Category Archives: Russian Church

Heresies, Schisms, Divisions and the Consequences of the Ukrainian Tragedy

The misfortune that has befallen Russia is the direct result of grievous sins and her rebirth is only possible through cleansing from them. However, so far there has been no real repentance.

Bishop (now St) John of Shanghai

Death is the enemy of Life; and he has many friends among men, in all those authorities in whom a debased sense of Life is linked with temporary power.

Introduction: On the Misuse of the Words Heresy and Schism

The words heresy and schism have been much misused and even abused, for self-justifying nationalist and political reasons. For example, Metr Antony (Khrapovitsky) (+ 1936) was accused of ‘heresy’ (heresy is a Greek word meaning a wrong choice) for stating that not only Christ’s Crucifixion, but also His Agony in Gethsemane played a part in our Redemption. Those who unreasonably accused him of ‘stavroclasm’, that he had rejected the centrality of the Cross, either misunderstood his words or else deliberately distorted his words out of personal dislike or, more often, because of differences in political views. Or there is Patriarch Sergius of Moscow (+ 1944), who was accused of the ‘heresy’ of ‘Sergianism’, a ‘heresy’ named as such by a priest who was a CIA operative and freemason! Of course, that Patriarch sinned through cowardice, abject lies, subservience to militant atheism, careerism, bureaucratic centralism and ritualism. The same misuse and abuse have happened with the word ‘schism’. (A Greek word meaning a split). This word has been misused to describe parishioners who left a (corrupt) priest for a non-corrupt priest, or who left a schismatic bishop for a non-schismatic bishop. The only schism was that of the bishop they had left! The same is true of political ‘defrockings’ (See below).

For example, over the last century the Russian emigration and the Patriarchal Church inside Russia were at each other’s throats for generations and accused each other of being ‘heretics’, ‘schismatics’, ‘without grace’ and ‘defrocked’ one another’s clergy. However, when the time came for reconciliation a few years after the fall of the USSR, they suddenly both withdrew all charges, stating that they had all been politically motivated. In other words, both sides had been lying the whole time! No wonder that there are priests who have been ‘defrocked’ by the KGB or the CIA and are considered to be confessors and not defrocked at all. Such ‘defrockings’ are of course all reversible, unlike what is stated on a Kremlin-funded, English-language ‘Orthodox’ website, which carefully censors all disagreement with itself. There is nothing new here. St John Chrysostom (+ 407) was also ‘defrocked’ for political reasons, St Nectarios of Pentapolis (+ 1920) was suspended because of jealousy, slandered, exiled and later canonised. As for St John of Shanghai (+ 1966), in the early 1960s he was suspended by his own ROCOR Synod and put on trial as a common criminal by his fellow-bishops. Later they canonised him! Nothing has changed.

Heresies

In the fourth century the Church became established, that is, it became closely linked to the State. There were many advantages to this, such as not being persecuted, being able to do missionary work freely, or receiving State financial aid to build churches. However, there were also many disadvantages, for example, officials were nominated as bishops by the State as part of an attempt at command and control, with centralisation, bureaucracy and protocols, clergy lined up in rigid ranks like soldiers, churches which were nationalist ghettos and not parish communities, and money charged for sacraments, all amid ritualism and superstition. St Basil the Great (+ 379) complained about bishops who had this mentality as not real bishops, they would side with anyone. Some of them did indeed know very little about Orthodox Christianity, some of them were probably atheists, or at least they behaved as the worst atheists. In any case, they compromised the Faith by their way of life, even though on paper they did not renounce the Creed, or Symbol of Faith, and so by inertia remained Orthodox Christians, but only nominally and formally, that is, only outwardly, and only for a time.

However, as usual, when you start living in a way that differs from the Creed, you fall into heresy. Now a heresy is a teaching that contradicts the Creed, which was drawn up at the two Universal Church Councils at Nicea in 325 and Constantinople in 381. Those who follow heresies are called heretics. The contents of the Creed, agreed on by all for all time, are dogmas of the Church. To apply the words ‘heresy’ and ‘dogma’ to anything outside the spiritually-revealed Creed is a misuse or abuse of the term. So a heresy is a separation from the Church for a dogmatic reason and leads to new dogmas and a new way of life, opposed to the Church. Many of the above nominal Orthodox Christians duly became heretics, called Gnostics, Arians, Nestorians, Sabellians, Donatists, Monophysites, Monothelites, Iconoclasts etc. Generally extremely proud and self-justifying, they all essentially denied that God is the Holy Trinity or that God had become man. All of these groups therefore denied some part of the Creed. Some of their naïve adherents, ‘heretics’, did return to the Church, but others, not naïve, did not.

The Roman Catholic Example

As an example of heresy, it was out of the situation of a State Church that in the eleventh century a new heresy (a heresy because it changed the Creed) called ‘Catholicism’ was born. This is a religion which is actually a State in itself. Its promoters who were greedy for power (unlkei its unconscious victims), wanted all the advantages of being a State Church, without the disadvantages. They did this by creating a ‘Church-State, that is, they put themselves above the State, making their institution into a Superstate. At the origin of this was their alteration to the text of the Creed, adding the word ‘filioque’, which implies that their Pope of Rome replaces Christ and the Holy Spirit. Thus, Orthodox Christians in Western Europe were forced to leave the Church by the invention of this new ‘Roman Catholic’ religion. Those who were conscious of this change were heretics, as they replaced Christ, present through the Holy Spirit, by mere men, with the title of Pope of Rome. The consequences were almost immediate.

At once bloodthirsty military campaigns were organised to obtain power, conquering lands and resources. The Popes of Rome promised the men who took part in them that whatever they did, murder, rape, theft, pillage, they would go to heaven because they were doing it in the name of the new Roman Catholic god. These expeditions were called ‘Crusades’ and started in what is now Italy, Spain and England (in 1066) and were then taken to Palestine, southern France and Eastern Europe (in the thirteenth century). These then developed into internal crusades with the bloodthirsty Inquisition and were spread in the sixteenth century to what is now Latin America. Certain Roman Catholics were still murdering and pillaging in Croatia and the western Ukraine only three generations ago and were still being promised a ticket to heaven by their Roman Catholic clergy for their Fascist deeds. This is what happens when you replace the Holy Spirit with some manmade teaching. In other words, false teaching always becomes a heresy and so leads to an evil and deformed way of life.

Schisms

A schism is a permanent separation from the Church for a non-dogmatic reason. Often these reasons are nationalist and sectarian, though there is also the risk of schisms becoming heresies. For instance, from an Orthodox Christian viewpoint, Protestantism is a schism from Roman Catholicism. Although Protestantism confessed the same heresy as the Roman Catholicism through the same filioque deviation from the Creed, it did not agree with Roman Catholicism in other respects and so split away from it. Therefore, in the sixteenth century dissident Roman Catholics separated, calling themselves Protesters. Then, as is always the case with schismatics, they disagreed with each other and have since separated into a myriad of sects. For sectarianism, usually accompanied by personality cults, is the result of schisms. Of course, apart from this classic case, there have been a multitude of other schisms. And just as heresies lead to an evil and deformed life, so schisms also result in hatred, jealousy, lies and slander.

For instance, in Russia in the seventeenth century there took place the ‘Old Ritualist’ schism. This was about minor changes in ritual, but because the changes were imposed by the State, they led to a schism, which soon became violent and split into multiple schisms, just as in the Protestant model. A more recent example is in the last century when those in Greece who did not want to accept the dating of the Western calendar for the fixed feasts, as the Greek State was insisting under pressure from Western governments, operated schisms from the Orthodox Church. They called themselves ‘old calendarists’ and they in turn also split into a multitude of sectarian groups that hated one another. As the calendar is not a dogmatic issue (the Creed never mentions it), separation on this basis is a schism, not a heresy. And finally there is the case of the nationalist and Sovietised US-based Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russa (ROCOR), which instituted a schism from the multinational Archdiocese of Western Europe. Although they are both groups under one and the same Moscow Church, yet they are now not in communion with one another.

Divisions

Finally, there are divisions. These are neither heresies, as Church teachings are not involved, nor schisms, as they are not permanent. These are temporary separations from the corrupted administration of a Church, usually for nationalist or political reasons. In other words, a division is due to differences of opinion between bishops or groups of bishops. Divisions have existed and exist within the Roman Catholic and Protestant worlds. For instance, Liberal Methodists separated from Tory Anglicans and so far only some have returned, and various groups of Traditionalists have separated from liberal Roman Catholics and, again, so far only some have returned. The danger here, as with all divisions, is the risk of them developing to schisms, that is, they become permanent, and so full of nastiness, hatred, jealousy, lies and slander.

In the Orthodox Church there have also been several divisions for nationalist or political reasons, especially over the last two centuries. For example, the Bulgarians separated from the Constantinople Greeks, the Macedonians from the Serbs, three different groups of Russian emigres separated from the Church inside the USSR and Serbian emigres separated from the Church inside Yugoslavia. Most of these issues were resolved, divisions overcome, even if it took decades and generations, almost a century in some cases. Despite these generally positive resolutions, today there is a new cause and outbreak of such divisions and they risk turning into schisms, that is, becoming permanent. These divisions are all centred around one single subject: the highly centralised and profoundly corrupt ex-Soviet (and not very ex-Soviet) multinational Republic of the Ukraine

The Ukraine

The first new and serious division here (there had been old divisions) took place in 2018 between the most powerful Local Orthodox Churches, the Greek (7% of the baptised, or four Local Churches) and the Russian (70% of the baptised and one Local Church). This left the vast majority of the Local Orthodox Churches (23% of baptised and ten Local Churches) in shock. When in 2018 the Greeks set up a new Church on Ukrainian territory, which has been under the Moscow Church for nearly 350 years – shocking enough – the Russians replied by refusing to concelebrate or co-operate with the Greeks – just as shocking. Then the Russians in turn set up a Church on the territory of Africa which, apart from Egypt and Libya, had been Greek Church territory for nearly 100 years – more shocking. Thus, a separation in the Ukraine had spread to Africa, a territory which the US and China with Russia are directly battling for political influence in. The consequences of this division are now escalating even further.

It seems that power does indeed corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. For of course, behind this division lies power politics, the desire for control of territory and so for money. The small Greek Churches are heavily financed and even controlled by the US, and the much larger Moscow Church is heavily financed and even controlled by the Russian State. Yet another new escalation took place one year ago in February 2022, as a result of the war that had begun between the US-controlled Ukraine and the Russian Federation in 2014. This had followed the violent US-organised coup which overthrew the democratically-elected Ukrainian government. The result was the present highly centralised, puppet regime in Kiev, financed and armed by the West, and threatening to complete its genocide of those of Russian language and culture in the east of the Ukraine. In response, in 2022 Russia sent in troops to protect those of Russian language and culture in the east of the Ukraine. A war had begun.

The Tragedy of the War

After Russia’s vastly superior forces had defeated the Kiev forces within a few weeks, the Kiev regime was about to conclude a peace agreement, but it was forced by the US to break off negotiations. Thus, in a second escalation, the US made its vassals send old, mainly Soviet, military equipment to re-equip the Kiev forces. By summer 2022 Russia had destroyed that equipment too. Then, in a third escalation, the US-led West began sending huge sums of money ($150 billion in twelve months so far), huge amounts of its own military equipment, training Kiev troops and also paying tens of thousands of mercenaries to fight on behalf of the beleaguered Kiev regime. Russia will destroy that too, but of course it will take even longer and even more will die. The proxy-war is being fought until the last Ukrainian and the last mercenary who wants to fight is dead. It is a giant war crime.

The result is that today Kiev dead number between 160,000 and 300,000 (including several thousand foreign mercenaries). Russian dead number 19,000. And this does not include the hundreds of thousands of physically wounded and psychologically wounded (traumatised). This does not include the damage to the infrastructure of what was already one of the poorest and most corrupt countries in Europe, which is still the battlefield for this proxy war between Washington and Moscow. This European war is unspeakable in its horror. Nor have we mentioned the millions of refugees who have fled to Russia and to various countries in Western Europe. Millions of lives have been disrupted and there are hundreds of thousands of widows and orphans. How could anyone possible approve of this tragedy? And yet…..

The Tragedy of the Moscow Church

The tragedy here is that the Orthodox faithful both in Russia and in the Ukraine used to belong to one united Church. The Church, centred in Moscow, used to be multinational, with faithful not only in the Russian Federation and the Ukraine, but also in Belarus, Moldova and Kazakhstan, and with millions of others in over sixty other countries around the world, especially in the Western world, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, the countries of Western Europe, Northern America and Australia. However, almost the whole episcopate of the Moscow Church inside Russia has failed to condemn what is now a nine-year long civil war, in which nominal Orthodox are killing nominal Orthodox. The result is that the once multinational Moscow Church is rapidly becoming a national, not to say, nationalist, Russians-only, Church. Why would Non-Russians want to belong to a Russian-controlled Church, where they cannot even express their own opinions? Most don’t, not to mention many Russians themselves, for whom the Church should have nothing to do with war. The Russians will surely win the war in the Ukraine, but the far, far greater challenge was to win the peace. Sadly, that seems to have been lost already and inevitably an independent but canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church will be born there.

Thus, left-wing liberals in the USA and the Roman Catholic politician Cardinal Koch have accused the Russian Patriarch of ‘heresy’ for saying that ‘the Russian World’ (wherever there are concentrations of ethnic Russians) must be united and that the Russian soldiers who die to unite Orthodox will go to heaven. (The accusation by Cardinal Koch is particularly hypocritical, since for its whole existence Roman Catholicism has claimed that those who murder others to make them Roman Catholic will go to heaven). Although clearly not heretical but just nationalistic, the Russian Patriarch’s words do invite profound disagreement, and not only among fringe liberals. Few, if any, agree with the Patriarch. These words are his personal opinion. They are especially strange, given that the leader of what used to be a multinational Church is seen to be promoting militant nationalism, just as his Greek Orthodox enemies do through their nationalist racism, which they call phyletism. Where is the difference between Greek and Russian leaders? Six of one and half a dozen of the other?

The Break-Up of the Moscow Church

Regardless of the rights and wrongs of both sides in the war and of its final outcome, the result is that everywhere, outside the tightly-controlled Russian Federation and Belarus, the faithful have been leaving the once multinational Russian Church. Either they have left for other Local Orthodox Churches or else they have declared themselves ‘fully independent’, as in the Ukraine and Latvia. Most recently there has been the case of five Orthodox priests in Lithuania, four of whom are ethnic Lithuanians. Not surprisingly, as Non-Russians, they find that they cannot agree with the Russian Patriarch and do not want to belong to the same Church as him. The result of this is that they were ‘defrocked’ (forbidden the priesthood) by the Moscow Church, even though they are not in Russia or Russians. However, they have now been allowed the priesthood by the Church of Constantinople, which had jurisdiction in Lithuania some 350 years ago. (Ironically, Constantinople, today called Istanbul, is now the largest city in Europe and with a population of Russians probably fifty times greater than its Greeks).

Apparently, these priests are not allowed the right to freedom and self-determination, they must obey what has become a foreign, since no longer multinational, Church. This situation is unthinkable in a Western country which has a culture of freedom. And of course, you cannot be defrocked for a difference of opinion about nationalism or politics! Real defrocking happens only when a priest behaves immorally, for example, he steals money or he is involved in sexual impropriety. Clearly, ‘defrockings’ like those in Lithuania are not canonical, they are purely political, and are not recognised by anyone except the present Moscow authorities. The irony is that those who defrock in such cases, though not in this one, are often guilty of real causes for defrocking! For instance, over the last fifty years in North America and Europe, only very recently in the Antioch jurisdiction, we have seen priests ‘defrocked’ for being whistleblowers because:

Their bishop was a pedophile.

Their bishop was heretical or schismatic.

Their bishop was homosexual.

Their bishop was committing fornication.

Their bishop wanted to sleep with the priest’s wife.

Their bishop was jealous of a priest’s church and tried to steal it from him.

Their bishop wanted a priest to spy for a secret service.

Their bishop was an atheist and ordained atheists.

Their bishop was a careerist and ready to commit any crime in furtherance of his career.

In each case the priest left his bishop and was duly ‘defrocked’! Of course, the ‘defrocking’ was completely ignored and the priest continued to serve, transferring to a normal bishop. As a result, the persecuted priest gained respect and his ‘defrocking’ bishop lost all respect, together with much of his flock – and also his career.

Conclusion: The Dogmatisation of Personal Opinions

As we can see, these new divisions are not at all theological, but nationalist and political. Here we are in the world of personal (political) opinions, the world of intolerance. Differences in personal opinions have nothing to do with heresies and schisms. Personal opinions are here being treated as dogmas. The Faith is the same. When Church authorities intolerantly impose nationalist and political opinions, they automatically divide their flock, as we see today in the Ukraine. Thus, the Moscow Church has lost moral authority in most of the Ukraine, not to mention in most of the rest of the world outside the Russian Federation and, one day, in Belarus too. The Moscow Church is rapidly ceasing to be the multinational Russian Orthodox Church and becoming a mononational Church. You cannot be a multinational Church and be a national (and nationalist) Church at the same time. You must decentralise yourself, as the USSR was decentralised (but astonishingly the Church was not decentralised), and grant other nationalities freedom and independence.

Only two bishops of the present Moscow Church have remained traditional, that is, multinational Russian Orthodox, by diverging in their opinions from the authorities. One of them, Metr Hilarion (Alfeev), was disgraced and exiled to a church in Budapest, the other, Metr Jean Renneteau, a French national, has courageously expressed his total disagreement (1). As far as they are concerned, through unequivocal support for the war in the Ukraine the Moscow authorities have confused the Church with politics, thus discrediting the Church which they represent, as well as themselves. These divisions are only about nationalism and politics. A dispute about territories and whether they belong to or do not belong to a Local Church has nothing to do with the creed and heresy and schism. Through their centralisation the Church authorities have dismissed the right to freedom and self-determination. And sadly, despite constant warnings, the centralisation of these Church authorities is not a case of Resovietisation, as there never was any Desovietisation.

Afterword

Reading the above there are those who will fall into despair. They are mistaken to do so, for they have forgotten Church history. Now is the Gethsemane of the Church, that is, the moment not of Her defeat, but of Her victory has begun. Christ is deserted by His disciples, who have fallen asleep, but as time and time again in Church history, when cast aside and deserted, this is the moment when Christ has overcome the world. The arrogance, narcissism and sense of impunity of the crazies who, even in complete freedom, sell their souls for a mess of Soviet pottage, accepting brainwashed ‘obedience’ for the sake of their careers, more Soviet than the Soviets, are cast down. Throughout the Russian Church, exactly as St Seraphim of Sarov prophesied, there will be a great cleansing from corruption, a generational change among the episcopate. From that will follow the repentance and restoration of the Russian Orthodox Church (which, it seems, now no longer exists) and the resurrection of the Russian Lands. But first they must go through this Great Tragedy, the Crucifixion of the Ukraine, the war that has happened on account of the apostasy of those who denied the Church of God. They reduced it to the sins of cowardice, abject lies, subservience to militant atheism, careerism, bureaucratic centralism and ritualism. Did they really think they could get away with it? We follow another way, the way of the New Martyrs and New Confessors. For the King is coming and we must be ready to meet Him.

Note:

See: https://www.svoboda.org/a/mitropolit-dubninskiy-ioann-my-idem-po-krovi-nashih-muchenikov-/32276466.html

News from Lithuania

Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople has announced that his Synod has unanimously reversed the defrocking of five priests in Lithuania who were defrocked for disagreeing with the conflict in the Ukraine and the apparent support for it by the Russian Church authorities. As the vast majority of Orthodox bishops agree, defrocking cannot take place because of a difference of political opinions. This is a question of basic human rights. The priests in question have been received into the Patriarchate of Constantinople, meaning that there are now two jurisdictions in Lithuania, as there have been for nearly thirty years in Estonia. Of course, in Western Europe there are multiple jurisdictions and have been for over a century. The five priests also expect that others in Lithuania will follow their example.

