Category Archives: Europe

From Recent Correspondence and Conversations – March 2013

Q: What dangers should those new to the Church especially try to avoid?

A: There are many dangers, just as many as for those of us who are not new to the Church, but the dangers are different ones. Those new to the Church are neophytes and that psychology, common to neophytes of all nationalities and in all religions, is particular.

For instance, I remember about 30 years ago meeting a young Irish woman who had converted to Judaism on marrying a Jew. She had taken up her new religion with all the zeal that you used to associate with Irish Catholicism. She was completely over the top, did not use birth control, wore rather strange clothes, had to eat kosher food, was incredibly pro-Israeli, read a lot etc. Her husband, who was a real Jew, could not have cared a less about any of this and had probably never read a book about Judaism in his life. She was the one who imposed Shabbat on him. In other words, there was no theology there, just the obsessive psychology of insecurity – she felt she had to prove herself by being more Jewish than the Jews. I suspect it all had to do with competition with her mother-in-law, rather than her husband.

Q: What can this type of neophyte insecurity lead to?

A: To extremes – and I think, essentially, the neophyte, like all of us, should avoid extremes. I would take as an example the late French convert, Olivier Clement. In his youth, he tried to be more Russian than the Russians, busying himself with wearing ‘Russian’ clothes and other externals and reading a lot, which he thought would make him Orthodox. Realising that this was absurd, he then went to the other extreme and began writing against the Russian Church, adopting semi-Catholic views and even taking communion in the Catholic Church. These same convert extremes can be seen in other personalities who in their youth were over-zealous, then became over-lax. In this country, for instance, I can think of cases of going from being more Greek than the Greeks to being more Anglican than the Anglicans

Q: How can you fight against such temptations?

A: Keeping a sense of reality. For example, this tendency to a lack of balance is greatly reinforced among intellectuals who do not have their feet on the ground in parish life, so that they have no living examples before them. The Church is not about reading, but about experience of real life. This is why mixed parishes with mixed languages are so vital. Little convert middle-class hothouses, passing themselves off as ‘Orthodox’, or even ‘more Orthodox than the Orthodox’, often trying to impose their own strange or eccentric agendas on the Church and always collapse.

In such groups ‘foreigners’ and ‘foreign languages’ are usually despised or made to feel not at home. Such inward-looking communities are just as much ethnic, ‘phyletist’ ghettos as immigrant or exile groups in big cities – but with a difference. Those groups are at least authentic, but the neophyte groups are pretending or playing, starting ‘beard competitions’, so beloved of ex-Anglicans, for example. This is because they have no roots in Orthodox reality, often, sadly, fleeing that reality. You really either have to get on the Orthodox train or else get off the tracks. If you do not, you will be run over – and it will be your own fault.

Q: Are there other consequences of such insecurity?

A: Yes, judgementalism. Censorious convert conversations like ‘this bishop does that’, or ‘that priest smokes’, or ‘there is a scandal there, so I cannot belong to that Local Church’ always display the same negativity. For example, I know a priest of the Antiochian jurisdiction who gives communion to anyone, Orthodox or not. Does that mean that I am not in communion with his Patriarch or all the many serious bishops and priests of his Church? Of course, I am.

Such conversations are very depressing, because they do not focus on reality, but only on the negative. Did the Apostles focus on Judas? No. So we too should focus on the 100 parishes where life is normal or even thriving and forget the one where there is some sort of scandal. This is not even a case of seeing a half-full glass as half-empty, this is a case of seeing a 99% full glass as 99% empty. The demon plays with our sense of reality and, sowing illusions in our minds, creates depressions, schisms and lapses. We do not lapse because of some scandal; a scandal should bring us zeal. ‘There but for the grace of God go I’, is what we should be saying. That is what the Apostles did after Judas. They had no illusions, but they also rejoiced in the Faith.

Q: What can we do to counter such thoughts?

A: Depression comes from pride. Be humble. Life is beautiful – God made it, not death. We should not expect others to be saints, when we ourselves are not saints. We should condemn only ourselves, others we should always find excuses for. We are responsible only for saving our own soul. Stop interfering, looking at your neighbour. Until we have learned this, we are not Christians, we are only sources of pride, for whom nothing is ever good enough. This is where neophyte idealism is dangerous. As they say: ‘If the grass is greener on the other side, start watering your own side’. We must stay with the mainstream and flee the fringes and margins around the Church. Of course, if we ourselves are asked to compromise, that is a different matter. But that is rare.

Q: How do we avoid compromising ourselves in such cases?

A: I remember a priest at a Diocesan Pastoral Conference in Frankfurt some years ago, asking what would happen when ROCOR and the Patriarchate of Moscow were in communion again, because he knew a particular Patriarchal priest who did totally uncanonical things and the priest who asked the question did not want to concelebrate with him. Archbishop Mark answered very simply and I think with great surprise at the strange question: ‘Then do not invite him to your parish. Then you will not have to concelebrate with him’. It is the same with those who use the Catholic calendar. We have no obligation to go to their parishes and concelebrate with them. But they are welcome to concelebrate with us and we invite them to. In that way they return to the calendar that the Church uses, for a day at least.

