enemy power and money are contaminated by the same disease. These extremists reject Holy Rus, the Orthodoxy of the faithful, and her universal Orthodox practices and traditions. They support only some reactionary, top-down, right-wing sectarianism.

The End of the Old History

Since the fall of the USSR, US leaders appear to have lost their minds. Craziness has taken over from reason with the hubristic desire to divide the whole world through chaos, in order better to rule it and asset strip it. Their chaos, injustice and genocide have been seen in Yugoslavia, the Northern Caucasus, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, the Lebanon, Georgia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Belarus, the Ukraine, Yemen, Iran, Taiwan, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Armenia…the list goes on, throughout the countries of Eurasia and North Africa.

Over the last thirty years Western Europe has in turn chosen to turn its back on Russia and to kow-tow to the craziness of US leaders. As a result, today Russia has turned its back on isolated Western Europe and gone out to the 90% of the world, where it has been warmly greeted, unlike in Western Europe. But what does this mean for ‘indispensable’ Western Europe, especially in the near future when Western Europe realises that the USA does not want it either and that Russia has no interest whatsoever in invading and liberating it? Western Europe is not worth a drop of Russian blood, it is no longer important enough. Russia liberated Paris from Bonaparte in 1814 and Berlin from Hitler in 1945, it will no longer send a single soldier to liberate Western Europe from its American demons. Enough is enough. The local electorates must liberate themselves from those demons by ceasing to vote for war criminals, atheists and perverts, however much their zombifying State media tell them to do so.

The millennial domination and exploitation by the West of the Rest (of the world) is now coming to an end – by Western suicide. The West is killing itself. The Millennium of the West is over. It is hardly surprising that some even maintain that the standard-bearer of the West, the Pope of Rome, will be the last Pope. As for the current ideology of the West, it is not Catholicism or Americanism, it is sexual perversion, apparently in some way now supported by that Pope, though rejected by African and other healthy Catholics. Such is the ignominy which stands at the end of the millennium of Western apostasy. The only way forward is, paradoxically, to return to the time before that disastrous millennium began.

The Beginning of the New History

As Orthodox Christians we have a mystical view of the world, that is, mystical in the sense of real Christian. We believe that outward world affairs are defined by the inward state of human souls. Where there is faith in the existence of the world of the spirit, that is, the real world beyond the veil which underpins everyday life and is the world to come, there are different values from the values of this world.

In the Ukraine President Zelensky is an actor, whose script ran out after last week’s murder in a Ukrainian Secret Police prison of the American journalist, Gonzalo Lira. He was left to die by the US because he was telling the truth. In Russia the fight is on against the fifth column. We remember very well that dark time when the Russian Church was infiltrated by the KGB and how we resisted it. Now it is infiltrated by the CIA – and we resist it equally, before the whole world. The Russian Church, like Russia, is populated by patriots, but also infiltrated by those who have been spiritually colonised by the West, which is led by the CIA. Some there are now at last waking up. The great cleansing of the Russian Church is under way.

The three Russian objectives in the Ukraine were its Demilitarisation, its Denazification and the Liberation of the Donbass from genocidal Nazism. After foolish Western interference, these three objectives have had to be expanded into something much greater: The Demilitarisation of all NATO through its weapons which have been offered up for destruction in the Ukraine; the Denazification of the Western world by the opposition to it of the 90% of the world which disagrees with Western leaders and is joining the multipolar BRICS; the Liberation of the whole of the Ukraine, and not just the Donbass, from genocidal Nazism.

England: The Victory of the New White Russia

We all want the victory of Holy Rus over Spiritless atheism, indifference, left-wing modernism and the right-wing fifth column of sectarians who have infiltrated the Church. This fifth column is the CIA-backed Americans who are also enemies of Holy Rus and have done their utmost to try and destroy us over the last seven years and utterly failed. We have worked all our lives for the victory of Holy Rus, indeed, we want its extension. As we declared at the Fourth and last Council of the then still free Church Outside Russia in San Francisco in 2006:

‘In Carpatho-Russia an elderly man asked me: ‘Father, where is your parish?’ I answered: ‘In Felixstowe’. He asked me a second question: ‘What province is that in?’ I answered ‘In the English province’. Yes, I rejoice that I serve in the English province of Holy Rus. I believe that you too rejoice, that you serve and pray in the American, Argentinian, Australian, Belgian, Brazilian, Canadian, Danish, French, German, Indonesian, Korean, Russian, Swiss, Ukrainian and Venezuelan provinces of Holy Rus. Whatever language we use, whatever local saints we venerate, we strive to preserve the spirit of Holy Rus, the spirit of Christ, our Orthodox roots’.

(http://www.orthodoxengland.org.uk/atcouncil.htm)

Holy Rus is challenged by the extremists of left and of right, as it always has been. We have all this time been on the front line, literally on the military road, fighting from the trenches against them all. We pray for the liberation of Holy Rus, in the Russian Federation, in the Ukraine, in Belarus and everywhere, from the US and its vassals, whether liberal LGBTs or sectarian Nazis. We are waiting and praying for the liberation of the Church, infiltrated by money-grubbing oligarchs, perverted homosexuals and self-admiring CIA agents. Moreover, we know that we shall win, for although man proposes, God disposes. God is with us!

The New White Russians

We are the New White Russians.

Unlike the Old White Russians of over 100 years ago, who were often only nominally Orthodox and sometimes even atheists, often Russian nationalists and opposed to the supranational Tsar, loved money more than their country and were morally decadent, we are Orthodox Christians, we are of various nationalities and live by traditional values and morals. We come from a time different to that where we live, but not necessarily from a place different to that where we live. You can recognise us because:

We go to church and lead Church lives.
We have strong links with the churches and monasteries in the lands once known as the Russian Empire and in lands beyond, indeed in all those lands in which we recognise the spirit of ‘Rus’.
We are for the Tsar, whose martyred Family is our model and we seek the restoration of the Orthodox monarchy.
We have family lives, believe in traditional male/female roles and have no confusion about who we are.
Although we are social conservatives, we are for social justice for all, living in the realities of the here and now, not in some imaginary or idealised past.
We are patriotic sovereignists, not money-grasping globalists, who exploit the peoples of the world.
We respect others who live around us, but that does not mean that we agree with them, we simply live alongside them as good neighbours.
We do not drink much, if any, alcohol, we do not smoke, take drugs, gamble, or have tattoos or piercings.
Although we are not rich, we dress traditionally and rather well, at least compared to the local populations.
We are waiting not for the dissolution of the USSR or for the appearance of the Russian Federation, which both happened over 30 years ago, but for the Resurrection of Orthodox Rus’ and the reconstitution of Her Church, without the errors of the past. Our Russia has thrown off the nominalism and social injustices of the Imperial period which began in 1721 and thrown off the violent persecutions of the alien Western atheism imported to create the USSR. Now Russia is fighting for the restoration of Rus’ and the consumerist Western companies which came to exploit Russia and her peoples in the 1990s are leaving Russia en masse. Russia can be left with the best of all those past periods, but above all with her more ancient history, with Orthodox Rus, wherein lie her roots and her future.

Orthodox England

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