Some will object that the priests in question did not receive letters of dismissal to leave from their Russian bishop (they were defrocked after they had already asked to leave). However, it is the common practice of at least one part of the Russian Church, ROCOR, to receive any number of clerics and parishes from the Patriarchate of Constantinople without letters of dismissal. This seems to be because ROCOR claims that it can receive clerics without letters of dismissal when there is an issue of conscience. And yet when clerics are leaving for reasons of conscience a ROCOR schism, as, for instance, the clerics who left ROCOR because of its schism with the Paris Archdiocese of the Russian Tradition (part of the same Local Church!) and were received into it without letters of dismissal (merely because ROCOR refused to write them!), ROCOR still defrocked them after they had been canonically received. Here we have the same situation and practice in reverse, from the Russian Church to Constantinople.

Further developments are expected.

A Message from a Churchman

When God wants to speak to men, at the beginning He whispers, only when they don’t listen to Him does He throw rocks.

Proverb

Everything has fallen apart. Educated society has lost all understanding of what Christianity is. Every day I can see before my eyes the ongoing corruption of our clergy. There is no hope at all that they will come to reason or understand their condition. Everywhere among them there is drunkenness, debauchery, simony, extortion and secular interests. The last remaining believers are trembling with repugnance over the condition of their clergy. And there is no one to finally realise just what brink of destruction the Church is standing on or what is happening.

The opportune time was missed. A disease of the spirit has taken over the entire State organism. The moment of recovery cannot recur and the clergy is rushing headlong into an abyss, having no strength or desire to stop the process. Just one more year, just a little while, and there won’t even be any simple people left around us. They will all rise up and reject such insane and repulsive leaders. And what will happen to the State? It will perish along with us. It no longer makes any difference who is in the Synod, who is its Head, what seminaries and academies there are – our agony and death are near.

The future New Hieromartyr Seraphim (Chichagov) of Petrograd, 1910

The Patriarchate of New Jerusalem and All Rus

Foreword

Of the fifteen universally-recognised Local Orthodox Churches, two are in great trouble, not to say in danger of being quite discredited. One was the most prestigious, the other is by far the largest, some 70% of the whole.

The first is the Patriarchate of Constantinople. Having accepted a lot of dollars from those who wish to destroy the Church, it has sponsored an entirely uncanonical ‘Church’ in the Ukraine, whose sponsors and gangsters and thugs, the worst of the worst, do violence to actual Christians and attempt to destroy the Church.

The second is the Patriarchate of Moscow. Outside Russia and Belarus, this is in danger of becoming a small network of nationalist ghettoes or tiny, semi-private groups, each with a few right-wing neophytes. To some it seems as though it has squandered its great, post-Soviet potential, just as it squandered its great Tsarist potential before 1917. Some even call its actions suicidal.

It has long been suggested that the first can repent by leaving its flock of fewer than 500 in Istanbul in the hands of one priest and moving to Athens. There, its leader would remain the Patriarch of Constantinople, though now with a real flock and real churches covering all Greece, just as the Patriarch of Antioch, who has long lived in Damascus and does not go to Antioch, which is in Turkey.

As for the second, like others, we too have a suggestion. Some will dismiss the following as fiction, not even faction. But suppose just 10% of it came true in the coming years? That would be a lot. We will never discount the possibility of repentance for anyone. We know how it transforms, from our own lives. See below:

The Synod

The meeting of the Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church which began on 20 May 2024 culminated on 24 May, the Feast of Sts Cyril and Methodius, Apostles to the Slavs. Momentous decisions were announced on that day, including changing the legal name of the Russian Orthodox Church from ‘Patriarchate of Moscow’ to ‘Patriarchate of New Jerusalem and All Rus’. The change of name is connected with the radical decentralisation of the Patriarchate, described below, and the move of all Patriarchal offices to the historic New Jerusalem Monastery outside Moscow. Even after the creation of two more Autocephalous Churches, the Russian Orthodox Church will still have over 130 million baptised, representing two-thirds of the whole Orthodox Church. As such the Russian Church has a huge responsibility to work together with other Local Churches in the Diaspora, shedding itself of any imperialistic tendencies.

Four Autocephalous Churches

The Polish Orthodox Church and the Orthodox Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia were already granted autocephaly by the Russian Church, respectively in 1948 and 1951. Now two new Autocephalous Churches have been created:

Ukrainian Orthodox Church

This covers the territory of the Ukraine, whose new borders were established on 5 May 2024. This numbers over 15 million baptised Orthodox.

Baltic Orthodox Church

This covers Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Finland and gathers all Orthodox in those countries who celebrate the canonical date of Orthodox Easter. They number some 400,000 baptised Orthodox.

Eight Autonomous Churches

The Chinese Orthodox Church and the Japanese Orthodox Church were already granted autonomy in 1957 and 1970, respectively. They have remained autonomous and not become autocephalous, simply because they have both remained small. At the Synodal meeting of the Russian Orthodox Church in May 2024 six new Autonomous Churches were created:

Moldovan Orthodox Church

This is destined to gather together all Orthodox in the Republic of Moldova, who are at present under the Russian and the Romanian Churches. If unity can be achieved through this autonomy, then this Church can become autocephalous.

Central Asian Orthodox Church

This gathers together Orthodox living in the five ‘stans’ of Central Asia. This Church could help bring Orthodoxy to other stans, such as Pakistan. Autocephaly is quite possible with time.

Northern American Orthodox Church (NAOC)

This replaces the old Autocephalous Orthodox Church in America, the OCA, founded in 1970. Its canonicity was always disputed as it was declared autocephalous, yet shared the same territory as other Orthodox, who were in fact far more numerous. Also the title ‘in America’ was very vague. Northern America is precise, meaning fundamentally the USA and Canada (with Greenland and Bermuda). Moreover, the NAOC has today received the addition of some 40 parishes from the former Moscow Patriarchate, which have now been transferred to it. (Only St Nicholas church in New York remains as a dependency under the Patriarchate). Furthermore, all bishops, clergy, parishes and monasteries of the old ROCOR in Northern America are invited to become part of the NAOC in order to avoid any uncanonical tendencies and extremes within itself. With time we hope that Orthodox of other ethnic backgrounds will join the NAOC and this Church will then become Autocephalous. However, on shared territory, such an Autocephaly can only be granted by several Patriarchates together, thus forming an authentic multinational Local Church.

Western European Orthodox Church (WEOC)

This replaces the old Western European Exarchate of the Moscow Patriarchate. It is hoped that with time the members of the old ROCOR in Western Europe and of the old Archdiocese of Western Europe, both officially within the Patriarchate, will come to take part in it in order to avoid any uncanonical tendencies and extremes within themselves. With time we hope that Orthodox of other ethnic backgrounds will join the WEOC and this Church will then become Autocephalous. However, on shared territory, such an Autocephaly can only be granted by several Patriarchates together, especially with the majority Patriarchate of Romania, thus forming an authentic multinational Local Church. Its territory at present covers the six Dioceses of: Germania (Germany, Austria, German Switzerland and Liechtenstein); the British Isles (England, Scotland and Wales) and Ireland; Iberia (Spain, Portugal and Andorra); Italia (Italy, Malta, San Marino and Swiss Ticino; Gallia (France, southern Belgium, French Switzerland and Monaco); the three countries of Benelux; Scandinavia – Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark. This is 23 countries, with at present 9 bishops.

Hungarian Orthodox Church

This is led by Metropolitan Hilarion of Budapest and All Hungary. Most of its baptised live in the autonomous Carpatho-Russian province in the east, formerly part of the old Ukraine, now part of Hungary. In time it will become Autocephalous.

African Orthodox Church

Founded in 2021 under the present Metropolitan Leonid of Uganda, this now has four bishops, three of whom are Black Africans. Its territory covers all Africa and with expansion will become Autocephalous.

Four Exarchates

The Exarchates of Belarus and of South East Asia already exist. Now two missionary Exarchates have been created:

Exarchate of Oceania

Based on the old ROCOR Australian Diocese, this covers the Continent of Australia, New Zealand and Pacific islands. Its vocation is to work with other Orthodox to form a new Local Church.

Exarchate of Latin American and the Caribbean

This gathers Orthodox living in South and Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean. Its vocation is to work with other Orthodox to form new Local Churches.

Divisions of the Russian Orthodox Church

Introduction: Divisions Outside the Church

The Western world began its separate and exclusivist existence when the Roman Papacy destroyed the Local Church entrusted to its care by enforcing a radical separation between clergy and laity, depriving the latter of communion with Christ. In this way Christians were no longer members of the Church, but subjugated to political clericalism. This centralising ideology of Papal supremacy replacing Christ dominated Western European history from the Gregorian Reform of the mid-eleventh century on, causing divisions everywhere. It was a radical departure from Orthodox Christianity, which the new ideologues hypocritically derided as ‘caesaropapism’. Moreover, it was the First Germanic Reformation of the mid-eleventh century, often called ‘the Gregorian Reform’ after the German Pope Gregory VII (c. 1015-1085), which led directly to the Second Germanic Reform, which essentially began in 1517. From here on, already much divided Catholicism split into thousands of protesting sects.

Divisions of the Russian Orthodox Church

Divisions Caused by Statism

Right-Leaning Groups: Nationalists and Provincials

In the 17^th century changes in ritual in Russia, enforced by the State, created the tragic Old Ritualist schism. If the changes had not been enforced by the State and had been left to be enacted voluntarily, this schism would not have occurred. Indeed, under Tsar Nicholas II, the Church accepted both rituals, old and new, as equally valid. However, round about the same time, other State bureaucrats enforced a persecution of simple and pious Russian monks on Mt Athos, who considered that the Name of God was in itself holy. Instead of leaving the pious if simple and uneducated alone, State persecution created another unnecessary, though this time far smaller, division.

Atheist persecution in the USSR, tacitly complied with by weak bishop-survivors, again created division. Small groups of Russian Orthodox celebrated secret services in the ‘catacombs’. They were soon divided from one another and, with time, became increasingly small and sectarian, attracting only the uneducated. It was zeal without knowledge. The same atheist persecution also led to potential divisions among Russian exiles outside Russia in the small Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR). Already in the late 1940s there were zealous but poorly-educated individuals in it who began to propound the Cold War theory that the Russian Church inside Russia had somehow, at some point, mysteriously, ‘lost grace’ and therefore that its sacraments were no longer valid. This piece of self-flattery would mean that those individuals, living in the USA, formed the ‘One True Church’. Free of extreme right-wing political prejudices, the reasonable and the holy in Europe like St Seraphim of Boguchar and St John of Shanghai, or in Serbia, St Nikolai of Ochrid and St Justin of Chelije, naturally rejected such fantastic delusions.

Left-Leaning Groups: Modernists and Liberals

Already before 1917 there was a group of modernists in Saint Petersburg. Profoundly Westernised, they basically wanted to make Orthodoxy into Protestantism. The notorious seductor-priest George Gapon, encouraged and not defrocked by his liberal bishop, was a typical representative. After 1917 these proto-Protestants formed the renovationist movement, a schism actively encouraged and enforced by the atheist Communist Party in order to weaken the Church.

Meanwhile, outside the former Russian Empire, Russian emigres in the USA, in Paris and in the Paris-based Sourozh Diocese in the UK continued the legacy of Renovationism, though in much more moderate forms. It was partly the fault of such semi-renovationists that there was no jurisdictional unity within the Russian emigration either in Western Europe or in Northern America. Those more traditional could not accept the left-wing and sometimes iconoclastic politics of these semi-renovationists.

Divisions Caused by Nationalism

After the fall of the Russian Empire in 1917, various national groups of the former Empire began forming their own nationalist ‘Churches’, separated from the Russian Orthodox Church. This was especially the case in the Ukraine and indeed, over 100 years on, the same Ukrainian nationalist separatism has been behind much of the present catastrophe in the Ukraine. They shout ‘Glory to the Ukraine’, and not ‘Glory to God’. They destroy themselves.

However, separatist and nationalist movements began elsewhere in the coming decades, notably in Latvia and Belarus, from where emigres formed separate Churches after 1945. In 1994, after the fall of the USSR, another division took place in Estonia, promoted by the power-hungry and dollar-backed Patriarchate of Constantinople and lately, after its similar disastrous recent adventure in the Ukraine, it has been tempted to start nationalist schisms in Belarus and Lithuania.

Divisions Caused by Sectarianism

Until the fall of the USSR at the end of 1991, the Church Outside Russia, ROCOR, had a clear self-identity as the politically free part of the Russian Orthodox Church, free because it was outside Russia. As such it at last canonised the New Martyrs and Confessors. However, once atheist Communism had fallen inside the USSR, which then disappeared, ROCOR lost its identity. It had no more reason to exist as a separate entity. However, instead of taking up the cause of helping the Russian Orthodox Mother-Church in Moscow to form new Local Churches on the continents where it existed, ROCOR gradually adopted a sectarian identity. In the 1990s some of its bishops uncanonically opened tiny communities inside (not outside!) the ex-USSR. This was in defiance of the views of such as Metr Anastasy and St John of Shanghai that ROCOR’s separate existence could only be temporary and that its meaning was to bring Orthodoxy to the rest of the world. At the same time some ROCOR bishops took up with sectarian Old Calendarists in Greece, Bulgaria and Romania, though they were ignored by other bishops and the mass of the clergy and faithful.

When in 2007 the anti-sectarian part of ROCOR at last forced the sectarians to abandon such Old Calendarist fantasies and enter into canonical communion with the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow, small groups left ROCOR and actually joined or formed various sectarian groups, some of them in effect becoming Russian Old Calendarists. Naturally, they were all divided from each other and warred with one another. However, this was not the end of the sectarian spirit in ROCOR. Despite strong and reasoned opposition, at the end of 2020 it returned with a vengeance and ROCOR created a schism with the Paris Archdiocese, both of them parts of the same Mother-Church! Worse still, this schism was suicidally encouraged by political elements in Moscow itself! Naturally, those who valued canonicity and moral justice left ROCOR for the canonical Orthodox Church. There now began in ROCOR a right-wing, Protestant-style, convert cult of isolationism, with some very strange and queer undercurrents.

Conclusion

Statism, Nationalism and Sectarianism. All are isms. The solution to overcoming all such temptations is to cease isolationism and engage constructively in forming and taking part in new Local Churches.

A Life for the Tsar: Gregory Efimovich Rasputin-Novy (1869 – 1916)

A Life for the Tsar: Gregory Efimovich Rasputin-Novy

Contents

Foreword

Origins: 1869-1893

Gregory the Wandering Pilgrim: 1893-1903

On the Way: 1903-5

The Wandering Pilgrim at the Emperor’s Court: 1905-1906

Eldership: 1907-1916

Jealousy and Slander: 1907-1916

Believers in Gregory: 1907-1916

Unbelievers in Gregory: 1907-1916

The Path to Victory: 1914-1916

The British Establishment Intervenes: 1916

The Murder: December 1916

The First Shot of the Russian Revolution: 1916-1918

Afterword

Bibliography

Akathist to the Holy Martyr Gregory the New

Foreword

I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord.

Psalm 117, 17

The stone which the builder rejected shall become the headstone of the corner.

Ps 117, 22

The wicked shall do wickedly and none of the wicked shall understand; but those who are wise shall understand.

Daniel 12, 10

Quench not the spirit. Despise not prophesyings. But test all things, hold fast to that which is good.

1 Thess. 5, 19-21

Of all the wretched stories that were told about him, I could believe in none, for there was not the slightest evidence in the man’s behaviour either at the Court or in the houses of his admirers to justify any suspicion of evil-doing…In a land of bribe-takers, robbers of state funds and corrupt officials, Rasputin stood out like the giant figure of a saint moulded in rugged iron. He, of all men in Russia, was immaculate.

Shelley, p. 65

I fight for the Tsar, the Faith and the Fatherland. While I am alive no harm shall ruin them, but if I perish, so shall they.

Gregory Rasputin-Novy (Shelley, p. 37)

Russia will not perish…it was and will be glorified; the tears of those who suffer, whoever they are, are higher than all idle talk.

Gregory Rasputin-Novy, 16 November 1916

Poor Russia bears a penance…It is our duty to cleanse the memory of the Elder from slander…This is vital for the spiritual life of the whole Russian Church…As Divine Truth begins to be revealed, everything will change in Russia.

Elder Nikolay (Guryanov) (1909-2002)

The West will never tolerate the rebirth of Holy Rus. It will always try to annihilate us, foisting on us as heroes its one-time agents of influence (to a greater or lesser extent): Lenin, Trotsky or Stalin. It will always strive by any means available to blacken and slander our Orthodox Civilisation and our holy Tsar, in order through them to besmirch and compromise our Orthodox Church and our present State, blowing them apart from inside.

Petr Multatuli, Contemporary Russian Historian

In around 1900 the elites of Europe took advice from all manner of charlatans, astrologers, occultists and table-turning mediums. Such was the fashion of the time, as also in Ancient Rome and Egypt, as also in the contemporary White House, under many a US President. However in 1905 at the Court of Imperial Russia, there appeared another sort of adviser. Like Christ come forth from Galilee, despised in the Capital of Jerusalem by the scribes and the high priests, come forth from a distant province, where supposedly only fools and bumpkins lived, from distant Siberia, there appeared at the Imperial Russian Court a peasant ascetic and prophet.

He was ignored and mocked both by the scribes, the intellectualist, modernistic, know-it-all careerists, and by the pharisees, the obscurantist, ritualistic, anti-Semitic nationalists. However, he was revered by the spiritual, many of them future New Martyrs. His name was Gregory Efimovich Rasputin. Over 100 years after his brutal murder his name is still taboo for most, as a synonym of depravity. This taboo comes from the sensationalist disinformation and slanderous fiction about Gregory, ‘the mad monk’, in all the standard and false histories in English. These lies were issued by aristocrats and journalists, right-wingers and Bolsheviks alike.

Therefore, something had to be done. Over the last few years I have been asked to write his life by several readers. Here it is. More than 100 years after his murder there are for the moment only lies about Gregory, written by some of his self-justifying murderers, Felix Yusupov and Vladimir Purishkevich, or by money-seekers, both Soviet and Western. More recently there have been the fictions written by amoralists. like the Soviet playwright and fantasist of obscenities, Radzinsky, with his absurdly-named book ‘Rasputin, The Last Word’ (in truth the last word in lies) and the mythmaker Varlamov, as well as those by similar Western novelists.

Then there is also the account of Gregory on the notoriously inaccurate Wikipedia site. None of the above pseudo-histories, all part of standard anti-Christian Western propaganda, is based on sources, and most of them seek to make quick money from invented accounts of debauchery. It is therefore high time to write down some facts about Gregory Rasputin for the Non-Russian speaker. The following has been compiled from the otherwise unknown 21^st century Russian studies of once secret sources; for in Russia too the truth has only recently emerged. These studies, to which I am greatly indebted, include detailed articles both by Church writers like Yury Rassulin and Igor Yevsin and by political writers like Tatiana Mironova and Oleg Platonov.

However, there is also the 400-page study, ‘Rasputin’, by the well-known doctor of history Alexander Bokhanov and published in 2006. This proved to be a turning-point in understanding the truth about Gregory. After this came the invaluable and highly detailed seven volumes of ‘An Investigation’, written by the erudite Church writer, Sergey Fomin, covering some 5,000 pages, with some 2,000-3,000 footnotes in each volume, as well as two excellent complementary volumes. These nine volumes cover the whole background reign of Nicholas II, with detailed analysis of the issues and personalities of the period, aristocrats, ministers, writers, journalists and churchmen, as well as sources for Gregory’s life.

I have read all the above, though critically, and used them in this study, referring especially to Fomin’s Vol II, pp. 1-120, all of Vols III and VIII, ‘Our Dear Father’, which presents 600 pages of authentic source material, and Vol IX. Although precise chronology in the early years is sometimes difficult because of conflicting sources or lack of them altogether, below we have reconstructed the early years of Gregory’s life as best we can. We would be happy to correct any errors in chronology if more certainty can be proved.

What we have concluded is personal, it does not engage the rest of the Church; we are happy to discuss these conclusions with anyone who has read the same sources as ourselves, but not with those who have not studied the matter in hand and dismiss the question out of prejudice. The question of possible canonisation has not yet been raised officially. All is in God’s hands.