An example is from the contemporary OCA, where some ordinary Orthodox are at last revolting against certain converts who have tried to impose Evangelical-style right-wing censoriousness on them. Rooted Orthodox do not want hothouse politics and pseudo-Orthodoxy, they want real-world tolerance. But they do not want lax practice either, which is the other side of the extremist coin. They have suffered from this for over forty years and that has led to the present crisis in the OCA, which means that it has been isolated from World Orthodoxy and few concelebrate with it, as we saw at the recent enthronement of Patriarch John of Antioch.

With all its financial and moral scandals the OCA is suffering from the sort of problems that the Roman Catholics are suffering from – and for the same reason – loss of faith. But that does not mean that everyone there is involved. That is why we must pray for it especially now. It is always a noisy minority that compromises the outward life of the Church. But the angels are still here, in spite of us. Never forget that. We serve God, not man. The Church is God’s, not ours. As for us, today we are here, tomorrow we are gone, but the gates of hell will not prevail. The Church does not need us, we need the Church.

Q: Where can Russian Orthodox in the West go for training at seminary? Would you recommend the new seminary in Paris?

A: Definitely not Paris. It has failed to meet our hopes on all counts and is notoriously ecumenist, as everyone knows and as we have told the authorities in Moscow face to face. It is amazing to us that in Moscow they still naively think in pre-Revolutionary categories, that the Catholic Church is utterly serious and is not subject to the Protestant-style freemasonry, homosexuality and pedophilia that entered it massively after the Americanisation of the Second Vatican Council.

In Russia they never went through the 1960s, so in that sense they still largely retain the freshness and also naivety of the 1950s. However, by compromising themselves by fraternising with Catholics, as they do in Paris, they are also compromising themselves with pedophiles. They do not consider this. It is a great shame that in Moscow they still do not listen to us in ROCOR about such matters. We are the Church Outside Russia, we were born here, we live here, we are aware, we talk to Catholics every day as neighbours and we know what goes on there. There are plenty of ordinary, decent Catholics who look to the Orthodox Church to free them from such tyranny and deformations. But be patient, give them time in Moscow and they will learn.

To answer your question about seminary training today: Seek a blessing to go either to Jordanville or else, in certain cases, to the seminary at Sretensky Monastery in Moscow. One day Paris will be cured. It has only just started.

Q: What is our view today of Metropolitan/Patriarch Sergius (Stragorodsky)? In 1930 over 30 bishops rejected administrative submission to Metropolitan Sergius, disputing his compromise with the atheist authorities. Metropolitan Sergius found himself in isolation, face to face with an atheist orgy, that took on a larger and larger scale. Do we still agree with what Fr Seraphim Rose wrote in his book ‘The Catacomb Saints’?

A: I think our view of Metr Sergius today is very much what it always has been. We do not agree with him, but also we do not condemn him – we never went through what he had to go through and were never faced with the choice between martyrdom and compromise. Having said that, it is true, for example, that Fr Seraphim Rose’s book, ‘The Catacomb Saints’, reflects some of the unnecessarily negative polemics of the Cold War 1970s, but that book is still fundamentally right, despite the sharp language used in it sometimes and its strange title.

In Russia today there is still a hangover from the Soviet period and deSovietisation has not run its course completely. It will take another generation for deSovietisation to be completed. For this reason there are still those there who praise Metr Sergius. However, we should not feel superior, in the West we also underwent the censorious and condemnatory, judgemental pharisee attitudes of ‘ColdWarisation’. But I think most have been able to rid themselves of that alien influence quicker than they have in Russia. Those who did not rid themselves of such attitudes have left us.

Q: What do we make of Metr Sergius’ role in rallying Russians during WWII?

A: As for rallying Russians in World War II, it could easily be argued that the Church survived DESPITE Metr Sergius. Stalin realised he could not win the war without the Church. The Nazi attack on the Russian Lands, on the feast day of All the Saints of the Russian Lands, 22 June 1941, was, paradoxically, what freed the Church, not the compromises of Metr Sergius. And from then on, until Stalin’s death and after that, the Church was not decimated as before 1941. True, Stalin and Khrushchev after him did of course close many, many churches which Stalin had allowed to reopen and still sent many to camps and prisons, but there were no longer the mass shootings etc.

We, who never had to go through Sovietisation, should concentrate on the New Martyrs themselves, on the canonised, for example, on the holy Metr Kyrill of Kazan, and not on such divisive and controversial figures as Metr Sergius. I know that in Russia they are already heading the same way and Metr Sergius is being forgotten by the faithful as, if anything, an embarrassing compromiser. Leave him to the dusty tomes of historians. Let us keep our eyes on the saints, not on the non-saints.

Q: Why does the Church of Constantinople use lots of clerical titles? I know of several bishops and even a metropolitan who are only glorified hieromonks. And the titles of protopresbyter and archimandrite are becoming meaningless as they have become so common there.