Origins: 1869-1893

Gregory Efimovich Rasputin was born into a pious peasant family on 9/21 January 1869 (not on 10/22 January or in any other year, as can be read in several misleading publications). He was baptised the following day and was named after St Gregory of Nyssa, whose feast falls on that day. He saw the light of day in the prosperous little town of Pokrovskoe, with a population of about 2,000, on the River Tura in the province of Tobolsk in Western Siberia. (This is on the same latitude as the far north of Scotland). The town had been founded in the early 17^th century, if not before. It had been named after its church dedicated to the Protecting Veil (‘Pokrov’) of the Mother of God, which had been due to a miracle worked by her there.

Pokrovskoe is only 50 miles from Ekaterinburg, less than 200 miles from Tyumen, 340 miles from Tobolsk and 1500 miles east of the then Russian Capital of Saint Petersburg, Gregory’s ancestors had been living there since at least the 17^th century, but originally came from the north of European Russia, in the region of Vologda. The surname ‘Rasputin’ refers to a fork in a road, where his ancestors must have lived. This was a common surname and in 1887 no fewer than 33 families in Pokrovskoe bore it. His father, Efim, whose grandfather had been a priest, was a peasant farmer, courier and churchwarden, like his father before him. He had been born in Pokrovskoe in 1841 and married Gregory’s mother, Anna Parshukova, on 11 February 1863. She came from the nearby village of Usalka, along the road to the north-east.

Apart from working the land and fishing, like other local peasants Efim also worked as an official courier, ferrying people and goods between the nearby important towns of Tobolsk, some 340 miles away, and Tyumen. His son was to do the same. As was commonplace all over the world at the time, the couple had many children, but seven died in infancy and early childhood and only two, Gregory and his youngest sister Theodosia, survived. Gregory was a very sickly child, but was remarkable for his perspicacity. Like the vast majority of people then, he was not formally educated, as he was needed to work, and he remained illiterate into early adulthood. However, his father was literate and would read the Gospels and the Lives of the Saints to his family in the evenings.

It was from these that Gregory, with his excellent memory, came to know the Gospels by heart. He was pious and kept the commandments. The accidental death of a cousin in a tragic accident in childhood made him all the more serious. At the age of 15 or 16 he went off by himself on pilgrimage (a walk of two weeks) to the relics of St Simeon of Verkhoture, who became his favourite saint. These relics were venerated in the very large St Nicholas Monastery in Verkhoture, famous in Western Siberia, nearly 250 miles to the north of Pokrovskoe. Following this, it seems that Gregory stayed in this monastery as a layworker for some time but he discovered, as he later wrote, that his calling was to find salvation in the world.

It was on another pilgrimage, to the Monastery of the Sign in Abalak near Tobolsk in 1886, that Gregory met a pious peasant girl named Praskovya (Paraskeva) Dubrovina. She was three years older than him and came from a neighbouring village. After a courtship of a few months, they married on 2 February 1887. Gregory was eighteen. It was a happy marriage. Gregory was an excellent husband and father, an honest peasant, working the land, fishing and driving as a courier like his ancestors. The couple had seven children, though only three survived past early childhood: Dmitry (b. 1895), Matrona (b. 1898) and Varvara (b. 1900). (Like so many others, Praskovya, Dmitry and Varvara were all to die cruelly in Soviet conditions, but Matrona emigrated and died in Los Angeles in 1977, aged 79).

Gregory’s spiritual father was the locally renowned Elder Michael (from 1906 on called Makary) (Polykarpov) from St Nicholas Monastery in Verkhoture. From him he learned the prayer of the heart which he used. Later he would have other spiritual mentors. Later slanders that Gregory was a horse-thief (a very serious crime in Siberia which would have been severely punished) are baseless. In fact, his only weaknesses were that he smoked, considered normal at the time, and would on occasion drink a little too much, as was common among peasants. Praskovya remained in Pokrovskoe throughout Gregory’s travels, prolonged absences and rise to prominence, remaining devoted to him until his death, respecting his piety and his destiny.

Gregory the Wandering Pilgrim: 1893-1903

After the upsetting death from scarlet fever of his first-born Adrian, aged four, in 1893 Gregory returned to the monastery in Verkhoture. Here he met more elders, Frs Adrian, Elias (now locally canonised), Evdokim and of course Elder Michael/Makary. His conversation with the latter gave him peace after his son’s death. It was Fr Michael who was to understand what Gregory’s destiny was and would later send him on his Imperial mission to Saint Petersburg. As Fr Makary, he was himself later to visit Saint Petersburg twice and in 1908 met the Tsarina and in 1909 the Tsar. He made an impression of simplicity, humility and holiness on all. He was to repose on 19 July 1917.

On Gregory’s return from the monastery, where he had stayed for perhaps as long as three months, all noticed a great change in him. Others found him ‘abnormally’ pious, he constantly prayed, giving up smoking and even the occasional use of alcohol. (However, it seems that he did accept some alcohol again towards the very end of his life from ‘friends’ who insisted on him drinking with them). His complete renunciation of alcohol for over twenty years would in 1907 lead him to found a branch of the Temperance Society in his little town and play an important role in the nationwide Temperance Movement (Fomin, Vol IX, p. 53). He considered that alcoholism was the curse of Russian life.

It was now, after 1893, that Gregory began visiting many holy places of Russia as a wandering pilgrim, always on foot, covering up to 30 miles a day, repeating the prayer of the heart and sleeping under the stars. For some nine years, like many others, Gregory made pilgrimages to Russia’s holy places, visiting Abalak, Tobolsk, Verkhoture locally, and, much further away, Sarov, Optina, Kazan, Kiev, Odessa, Mogiliov, Pochaev, Moscow and Saint Petersburg, fasting and praying as he went, living off alms, fighting against temptations, confessing and taking holy communion in the monasteries. In all the holy places he met bishops and well-known elders.

He related that he had had a vision of St Simeon of Verkhoture, met St Nicholas in the forest and that he had heard the voice of the Mother of God. He said that nature had taught him to speak to God and learn of His wisdom. For the first three years he wore heavy iron chains, but he stopped doing this, as he found the chains did not make him humble. Inbetween these pilgrimages, some of which lasted for months, he would stay at home with his wife and children, living the life of a peasant. During his absences, his father did his work for him. In these years a small group of other Orthodox, primarily family members and other local devout peasants, some ten in number, would pray with him on Sundays and holy days, listening to the accounts of his pilgrimages, changing their ways.

Digging out a cellar beneath his father’s stable, Gregory made a makeshift chapel, covering it with icons. Gregory would pray here, fighting against the devil. Metr Veniamin (Fedchenkov) wrote in his memoirs (p. 153) that it was here that Gregory obtained the gift of working miracles. His wife greatly respected him and never interfered, knowing that her husband had some special and unique calling and destiny, a mission to accomplish. In other ways, Gregory remained a peasant, direct and simple, taking great pleasure in fishing. However, he was renowned for his generosity and hospitality, helping the poor. His doors were open to all and in Pokrovskoe he was respected as a prosperous and devout peasant.

One day, it seems in 1902, working in the fields at home, Gregory had a radiant vision of the Mother of God, as in the Kazan Icon, and she blessed him. Gregory set up a cross on the site of the vision and set off for advice to his spiritual father, Fr Michael. The latter told Gregory: ‘God has chosen you for a great feat, in order to strengthen yourself for this, you must go to Mt Athos and pray to the Mother of God.’ Gregory set off with a pious close friend from a nearby village, also a wandering pilgrim, Dmitry Pechorkin, who had considerable influence on Gregory. Having arrived on Mt Athos, where his uncle was a monk, Gregory stayed for many months, his friend Dmitry becoming a monk with the name of Daniel. However, Gregory was not tempted to stay, being disillusioned at the monastery by the sight of monks sinning (as I saw in exactly the same place exactly three generations later, in 1979). But Gregory did give up eating meat after this pilgrimage.

On the Way: 1903-5

On his return, most probably in November or December 1903, Gregory went to Saint Petersburg and met the future St John of Kronstadt at St John’s Convent, founded by Fr John. Gregory had with him a letter of recommendation from, it seems, Elder Michael in Siberia. Gregory made a profound impression on Fr John and stayed at the Convent for some time. Fr John said that he saw in Gregory ‘a Divine spark’ and that he had a special mission as ‘God’s chosen one’. He also gave Gregory his blessing to help others and be ‘his right hand’. (This meeting was later much misreported by Gregory’s slanderers). Another source says that Fr John asked for Gregory’s blessing and told him that his destiny would be according to his name – Gregory means ‘vigilant’ in Greek.

Those who knew both of them noted their same penetrating eyes, as can be seen in their photographs. Moreover, their destiny was similar: both were prophets, both were slandered as debauchees (Fr John had been ordained at the age of 26, but was not appointed rector of his own church until he was in his sixties; so history repeats itself) and both were loved by the friend of the Tsarina, Anna Vyrubova. Indeed, after Fr John’s repose at the end of 1908, Gregory was, in Anna’s words, to inherit from Fr John the prophetic task of delaying Russia’s suicidal slide into the atheist abyss. For once Russia had renounced its Christianity in favour of Western secularism, its self-destruction would be certain. In early 1905, Gregory went to see Fr Michael/Makary again. He confirmed that Gregory’s path would be to find salvation in the world and that ‘great feats awaited him’. Gregory did not stay at home for long, but set off for Kiev.

It seems that it was on his way home from Kiev that Gregory stayed for a while in Kazan. This may well have been connected with his earlier vision of the Kazan Mother of God, who was directing him. Here he met the future hieromartyr Bishop Theodore (Pozdeevsky) and the holy elder Gabriel (1844-1915) of the Seven Lakes Monastery (now also canonised) and other churchmen from the Kazan Theological Academy. These included four future bishops of the future Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia: Metropolitan Nestor (Anisimov), ‘the Apostle of Kamchatka’ (1885-1962), who also received and then ordained Nicholas Gibbes to the priesthood, Bishop Michael (Bogdanov), Metropolitan Melety (Zaborovsky) of Harbin, who came from near Pokrovskoe, and the saintly Archbishop Tikhon (Troitsky) of San Francisco (1883-1963). (The latter was succeeded by St John (Maximovich, + 1966), whose ancestor was St John (Maximovich) of Tobolsk, who almost exactly fifty years before his descendant’s repose, in June 1916 became the last saint to be canonised by Tsar Nicholas with the vital support of Gregory and against the views of certain liberal bishops).

Here he also met the famous and pious Korean missionary Bishop Chrysanth (Shchetkovsky – 1869-1906). Bishop Chrysanth gave Gregory a letter of recommendation to Bishop Sergiy, Rector of the Saint Petersburg Theological Academy at the St Alexander Nevsky Monastery (and future Patriarch), and to the Inspector of the Academy, Fr Theophan (Bystrov), the confessor of the Imperial Family. So it was that Gregory made his way on foot to Saint Petersburg and finally met Bishop Sergiy at the Monastery in October 1905, probably meeting Fr John of Kronstadt once more. Here he was introduced to a number of different churchmen, including Fr Theophan. The young Fr Theophan was at the time much admired for his spirituality and sincerity, even by atheists, and was well-known to spiritual-minded aristocrats in Saint Petersburg.

Fr Theophan was so overwhelmingly impressed by Gregory, of whom he had previously heard as ‘the prophet from Siberia’, that he invited him to stay in his home and Gregory became one of his most important friends in Saint Petersburg. He openly considered Gregory to be a saint. Fr Theophan told many that Gregory was quite exceptional, an Old Testament prophet and a man with gifts of prayer and holiness, which were usually granted only to the most experienced monks. As Shelley later wrote (p. 69): ‘There was so much of the Old Testament prophet in Rasputin that it may not be wrong to compare him to one of those strange, rugged seers who played so great a role at the courts of the kings of Israel’.

Thus, Gregory became known to the future Patriarch Sergiy and the future Metropolitan Benjamin (Fedchenkov), who was then a young student, and many other bishops and churchmen, as well as aristocratic laypeople. They were all of the same opinion that Gregory was a man of God and an elder. All noticed his simplicity, frankness, truthfulness, sincerity, purity, unusually penetrating eyes which looked straight through people, with a remarkable perspicacity and visionary power of prophecy. They were also astonished by his knowledge of the Scriptures and even more by his understanding of them. Although Gregory had not studied, he understood much more than those who had studied.

The Wandering Pilgrim at the Emperor’s Court: 1905-1906

Soon Gregory met some of Fr Theophan’s spiritual children, the Montenegrin women involved with the Tsar’s cousins, the Grand Dukes Peter and Nikolai Nikolayevich, whom they married. All four of them, like many European aristocrats of the time, were obsessed by the supernatural. Naively trying to draw them away from the dangers of the occult, Fr Theophan warmly recommended Gregory to them as a man of God. Thus it was that the self-interested and highly ambitious Grand Duke Nikolai introduced Gregory to the Tsar and his family on 1 November 1905 at the Peterhof Palace, hoping to gain some advantage from this introduction. (When he did not, he and his previously divorced wife from 1908 on began slandering Gregory, just as the Grand Duke, like many others, had also slandered the future St John of Kronstadt as a debauchee).

The Tsar recorded his first meeting with Gregory in his diary, writing that he and Alexandra had made the acquaintance of a man of God – ‘Gregory, from Tobolsk province’. They had been deeply impressed by him and indeed the meeting had lasted for three hours. The meeting occurred at a critical moment in his reign, during the barbaric, anti-Russian terrorist campaign, which murdered thousands and came on top of the treacherous Western-backed Japanese attack on Russia and sabotaged Russia’s victory. It also notably came after the Tsar’s offer to abdicate and become Patriarch had been refused by the bureaucrats of the Holy Synod, who did not want to have a Patriarch. Shortly after this first meeting Gregory returned home to Prokovskoe.

His second meeting with the Imperial Family took place eight months later, on 18 July 1906. On this visit to Saint Petersburg, Gregory also met Fr John of Kronstadt publicly again, though it seems that they also met several times privately; Gregory openly considered that Fr John was a saint and wrote about him as such. At this time Gregory stayed for some months with the future New Martyr Fr Roman Medved and his family in Saint Petersburg. Fr Roman was a friend of Fr Theophan, well-connected at the time, and he greatly valued the healings and the extraordinary prophecies of Gregory, all of which came true. It was while staying with them that in August 1906 Gregory healed the daughter of the Prime Minister Stolypin after a terrorist bomb attack on his home in which 24 people had died.

After this, Gregory asked to be allowed to present the Tsar with an icon of St Simeon of Verkhoturye, the much-venerated Siberian saint. This he did at their third meeting on 13 October 1906, when he met the Imperial children for the first time. Here too was a prophecy, for an icon of this very saint stood in the shrine outside the Ipatiev House where the Imperial Family was to be martyred on 4/17 July 1918 – only fifty miles from Gregory’s home. This third meeting was Gregory’s first visit to the Palace and the Tsar again recorded the very strong impression made on the Imperial Couple by Gregory in their hour-long conversation. Gregory’s attitude to the Imperial Family was to be not just respectful, but full of love. He never boasted of his acquaintance with them and was always discreet.

On 15 December 1906 Gregory petitioned the Tsar to be permitted to modify his very common surname to Rasputin-Novy (not Novykh, as some mistakenly have it). The new name meant ‘Rasputin the New’. This was so that others in the village of Pokrovskoe or nearby, some also called Gregory Rasputin, would not confuse him. Tsar Nicholas swiftly granted the request, little knowing that almost exactly ten years later Gregory would be assassinated. At the end of 1907 the Tsar’s infant son and heir, Alexei, then aged three, had a crisis of haemophilia (passed down from Queen Victoria, Alexandra’s grandmother). His doctors could do nothing for him. However, Gregory, alerted by the Empress, stopped the bleeding and eased the pain of the Tsarevich. Gregory was to heal him again on several other occasions, for example in March 1912, October 1912 (see below), July 1913, September 1914, December 1915 (see below), February 1916 and April 1916.

The Tsarina and her closest friend, the devout Anna Vyrubova (1884-1964), who in Finnish exile became a nun and is venerated by some as Mother Maria of Helsinki, soon became convinced that Rasputin had miraculous powers. His enemies, left without any explanation for the miracles, nonsensically suggested that Gregory had used hypnosis or some secret herbs to stem the flow of blood! The conviction that he had miraculous powers became especially strong when Gregory healed at a distance, without even being present. Moreover, Gregory correctly foretold that once the heir had reached the age of twelve in 1916, his illness would dissipate and that he would be able to live a normal life as an adult. This was a great consolation to his parents and indeed after 1916 the prophecy came true. Even after his murder, Gregory would appear to Alexei in dreams and comfort him. The link between the two was very close indeed.

Eldership: 1907-1916

After the first meeting in 1905 and the two meetings in 1906, altogether three meetings between Gregory and the Tsar and Tsarina took place in 1907, five in 1908 and five in 1909. They became even more frequent after this, whenever Gregory was in Saint Petersburg and not at home. In 1911, 1912, 1913 and 1914 Gregory was invited by the Tsar to the Crimea, beloved by the Imperial Family, where he visited them. At some point now the Tsar granted Gregory the right to wear a small priest’s cross, which he wore around his neck on a cord (not a chain); his service was that of a pastor. Their meetings would usually take place in the modest home of Anna Vyrubova, the Tsarina’s friend who lived near the palace in Tsarskoe Selo. Anna, a woman filled with compassion and much mocked for her simple piety, became a close disciple of Gregory, so much so that during the First World War she would see him at least once or twice a week.

At this time, whenever he was in Saint Petersburg, Gregory lived with various families until he moved into a modest apartment with very modest furniture, which did not even belong to him. In 1910 his two daughters moved in with him so that they could receive a good education in Saint Petersburg, which Gregory greatly valued. Gregory would get up early every day to go to church. His diet consisted of black bread, dried bread, sometimes with jam he had been given, sometimes with fish and vegetables, such as cabbage, gherkins, radish and onion. Cabbage with gherkins was his favourite dish. He never ate meat or dairy produce. Here and in these conditions he received those who came to him for advice. Gregory received those who came to him for advice for hours, from eighty to several hundred people a day.

He especially received the poor, but also generals, students, priests, journalists, ministers, officers, aristocrats, merchants and pious women of all sorts. Some of Gregory’s visitors were sincere and deserving; others were intriguers and crooks. Any money that visitors gave him he always passed on to those in need. With gifts of money he also built the school and an extension to the church in his native Pokrovskoe. The Grand Duchess Anastasia, wife of the Grand Duke Peter Nikolayevich, gave him money specifically to build a solid two-storey house for his family, when she visited him there in 1907. (This house was purposely destroyed by the atheist authorities in 1980, fearful that it would become a place of pilgrimage, just like the Ipatiev House in Ekaterinburg, demolished just before this by the drunkard Boris Yeltsin).

Gregory was like a breath of fresh spiritual air amid the stultifying bureaucracy of the State Church world of Saint Petersburg. Here, even more than elsewhere, the Church suffered on the one hand from spiritually suffocating moralism and ritualism, and on the other hand from spiritually suffocating liberalism and modernism under its notorious careerist Metropolitan, the liberal Antony (Vadkovsky). This was spiritual death. This was clear in the Theological Academies, which had become ‘the graves of Orthodoxy’ (in the words of the prominent churchman, Prince N. Zhevakhov), and the seminaries which produced atheists, as described by Metropolitan Antony (Khrapovitsky) and Zhevakhov of the Holy Synod in their memoirs. Gregory soon gained many disciples in this spiritual desert. From 1910 on he was talked about by all.

In October 1912 the Tsarevich Alexei developed a haemorrhage in his thigh and groin after a fall while getting out of a boat at the royal hunting grounds at Spala near Warsaw. For three weeks he lay between life and death, in severe pain and delirious with fever. In desperation, the Tsarina asked Anna Vyrubova to send Gregory (who was at home in Siberia) a telegram, asking him to pray for Alexei. Gregory wrote back quickly, telling the Tsarina that ‘God has seen your tears and heard your prayers. Do not grieve. The Little One will not die. Do not allow the doctors to bother him too much’. To the astonishment of the doctors, who had been quite unable to do anything, Alexei’s bleeding stopped the following day. It was another miracle.

Gregory’s many healings seemed to come straight out of the Acts of the Apostles. Among others he offered to heal Prince Yusupov, one of his future murderers, of his illness, but he refused. Gregory became well-known, receiving many invitations to speak at aristocratic salons. He gave advice, he consoled, acting as an Elder, both to simple peasants, merchants and aristocrats, as well as to the Tsar himself, speaking with the authority that many clergy – bureaucrats, ritualists and careerists – then quite lacked, as the Tsar noted. Little wonder that in 1913 Gregory was to consider that the bureaucratic Synod had been excessive by far and downright wrong in its violent persecution and repatriation of hundreds of simplistic but still profoundly pious ‘Name-Glorifier’ monks from Mt Athos. Gregory interceded for them and made their lot easier. The repatriated Name-Glorifiers included Monk Daniel Pechorkin, who was later martyred by the Soviets.

In 1907, 1911, 1912 and 1915 there appeared booklets of Gregory’s writings, consisting of short works on Christian piety and reflections and on his pilgrimage to the Holy Land and Constantinople, taking in Ephesus, Patmos, Rhodes, Cyprus and Beirut, from February to May 1911. These were written down and edited from the words of the semi-literate fisherman Gregory (like Peter of Galilee) by various disciples, including the Tsarina herself, from 1911 on. These works have been collected and republished in our own days. Totalling over 100 pages, they show that Gregory was fully Orthodox, a sincere and righteous man who knew the Holy Spirit. Gregory did not mention political matters in his writings or indeed in his talks, as he had no interest in either the political left or right. He simply supported the Tsar and wanted all to be reconciled under him. For him the Tsar and Russia were the same, according to his mystical faith in the Tsar as God’s Anointed.

Jealousy and Slander: 1907-1916

Social climbers and aristocrats were frustrated that Gregory was unbribable – not least the Prime Minister Kokovtsov, who was to offer him a colossal bribe of 200,000 roubles to leave Saint Petersburg, and saw it rejected. Whenever given honest money, Gregory devoted it to others and to the church and school in Pokrovskoe. His home there became a centre of hospitality for wandering pilgrims and local people, who long after recalled Gregory as ‘a holy soul’. However, even in 1907 the local clergy, well-known for stealing money and getting drunk (the two besetting sins of the worst clergy at the time), had become jealous. They never did services on time, when they did them at all, and their attitude was dry and ritualistic. Unable to preach, they never gave any spiritual food to their flock, who duly ignored them and the village church. These local clergy invented various slanders, such as that Gregory belonged to a strange (possibly by then fictitious) sect of orgiastic flagellants, called ‘khlysty’.

Although their slanders were supported, as does happen to the righteous, by their Bishop, Antony (Karzhavin), a dry formalist who was also jealous of Gregory’s real faith and popularity, there was no truth in them. Fortunately, Gregory was strongly defended by the pious clergy of his Diocese as ‘a righteous and holy man, a benefactor and man of zeal’ (these clergy are listed by Fomin in Vol III, p. 481; one of them, Fr, now St, Augustine (Pyatnitsky), a friend of Gregory, was to be martyred in 1918). However, these slanders were eagerly picked up in Saint Petersburg by those of ill-will and jealousy, who by discrediting Gregory thought to discredit the Tsar. They had been influenced by others and Gregory had come too late for them. For well before Gregory’s arrival in Saint Petersburg, various charlatans with their occultist movements, such as spiritualism and theosophy, had become popular among the capital’s pagan aristocracy. Many of them were intensely curious about the occult and the supernatural generally.

Thus, despite their initial fascination with the peasant Gregory and invitations to their salons, the decadent Saint Petersburg elite never accepted him. They were notable rather for their intense hatred of the Tsar and their desire to seize power for themselves. Gregory was far too loyal to the Tsar and too strict an Orthodox for the aristocrats and bureaucrats of Saint Petersburg, who were intensely jealous of him. Of them Gregory said: ‘These people will ruin Russia. They hate the Russian peasants like cattle. They are not Russians. They speak our tongue and cross themselves in the Orthodox way, but their hearts are foreign’ (Shelley, p. 67). Gregory was appalled by the belief of these aristocrats that grace can be found through self-flagellation. Often heavy drinkers, the aristocrats were shocked by Gregory’s vigorous and successful combat against alcoholism in the Russian Temperance Movement from 1907 on.

At first, Gregory had literally been lionized in the Capital like an exotic animal, but Gregory disturbed the aristocrats by telling the truth. Jealousy gradually came to the fore and by 1910 jealousy had turned to open slander. Foul slanders concerning Gregory began from 1910 on, becoming ever more vile, especially from 1912 on, insinuating depravity between Gregory, the Tsarina and Anna Vyrubova, using forgeries, fake photos, fake memoirs, a fake diary, fake letters, fake photographs and at least one double of Gregory to support their lies. These lies are repeated to this day by Radzinsky, but hack-writers had a field day even then. Interestingly, the slanderers always accused Gregory of precisely their own vices, especially alcoholism and sexual depravity. As Shelley says in his memoirs on p. 53: ‘I realised that the fearful things attributed to Rasputin were, in many cases, the actual doings of his accusers. Perhaps no man in history has been so furiously calumniated’.

The well-connected slanderers enlisted the support of their friends in the Secret Police, who had in any case as a matter of routine been following Gregory since 1909, whenever he met the Imperial Family in Saint Petersburg. As their predictable reports had initially consisted of tedious lists of dates and times of Gregory’s meetings with his various spiritual children of all conditions, from 1912 on fictional episodes were inserted, with accounts of salacious meetings (Bokhanov, Chapter XI). The corrupt General Dzhunkovsky had overall responsibility for these fictitious episodes, which seem to have been written by Beletsky, the Director of Police, or by a hack-writer employed by him, perhaps a journalist called Duvidzon. In any case, they ceased in February 1916, when Beletsky was fired.

These episodes also introduced lies about gross interference by Gregory in matters of Church and State, appointing Ministers and Metropolitans alike for bribes. The reports also invented the lie that Gregory wished to become a priest. These episodes, held in Russian State Archives, are all in typed form, having been edited from the original handwritten notes. Platonov gives an extensive analysis of these reports, noting that there is absolutely no corroboration of them, for example, from supposed prostitutes. They are badly constructed and the scandalous episodes, both salacious and political, are clearly interpolations, as they describe completely bizarre events, which have no logical link to observations before and after them and many can clearly be disproved.

It was only when these reports became available at source in quite recent times was it realized that they are entirely fictitious. In slandering Gregory, both right-wing aristocrats and bureaucrats and left-wing journalists and politicians, members of the ‘Duma-Sanhedrin’ (the description used by Elder Nikolay (Guryanov)), saw an opportunity first to discredit and then to depose the Tsar and so to seize power for themselves. Regardless of whether the slanders came from right-wing aristocratic money-grubbers (some of these even dared to call themselves ‘monarchists!) or left-wing terrorist power-grabbers, the two sides of the same worldly coin, they were all designed to make Gregory into their scapegoat – an excuse to attack the Monarchy.

A few who did not know Gregory actually believed these slanders out of naivety, but most believed them out of sheer ill-will. For example, in one notorious rigged-up incident in June 1915 in a Moscow restaurant/night-club called ‘Yar’ (‘Fury’) a Gregory look-alike disgusted everyone with his debauchery and drunkenness (Bokhanov Chaper IX). Naturally, the tabloid press and all others haters of the Monarchy reported that this was Gregory, although in fact Gregory was not in Moscow at the time (Mironov, pp. 120-127 and Platonov, Chapter 5). Other reports made out that Gregory frequented prostitutes in Saint Petersburg. In reality the figure in question was a look-alike, for at the time Gregory was at home in Siberia 1500 miles away (Dehn, p. 95). The use of doubles became especially common in the last year of his life (Platonov, Chapter 7).

Believers in Gregory: 1907-1916

Gregory remained tenaciously single-minded despite all the attacks; he knew that he had to do what God had sent him to do (Fomin, Vol IX, p. 162). Those who knew him by far the best, the Tsar and Tsarina (and their Children, inasmuch as they were aware of anything), never for one moment believed the slanders about their ‘Friend’ (See pp. 349-352 of Vol VIII of Fomin’s research). As Shelley wrote (p. 26): ‘To the vast majority of the Russian aristocracy, and especially to the intelligentsia, he (Gregory) was a monster of iniquity. To a very select few – those, in fact, who had personal relations with him – he was a saint and the protagonist of a great ideal’. His plan of action: ‘The rejuvenation of Orthodoxy and Autocracy and the welding of the throne with the Russian people’ (Shelley, p. 32).

It was impossible for the Tsar and Tsarina to see in one who was clearly a prophet, healer and miracle-worker a man of evil life. Like Gregory, the Tsar and Tsarina were profoundly hurt by the treachery of the aristocracy around them, expressed in their ability to believe such fabrications. The Tsar and Tsarina were both slandered in exactly the same way as Gregory. A few, like Anna Vyrubova, restored to life by Gregory after her train crash on 2 January 1915, or the Imperial chaplain Fr Alexander Vasiliev, remained faithful, considering Gregory to be a saint.

Another of Gregory’s defenders was the missionary preacher, monarchist and future New Martyr, Fr John Vostorgov (+ 1918), who called Gregory ‘a true Christian’. As one who was also slandered for being faithful to Orthodoxy, the Tsar and his Fatherland, Fr John defended Gregory, who in turn supported Fr John. Another defender was the new Bishop of Tobolsk, Bishop Aleksiy (Molchanov) (+ 1914), who in November 1912 concluded the then still unfinished diocesan report on Gregory started by his predecessor with the words that the accusation that Gregory belonged to an orgiastic sect was based on ignorance. As an expert on sects, Bishop Aleksiy had clearly seen through the jealousy of the former bishop and unworthy local clergy, who had accused Gregory of sectarianism. Bishop Aleksiy dismissed and replaced these clergy.

There were also other bishop-friends of Gregory, the devout Bishop Barnabas (+ 1924) (Nakropin) who like Gregory did much to promote the canonisation of St John of Tobolsk, Bishop Aleksiy (Dorodnitsyn) and Bishop Palladiy (Dobronravov), Bishops of Saratov and Tsaritsyn. They had both studied in Kazan, known as a missionary centre, and Gregory had met Bishop Aleksiy there in 1905. The latter would become the rector of the famous Novospassky Monastery in Moscow, which was closely linked with Gregory. The Bishop died in prison in 1922 and many consider him to have been a saint. Then there were Bishop Vladimir (Sokolovsky-Avtonomov – 1852-1931), who was shot by the atheists, and Bishop Seraphim (Golubyatnikov – 1856-1921), who much admired Gregory. Those who knew Gregory and knew him the best were the very ones who spoke and later wrote the most appreciatively of him.

These included, for example, his daughter Matrona, his spiritual children Anna Vyrubova and M.E. Golovina (whose invaluable record was published in Paris only in 1995, some 30 years after she died). Also, the pious missionary Metropolitan (now St) Makary of Moscow revered Gregory, recognising in him a righteous Orthodox and ‘a holy man’. In 1917 this Metropolitan was uncanonically deposed by the Kerensky regime, which notoriously meddled in the Church’s internal affairs and tried to manipulate the 1917-18 Moscow Church Council. Contemporary believers in Gregory include the ever-memorable Fr Dmitry Dudko and my late friend, Fr Vasily Fonchenkov, formerly the rector of our parish in Salzburg.

One who for a long time believed the slanders, but had also actually known Gregory, was Fr Theophan, his former admirer. Fr Theophan is a typical case of the intellectual from a well-off family who has read and understood everything theoretically, but has had it easy in life, living in a cocoon. Therefore he had never had to struggle and so suffer; as a result he did not have that vital spiritual experience which comes from suffering and which is called spiritual maturity. The result is naivety. The reason for his complete change of view was precisely his gullibility in believing slanders against Gregory made in 1909, something for which he would later bitterly repent as an archbishop in the emigration in France.

Another case of a churchman and former admirer who then believed the slanders but lived to repent was the future New Martyr, Bishop Germogen (Dolganov). He was renowned for his utter sincerity, but also extreme and sometimes blind zeal, passion, almost rude frankness and also poor administrative skills, for which he was later dismissed. Having met Gregory in 1908, he became upset by Gregory’s unwillingness to be manipulated by him for his then right-wing political plans. What he did not understand was that Gregory was neither of the right or the left, but a real monarchist. In any case, at the end of 1911 he fell out with Gregory.

After the Revolution Bishop Germogen repented for believing these slanders, following a vision of Gregory to him in his temporary exile (Zhevakhov and Platonov, p. 285) and so cleansed himself before he too was martyred – as Bishop of Tobolsk, the very diocese of Gregory. Here Bishop Germogen was drowned in the river by the Bolsheviks. The funeral service for him was to take place in the very chapel built onto the church in Pokrovskoe which Gregory had paid for. Such had become the mystical connection between the two. Bishop Germogen was buried in the very tomb that had contained the relics of the last saint canonised by Tsar Nicholas, St John of Tobolsk, the ancestor of our spiritual guardian, St John (Maximovich). Bishop Germogen is now a New Martyr.

Unbelievers in Gregory: 1907-1916

Several politicians and aristocrats like the Grand Duke Nikolay, who during the War publicly threatened to hang Gregory, though even in 1915 still considering him ‘amazing’ (Fomin, Vol IX, p. 214), hated him. So did the powerful, scheming clique around him. These included the Ministers of Internal Affairs, the amoral social climber Khvostov and the notorious General Dzhunkovsky, the Director of Police Beletsky and the treasonous politicians Guchkov, Rodzianko and Lvov. There were also others at Court, like the disturbed intriguer Sophia Tyucheva, sent from Moscow to slander Gregory, who could not stand Gregory – though this spinster only saw him once and never once talked to him.

In self-justification these intriguers all deliberately slandered Gregory. Among churchmen who believed the slanders there was the highly political future Metr Evlogy (Georgievsky), who never met Gregory. Another case was the Metropolitan’s friend, the notorious modernist and freemason Fr George Shavelsky. Yet another was Metr Vladimir (Bogoyavlensky). However, he was cleansed, becoming the first bishop to become a New Martyr, in Kiev. All these relied on hearsay to form their opinions, just like the Tsar’s secular-minded Danish mother and his sister Ksenia and her lover.

Tragically, the Tsarina’s very naïve and undiscerning sister, the Grand Duchess Elizabeth, who lived in Moscow, also believed the slanders. She too suffered from that selfsame disease as Fr Theophan – lack of experience. Never having met Gregory, she had been completely convinced of Gregory’s depravity by a whole clique of Protestant-minded individuals who surrounded and manipulated her with their rationalism (for the full list of them, see Fomin, Vol IX, pp. 392-395) and tried to persuade her that the Church needed Protestant-style deaconesses. These even tried, and failed, to compromise the trusting Gregory in restaurants in both Moscow and Saint Petersburg. The intriguers included two Moscow priests. Elizabeth’s unusual naivety would in time be cleansed by her sacrifices, confession of the Faith and victorious martyrdom.

However, by far the worst case of slander against Gregory was that of a former admirer and entirely unrepentant Fr Iliodor (Sergey Trufanov). Out of jealousy he fell out with Gregory in December 1911 and proceeded to slander him. In 1912 he renounced the Faith and the Church and fled the country. As a result of public slanders, especially those made by Iliodor, on 29 June/12 July 1914, the day after the assassination of the Austrian Archduke in Sarajevo and so on the eve of the First World War, another attempt to assassinate Gregory took place. A young peasant woman called Chionia Guseva, mentally deranged from syphilis, which had deformed her physically, attempted to murder Gregory by stabbing him in the stomach outside his home in Pokrovskoe.

As Fomin recounts in hundreds of pages in Volume VI of his study, Gregory was seriously wounded and for a time it was not clear that he would survive. Indeed, he suffered for long afterwards. However, certain newspapers rejoiced and even announced that Gregory had died. Nevertheless, after surgery in hospital in Tyumen, where in 1892 he had worked as an assistant during a cholera epidemic, he recovered. Guseva claimed to have acted alone, having read about Gregory in slanderous newspapers, which were in fact guilty of inciting her to murder. Believing him to be a rapist, a ‘false prophet and even an antichrist’, she had acted. In reality, Guseva was a follower of this self-exalted Fr Iliodor, the controversial and notorious extreme right-winger, immoral adventurist and the greatest of all of Gregory’s slanderers.

Once a close friend of the naïvely zealous Bishop Germogen, Iliodor too became a slanderer of Gregory, after the latter had refused to support him and fell out with Gregory at the end of 1911. A ferocious anti-Semite and political intriguer, Iliodor had been part of a group in the aristocracy who had attempted to drive a wedge between the Imperial Family and Gregory. The police believed that Iliodor had played some role in the attempt on Gregory’s life and he was banished from Saint Petersburg and defrocked, fleeing the country before he could be questioned about the attempted murder. Guseva was found to be not responsible for her actions due to insanity and was committed to a mental hospital. (When released by the equally insane Kerensky government, in 1919 she attempted to assassinate the saintly Patriarch Tikhon). As for Iliodor, he married and ended up as an impoverished janitor in New York, dying in 1952.

The Path to Victory: 1914-1916

Like all practising Orthodox Christians, Gregory saw salvation as dependent on our seeking first the Kingdom of God. Therefore, he was opposed to war, both from a moral point of view, but also as something which leads to political, economic and social catastrophe. Thus, in 1912 he had already pleaded with the Tsar to oppose a potential war with warmongering Austro-Hungary. A war was being urged by the militaristic Germanophobe Grand Duke Nikolay Nikolayevich. Gregory’s opposition probably played the main role in avoiding war then. In 1914 he also directly opposed the Russian entry into the Kaiser’s War, though his influence was much limited by his enforced Siberian absence from the Capital.

Indeed, some have seen in the assassination in Sarajevo and the attempted assassination of Gregory on the next day not a coincidence, but an organised plot. However it may be, from his hospital bed in Tyumen in July 1914 Gregory sent some twenty telegrams to the Tsar (these are collected in the book of his writings, ‘The Chains of Love’), prophesying that if War broke out, it would be the end of Russia and the Tsar. He even considered that if Guseva had not nearly murdered him in Pokrovskoe, he would have been able to travel to Saint Petersburg and war could have been prevented. His prophecy (‘Just give us another ten years’), correct in every detail, as were all his prophecies, was not heard, such was the militarism of the aristocracy, especially of the ultra-ambitious and remarkably rude Grand Duke Nikolay Nikolayevich, who had always wanted to be Tsar.

Deliberately twisting Gregory’s peace-making Christian opinions, during World War I Gregory became the focus of slanders about unpatriotic influence at the Court. The Tsarina, who was of Anglo-Hessian, not Prussian, descent, was also slandered as acting as a spy in the enemy’s employ. In fact she was a Russian patriot and had long despised the Prussian unifiers of Germany for destroying her native and independent Hesse. Indeed, once war had broken out, Gregory stated several times that it had to be continued to the end and to victory, which was quite possible for Russia, though at great cost to the peasant-soldiers. The incompetent Russian generals (just like their French and British counterparts, ‘donkeys leading lions’), the other corrupt and ultra-rich aristocrats and meddling bureaucrats run by the aristocrats and their minions, all contributed to Russian losses in the War.

The jealous and anti-Christian politicians and journalists (most of them Non-Russians) were hostile to Gregory’s spiritual influence on the Tsar. And this in a land where there was no censorship or libel laws, unlike in Western Europe. Their intrigues and lies in the newspapers were to weaken support for the Imperial Family. Their lies were all aimed at attempting to seize power for themselves and destroy the Church, as they had been plotting for decades, as had already occurred in the failed Decembrist conspiracy of aristocrats in 1825. The situation was only saved when in August 1915 the Tsar himself successfully took over the command of the Army, as he had wanted to do from the very start.