A; I think it is quite unfair to say that it is only the Patriarchate of Constantinople that gives out such titles so freely. True, the title protopresbyter seems now to be given there to any priest who has a doctorate and archimandrite is rather used as ‘hieromonk’ is used in the Russian Church. On the other hand, in the Russian Church ‘Metropolitan’ is sometimes used in a titular way as ‘Cardinal’ in the Catholic Church and there is a system of awards in the Russian Church that is often abused. So I cannot see that this is any better than in the Patriarchate of Constantinople. Some people are a little vain and like titles and can be bought with them. Sadly, people have their price and in a world where many priests are not paid in money, they can get paid in titles.

Q: As Orthodox what should we think of Eurasianism?

A: There is something called the International Eurasian Movement, which is Russian-based and developed after the fall of Communism in 1991, though on the basis of a pre-Revolutionary movement. On the surface, Eurasianism has links with Orthodoxy, whose emblem is the double-headed eagle, looking east and west. The Church of God, Orthodox Christianity, has the task and mission of uniting the world, east and west, Europe and Asia, in unity in diversity. (This is quite unlike the Vatican sense of unity – inherited also by the Protestants – which allows little diversity and imposes a totalitarian unitary model on all. This we can see in the EU model, which is a secular form of the Vatican model, and in the US model, which is a secular form of the Protestant model. Such people look at the diversity of Orthodoxy and call it disunity! This is only because they are used to such monolithic, totalitarian heterodox styles).

Generally speaking, Eurasianism sees the modern West (not the historic Old West) as having taken a destructive path, especially since the Reformation and especially since the so-called ‘Enlightenment’. Western culture today has been spiritually emptied, it has lost its soul, abandoning its roots in the Christian Orthodox first millennium, decadently reverting to barbarianism. In other words, behind incredible Western economic and technological sophistication, there is spiritual barbarianism, as can be seen in the Western promotion of sodomy and other politically correct but spiritually pernicious views.

Eurasianism sees the future in Russia, not in the West, which in its decadence ever more resembles the Western Roman Empire just before it fell over fifteen centuries ago. Insofar as this is self-evident, we as Orthodox agree with Eurasianism. However, the problem is that Eurasianism is essentially politics, another ism or ideology, not the Church.

Q: Who founded this Eurasian movement?

A: The founder of modern Eurasianism is the Russian Orthodox philosopher Alexander Dugin, who was born in 1962. Typical of the post-Communist generation, at first, in the 1990s, he tried to reconcile Bolshevism or Stalinism with Orthodoxy. In so doing he also got caught up with post-Soviet right-wing nationalist movements like ‘Pamyat’. His Eurasianism developed out of this spiritual impurity. He has since moved on somewhat and begun to free himself, expressing more traditional Orthodox views, though still remaining a nationalist. However, what is written about him on Wikipedia is probably the work of a CIA hack. There is little truth in that.

I met Alexander Dugin at a Conference in London about eight years ago and had a clear impression of him. He is intellectually clever, but still suffers from spiritual confusion. This is why he mixes Orthodoxy with politics of all sorts, though particularly with right-wing views. His closest disciple is a young intellectual called Natella Speranskaya, who heads the Eurasian Youth Movement, but she also suffers in the same way as Dugin. Dugin is linked with the Greek Orthodox intellectual Dimitrios Kitsikis, an elderly geopolitician of the previous generation. Although also a friend of the Orthodox Tradition – Kitsikis wants the Greek Church to return to the Orthodox calendar – he too suffers from spiritual and nationalist confusion and has been closely linked with Maoism!

What is interesting with both these Orthodox thinkers is that they have both been inspired by the father of geopolitics, the Non-Orthodox English geographer Sir Halford John Mackinder. Mackinder called Eurasia (basically Russia and the Orthosphere, or the Orthodox civilisational world), what we call ‘the Centre’, ‘The Heartland’. This is what Kitsikis calls the Intermediate Region and, I suppose, if we use Tolkien’s terminology, we could also call it ‘Middle Earth’.

In other words, there is no doubt that all three geopoliticians, Englishman, Greek and Russian, completely agree that he who controls Russia / Eurasia controls the world. This is why the territory of the Russian Empire, or Soviet Union, or Russian Federation, whatever the name, has been so much attacked down the centuries – because of its geostrategic significance.

Q: What is happening in Syria?

A: I am only an observer. It is difficult for me to say anything. However, I cannot help observing certain public tendencies in US policies since Mr Obama was re-elected last year. Until then his policies seem to have been Republican and Bushite.

First of all, the US right-wing hawk General Petraeus who wanted to invade Syria and perhaps bomb Iran was sacked, having been compromised, and perhaps framed, in an affair. There followed a root and branch change in US foreign personnel. Most notably the hawkish Russophobe Hillary Clinton was replaced as Secretary of State by John Kerry, formerly a personal friend of President Assad of Syria. Clinton had been blamed for the death of the US ambassador in Benghazi in Libya, killed by Islamic terrorists, armed to the teeth with weapons allowed to them by the US. I think that the US administration realised that it had been arming its enemies. This was seen in Mali too, which Islamists had been conquering with weapons stolen as a result of NATO bombing in Libya. I remember the old saying: ‘Do not spit in the sky, it will fall back on your face’.