When the Tsar assumed leadership of the Imperial Army, sacking his utterly incompetent uncle the Grand Duke Nikolay Nikolayevich, hope of victory came. The Grand Duke, whose disastrous military leadership had caused setback after setback at the Front, had in fact been planning a coup d’etat with the help of treasonous ministers and the notorious Protopresbyter George Shavelsky. They were much opposed to Gregory, who was supported by the living spiritual forces in the Church, so many of whom were to become New Martyrs. Thus, in November 1916 the Optina elder and now saint Anatoly (Potapov) had said in Petrograd that it was not God’s will for Gregory to be removed from his position.

On 3 December 1915 another incident occurred with Alexey. The boy lay bleeding profusely. On 4 December Gregory again intervened in prayer and reassured the Imperial Couple that all would be well. Again, to the astonishment of the powerless doctors, Gregory was to prove to be right. On 6 December Gregory was able to get to the Tsarevich’s bedside, made the sign of the cross over him and he was healed. The Tsar’s sister, Olga Alexandrovna, confirmed this in her memoirs, unable to give any explanation, but simply confirming the fact. Many others agreed with her. Meanwhile, the Tsar had greatly improved Army morale, stabilised the Front with a successful operation in September 1915 and rearmed the troops ready for 1916.

The British Establishment Intervenes: 1916

There followed the Tsar’s hugely successful 1916 summer offensive, usually miscalled the ‘Brusilov Offensive’, which was by far the most successful Allied offensive of the War. In December 1916 the Tsar addressed his Armed Forces, underlining his determination to fight against the invaders until ethnic borders had been reached in Eastern and Central Europe. He was determined to ‘deprussianise’ Germany, restoring independent German principalities. Constantinople was to be freed after 450 years and a free, reunited Poland would be established. The British elite were by now greatly alarmed, seeing that a victorious and rearmed Russia was poised to win the war in 1917.

Given their own incompetence on the Western Front, bogged down in trenches in a murderous stalemate, the British saw that Russia would soon liberate Vienna, Berlin and Constantinople, their forces arriving on the border with France. Thus, Russia would control all of Europe as far as France and Italy, so becoming the main European Power. Although it had been delayed by the British and US-backed and armed Japanese attack on Russia in 1904, it would also become the main Asian Power. British Establishment jealousy of Russia, now on high alert, went back to Tudor times, but had reached a high point in the nineteenth century. Then in imperialist paranoia after the Indian War of Liberation of 1857-58, known in Britain as the ‘Indian Mutiny’, Britain had invaded Russia in the disastrous so-called ‘Crimean War’ in 1854 and invented ‘The Great Game’.

This imaginary and murderous scenario, not at all a game, had suggested that Russia was about to liberate British-enslaved India. This is what led to the repeated and failed British invasions of Afghanistan, the British massacres in Tibet in 1903-4 and the British arming of Japan with dreadnoughts, inciting it to war against Russia. This paranoia, led by Disraeli among others, had created an incessant campaign of ethnocentric stereotypes, racism and mythmaking to make out that ‘the Russian bear’ was ‘Asiatic’, ‘dangerous’, ‘primitive’ and its rulers were tyrants – unlike those of the British Establishment! Russian rulers were always the main objects of British propaganda, just as nowadays, with the absurd but self-justifying NATO propaganda that President Putin is about to invade today’s US-owned Eastern Europe!

Therefore, the British government, led by the notorious sexually-obsessed Lloyd George, hatched a plot against Gregory. It would use its spies in Saint Petersburg, including especially a certain Oswald Rayner (all of them are catalogued with their photographs by Fomin on pp. 302-325 of Vol IX of his study) to undermine the Tsar and so Christian Civilisation. The first step would be to assassinate the Tsar’s spiritual mentor, Gregory. For this their agents would naturally remain in the background, hiding behind the treasonous services of local Anglophile Russian aristocrats, who had always sought power for themselves (Zhevakhov, p. 197).

Thus, the Allies would be able to set up a puppet-regime in Russia, led perhaps by the Germanophobe Grand Duke Nikolay Nikolayevich and other traitors among the Grand Dukes. Thus, Russia with all its wealth would at last be theirs, achieving, as Lloyd-George openly proclaimed in Parliament after the overthrow of the Tsar, ‘one of our main war aims’. The main British helper would be the ultra-wealthy aristocrat, homosexual and transvestite admirer of Oscar Wilde, Prince Felix Yusupov.

Backed by many aristocrats, Yusupov actually knew Gregory and crucially had been at University College in Oxford (just over sixty years before this author; his daughter died in 1983 in the small town outside Paris where I then lived). Furthermore, it was in Oxford that Yusupov had already met Gregory’s future assassin, Oswald Rayner. Yusupov was heavily involved in occult practices (see his chilling drawings of demons in Fomin, Vol IX, p. 269). Moreover, he was married to the Tsar’s niece. (This marriage was obviously a disaster and after it the famous Yusupov family died out, for there were no male descendants. Yusupov continued to cause great scandal in the Russian emigration in France with his transvestite activities).

The Murder: December 1916

There had already been several attempts on Gregory’s life. The first had been on 16 December 1911 (the same date as his murder five years later), the second was a plot involving General Dumbadze in the Crimea, the third was Guseva’s in 1914, as we have related, the fourth was on 7 January 1915 when a car had ‘accidentally’ collided with Gregory’s sleigh, and a fifth was an unrealised plot by the notorious Minister of Internal Affairs, Khvostov, in February 1916. This time was different. Rayner and the other spies in Saint Petersburg were under the command of the British spymaster and future minister, Samuel Hoare. All were supervised by the treacherous British ambassador Buchanan.

Realising that Gregory’s Faith made him a threat to their planned seizure of power, Yusupov, the Tsar’s cowardly nephew, the bisexual anglophile Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich Romanov, an extreme right-wing politician called Vladimir Purishkevich (‘only the wall is further to the right than me’), helped by a lawyer and senior freemason V. A. Maklakov and their friends, Sergei Sukhotin and Dr Stanislav Lazovert, concocted a plan. Purishkevich had for years been plotting to overthrow the Tsar and replace him with a weak puppet like Dmitry Pavlovich, whom he could control with his Fascist inclinations. He had been known to say: ‘As long as Rasputin is alive, we cannot win’ (Mironov, p. 107). Their plan, with British approval, was ready by the end of November 1916.

All of them wanted to dethrone the Tsar and replace him with a powerless, right-wing puppet of their choice, rather as in the case of the German-British monarchy. British spies were only too happy to support them. They would torture Gregory and then use the British spies to finish him off in December 1916 in the Yusupovs’ Moyka Palace, before the victorious Russian year of 1917 could begin. The forthcoming Russian victory would thus be turned into the Russian catastrophe, for without these traitors there would have been no mass genocides under Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and Khrushchev. Thus, shortly after midnight on 17 December 1916, Yusupov would and did lure Gregory, who remained trusting, but felt a dark premonition, to his Palace under false pretences.

Here Yusupov ushered Gregory into the basement, where he offered him tea and cakes, some of which he thought had been laced with cyanide by the anti-Tsar Maklakov. To Yusupov’s surprise, Gregory was not affected. This was because the legally-minded Maklakov had not supplied cyanide, but aspirin, as he was frightened of being implicated and found out as a result of the talkative Purishevich’s inability to keep the plot secret. At around 2.30 am Yusupov excused himself to go upstairs, where his fellow conspirators were waiting. Taking a revolver from Dmitry Pavlovich, Yusupov returned to the basement. Here, pointing to a medieval Italian crucifix on a wall in the room, Yusupov told Gregory that he had ‘better look at the crucifix and say a prayer’. Then he shot him in the chest.

Probably it was at this point that the conspirators began torturing him. Wounds to his eyes, ears and sides can only be understood as torture. Believing him to be dead, they then drove to Gregory’s apartment with their accomplice Sukhotin wearing Gregory’s coat and hat, in an attempt to make it look as though Gregory had returned home that night. On returning to the Moyka Palace, Yusupov went back to the basement. Suddenly, Gregory, only wounded, staggered up and tried to defend himself against Yusupov, who freed himself and fled in cowardly terror upstairs. Gregory went outside to the Palace courtyard before being shot dead by a panicking Rayner and collapsing into a snowdrift. Gregory died of three gunshot wounds, the last of which was Rayner’s close-range shot to his forehead.

Thus, in the early morning of 17/30 December 1916, Gregory was murdered by British spies and jealous aristocrats, who opposed the prophet’s Christian Faith, the Christian Tsar and Christian Russia. Whether representatives of the Russian aristocracy or the British Establishment, they had all put themselves above Christ and so destroyed Russian Civilisation and its underlying authentically Christian values. The conspirators wrapped Gregory’s body, drove it to the nearby Petrovsky Bridge and dropped it into the Malaya Neva River, with the idea that people would think it had been a drowning accident. However, news of Gregory’s murder spread quickly, as the clumsy Purishkevich had spoken openly about Gregory’s murder to two soldiers and a policeman who was investigating reports of shots. Purishkevich urged them not to tell anyone.

The First Shot of the Russian Revolution: 1916-1918

The next morning an investigation was launched. When two workmen noticed blood on the railings and a support of the Petrovsky Bridge and a boot was found on the ice below, river police began searching the area for a body. It was found under the river ice on 19 December/1 January, approximately 200 yards downstream from the bridge. Gregory was recognised at once. The frozen fingers of his right hand were folded in the form ready to make the sign of the cross. Large crowds, mainly composed of women, gathered to take water from the river which they considered had been made holy by the blood of a martyr. Popular veneration had begun; only the aristocrats and middle classes rejoiced at the death of a peasant. Ordinary folk were horrified at the murder of one of their kind. A few, instinctively, realised that the Monarchy was finished, for only Gregory had been supporting it. With his murder, all was over.

An autopsy was conducted by Dr Dmitry Kosorotov, the city’s senior autopsy surgeon. The report that he wrote was lost, but he later stated that Gregory’s body had shown signs of severe trauma, including three gunshot wounds – one of which had been sustained at close range and to the forehead. There was also a slice wound to his left side and several other injuries, many of which Kosorotov felt had been sustained post-mortem. Kosorotov found a single bullet in Gregory’s body, but stated that it was too badly deformed and of a type too widely used to trace. He found no evidence that Gregory had been poisoned and found no water in Gregory’s lungs – reports that Gregory had been thrown into the water alive were incorrect.

Gregory was buried on 21 December/2 January in the grounds of the Imperial Palace at Tsarskoe Selo. Bishop Isidore (Kolokolov), now a New Martyr, led the funeral liturgy. The burial site was next to the foundations of a small and unfinished church to be dedicated to St Seraphim of Sarov, who had been canonised on the insistence of Tsar Nicholas. Anna Vyrubova had wanted to build the church with compensation money she had received from her railway accident in 1915. The funeral was attended only by the Imperial Family, still reeling from the horror of the murder and the treason of those well-known to them, not least a Romanov, and by a few of their intimates. However, in March 1917 Gregory’s body was exhumed, his hands still like those of a living person, and incinerated on a bonfire on orders of the Kerensky regime which had replaced the rule of God’s Anointed (Bokhanov, pp. 31-34).

This destruction of the body was in order to prevent Gregory’s burial site from being a shrine for the faithful, as it had already become, and has become again since the fall of the atheist yoke in Russia. Already in early 1917 a brochure had appeared in Saint Petersburg about Gregory, calling him ‘The New Martyr’. Thus, his body met the same fate as the bodies of the Imperial Family, whose remains the Bolsheviks also tried to consume by fire. In life as in death, they shared the same destiny. Gregory had made several prophecies about his murder, which he had been expecting. Thus: ‘Do you know that I will soon die in terrible sufferings? But what can be done? God has assigned me the great feat of dying for the salvation of my dear sovereigns and Holy Rus’.

Significantly, he had also prophesied: ‘They will surely kill me and all of you will also die. They will kill all of you. And Papa and Mama’ (the Tsar and the Tsarina). ‘I have a premonition that I will leave you before 1 January (1917)…If Russian peasants, my brothers, kill me, then you the Russian Tsar have nothing to fear…But if aristocrats and nobles kill me and they shed my blood, then their hands will remain stained with my blood….’. (Platonov, pp. 159-60). The British Establishment and their equally amoral Russian aristocrat puppets had now opened a Pandora’s box. For Gregory was only the first martyr of the palace revolt of the traitors, deChristianised aristocrats, generals and politicians, which became known as ‘The Russian Revolution’. Their treason would lead to millions and millions of martyrs, an irremovable stain on world history and on their consciences.

On the eve of the Revolution, but before Gregory’s murder, Maria Golovina, one of his closest disciples, had asked him if there would be a Revolution. He had answered: ‘Only a small one, if I am here to stop it, but…’. (Fomin, Vol VIII, p. 340). In other words, Gregory’s murder meant there was no longer anything to stop those processes of spiritual decay which in the end would lead to the deaths of tens of millions in the Soviet Union. As Tsar Nicholas himself repeatedly said: ‘If it were not for Gregory’s prayers, they would long ago have murdered me’ (Fomin, Vol VIII, p. 350). Just as they had murdered his grandfather, Alexander II. Those who finally succeeded in murdering Gregory would have the blood of far more than just one man on their hands. However, our hope is in the Lord: ‘Fear not, for I am with you; I will bring your offspring from the east, and from the west I will gather you’ (Isaiah, 43, 5).

Afterword

After his murder Gregory continued to be vilely slandered, both in Soviet Russia and in the Russian emigration. (And it is those who tried to censor even this modest work!). He was especially slandered by exiled Saint Petersburg and Baltic aristocrats in Paris and other Western capitals – not least by those bearing the surname Romanov. Instead of repenting for their treason and slanders, they blamed Gregory for the fall of the Russian Empire and, particularly, for the loss of their personal power and wealth. In reality, they were themselves to blame; like the Western Powers whom they represented, they had not understood that when Russia is no longer Christian, then it is militantly atheistic. Unlike in Western culture there is nothing inbetween; authentic Christian culture in Russia is not going to be replaced by Western secular culture. Destroy authentic Orthodox Christianity in Russia at your peril.

These slanders continue among their descendants to this very day, over 100 years later. Within my memory their descendants in Paris would refuse even to talk to Gregory’s great grand-daughter, Laurence, who lives there. Gregory is still slandered as a drunk and a debauchee in books, articles, plays and films, both in post-Soviet Russia and in the West. Today some extremist right-wingers with their pro-Nazi ideology use him as a peg for their anti-Semitic nationalism (their excuse being that most of the first Bolsheviks were Jews). Others, including contemporary, so-called ‘Orthodox’, academics, infected by anti-spiritual Protestant-style rationalism, use him as a peg for their Soviet-coloured anti-Tsar prejudices.

Pharisees and scribes, all of them. They are all merely repeating the errors of the murderers, the right-wing nationalist and pseudo-monarchist Purishkevich and the liberal Oxford graduate Yusupov, notorious for his scandalous depravity, both before and after the Revolution. They were supported both by anti-German British assassins and left-wing Bolsheviks. All of them, right or left, are in fact just the two sides of the same anti-Christian coin. That is why they all slander Gregory, as they also slander the Tsar-Martyr Nicholas and his Family, who was murdered not in Saint Petersburg or Moscow, but far away, along the road from Gregory’s Siberian home.

On the other hand, there are those Orthodox who love the Imperial Martyrs, especially in Saint Petersburg and Ekaterinburg, and who also venerate Gregory as a saint, usually under the name ‘St Gregory the New’ or ‘The Martyr Gregory’. The apartment where he last lived in Saint Petersburg, at 64, Gorokhovaya Street, and the place of his burial have become places of pilgrimage for them. However, there is very little veneration for him among the masses, among whom his name is still slandered. Among the episcopate there is as yet no call for his canonisation, despite some sympathy expressed by a few, icons painted (as early as 1931 – Fomin, Vol IX, p. 473), services composed and prayers invoked by the few.

Naturally, any possible future canonisation is out of the question until the facts are better known and veneration of the Imperial Martyrs themselves spreads, creating popular reverence. Until that moment, Russia will never recover from her apostasy and its resulting endemic corruption, injustices and poverty. As for the rest of the world, it will continue to be blinded by its delusions of self-belief and self-justification, which have now brought it to the verge of extinction. As Elder Nikolai (Guryanov) said: ‘As the Truth of God begins to be revealed, so everything in Russia will change’. For only once all has changed among the Russian masses, will the Monarchy be restored there, so that the vital changes in the rest of the world can then follow.

We cannot forget that in August 1917 the Imperial Family sailed past Gregory’s house in Pokrovskoe, as they were taken into exile. The next year, on Palm Sunday, 14 April 1918, the carriage which took the Tsar from his Gethsemane to his Golgotha, from his captivity in Tobolsk to his martyrdom in nearby Ekaterinburg, passed by Gregory’s very house in Pokrovskoe, again exactly as Gregory had prophesied (Dehn, p. 96 and Fomin, Vol IX, p. 411). In passing by, it was blessed by Gregory’s faithful widow, Praskovya. Later the Tsarina and the Grand Duchess Maria followed him along the same road. Gregory and the Imperial Family were inseparable, even now they followed the same road. May God grant repentance and spiritual purity to all to see that road and the Truth of God.

Bibliography:

Although many books have been written about Gregory Rasputin, mainly in the last century, there are few in any Western language which bear a resemblance to the truth, being works of sensationalist tabloid journalism, anti-Russian political propaganda, or else forgeries. Exceptions are the reprinted ‘The Real Tsaritsa’ by Lili Dehn, Shelley’s ‘The Speckled Domes’ of 1925, and the now unobtainable Memoirs of Gregory’s daughter, Matrona, published in French in 1925, uncorrupted, unlike the German, English and particularly awful Russian versions, the latter published in 2002. Perhaps the most valuable document to translate would be the also now unobtainable 112-page Memoirs of Mounia (Maria) Golovina, who like the Tsarina expressed the mystical understanding of Gregory, first published in French in Paris in 1995, but written decades before. The works below are in Russian, except for those by Cook, Cullen, Dehn and Shelley:

Bokhanov A. N., Rasputin, Fact and Fiction, Moscow, 2006

Cook Andrew, To Kill Rasputin, 2005

Cullen Richard, Rasputin, The Role of Britain’s Secret Service in His Torture and Murder, 2010

Dehn Lili, The Real Tsaritsa, Nabu Press, reprint, 2011

Fedchenkov Metr. Benjamin, One the Edge of Two Eras, Moscow, 2004

Fomin S., Gregory Rasputin, An Investigation, 7 Volumes + plus an invaluable eighth volume of sources called ‘Our Dear Father’, which includes Gregory’s biography written by his daughter Matrona and the defence of Gregory by M.E. Golovina, and a ninth volume or album with all known images of Gregory and further information about his murder, Moscow, Forum, 2007-2015

Mironova T., From Beneath the Lie. A Slandered Life. A Slandered Death, Vesti, Saint Petersburg, 2005

Platonov O., A Life for the Tsar, Rodnaya Strana, Moscow, 2015

Rasputin-Novy Gregory E., The Chains of Love, Articles, Letters, Reflections, Sayings, Saint Petersburg 2017, (254 pages in Pocketbook Format)

Shelley G, The Speckled Domes, Episodes of an Englishman’s Life in Russia, New York 1925 (In 1950 George Shell, which was his real name and not Shelley, became an Old Catholic bishop).

Zhevakhov N.D. Memoirs, Saint Petersburg, 2014.

Internet:

The best source for a very extensive number of articles on Gregory Rasputin-Novy, by authors like Yury Rassulin, Igor Yevsin, Fr Sergiy Chechanichev, Fr Alexander Zakharov and others, is the Russian national website: http://ruskline.ru/

Akathist to the Holy Martyr Gregory the New

Kontakion I

Called from the furthest bounds of East and West by the Most Holy Mother of God through her Image of Kazan to become a faithful servant of the Double-Headed Eagle, thou didst journey as a pilgrim to the holy places of the vast Orthodox Lands, even to the earthly Jerusalem, fearing God, honouring the Tsar and having compassion on the people. When the Spirit came down on thee, thou didst not forsake thy calling even unto death, acquiring boldness before the Lord and praying for those who sing to thee: Rejoice, O martyr Gregory, friend of the Emperor and guardian of the Empire!

Ikos I

Coming forth from the village of the Intercession of the Mother of God, thy destiny was revealed to be as an intercessor for the Imperial Family, O martyr Gregory, by thy prayers opposing the efforts of the dragon to overthrow the Christian Emperor and bestow his Empire on the beast from the bottomless pit. In wonder at thy service and protection beneath the veil of the Mother of God, we sing to thee thus:

Rejoice, thou who didst heal the heir to the throne after earthly doctors had laboured in vain.

Rejoice, thou who didst heal the future hope of the Christian Empire through thy prayers.

Rejoice, thou who didst turn the sorrow of the Empress into joy by the Holy Spirit.

Rejoice, thou who didst not seek any earthly reward for thy labours.

Rejoice, thou who didst imitate the mystical feat of the great martyr George.

Rejoice, thou who didst bear thy name as an evil for the sake of the Lord’s Anointed.

Rejoice, thou who didst obtain from thy Lord a new name that shines like a star in the heavens.

Rejoice, thou who didst speak words of the Lord as a prophet of the New Israel.

Rejoice, thou who made the slanders and blasphemies of the enemies of Christ into salvation.

Rejoice, O spiritual warrior and companion in the battle for Sovereignty.

Rejoice, O invisible companion of the Emperor’s prayer.

Rejoice, O good and faithful servant even unto death.

Rejoice, O martyr Gregory, friend of the Emperor and guardian of the Empire!

Kontakion 2

Seeing the Christian Empire troubled and shaken by the enemies of Christ, thou, O martyr Gregory, wast revealed after the repose of the Righteous John of Kronstadt as a new prophet to denounce the spiritual impurity of the Emperor’s foes and confirm the good estate of his faithful subjects, singing to God: Alleluia.

Ikos 2

Having the mind of the saints of old, whom thou didst love, and concealing God’s gifts from the world behind the foolishness of the Cross, thou wast beloved by the Emperor and Empress. Slandered by the spite of apostates and the jealousy of traitors, thou, O blessed one, wast no friend to the dark forces that hated Christ. Teach us also by the knowledge that God inspired in thee to withstand temptations, the enemies of Christ and the devil, singing to thee thus:

Rejoice, O man of God, honoured by Imperial friendship.

Rejoice, O messenger of the will of God, revealed to the Emperor.

Rejoice, O treasury of the Wisdom of God, hidden from the world.

Rejoice, O servant of Christ, whose nobility was far greater than that of princes.

Rejoice, O bee made wise by God, who gathered mystical nectar from the Emperor’s flowers.

Rejoice, O sweetness feeding the lovers of honey with holy honeycombs.

Rejoice, O faithful keeper of the Sovereign Empire against the servants of Antichrist.

Rejoice, O untiring guardian and zealot of ancient piety against the demons.

Rejoice, O converser with the Imperial Family.

Rejoice, thou who didst suffer for the good order of the Empire.

Rejoice, O meadow of virtue cultivated from generation unto generation.

Rejoice, O fool for Christ blessed by God amid the intrigues of Babylon.

Rejoice, O martyr Gregory, friend of the Emperor and guardian of the Empire!

Kontakion 3

Raised up from a distant province for thine Imperial destiny by the Divine Love of Providence, thou, O blessed Gregory, admiring the Redeemer, didst witness to Him. In thy vigilance, as prophesied by the Righteous John according to thy name, thou didst sacrifice thy soul for thy Imperial Friends, prophesying and calling out to God: Alleluia.

Ikos 3

In thee the Sovereign Family found a new intercessor, a new prophet and a new martyr, for thou, O faithful Gregory, wast revealed to be a forerunner of the Imperial Martyrs, like them slain in the darkness of the night by the base in a basement. As the offering of thy soul for the Emperor was accepted, now pray for those who call out to thee in this wise:

Rejoice, O trusted intercessor for the Imperial City come from a lowly village.

Rejoice, O protection against those who plotted to slay the Emperor.

Rejoice, thou who gavest thy life for the Tsar as a protomartyr.

Rejoice, thou who didst suffer at the hands of those who then martyred the Imperial Family.

Rejoice, thou who didst repeat the famed patriotic feats of old.

Rejoice, thou who didst mystically sacrifice thy soul for the Emperor.

Rejoice, thou who didst accept royal hallowing from God.

Rejoice, thou who wast revered by thine Emperor and Empress as a man of God.

Rejoice, thou who wast crowned on earth with a crown of thorns.

Rejoice, thou who wast crowned in heaven with a royal crown.

Rejoice, O friend of the ancient and sacred union of Emperor and people against apostates and traitors.

Rejoice, O spiritual offshoot of the Imperial Family.

Rejoice, O martyr Gregory, friend of the Emperor and guardian of the Empire!

Kontakion 4

Rightfully spurning the wisdom of the world as vainglorious and impure and preferring the foolishness of the Cross, thou, O blessed one, didst denounce the lies and delusions, intrigues and evil schemings of those who had rejected Christ and didst pray with the greatest simplicity for those who sing to God: Alleluia.

Ikos 4

Hurling slanders and blasphemies at the Emperor who had been crowned by God, in their folly the traitors forced the Anointed of the Lord from his ancestral throne and led him like a lamb from his Gethsemane to his slaughter. Seeing the depth of thy love for the Emperor, who looks down on us now, we sing to thee, O Gregory, thus:

Rejoice, thou who in thy life with the Imperial Family wast falsely accused of every sin and vice.

Rejoice, O ever-watchful guardian of the Ruling Family who suffered for the sins of Russia.

Rejoice, thou who art not parted in death from their heavenly glory.

Rejoice, O gatekeeper in the heavenly mansions, guiding those who are called to speak of the Imperial mystery.

Rejoice, thou who denouncest unfaithful ministers before the Imperial Family.

Rejoice, O stumbling block for those gone astray from Christ, who even now scorn the Emperor’s glory.

Rejoice, thou who didst abide night and day in prayer for the Christian Ruler.

Rejoice, O never-slumbering eyes of the Tsar, delaying the appearance of Antichrist.

Rejoce, O holy standard of all the faithful servants of the Emperor.

Rejoice, O denouncer of treason, cowardice and deceit.

Rejoice, O humble ploughman who didst put thy hand to the plough of the Empire.

Rejoice, O mystical shield and protection of the Christian Emperor.

Rejoice, O martyr Gregory, friend of the Emperor and guardian of the Empire!

Kontakion 5

Like a star shining forth from the Russian Lands in the distant east and moving on its God-given course to Christ, thy soul, O martyr Gregory, burned like a bright flame amid the delusions of the spiritual night in the west, going before the Emperor who cried out to God: Alleluia.

Ikos 5

Seeing thee going before the Emperor as a prophet and fool for Christ, and witnessing to the grace of God resting on His Anointed, in their folly the traitors turned on thee like wolves in order to part thee from the Emperor. Wondering at the many miraculous acts of Divine Providence which guide the Christian Empire, we sing to thee thus:

Rejoice, O pilgrim who during many years prayed at the holy places.

Rejoice, O sower of the noble seeds of beauty, goodness and truth among the Orthodox people.

Rejoice, thou who didst mystically see the Imperial destiny of Holy Rus.

Rejoice, O fisherman, who gavest wise counsel to those caught in thy spiritual nets.

Rejoice, thou who didst come like a prophet unto thine own and wast not known by them.

Rejoice, O pearl of great price who was cast before swine.

Rejoice, thou who didst love God, Tsar and Empire.

Rejoice, O citizen of the heavenly Jerusalem.

Rejoice, thou who didst worship in the Holy Land and the earthly Jerusalem.

Rejoice, O pilgrim to Patmos, where John the Theologian saw the vision of the last times.

Rejoice, thou who didst eclipse the dark star of the enemies of the Tsar with the Sun of Righteousness.

Rejoice, thou who gavest sight to those made spiritually blind by the world.

Rejoice, O martyr Gregory, friend of the Emperor and guardian of the Empire!

Kontakion 6

False brethren, weak in faith and cold of heart, did not wish to honour the see of Tobolsk, but thou, O wondrous Gregory, zealous for the greater glory of the Empire, didst intercede before the Tsar for the glorification of the holy hierarch John Maximovich, who is wonderful among the saints, calling out to God: Alleluia.

Ikos 6

By thy prayers and intercessions before the Emperor, the light of Christ shone forth from the shrine of the holy relics of the sainted John of Tobolsk, for thou, O martyr Gregory, didst diligently labour to keep thy land faithful to the Tsar; through thy intercessions forsake not us who call out to thee such things as these:

Rejoice, O fulfilment of the mystical prophecies of Holy Rus for all the peoples of the world before the end.

Rejoice, thou who didst proclaim the city of Tobolsk to be Christ’s.

Rejoice, O hope of the land that suffered the blood of idolatry in former times.

Rejoice, O intercessor for the Empire made white by the red blood of the first martyred Tsar.

Rejoice, O spiritual guardian of the prison, which received the Imperial Captives.

Rejoice, O native of the land where mystically met the earthly and heavenly paths of Emperor and prophet.

Rejoice, thou who didst bear chains on thy body like a hidden schema.

Rejoice, thou who tookest the sanctuary of Tobolsk from its enemies with the sword of the Spirit.

Rejoice, thou who didst work many wonders and healings in thy lifetime.

Rejoice, thou who gavest repentance to the hierarch Germogen, appearing to him after death.

Rejoice, thou who didst mystically accompany the Tsar through the land of Tobolsk.

Rejoice, thou who lookest down on us from Heaven together with the Imperial Family.

Rejoice, O martyr Gregory, friend of the Emperor and guardian of the Empire!

Kontakion 7

Desiring that all should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth, thou, O blessed one, didst guide both the good and the bad through life’s sorrows, giving spiritual treasures to the faithful, who call out to God: Alleluia.

Ikos 7

Christ showed thee to be a new passion-bearer, for thou didst not render any of thy persecutors evil for evil, praying for them and making ready for the Day of Judgement. Help us to escape the horrors of Gehenna that await Satan and his henchmen, as we call out to thee thus:

Rejoice, O generous almsgiver who didst love the poor.

Rejoice, thou who didst bar the gates of hell for the faithful.

Rejoice, thou who didst help the poor and naked.

Rejoice, thou who gavest every good gift for Christ and the Tsar.

Rejoice, thou who hast the exceeding great power to console in sorrow.

Rejoice, thou who didst call the rich and powerful to repentance from their spiritual impurity.

Rejoice, thou who dost ever sorrow for all who were guilty before the Tsar and sinful before God.

Rejoice, for none who came to thee with faith departed sorrowing and unconsoled.

Rejoice, thou who in wisdom didst conceal thy deeds from traitors with the foolishness of the Cross.

Rejoice, thou blessed by God who wast wiser than the enemies of Christ, the world and the devil.

Rejoice, thou who didst appear deaf and mute before those who insulted thee.

Rejoice, thou who didst pray for the enemies of God before the Day of Wrath.

Rejoice, O martyr Gregory, friend of the Emperor and guardian of the Empire!

Kontakion 8

Seeing thy life of struggles and labours in the world through the eyes of spiritual impurity, O holy Gregory, some fell into temptation, for they heeded the words of the enemies of Christ, whose slanders against thee described their own vices, raising up a persecution against thee and thy spiritual children, who call out to God: Alleluia.

Ikos 8

Thou didst endure all the filth and torment of the enemies of Christ with valour, O martyr Gregory. Struck by cutting words and piercing slanders sharper than swords and spears, thou didst accept bodily wounds, foreknowing thy violent death at the hands of enemies of Christ and traitors. As thou didst smite the old dragon, who rose up against the Christian Emperor with the Cross of the Lord, pray for us who call out to thee thus:

Rejoice, O protomartyr, against whom the demons inspired slander in every enemy of Christ.

Rejoice, thou whose life God had already preserved from death.

Rejoice, thou who didst bear the feat of martyrdom by the power of Christ.

Rejoice, thou who wast pierced in the side like the Saviour, with the cross in thy hands.

Rejoice, thou who wast thrown down beside a dead dog according to the evil custom of the enemies of Christ.

Rejoice, thou who wast cast into a freezing watery grave.

Rejoice, thou whose body was buried by the Imperial Family in a place of honour.

Rejoice, thou whose body was taken up and burned by the enemies of Christ, so having suffered both ice and fire.

Rejoice, for the enemies of Christ slew thee in a basement at night like the Imperial Martyrs.

Rejoice, for apostates and traitors of the Imperial line were guilty of thy peasant blood.

Rejoice, thou who wast raised up from afar for an Imperial destiny.

Rejoice, thou who didst beforehand show the Emperor a martyr’s end.

Rejoice, O martyr Gregory, friend of the Emperor and guardian of the Empire!

Kontakion 9

Having shared and passed through every temptation of thine Imperial Friends by the grace of God, thou didst confess the Imperial mystery of the Incarnation, O blessed Gregory, which none knows, save the pious Orthodox who truly confess Christ and so are faithful to the Tsar, singing to God: Alleluia.

Ikos 9

All the long words of orators and all the airy works of philosophers are unable to express the depth of the spiritual impurity of those in seats of authority, who had lost the Orthodox Faith and so fell into envy, spite, slander and treason against the Emperor, the Empress and thee; but as for us, we see and honour only the glory of thy cross and call out to thee thus:

Rejoice, thou who didst share the Imperial burden before their Golgotha.

Rejoice, thou who didst eat at the Emperor’s table.

Rejoice, thou who didst choose the path of loyalty to the Emperor, refusing the pieces of silver of the traitors.

Rejoice, thou chosen out of distant Siberia who becamest one of the Ruler’s own.

Rejoice, thou who didst look on the Emperor and Empress as a faithful son.

Rejoice, O holy new prophet blessed by God to protect Sovereign Rus.

Rejoice, for thou didst shame those who shamed Holy Rus in the sight of the whole world.

Rejoice, thou who wast rewarded by the Empress.

Rejoice, thou who voluntarily tookest on thyself the sorrows of the Emperor.

Rejoice, thou who didst gain the envy and spite of the enemies of Christ.

Rejoice, thou who wast the Emperor’s faithful servant.

Rejoice, for thou wast one of those of whom the world is not worthy.

Rejoice, O martyr Gregory, friend of the Emperor and guardian of the Empire!

Kontakion 10

God entrusted thee with the protection of the Christian Emperor, the faithful Empress and their godly children, O prophet and wonderworker Gregory. Thou didst stop the issue of blood of the heir, shedding thine own blood instead, that with the piety and holiness of the Orthodox spirit thou couldst feed the souls of thine Imperial Friends, who call out to God: Alleluia.

Ikos 10

In their cunning and jealousy the enemies of Christ, greedy for power, tried to build a dividing wall of slander and lies between the Emperor and the people, that they might slay first him and then them, but thou, O wise one, pulled down that dividing wall, interceding for the people before the Emperor and showing the people to him, thus interceding for us too, who call out to thee such things as these:

Rejoice, for the Imperial Family were among thy spiritual children.

Rejoice, for in thy person they mystically adopted the Russian people.

Rejoice, O wise and patient mentor of thine Imperial disciples.

Rejoice, thou who didst savour their souls with the salt of Divine grace.

Rejoice, thou who didst teach the Imperial Family prophecy and holiness.

Rejoice, thou didst bless them with the simplicity of wisdom.

Rejoice, O offshoot of the Church sacredly grafted onto the Imperial vine.

Rejoice, thou who by thy grafting dost break off the withered branches of the Church.

Rejoice, thou who gavest a good answer for thy sacred pledge.

Rejoice, for thou makest us too, who honour thee, the Emperor’s friends.

Rejoice, thou who mystically askest for the Tsar’s forgiveness for those who betrayed him.

Rejoice, for in thee we await the restoration of the nobility of old.

Rejoice, O martyr Gregory, friend of the Emperor and guardian of the Empire!

Kontakion 11

Loving the Church and partaking of the Holy Mysteries more eagerly than of all the treasures of the world, thou, O Gregory, tookest up thy cross of serving the Emperor in accordance with thy destiny appointed by Divine Providence, calling out to God: Alleluia.

Ikos 11

The hierarchy was divided; brave and humble-minded missionaries, serving the Tsar and the people in east and west, blessed thee with warm hearts; proud and self-admiring functionaries, serving themselves and the worldly in ease and wealth, despised thee with cold hearts. Praying for the enlightenment of scribes and pharisees, we honour thy memory and that of all those faithful to the Imperial Family, singing praise to thee in this wise:

Rejoice, thou who wast mystically raised up from among the people by the Emperor.

Rejoice, thou who wast blessed by many faithful hierarchs such as Aleksiy, Makariy, Pitirim, Barnabas, Isidore and Melchizedek.

Rejoice, O pleaser of God, who didst honour Christ our God in every place of His dominion.

Rejoice, thou who hadst spiritual power, shaming the powerless wisdom of this world.

Rejoice, O unmercenary builder of the church in thy home village.

Rejoice, thou who didst love the Mother of God and wast zealous for piety.

Rejoice, O resolver of disputes, not with the booklore of scribes and pharisees, but with simplicity of heart.

Rejoice, O peacemaker sent by God among the disorder of men.

Rejoice, thou who didst fulfil the prophecies of the holy wonderworker Seraphim.

Rejoice, O lover of the Scriptures through the Spirit, who gavest the name of God all glory and honour.

Rejoice, thou who didst receive from Christ the gift of discernment.

Rejoice, thou who didst fight the serried ranks of heretics.

Rejoice, O martyr Gregory, friend of the Emperor and guardian of the Empire!

Kontakion 12

By thy prayers increase the grace of intercession of Christian Emperors for the whole world, O martyr Gregory, for the prayer of the righteous avails much. After God had raised thee up from among the people to shame the apostasy and so lack of love of the rich and powerful, the treason of princes, the cowardice of generals and the deceit of the fleshly-minded ushered in an age of bitter persecution, but of sweet glory for the faithful, who called out to God: Alleluia.

Ikos 12

Singing of the wonders worked in thy life by the grace of God, the healing of infirmities, the casting out of evil spirits, the granting of victory in battle, the foretelling of things to come, the consoling of the sorrowing with a single word and wise counselling for all life’s needs and cares, we call on thee, O wondrous Gregory, cease not to pray for us who are scattered across the face of the earth, awaiting the coming restoration of the Christian Empire and the new Tsar, who will sweep away the unworthy and the unfaithful, and calling out to thee such things as these:

Rejoice, O wise husbandman of the Imperial garden.

Rejoice, O fence against the thorns of the rich and powerful.

Rejoice, for no man has ever been slandered in his life like unto thee.

Rejoice, for even after thy martyrdom those who honoured thee were slandered.

Rejoice, O spiritual cloth with which every tear is wiped from every eye.

Rejoice, that evil words against thee may be forgiven.

Rejoice, O mystery of peasant nobility, tilling the earth of the soul.

Rejoice, O faithful servant of the holy ones of God.

Rejoice, for by thy martyrdom the dragon was run through.

Rejoice, O bright star of Siberia and martyr for Holy Rus.

Rejoice, for the Imperial Family loved thee.

Rejoice, O fair flower from the Imperial meadow.

Rejoice, O martyr Gregory, friend of the Emperor and guardian of the Empire!

Kontakion 13

O glorious new martyr and wonderworker Gregory, by the cross of foolishness for Christ’s sake and voluntary suffering thou didst defeat the dragon, like the martyrs George, Theodore and Mercurius of old, and as the friend who fought for the Emperor of the Russian Lands thou dwellest with the holy ones in eternity, pray for the servants of Christ that by thine intercessions we unworthy sinners may also be accounted among the number of the friends of the Emperor, singing to Almighty God: Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.

The above kontakion is read three times, then the first ikos, followed by the first kontakion.

Prayer

O holy new martyr and wonderworker Gregory, the Emperor’s friend who fought against the traitors who took Holy Rus to the depths, show the foes of the Orthodox Lands both on the left side and on the right side the might of the double-edged sword of Divine justice. May they not destroy the holy seed of Sovereignty, may the Christian Empire and Emperor be restored for all before the end, still mightier than before, according to the prophecy, through thine intercessions and the prayers of the Imperial Martyrs, that all who love the Name of God in Orthodox wise all over the world may make glad forever. Amen.