Then there was the appointment of the new US Defence Secretary, Chuck Hagel, a Vietnam veteran and hero, who called the bankrupting invasion of Iraq one of the greatest blunders in US history. It had completely destabilised the whole region, creating a whole chain of liabilities for the US. This involved Iraq, Iran, Syria, Turkey (where anti-US attacks have taken place), the Kurds, the Jordan, the Lebanon and the money-pit of Israel – the US had lit a fuse on a powder keg and is now trying to extinguish it before it is too late.

Thus, the realisation that many of the foreign mercenaries fighting President Assad’s government in Syria are terrorists seems at last to have come to the US. From what I understand, I have the impression, and it is only an impression, that the US may have realised that the real danger from its point of view is China and that perhaps it had better leave the Middle East to Russia. It cannot fight both at the same time. Even tiny but incredibly wealthy Saudi Arabian and Qatari dictatorships, which financed and armed the tens of thousands of Sunni Islamist mercenaries in Syria, are worried now. The genie was let out of the bottle. It has to be put back. I think only Russia, which has over one million Russian speakers in Israel and influence in Syria, can do this. Someone has to clean up the mess the West has made.

Q: What are we to think of Columbus?

A: I think he was an Italian sailor who got lost at sea, thought he had found India, but in fact had found some Caribbean islands. So he landed in someone else’s country and decided to steal it by massacring and enslaving the inhabitants.

A Fools’ Paradise

And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees.

Lk 3, 9

Election results in Italy have brought political instability and ungovernability. So read the headlines. Of course, some would say that political instability has been the order of the day in Italy since the fall of the Western fragment of the Roman Empire in the year 476. Yet Italy is still there.

More seriously, however, the current political stalemate in Italy has in part been caused by the appearance of a new populist protest party, the ‘Five-Star Movement’, which is fed up at the corruption of the whole political elite, the euro it imposed and the austerity policies of an unelected, German-style, technocrat Prime Minister, imposed by Brussels and the US. No-one should be surprised. The same thing has already happened in many European countries, where many others are also fed up with the democratic deficit of EU-imposed policies, not to mention mass immigration and yet at the same time mass unemployment.

‘A plague on both your houses’ comes from Italy, but it is universal. In France there is the Front National, which under its present leader is breaking the mould of the old identical left-right technocrats, who all come from the same elitist schools. In Greece a rather extreme political protest party called Syriza has moved out of the old and corrupt two-party system of left and right. In Great Britain the Independence Party (UKIP) is upsetting the old two/three party system and its public school boys. The old political mafia of Western Europe, shown to be incompetent by the financial crisis which it directly created but refuses to take responsibility for, is falling.

In Italy, the situation was made all the more complex – and corrupt – by the situation whereby for some fifty years after 1945 the right was kept in power, government after government, by corruption and US dollars, in order to prevent Italy falling to Communism. The corruption was guaranteed by a self-perpetuating elite, kept in power by mythical democracy. The democracy was mythical because the electorates were only ever given a choice between two self-interested and almost identical individuals, who between periodical elections did whatever they wanted, regardless of what the electorates may have wanted.

However, it is unlikely that anti-elite populist protest parties will actually bring a solution, at least not in the long-term. The underlying problem of Western Europe is debt and bankruptcy. For a generation and more, government after government in country after country has avoided the essential issue of debt. All political parties, including the new anti-elite populist parties, are quite unwilling to make the drastic cuts to budgets that all Western European countries have to make if they are to stave off ever closer bankruptcy in their ever closer union.

One of the essential weaknesses of Western so-called ‘democracies’, run by accountants, is short-termism. No political party actually thinks of national well-being, only of its own well-being – and survival through the next elections – so each party simply makes promises that it can never keep. As they say, ‘if it is too good to be true, it is’. No political party wants to do something openly and immediately unpopular – such as cutting State spending and employment by the huge amounts necessary if Western Europe (+ the USA + Japan) is to avoid a bankrupt future. So instead there is slow but inevitable decline.

Does this mean that austerity, in a far harsher form than even at present, is necessary? Does this mean that we approve of Thatcherite economics, that is, of economic egoism which panders to the basest and greediest instincts of humanity, to the idolatry of Mammon? Does this mean that we approve of an ideology which denies that society exists and has turned tens of millions into economic refugees, creating mass emigration and mass immigration, uprooting communities and destroying family life across Europe, East especially, but also West?

No. In reality, there are huge amounts of money in the world; it is just that so much of it is in the hands of very few. If austerity is shared by all, then that austerity can be bearable. What is unbearable is when the poorer half of society has to bear everything. Some kind of austerity is inevitable, but that does not mean, as in Spain and Greece and Italy, as in Latvia and Estonia and Hungary, that people literally have to starve and the young have to emigrate to Canada and Australia, if they can. Austerity has to be, but it also has to be fair.