Troparion, Tone IV

O friend of the Emperor, who fought for Christian Rule, / thou didst appear as a fool for Christ to the world, / which did not know thee and evilly slandered thee. / O holy passion-bearer and martyr Gregory, / as thou didst offer thyself up as a sacrifice to Christ for the Emperor, / so pray for us that we too may be delivered from the injustices of enemies, / becoming the friends of the Sovereign Emperor // and seeing the Resurrection of Holy Rus.

Q and A on the Shipwreck of the Russian Orthodox Church, 1 December 2022: Follow the Money or Follow the Saints

The darker the night, the brighter the stars.

Q: Why did the émigré Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR), based in New York, enter into communion with the Moscow Patriarchate (MP), based in Moscow, in 2007? I heard it was for money.

A: It was definitely not for money. No money was involved. This story comes from the self-justification of old calendarists, who left ROCOR rather than enter into communion with the MP and had to give a reason for it. Ironically, some ignorant people in Moscow at the time – and I was there – said that the link-up was because Moscow wanted ‘all the ROCOR money’! Of course, that was an inherited Soviet fantasy, which imagined that all emigres were wealthy aristocrats. ROCOR, which was and is in any case only 1% of the size of the MP, had very little money in those days and Jordanville had survived till the mid-1980s only thanks to handouts from the CIA.

Q: Why did Moscow want to enter into communion?

A: Moscow wanted the link-up for political prestige: if the anti-Communist ROCOR entered into communion, it would mean that Moscow was clearly no longer tainted by Communism, which had fallen 16 years before 2007 in 1991. They needed the ROCOR rubber stamp on that. Patriarch Kyrill himself told a Russian Orthodox Metropolitan whom I know well this very fact.

Q: But surely the MP bishops had KGB code-names?

A: When it still existed, the KGB gave everyone code-names, including Mrs Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Neither of them was a KGB agent – as far as I know! Who knows, maybe they had a code-name for you!

Q: But weren’t the old calendarists justified? Surely the MP was corrupt and controlled by the KGB?

A: The MP? You mean the MP bishops? Bishops are not the Church. The MP hierarchy had been held hostage before under the Soviets, yes. And it is true that bishops then were forbidden to speak freely under the Soviet Union, when the KGB still existed. But actually ‘controlled by the KGB’? I spoke to many bishops, priests and laypeople of the MP in private conversations and they were quite free with me! In any case, all that was over 30 years ago. The KGB no longer existed in 2007 and most of the men who were bishops in the KGB’s time are no longer alive today.

True, some of the MP bishops were then, and are now, corrupted by power and money, but that is nothing to do with Soviet rule. Some of the Russian bishops before the Revolution – and judging by their behaviour after the February Revolution perhaps most of them – were corrupted by power and money. That is just human, not systematic. That is and that was their personal choice, not a Church dogma or because of a political system.

For instance, one of the present defrocked MP bishops, Maxim, is in London now. He was already notorious as a loose-living young priest in London a few years ago, but he still got made a bishop, after which he was accused of drug-dealing (no surprises there, for those who knew him) and ran away from police arrest in Russia. Of course, here the authorities gave this criminal asylum. All he had to say to get asylum was that he was against Putin! Two other bishops, both called Ignaty, are in monasteries in Russia, for repentance after moral crimes. What is remarkable is that all three unworthy candidates somehow got made bishops. How was that possible? That is the real question. Why are there so many clearly unworthy bishops in both parts of the Russian Church?

Q: So why did the link-up take place in 2007, if no money was involved? What was in it for ROCOR?

A: It was to stop the already very isolated ROCOR becoming a Protestant-style right-wing sect of the old calendarist variety (which it has now largely become). Unity was the great desire of Metr Laurus and all the Church wing in ROCOR, who could see the danger and temptation of becoming a sect. ROCOR’s only remaining friends, the Serbian Church and the Patriarchate of Jerusalem, both advised ROCOR to enter communion with the MP, or else it would become a sect and fall out of communion even with them.

However, the desire of the political wing in ROCOR was to be sectarian, they liked their isolation and life in the ‘One True Church’ ghetto. So some of the isolationists left in 2007 for multiple old calendarist-style, sectarian ‘One True Church’ groups, one of them CIA-financed. Others stayed behind. Those who stayed behind have contributed to some of the present problems. For example, they took in an extremist priest who was with the right-wing mob at the Capitol on 6 January 2021 (the OCA quite rightly did not want him any more after that). Then there were the open recommendations to vote Trump from ROCOR bishops. In other words, American ROCOR refused to keep out of US party politics and even told us, Non-Americans, to support Trump!

Q: Where exactly do the problems and scandals in ROCOR today come from?

A: The problems come from the corruption by power and money of individuals in ROCOR, which at one time was mostly above and outside that. There was, after all, in those days, no money to be corrupted by in ROCOR. There was still nobility and honour, bishops were still servants of the Church, and nobody mentioned the dread phrase, ‘we bishops are princes of the Church’. ROCOR decided to be corrupted, it was under no obligation to be so. In other words, individuals in ROCOR corrupted themselves with American money, the dollar.

This was a tendency that was already present among a few in the 1960s (the ones who put St John of Shanghai and Western Europe on trial in the fleshpots of San Francisco), but the trend grew enormously in the 2000s. The younger generation, who never knew the old, principled and poor emigre ROCOR of St John of Shanghai and others, fell, and they took ROCOR down with them. This will go into the history books and be marvelled at by future generations.

Going to the USA after World War II finished ROCOR, not going to the post-USSR. ROCOR was corrupted by the USA, not by the USSR! That is the irony of it. ROCOR’s corruption was nothing to do with the MP. That is not to say that there are not parallels or that the MP does not have the same problems and even worse. As we have said, what is sad is that corrupt individuals have been made bishops in both parts of the Russian Church, rather than being exposed beforehand and dealt with before they could bring their corruption up to the episcopal level. These anti-pastors and anti-missionaries who with their profound desire for money and property, are mini-oligarchs and have wrecked whole dioceses. They are wolves in archpastors’ clothing

How did they get away with it? How did they deceive those above them? Were those above them blind? Did these individuals corrupt or bribe those above them? Here there are many, many unanswered questions. We understand that the Russian Church only had 150 bishops at the time in 2007. Another 250 have been made since then. But was there no examination of the candidates first? We have indeed returned to the scandals of the fourth century when most bishops were corrupt.

Q: Is the Ukraine affair and ROCOR support for President Putin the end of ROCOR?

A: Yes, it probably is, but only as the last nail in the coffin, which ROCOR had already decided to make for itself long before 24 February 2022. If the Ukraine had not happened, there would have been something else. ROCOR was already on its way out, as it had refused to take the only logical path of survival, that of helping to build up Local Churches. With so little humility, mercy and love, it had become spiritually irrelevant, a tiny Church of tiny ghetto communities in rented properties and wooden sheds, with very little idea of the authentic Russian Orthodox tradition, let alone other Orthodox traditions.

Q: What about the Ukraine and the MP?

A: Above all, the Ukrainian affair is the end of the highly centralised Soviet and post-Soviet Moscow Patriarchate, as it developed after 1925, after the repose/martyrdom of the holy Patriarch Tikhon, who was also, by the way, an American citizen and after whom a New York street has now been named. It is the end of the ‘Soviet Orthodoxy’ of Metropolitan Sergius and those who admire him, the end of erastianism, the end of that strange mixture of centralised bureaucracy, protocols, narrow nationalism, ritualism and superstition that was accepted on account of the ignorance of people, who had been held captive by Soviet atheism for three generations.

Q: What is the future?

A: Today the whole Russian Church, the MP and ROCOR, has to be recast. Both will have to change names, restructuring themselves completely and granting autocephalies, founding new Local Churches. They will both have to stop living in the past, whether centralising Soviet or CIA-funded anti-Soviet. That period is over. Both terms, MP and ROCOR, are purely Soviet and anti-Soviet, purely political and belong to a historical period in the past. They are not relevant today. An anti-corruption purge among senior clergy must take place before both parts of the Russian Church can recover and become credible once more. Now is an incredibly decadent period, when both the Church hierarchies are living under the shadow of the money-money corruption that began in the 1990s. However, great potential is still there, the potential of the New Martyrs and the New Confessors. All the corrupt have to do is to recognise and to repent for their huge errors and only then can they both move forwards.

Q: How could ROCOR have avoided compromising itself on the Ukrainian question?

A: As I said, by providing three foundation-stones for new Local Churches, that is, in Western Europe, North America and Australia. Instead of that, ROCOR continued to make out that it was Russian and a kind of super-territorial Church, refusing to work together with other local Orthodox, pridefully placing itself above them and persecuting its own clergy and people, siding with Moscow like obedient slaves. The fall from grace, from the moral high ground, has been great. But, as ever, a fall is always preceded by pride and it was the towering pride of the pharisees that destroyed ROCOR.

The refusal to help build Local Churches, to live in the here and now, thus losing generations of young people who found it all so alien, is in defiance of the Dogma of the Incarnation. The rejection of the implications of that Dogma has been an open invitation to cultivate phariseeism, sectarianism and Californian-style cultishness. And that is precisely how it has ended up: a right-wing, Protestant-style sect, like so many others in the USA, only with the folklore of exotic, purposely untranslated words to mystify the uneducated, with vestments, ritual and incense.

It is also hypocritical because today the language of the New York Synod is English. Most of its bishops cannot speak Russian correctly or grammatically. It grates on the ears of real Russians. In conversation they break into English as soon as possible. Thus, we have a pretend-Russian Church. Why not be honest and co-operate with other Orthodox locally and help build up new Local Churches? Instead of that, ROCOR has pridefully said that it is better than others, superior to them, whom it despises.

It has also been uncanonically stealing priests from Constantinople and uncanonically ‘defrocking’ pastors and even attempting to close down the communities of the canonically-minded, who with integrity object to ROCOR’s uncanonical and schismatic activities, as well as to ROCOR’s illegal attempts to seize property. (This is exactly what the present regime in Kiev is doing to canonical churches in the Ukraine, seizing them in order to close them down. Nobody will go to the seized and uncanonical churches. So that is the same situation as here).

As a result, other Local Churches are, quite rightly, refusing to concelebrate with this new ROCOR. In Europe, ROCOR is not even in communion with the MP’s own very small Parisian Archdiocese of Western Europe. It is sheer hypocrisy.

Q: But isn’t the MP also corrupt, perhaps even more so?

A: Individuals in both parts of the Russian Church have been corrupted by power and money. In the MP it is only worse because it has access to greater temptations – more power and more money. That is why all the mini-oligarchs now face the same chastisement – the war in the Ukraine. This has for ever divided both parts of the Russian Church. The Russian Church is no longer an agent of unity between Russia and the Ukraine, but an agent of division.

Most Orthodox no longer want to go to Russian churches. The Cathedral they built in Paris ten years ago for 50 million euros is virtually empty, the oligarchs gone, the local people rejected, no parish community has been formed. The same in the Cathedral in Nice, where they spent 20 million euros on restoration. They have all put their petty nationalism and ritualism above Christ. The fact that they can have a war with each other shows how low the spiritual level is in both countries. I have seen this coming over the last fifteen years on frequent visits to Russia and the Ukraine, as well as here. Golden or blue cupolas, gold decorations, colourful frescoes, but empty churches. No pastors, and so no parishes, just priests carrying out rituals.

Q: When did the situation for ROCOR change?

A: I think the turning-point here came in 2018. That was the beginning of the end. The leader of ROCOR, the meek and weak Metr Hilarion, became prey to dementia and cancer. Others around him, lacking the traditional Orthodox Christian spirit, read and signed his letters in his place and he had no idea what was going on behind his back.

Q: And in the MP?

A: In the MP the weight of careerists hit a tipping-point around the same time too, in about 2018, having, just like ROCOR, also failed to drain its swamp. The results: lack of prayer, the refusal to take the sacraments, churches like railway stations with people going in and coming out, the lack of any parish communities, the need for paid choirs (or else there will be no-one to sing) and no sense of belonging. Superficiality and folklore, passed down from great-grandparents. Money, money, money. No wonder so many Russian Orthodox have become Protestants, especially in the Ukraine and in the West. In the Ukraine it is said that up to 18% are Evangelicals. Outside San Francisco there is a huge Russian Protestant/Pentecostal church. In London, UK, too.

All of this is the result of almost total pastoral failure, which has brought with it the persecution of the pastors who do exist. There are clergy, whether MP or ROCOR, who are clergy simply because it is a career and they would fail or have failed in a secular career. The careerists are notable for their ‘Popeness’, their narcissism and total lack of love. They are heartless. Some of them are not even believers, let alone were pious laypeople before ordination.

Now they are paying the price. How did they think they could ever get away with it? The only solution is repentance. Because otherwise: ‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord’ (Rom. 12: 19). And that vengeance is terrible, as we can already see in the Ukraine and it is not finished yet. Once you cut yourself off from God and commit blasphemy, like these careerists have, you have no more spiritual protection from the demons.

Q: How do you feel about having left the Russian Church after nearly 50 years?

A: I think we all feel the same – we feel a huge sense of relief. We got off the Titanic eight days before it hit the Ukrainian iceberg. We left a nightmare, which has become far worse since last February. We got out just in time and feel sorry for those who did not leave then. We were on the last flight out of Kabul. That was Divine Providence for us. But we still hope that good can come out of evil. We await the great cleansing of the Russian Church and so its re-formation, reconfiguration and restructuring. The old is completely compromised; they decided to follow the money instead of following the saints. The Russian Church has to return to being a Church of the Saints, of the New Martyrs. Otherwise it has no reason to exist, except as a money-making business organisation, if you consider that that is a reason to exist.

Today, more and more are coming to us, refugees from the Russian Church, Russians and Ukrainians, who put Christ above their passports. They are all disgusted with what is happening there. So we have become an oasis for the refugees from the very real shipwreck that is the Russian Church today.

Is There any Future for the Russian Orthodox Church in the Western World?

Foreword: The Wages of Sin Are Death

In the old days, the hierarchy of the Persecuted Church inside the Soviet Union (called the Moscow Patriarchate) was held hostage by compromises with militant atheism, whereas the Persecuted Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) was the surviving free remnant of Russian Orthodoxy, largely clean of the stains of either form of atheism, both Communist and the perhaps even worse Capitalist atheism. Since 2007, when the two parts of the Russian Church linked together, their potential to transform themselves into one worldwide missionary Church has continually been pointed out. But also, again and again, people warned of the dangerous temptations of money and power, which could poison them both.

The last four years in particular have seen that poison spread very, very rapidly. And so, very sadly, their potential has not been realised and both have fallen to the temptations of Mammon. The heritage of St Seraphim of Sarov, St John of Kronstadt and St John of Shanghai have alike been falsely accused, put on trial once more and unjustly condemned. In reality, however, only those who have carried out these uncanonical acts have been condemned, or rather have condemned themselves. As a result of these grave sins, spiritual crimes, the faithful of the Church have been deprived of grace and are, literally, at war. And the blood spilt divides them cruelly. Once more the Russian Church has lost its freedom to the State, as before the Revolution, so after the Revolution, so also today.

The dead hand of the State is, as always, killing spiritual life, reducing all to a mere right-wing, State-controlled Protestant denomination with rituals. Bureaucratisation, centralisation and politicisation mean that many have once more put the State above Christ and harshly punish all who witness to Christ. Protocols above the Holy Spirit! When, long before the Revolution, St Seraphim was asked why Russia would fall, he answered that it was because Orthodox no longer kept the fasts, including Wednesdays and Fridays. For St John of Kronstadt, who prophesied the consequences of the imminent Revolution in detail, it was the refusal to prepare for and take communion, reinforced by the clericalist hypocrisy opposed to frequent communion, scandalously depriving the people of the Body and Blood of Christ.

For St John of Shanghai and Western Europe, the Ukrainian Saint who after the Revolution lived all over the world, hounded and put on trial in San Francisco by pharisaical Statist bishops, even though they had no State, and who so hastened his repose, it was the ethnically-based refusal of the racist ghetto to tell the Non-Orthodox world about Christ which was destroying Church life. Today’s disastrous and tragic war in the Ukraine illustrates the consequences. All are being chastised in the Russian Church for their sin of not loving one another. Here are the consequences of sin – lack of love and so war. Where in the Gospel does it say that we should destroy or close churches and kill each other? The wages of sin are indeed death, both spiritual and physical death.

Introduction: The Conflict in the Ukraine

After nine months of its present and second phase, the conflict in the Ukraine is about to enter a third and far more intense phase. So far it has largely been fought between Russian-backed Ukrainian militias with their Chechen and contracted allies and the Western-backed Kiev Army with their NATO training and immense amounts of arms and tens of thousands of Polish troops and mercenaries, dressed in Ukrainian uniforms. Over 100,000 have been killed and 400,000 injured, just on the Kiev/NATO side, and at least another 10,000 killed and 40,000 injured on the other side. Millions of young men have fled the Ukraine to avoid conscription and almost certain death or mutilation. Now the actual Russian Army is preparing to enter the fray with its winter campaign. There is going to be a real war.

The Ever-Smaller Russian Church in the West

As a result of the first phase, the Western elite’s choice between February 2014 and February 2022 to take over, arm and train the Kiev forces, nearly 14,000 Ukrainians were massacred in the Eastern Ukraine by Nazi elements from Kiev and the rest of the population were told to leave. As a result of the second phase since February 2022 and the ensuing sanctions, it is clear that in the future only very few Russian Orthodox from Russia will be allowed to settle in the Western world. In the Ukraine Ukrainians refuse to attend churches where the Russian Patriarch’s name is mentioned. Like them, very, very few of the, for the moment, 3.5 million newly-arrived Ukrainians in Western Europe, unlike the Orthodox among the 6 million Ukrainians who have been forced to flee to Russia since 2014, wish to attend Russian churches.

During the Cold War, when citizens of the USSR were also not allowed to settle in the West, Russian Orthodox clergy, like those in the tiny Moscow Patriarchal Sourozh Diocese in England, run by the late Metropolitan Antony Bloom, turned their attentions to missionary work, to bring Orthodoxy to the native people. They had to attract local people into the Diocese simply in order for their group to survive. This too is now not an option, for a free Church no longer exists. The old freedom has gone. Missionary work is being stopped and even hounded by harsh and compassionless ritualists and bureaucrats, who take pleasure in trying to steal and then close the most popular churches. Today, no Western people are attracted to the politicised, centralised and bureaucratised Russian Orthodox Church, which appears to persecute its own faithful openly and quite shamelessly, on the internet for the whole world to see. And even if people were attracted to such, would they be allowed to join it?

Russian Orthodox churches under the Russian Patriarch are now banned in much of the Ukraine and completely in Latvia, and perhaps soon in Lithuania and Estonia, where government interference in Church matters is becoming ever more aggressive. In the UK and the USA all Russian bishops from Russia are banned and they are now in exile. Their churches have no bishop. In the UK, USA and Canada you are not allowed to belong to the Russian Orthodox church if you work for the local ‘security services’. In addition, the Russian Patriarch is physically banned by personal sanction from the UK, as also from Lithuania and Canada. It is also very difficult to obtain insurance for Russian church buildings in the UK. And without insurance, you cannot legally operate.

Over fifty years ago, at the height of the Cold War, a way out for Russian Orthodox who were long settled in Northern America was found. This was in the ideological heart of the then Cold War. This took the form of autocephaly (full independence), given to them in the form of a new Local Church, the ‘OCA’ (Orthodox Church in America). Thus, they had their own Church, independent of any political or other connection with the Russian Church in Moscow, which was then held hostage by the Soviet regime. But today, with unheard-of Soviet-style centralisation, no such autocephaly is being given to Russian Orthodox in Western countries. The results are ever smaller churches, as there is no possibility of doing missionary work: the centralised, ethnic Russian authorities will not allow it. They do not want ‘foreigners’ in their Church. The Russian Church in the Western world is closing down, or rather, closing itself down and being closed down.