Forty years ago, amidst the consumerist frenzies of 1970s materialism, the Russian writer Solzhenitsyn pleaded with the selfish Western world for ‘self-limitation’. What he meant by this was the necessity for it to distinguish between selfish wants and actual needs. Most Western ‘wants’, artificially created by manipulative advertising and publicity, are not what we need. Most of Western Europe, merely copying its US idol before it, has been living in a fantasy world of debt for over forty years. With the ‘revelation’ (at least, to some) that banks had been lending money which they did not have for much of that time, reality is now dawning. And that reality is past selfishness, because it never thought of how children and grandchildren would cope with the accumulated debt.

However, this ‘Third Way’ of self-limitation is not a political problem; it is a spiritual problem. And here is the rub. Self-limitation means repentance for greed and selfishness, acceptance of needs and rejection of wants. And that means a shift in values and a shift in ideology and a shift in the whole pseudo-democratic Capitalist Western system, a fools’ paradise. And this is not going to happen because the Western world agrees to it. But it is going to happen – because the Western world is rapidly coming to the point when it will have no say in the matter. A bankrupt has to live within his means, whether he wants to or not.

Extremism Breeds Extremism

Introduction

The recent trial and sentencing for attempted terrorism of three British-born Muslims should cause few surprises. A whole generation of Muslim youths, often of Pakistani origin, has grown up in this country. It has been profoundly disaffected by the profoundly anti-Muslim attitudes and policies of British governments – even to the point of planning or committing murderous terrorist attacks. Obviously, such dangerous individuals have to be imprisoned in order to protect the public, Muslim and Non-Muslim alike. What errors have British governments committed in order to create such disaffection?

Errors

The first error is historic, in fact going back many centuries to the Crusades. These were in fact Catholic or Western holy wars – anti-Muslim jihads. The Crusades themselves began a ‘tradition’ of racist attitudes and ignorance towards Islam, highly visible in the British Empire. Given such a historical background, it seems extraordinary that governments should have invited Muslims to come and live in Great Britain. It is almost as if they desired to create friction. After 1945, when British factories needed immigrant labour, governments could have invited immigrants from European backgrounds to come and work here. This surely would have created far less cultural friction.

The above error was compounded by secularism. Secularism had no understanding of religion and the fact that culture is moulded by religion. Therefore it had no understanding of Islam and Muslim culture. It presupposed that Islam would die out, just like British Protestantism has died out. In its supreme contempt for and ignorance of genuine religious belief, secularism promoted so-called ‘tolerance’ – actually indifference – and called it ‘multiculturalism’. Obviously, multiculturalism could never work and the ruins it has created are visible throughout Western Europe. Here, Islam is set to become the main practised religion, replacing the dying Western denominations.

Solutions

The solution to historic hostile attitudes to Islam is to spread knowledge about Islam and its historic contributions to, for example, technology and medicine. A shift in the teaching of medieval history in British schools would be welcome. Western ethnocentrism has taught generations that the Crusaders, e.g. the cannibal French King of England Richard the ‘Lionheart’, were not the barbarians, but Muslims were! All those who have lived in countries with large Muslim minorities or majorities for centuries, for instance Russia or Syria, have always practised respect towards Islam, not racism. In this way, those peoples have been able to live side by side with Muslim neighbours in peace.

Such respect must be strengthened by realism. Realism means not mythical ‘multiculturalism’, but separation. Wherever Christians and Muslims have lived together in the same country in peace, it is because they have lived in separate areas. They have been good neighbours, but no more than this. Thus, at the time of the Crusades, militant Westerners arrived in countries where local Christians and Muslims had been living side by side in peace for five centuries or more. It was the foreign and alien violence which they brought which destroyed the peace. Similarly, today, it is the new militant Islam, Islamism, which is destroying peace in Egypt, Libya, Syria and a host of other countries.

Conclusion

Most sadly, there is little doubt that more and more British-born Muslims, most frequently the sons of Muslim immigrants, will be attracted to the new Islamic extremism. There are, it is said, some 500 of them among the foreign Islamists fighting at present in Syria. We can only hope that the security services of this country will protect us from the evil which these Islamists scheme, as has now happened. Most sadly, however, this disaffection has been directly caused by the extremism of recent British governments, which have undertaken invasion

The Roman Catholic Crisis and the Orthodox Future

On July 18th, 1870, the (First Vatican) Council met for the last time. As the first of the Fathers stepped forward to declare his vote (on papal infallibility), a storm of lightning and thunder suddenly burst over St Peter’s. All through the morning the voting continued, and every vote was accompanied by a flash and a roar from heaven.

Lytton Strachey, on ‘Cardinal Manning’ in his ‘Eminent Victorians’

The resignation of Pope Benedict XVI last week shocked many, not least Roman Catholics. Conspiracy theories are rife, all the more so since on the evening of his resignation a violent thunderstorm erupted over Rome and, dramatically, lightning struck St Peter’s Basilica. Some of these theories assert that the Pope of Rome is dying of cancer and has not long to live, others that he resigned in order to escape a deepening of the pedophile scandal, or else a financial scandal. Others believe that the next Pope will be the last Pope and will call a Third Vatican Council, which will be the end of millennial Roman Catholicism.

According to these crisis theories, this last Pope will either be a saintly man or else a profoundly evil one, and that either the Vatican will come under persecution and disappear, or else that a new Church will replace it. In the latter case, for us, this can only mean a Western European Metropolia under the Russian Orthodox Church, the only multinational Local Church, and the only Local Church large enough to establish such a Metropolia. One wonders if this Friday’s meteor that appeared over Russia and then exploded just south of Ekaterinburg, the place of martyrdom of the Royal Martyrs in 1918, is not linked with this.

Against this background do we not see the genocide of Orthodox Syria, organised and financed by the anti-Christian Western Powers and their Islamist allies? It is written: ‘Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom…land fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven…’ (Lk 21, 10-11). However, let us remain sober. What practically are the prospects for such a Metropolia to come into being? The Orthodox Diaspora seems to be divided into narrow ethnic ghettos, generally unable to see beyond temporary nationalistic or political interests. Such ghettos have only one destiny – to die out. They are history.

A great move forward occurred six years ago, when the two parts of the Russian Orthodox Church were reunited, after it had been proved that the Church inside Russia was free of State interference. Now together and growing with 824 parishes and monasteries in countries of the Diaspora, Russian Orthodox churches outside Russian Orthodox canonical territory are clearly a vital part of Orthodox life in the Diaspora. It is obvious then that no Metropolia can be built on political division, or on groups used for Cold War purposes and financed by Non-Orthodox Powers, who are at present orchestrating the destruction of Orthodox Syria.

The regular meetings of all local Orthodox Bishops in different countries or groups of countries (North America, Latin America, France, Great Britain and Ireland etc) only became possible after this reuniting of both parts of the Russian Orthodox Church in 2007. Until then the Russian Church of the Diaspora was excluded for political reasons and so any meetings were unrepresentative, political manipulations. The next step is an inter-Orthodox step to unite the Diaspora in regional Metropolias. Such regional Metropolias, in Western Europe, in the Americas and in Australasia, cannot be built on the lowest common denominator.

The fact is that Metropolias, the essential basis for new future Local Churches, will be built on the maximum of Orthodox practice, not on some artificially contrived minimum and compromise. The concept that a Church can be built on the lowest common denominator of different Orthodox dioceses (so-called ‘jurisdictions’) is surreal. It must be built on the maximum and only then can economy be applied. Any other ‘solution’ would be a grave mistake. Indeed, it was tried experimentally in the USA during the Cold War and has been a moral and financial fiasco. This is an experiment not to be repeated.

For example, all Local Churches believe that there are no sacraments outside the Orthodox Church; however, all regularly apply economy in their reception of heterodox. All Local Churches agree that there is only one Church calendar. However, all apply economy, that is allow temporarily for pastoral reasons, the use of the secular calendar for the fixed feasts, to those communities which are not spiritually strong enough to live the Orthodox calendar. Similarly, all Local Churches clearly need traditional monastic life, as with the Greek Archdiocese in the USA, which has been saved by the monasteries of Fr Ephraim.

Of course, all can also agree that some extreme practices are simply unacceptable, even out of economy. We can think of intercommunion, the abolition of fasting and confession, cremation, or other strange practices of small marginal convert groups, who have never integrated the Orthodox Faith. These of course we exclude. The time is coming when new Orthodox Metropolias, composed voluntarily, will be born. Orthodox need them so as to be stronger together. But also the failing heterodox world, which is clearly in crisis, needs a canonical Church with a married priesthood and sacraments. It has only one choice.

The Stumbling-Block and the Foolishness of Millennial Western Cultural Prejudice

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
(Matt 5, 8)

But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness.
(I Cor I, 23)

The culture of Western Europe began as Orthodox Christian. The history of the first millennium AD confirms this bold but factual statement. Thus, the Apostles Peter and Paul were martyred in Rome, an event followed by the martyrdom of thousands of others in Rome and all over Western Europe, veneration of whom is fundamental to the Orthodox Church. Thus, there are great Orthodox Church Fathers in the West, such as St Irinaeus of Lyons, St Cyprian of Carthage, St Hilary of Poitiers, St Ambrose of Milan, St Vincent of Lerins, St Leo of Rome and St Gregory the Dialogist. Thus, Orthodox monasticism from Egypt and Palestine entered into European life through those like St Martin of Tours, St John Cassian, St Benedict of Nursia and St Columba of Iona. Thus, the whole territory of Western Europe, Portugal and Spain, Italy and France, Switzerland and Austria, Germany and the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, Britain and Ireland, Denmark and Sweden, Norway and Iceland, became patterned by monasteries and churches and their Orthodox Christian life and the place names they left behind them.

Of course, there was another element in Western culture – the paganism of the pagan Rome Empire and of the pagan Celtic, Latin and Germanic peoples. This element always existed in the first millennium, alongside the Orthodox Christian one. However, this does not explain the reasons why the descendants of the once Christianised peoples of Western Europe are so little drawn to the Orthodox Church of today.