Once the Russian Orthodox Church was rightly seen as the Persecuted Church, the Church of the New Martyrs and Confessors. It was the bearer of the multinational ideal of Holy Rus. As such it attracted sympathy, prayer and members. The faithful wanted to stand together with the New Martyrs and Confessors. However, today, as a result of careerist power structures many see the Russian Orthodox Church as a single Persecuting ‘Church’.

Thus, many see it as the secular and political ideology of a ‘Church-Business’. Their ‘executives’, or ‘effective managers’, scandalously task their clergy with extracting as much money as possible from the faithful. Complaints are swept under the carpet and whistle-blowers absurdly and uncanonically punished. Naturally, principled clergy and faithful refuse to take part in this and have gone into exile. Loyal to the old Russian Church, its martyrs, saints and its spiritual values, they have left because of their principled refusal to accept the ideology of a money-making ‘Church-Business’, which is the moral low ground, where Caiaphas and Judas live.

Others left for a totally different reason – they were political disciples of the liberal Parisian Metr Antony Bloom, as in, for example, the Netherlands and Italy, where they have gone to Constantinople, and in Spain. (In the 1970s Metr Antony Bloom was himself demoted by the Moscow Patriarchate for his support of Solzhenitsyn, which led him to requesting admission into ROCOR. That was turned down by ROCOR, as he was considered to be a liberal, among other things).

In any case, the new structures, concerned with careerist power politics and money, the sin of Judas, no longer seem to represent the old Russian Orthodox Church of the New Martyrs and Confessors, which we knew and loved. Faithful clergy and people always belonged to it in the past, spiritually belong to it now, and spiritually will always belong to it in the future.

Three Paths

When you are cut off, because the central Church structure in another country has temporarily been taken captive by a Non-Orthodox ideology, whichever it may be, and there is no chance of independence or autocephaly from that Centre, you can take one of two secular paths:

You can go outwards to the secular left, taking the path of new calendarism, ecumenism, liberalism and modernism, assimilating into the secular world and disappearing into it. This is happening now. However, this wholly outward-looking path sooner or later leads to assimilation and disappearance into the woke sects of liberal pseudo-intellectuals. So they die out.

Or you can go inwards to the secular right, taking the path of old calendarism, extreme conservatism, ‘catacombism’ and ghettoism, cutting yourself off from all others and so becoming disembodied. However, this wholly inward-looking path sooner or later leads to Protestant-style right-wing sects of apocalyptic judgemental pharisees. So they die out.

We have personally lived through and seen both these above tragic paths and seen specifically various different parts of the Russian Church of the émigré past of two generations gradually disappear almost completely into both these black holes. Thus, we witnessed the agonising suicidal deaths of the groups that took those paths. Just as we did not go there then, we are hardly going to go there now. Suicide is not part of our mentality. We prefer life to death.

The Third Way

There is another path, a third way. If you wish to survive as a Church, you must follow this path. This is the path of the saints of all the Local Churches, ancient and modern, of the whole Church. This is the path of the Church which is One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic. These four words stand for the Four Pillars of the Church, the Martyrs, the Confessors, the real Monastics and the real Pastors:

The Church is One because of the Unity of her Martyrs. The Church is Holy because of the Holiness of her Confessors. The Church is Catholic because of the Catholicity of her real Monastics. The Church is Apostolic because of the Apostolicity of her real Pastors. These are the Four Pillars of the Church on Earth, as in Heaven. We follow them.

If you live in the Western world and you refuse either of the two secular paths and follow this third path, you will inevitably find yourself developing into part of a new Local Church. As the saints have no nationality, no passport, you will find yourself in a multinational parish and network of parishes, an international Deanery and even Diocese. You will find the children of immigrants turning to you, for they no longer identify as citizens of the countries which their parents emigrated from, but as local and speaking the local language. This is a foundation stone of a new Local Church. For we look forwards to local enrootment, not backwards to the past and dependence on the elsewhere. Local Churches define and embody the Dogma of the Incarnation and also the Teaching of the Holy Spirit, which means the spreading and enrootment of the Church to countries where once it was not.

And if you are not allowed to take the path of the saints, which is the only future for the Russian Orthodox Church in the Western world, what do you do? You leave it and take refuge in the jurisdiction of, and under the canonical protection of, another Local Church until new times. This is called Divine Providence, which is the salvation of the Holy Spirit and keeps the flame of hope alive.

Conclusion: A Future?

Is there any future for the Russian Orthodox Church in the Western world? Yes, there is, but only for the Russian Orthodox Church of the New Martyrs and New Confessors, the Church of the saints and the fools for Christ, the Church of the ignored Spirit-driven prophets and the persecuted elders, and their multinational ideal of Holy Rus and charismatic universal missionary work. This was witnessed to by the Three Saints of the Russian Emigration, St Jonah of Hankou, St Seraphim of Boguchar and St John of Shanghai. Thus, there is a future, but only for the authentic Russian Orthodox Church, the Church of the Saints of God, of the Martyrs, the Confessors, the real Monastics and the real Pastors. The Holy Spirit is greater than all the narrowness and nasty politics of mere men. Victory awaits the faithful for their patience.

On the Sadness of Mammon: Whatever Happened to the Russian Orthodox Church? (1992-2022)

Thirty years have gone by since Communism fell and the Russian Orthodox Church began to revive on a mass level. But over the last three or four years, before the events in the Ukraine, more and more have become disgusted with the behaviour of some in the Russian Orthodox episcopate, both in the Moscow Patriarchate (MP), based in the former Soviet Union, and in the émigré Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR), based in New York. When did this decadence among the Russian episcopate begin?

The historically-minded would go back to the Judaisers of Skhariya in fifteenth century Russia, or to the Old Ritualist schism in the seventeenth century, yet others to Peter I and the German Catherine II (both dubbed by Westernisers ‘the Great’). In any case, the decadence certainly began well before 1917 and there are probably very few nowadays who still believe the old ‘lightswitch’ myths of the children of émigrés about how everything was perfect before 1917 and suddenly everything was awful afterwards. Revolutions do not happen without a cause.

A reading of the early volumes of the works of the incredibly frank Metr Antony (Khrapovitsky) (+ 1936) or of ‘The Russian Ideology’ by St Seraphim of Boguchar (Sofia) (+ 1950), describing the deviations of a State Church, is enough to see through that nonsense. As the ever-memorable Archbishop Antony of Geneva used to point out to us with a shrug of his shoulders: ‘They complain about the Russian bishops inside Russia who have swish black cars. Well, before the Revolution they had swish black carriages with swish black horses’.

However, none of the above distant historical references explain, let alone justify, what is going on today, with calls to ‘cancel’ (1) scandalous Russian Orthodox bishops, both in the Moscow Patriarchate and in its ROCOR subsidiary, for whom everything is wonderful. We are talking about the here and now. As one recent correspondent has put it: ‘I really think this is the reason why Orthodoxy is in such a mess today, it comes from the top down. Nowadays bishops have no humility, they’re full of pride and have a never-ending love of luxury which is corrupting them. Bishops in the MP and ROCOR live in a far more luxurious way them the vast majority of their parishioners and the worst thing is they think it’s normal.’

We were used to the old decadence of the Patriarchate of Constantinople: its careerist bishops, usually homosexuals, ordaining their boyfriend who then turned alcoholic, occasionally pedophiles, the womanisers with their mistress(es), the amassing of money for a villa in Greece, getting their teeth whitened in Turkey so they could look even more like the Hollywood stars they adore. But then exactly the selfsame disease spread to the Russian Church. What is the difference?

We can remember Metropolitan Philaret Denysenko of Kiev who in the 1970s (!) built himself a palace with the help of his Communist friends. The fact that he was married and had two children bothered no-one: in Moscow they turned a blind eye to married bishops – there were a lot of them then (as there are today, including in Western Europe), with at least one in the then ROCOR. The only problem was that Denysenko, like all careerists, wanted to be the Patriarch and then, like so many Communists, in 1992 turned overnight into a nationalist in the hope of achieving his aim (2). So he created a schism. Understandably, Moscow turned against him then. You could turn a blind eye to his moral weakness and his pickpocketing of money from the Church till, but not to schism. He is now defrocked, a shame, but also one who makes you shudder.

I remember Dmitry, an old émigré of the second generation (those nostalgic for something they had never known were always the worst – the real emigres, adults before the Revolution, knew all about what it had really been like and all the scandals). He told me in 2005 that ROCOR could not possibly be linked to the Moscow Patriarchate because that would be like a glass of pure water being mixed with a glass of dirty water. Pure phariseeism. I mentioned the word ‘Grabbe’ to him. Not the CIA and freemason father George/Gregory or Nasty News Nastia, but the notorious womanising son (3), Antony, who in ROCOR was called ‘the six-million dollar man’. That, after all, is how much he had made by selling Russian Church property in the Holy Land to the Jews. Poor old Dmitry pretended to know nothing about it. But he did, just as he knew about the alcoholic ROCOR protodeacon, the defrocked ROCOR priest, the womanising ROCOR priest who stole tens of thousands from his church and was awarded for it all by his naïve (or not so naïve?) archbishop. No, Dmitry, there were two glasses of dirty water.

Inside Russia, some blame the 250 bishops consecrated over the last 14 years by Patriarch Kyrill, too many of whom were clearly unworthy. Yet the search for more bishops was necessary. True, too many of them were not men of prayer, just ‘effective managers’ (code for ‘fundraising bureaucrats’) and they turned out to be just homosexuals and careerists (often one and the same, as among the Greeks), on the thrones of whose vacant souls sat the mocking satan. But despite even their numbers, the Russian Church still needs to find another 1,000 bishops, build another 100,000 churches and real Christian communities (rather than trying to persecute them and close them down) and find another 100,000 priests (rather than expelling them to other Local Churches), before it can say that it has really revived. The path for them has barely begun, as I have said time and time again.

Sadly, since the fall of Communism and the USSR in December 1991, many have fallen by the wayside in Russia. First there were the liberals like Kuraev, who adored Bulgakov, Schmemann and Meyendorff etc more than the saints. Then there were the ‘Orthodox Stalinists’, yesterday’s left-wing Bolsheviks who became today’s right-wing nationalists, under the cloak of Orthodoxy (2). These extremes all lead nowhere. The liberal Kuraev is defrocked, just as the anti-Semitic, right-wing ‘worshipper of Tsar as God’ Sergei Romanov from the Urals Convent. I met them both.

But perhaps the worst cases are in the Russian emigration. How we recall a very naïve young man from the ex-USSR seeing in Europe in the 1990s an elderly emigre bishop sweeping the floor of his church. He blurted out: ‘Clearly, he is a saint’. What nonsense. All émigré bishops and priests swept (and some of us still sweep) the floors of our churches. Are we all saints then?! We well remember the old school, of all jurisdictions: Archbishop George Tarasov in Paris, the widowed World War One pilot who became a bishop and had no clothes to wear; Archbishop Seraphim (Dulgov), the ROCOR bishop who lived in poverty and was happy so; Metropolitan Benjamin (Fedchenkov), whose only food was that given to him by his few parishioners and who slept on a concrete floor because he had given his bed to a beggar. Let me assure you that all this was completely normal. We never thought of ourselves as saints. We were, and are, simply confessing Orthodox Christians. It is you who are abnormal, which is why we are calling you to shame and repentance now.

And then in recent years there have come to Europe new ‘princes of the Church’, as they call themselves. There were a young bishop whose first act was to buy himself a fancy car and another even younger one, who refused to live next to his church and instead rented a whole very expensive house miles away, near a foreign embassy, from where he took his orders as their asset, so depriving a married priest of a salary! Both then tried to grab properties and cash, bullying like racketeering Chicago gangsters. Both discredited themselves immediately among their flocks, though they were lauded by their fellow-bishops. They convinced no-one and their dioceses are visibly and actually quite rapidly contracting as a direct result. But they say that everything is wonderful. Because they cannot see the elephants in the room. Themselves.

The curse of today’s Russian Orthodoxy, MP and ROCOR, is undoubtedly love of money. And this is not because ROCOR has been corrupted by the money of the MP. The MP never gave ROCOR a penny. You could perhaps argue just the opposite: ROCOR corrupted the MP with its American love of money. Already fifty years ago, the new ROCOR celibate priests sent to Europe in the 70s and 80s were not like the old ones, the authentic poor monks and probable saints. Fr George Sheremetiev (+ 1971) warned us even then of ‘the American disease’ coming to ROCOR. The new ones all wanted to live like the wealthy Americans they already were or else wanted to be. One turned out to be a pedophile, others were long ago defrocked. On the other hand, in 2018 I met a priest in Russia, who had been through the Americanisation of Russia in the 1990s, who boasted that he had 15 kilos of gold inside the magnificent church he had built. I told him to sell it and give it to the poor. ‘In England we use gold paint. That’s good enough for us’.

We know all their stories and all their names, from the photos with the ostrich feathers down. (You know who you are). But as St Paisios the Athonite told me in 1979: ‘When you see the excrement of wild animals on a path between monasteries, you gather it together and throw it away into the bushes, so that the next passer-by does not walk in it and spread it around’. As with the excrement of wild animals, so we do with the scandals of bishops.

I remember that same old son of an émigré, Dmitry, who told me that we in ROCOR could not possibly concelebrate with the corrupt of the Moscow Patriarchate. I quietly reminded him that all the New Martyrs belonged to the Moscow Patriarchate, for there were none in ROCOR, and that we belonged to the New Martyrs. He had no answer. We Orthodox belong to the Persecuted Church, not to the Persecuting Church and we are not afraid, for as it is written:

This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, inhuman, implacable, slanderers, incontinent, fierce, haters of the good, traitors, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God. Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof. From such turn away…But they will not get very far: for their folly shall be made plain to all.

Prophecies of Paul the Apostle, 2 Timothy 3, 1-5, 9

And if you are disheartened by all this, know that we are still here, despite all the mud they have slung at us and which has stuck only to them. And then read the prophecies from outside Russia and from inside Russia:

The Lord has already chosen the future Tsar. He will be a man of fiery faith, having the mind of a genius and a will of iron. First of all, he will introduce order into the Orthodox Church, removing all the untrue, heretical and lukewarm hierarchs. And many, very many – with few exceptions, all – will be deposed, and new, true, unshakeable hierarchs will take their place.

Archbishop Theophan of Poltava, in exile in France (+ 1940)

The bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church will fall away from the truth of the Orthodox Faith, they will not believe in the prophecies of the resurrection of Russia. To reprove them, St Seraphim of Sarov will be raised from the dead. He will reprove the clergy for their treachery and betrayal and will preach repentance to the whole world.

Blessed Pelagia of Ryazan (+ 1968)

Judgement Day is coming.

Notes:

In the same way as the recent ‘cancelling’ of the scandalous Metr Joseph of the Antiochian Archdiocese in the USA has already led to his ‘retirement’.
Communists who see that they have lost always then play the nationalist card, as in Russia, the Ukraine, Poland, Yugoslavia etc. And in China. The overnight techniques are the same, as are the results. The biggest Nazis in today’s Ukraine were the biggest Communists thirty years ago. Denysenko is but one example.
The old ROCOR quip on father and son clerics has always been: ‘Yes, I saw the father and the son, only I didn’t see the Holy Spirit’.

Will the Russian Orthodox Church Be Forbidden in Western Countries?

At the Peace Forum in Rome on 23 October, President Macron of France spoke in front of an audience of many Church leaders, including Metr Antony (Sevriuk), reckoned to be the No 2 of the Moscow Patriarchate. The President stated that the Russian Orthodox Church (both the Moscow Patriarchate and ROCOR) is manipulated by the Russian State.

https://www.cath.ch/newsf/selon-e-macron-la-religion-orthodoxe-est-manipulee-par-la-russie/

This was said in front of many other Orthodox clergy, including our friends from the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church and our own Metropolitan Joseph (Pop) of the Romanian Orthodox Church, whose Autonomous Metropolia numbers 4 million Orthodox in Western Europe. (This makes him the bishop with by far the largest Orthodox flock in Western Europe, far larger than the total flock of many Local Orthodox Churches). Is the Russian Orthodox Church manipulated by the Russian State, as President Macron claimed? Whether it is true or not is irrelevant, the fact is that this is the Western Establishment perception – and has long been. For them the Russian Orthodox Church is no more independent of the Russian State than the Church of England is from the British government, whose new and entirely expected Hindu Prime Minister will nominate all its bishops.

The only exception to this possibly true claim of subservience to the Russian State is the small but much-persecuted Russian Orthodox Western European Archdiocese under Metropolitan Jean of Dubna. There clergy are allowed to commemorate or not the Russian Orthodox Patriarch. The Archdiocese is where we were not allowed to stay by Metropolitan Antony (Sevriuk). Thus, highly providentially, we were safely received into the above-mentioned Romanian Patriarchal Metropolia of Western and Southern Europe eight days before the Special Military Operation in the Ukraine began on 24 February 2022.

Meanwhile, the Russian Orthodox Patriarch has been banned from visiting his flock in four countries through a personal ‘sanction’. These countries are the Ukraine, Canada, the UK and Lithuania. As well as this, the Russian Church has had to withdraw its bishops from Northern America (the USA and Canada) and from the UK. Bishopless churches are churches that will die out. What is to be done? You can sit it all out and wait till the war in the Ukraine is over. This appears to be the policy of many. However, that does not solve the pastoral problems in the here and now or the problems in the future, which will be even greater.

The Russian Orthodox Faith first came under persecution in the Ukraine in 2018, when the CIA with the help of Poroshenko and certain Greek Orthodox individuals who set up an uncanonical Church, so that Ukrainian Orthodox would not belong to the Russian Orthodox Church. Few fell for this trick and the new ‘Church’ failed. This year the canonical Church in the Ukraine has come under even greater persecution and was forced to declare itself ‘fully independent’ of Moscow. Of its 12,000 churches, 2,000 have been taken away from it by force and nearly all of them now stand locked and empty. The US-sponsored Ukrainian nationalist persecution resembles very closely that of the Bolsheviks.

Only recently a curious though different fate has befallen the Russian Orthodox Church in Latvia, which was declared independent by the Latvian government. It has no choice other than to accept this imposed independence. It looks as though the same is about to happen in Lithuania and Estonia. However, we note that the Russian-founded Orthodox Churches in Poland, the Czech Lands and Slovakia, and in the USA (the OCA) are not suffering from any persecution from their States because they are associated with the Russian Orthodox Church. Why? Because they are all ‘Autocephalous’, i.e. canonically fully independent.

Surely this is the way out for the whole of the Russian Church, which is not inside the Russian Federation and Belarus? In any case, the difference between Orthodoxy and Papism is surely that we do not have a Pope, that we do not claim some sort of universal jurisdiction. When a Local Church sets up a mission in another country or a country becomes politically independent from the one where the Local Church is based, and that mission is successful, inevitably, that country ends up having its own Local Church. And the new Local Church is independent of political pressure from foreign governments (and from its own government).

A Patriarch is not a Pope. We ignore any ‘Eastern Papist’ temptations or claims of any Patriarchate (e.g. the deliberate misinterpretation of Canon 28 of Chalcedon, for instance). We know that the hubris of power is always punished. We do not confess any universal jurisdiction, but missionary autocephalies, as in the Local Churches of Rome, Corinth, Galatia, Ephesus, Philippi, Colossae and Thessalonica. Let us be frank: There is room for very many to stand on the moral high ground in the Orthodox Church. If some want to compromise themselves politically or have little integrity or conscience and do not wish to stand there, that is not our business. We shall continue to stand there, waiting for others to join us, whatever the stones they cast at us.

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Category Archives: Russian Church

Heresies, Schisms, Divisions and the Consequences of the Ukrainian Tragedy

News from Lithuania

A Message from a Churchman

The Patriarchate of New Jerusalem and All Rus

Divisions of the Russian Orthodox Church

A Life for the Tsar: Gregory Efimovich Rasputin-Novy (1869 – 1916)

Q and A on the Shipwreck of the Russian Orthodox Church, 1 December 2022: Follow the Money or Follow the Saints

Is There any Future for the Russian Orthodox Church in the Western World?

On the Sadness of Mammon: Whatever Happened to the Russian Orthodox Church? (1992-2022)

Will the Russian Orthodox Church Be Forbidden in Western Countries?