For this we can identify three reasons. The first is that many Western people may not live anywhere near an Orthodox church. Until very recently, there were very few Orthodox churches in Western Europe outside the capitals and major cities. The second reason is that even when such churches do exist, they may cater only for foreign-language immigrant communities, who consider that their task is precisely to conserve their foreign language and customs, which are not to be watered down with a local language. It must be said, however, that, whatever the excuses of the past, both these factors are much less relevant today than twenty-five or fifty or seventy-five years ago. Indeed, it is now obvious that there is a third reason – ultimately a factor which is far more important than the first two, because it is a spiritual reason. What is this?

This is that any who have been subject to Western culture, by birth or by assimilation, must first divest themselves of anything in that culture which cannot be baptised into the Church of God. This means ten layers of anti-Christian cultural prejudice, ten centuries of a false messiah, which have, like a parasite inside the body, become attached to the original Western Christian culture. What are they?

1. 11th century: This is the fundamental layer, which asserts that Western man can replace the Holy Spirit, that fallen and mortal man, whose immortal destiny by throwing off the Fall is heaven, is already a god on earth.

2. 12th century: This is the layer of the arrogant mind, the layer of the proud and aggressive and unrepentant individual human reason, which asserts that it knows all mysteries, that it knows better than the Church.

3. 13th century: This is the layer of false spiritualism, of the emotional pietism of the soul, of the self-exalted psyche, which imagines in its illusion that it sees God, when in reality it sees only its own fallen reflection.

4. 14th century: This is the layer of violence, of war and plague, which brings the spirit of morbidity into the Western soul, which fears death because it does not know of the Resurrection and even denies it.

5. 15th century: This is the layer of clerical corruption, which brings hatred and mistrust, the misperception that a mere human institution is the Body of Christ and that therefore it cannot exist anywhere else on earth.

6. 16th century: This is the layer of protest and revolt of the individual, the individualism which is in fact the egoism that lies at the root of the self-loving bubble of consumerism, which it claims as its ‘human right’.

7. 17th century: This is the layer of the puritanical witch-hunt, of the rejection of superstition, but which also rejects all that is beyond the narrow and limited understanding of the fallen mind as politically incorrect.

8. 18th century: This is the layer of irrational reason which claims enlightenment, but which in its darkness justifies its arrogant and imperialist desire to enslave others in its all-conquering quest for power, land and gold.

9. 19th century: This is the layer of delusional triumphalism, which asserts that the idolatrous Western domination of the whole world, through arms and industry and science, is messianic and will bring paradise on earth.

10. 20th century: This is the layer of the abandonment of God and His replacement by technology, which asserts the primitive superstition that, despite now recognised weaknesses, human knowledge is all-saving.

Thus, the first five centuries of the second millennium saw Orthodoxy as a stumbling block in the process of reducing the Faith to a mere human institution. That is why it sent out its troops to destroy the Church, which remained as a living reproach to the imperialist Western substitute for it. The second five centuries of the second millennium saw Orthodoxy as foolishness before the so-called triumph of the individual human mind divorced from God. That is why it despised as superstition and idolatry the Church, which remained as a living reproach to the rationalist Western substitute for it.

What then can we say of the 21st century?

We consider that it is too early to speak of this unfinished layer. However, we predict that in this century so-called human freedom will be proved to be enslavement. Therefore, this is the century when millennial Western cultural prejudice will evaporate, as it is seen that in truth the only real stumbling block has been the reduction of the Church of God to a human institution and that the only real foolishness has been that of the individual human mind divorced from God. This is the century when the spiritually sensitive in search of spiritual purity will find the Church, but the spiritually insensitive in search of spiritual impurity will find Hell.

Orthodoxy and the Future of the Western World

Never has the power of sin dominated humanity as it does today…And we know that if sin is victorious over all humanity, then Antichrist will appear.

His Holiness, Patriarch Kyrill, 1 February 2011, (http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/print/1398799.html)

Today we recall the prophetic words of St John of Kronstadt on the birthday of Tsar Nicholas II in 1907:

‘The Empire of Russia wavers, shakes, is close to falling…Hold firm to your Faith and the Church and Orthodox Tsar…If you fall away from your faith…then there will be no Russia or Holy Rus, but a collection of all sorts of people of other faiths, trying to destroy one another…’.

We can understand this prophecy in the light of later history, as recalled by ROCOR faithful:

In Paris the White Russian General P.N. Krasnov related how during the First World War Kaiser Wilhelm once asked a thousand Russian Muslim prisoners of war, for whom he had built a mosque, to ‘sing your prayer’. To a man they sang, ‘God, save the Tsar!’

The overthrow and the arrest of Emperor Nicholas II caused great sorrow to many of the Protestant Baltic Germans in the Imperial Army, such as Count General Keller and General von Rennenkampf, or the Muslim General, Ali-Hussein Khan Nachichevansky, who remained faithful to the Tsar, unlike so many other generals.

In Tobolsk, where the Imperial Family had been exiled, the local Tartars prayed with their mullah for the well-being of the captives in front of the house where they were under arrest.

In 1939, that faithful and most active layman of ROCOR in Western Europe, P.S. Lopukhin, wrote:

‘In this essence of Orthodoxy and Orthodox people lies the foundation of Russian expansion and the ability to join peoples to them, without crippling them. Foreigners perhaps sometimes even more than Russians have loved their ideals, for example, the idea of the White Tsar. This is of course a purely Holy Russian idea. ‘Don’t think’, said one Palestinian, ‘that the Russian Tsar was only Russian. No, he was also Arab. The Tsar is the all-powerful protector and defender of the Orthodox East. While he lived, millions of Arabs lived in peace and security’. Another man said: ‘When the news that they had killed the Tsar reached the Middle East, then in three countries (Syria, the Lebanon and Palestine) there was a wave of mass suicides. Already at that time Arabs felt that with the death of Tsar Nicholas human history was over and that life on earth had lost all its meaning’. A Russian Orthodox man recalled how when the news of the murder of Emperor Nicholas II first reached Kazan, a Tartar said in despair: ‘Russia is dead. We are all dead’.

Today, in many parts of the world, for example in Syria, we see the results.

Why do we recall these words today? Let us look at Western Europe today, first recalling events which took place in Portugal in 1917 – 96 years ago:

‘We will not dispute the miraculous nature of the original appearance of the Mother of God (in Fatima)…like other similar appearances. All these signs had one general task: to warn faithful Catholics of coming misfortunes and to call them to repentance, to change their lives and draw near to God – in order to avoid these misfortunes. To the unprejudiced consciousness, all these appearances, especially the miracle at Fatima, contain what is applicable to Russia, clearly and beyond argument’.

Fr Konstantin Zaytsev, Pastoral Theology, Vol II, P. 41, Jordanville 1961

And what has happened 52 years on since these words were written? Has there been repentance? Let us look at four items, taken from the news this very day, 7 February 2013:

It has been announced in Germany that the Catholic Archdiocese of Berlin is to reduce the number of churches it has from 105 to 30 in the next seven years.

Meanwhile a similar situation has developed in Brussels, (which within a generation will, it is said, have a majority Muslim population, where scores of its 108 churches are to be closed, including the central St Catherine’s church, which is to be turned by the Archdiocese into ‘a vegetable market’.

After being deluged with complaints from outraged religious groups, Obama’s health department has dug in its heels, saying its decision to force employers to provide abortifacient birth control drugs will continue as planned – although faith-based groups will be given a year reprieve. In response, U.S. Catholic bishops have not minced words, vowing to fight the order as ‘literally unconscionable’.

It has been announced that the government of the Russian Federation will review its policy of allowing Russian orphans to be adopted in countries like France and Great Britain, since legislation is being passed there to allow single sex ‘marriage’.

What is the purpose of Orthodoxy?

That I may not be accused of speaking from myself, I will quote again from that renowned Orthodox thinker and writer, Fr Konstantin Zaytsev, from page 136 of the very same book as above:

‘The world has previously been on the threshold of its end. Even now the end can be postponed. What is necessary for this? The Restoration of the Russian Orthodox Empire. The Restoration of Age-Old Church Consciousness’.

He continues on page 138:

‘As regards the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia…inasmuch as it remains by succession a surviving part of the Russian Orthodox Church, it thereby remains faithful to the idea of the Russian Orthodox Empire…’.

The West has westernised Russia. All aspects of modern, everyday life, from blast furnaces to railways, from electricity supply to television, from cars to smartphones, have been shaped by technology born in the West. However, all this belongs to the realm of the natural. But there is that which belongs to the realm of the supernatural, the miraculous: This is the bringing of the West to Christ and only a fully restored Orthodox World can do this.

Il barlume di luce sulla strada davanti a noi: sullo Tsar Nicola II e la restaurazione dell’Impero cristiano

Qui di seguito sono riportate le risposte a vari commenti e domande in recenti e-mail provenienti da Russia, Olanda, Gran Bretagna, Francia e Stati Uniti

D: Perché ci sono così tante incomprensioni su Nicola II e tante critiche stridenti nei suoi confronti?

R: Per comprendere lo Tsar Nicola II, devi essere ortodosso. Non serve essere laico o nominalmente ortodosso, semi-ortodosso, ‘ortodosso per hobby’, e mantenere il tuo bagaglio culturale non convertito, sia sovietico che occidentale – che è essenzialmente la stessa cosa. Devi essere coerentemente ortodosso, consapevolmente ortodosso, ortodosso nell’essenza, nella cultura e nella visione del mondo.

In altre parole, è necessario avere integrità spirituale – esattamente come l’aveva lo Tsar, al fine di capirlo. Lo Tsar Nicola era profondamente e sistematicamente ortodosso nella sua prospettiva spirituale, morale, politica, economica e sociale. La sua anima ortodossa guardava il mondo attraverso occhi ortodossi ed ha agito in modo ortodosso, con riflessi ortodossi. Così anche noi dobbiamo essere ortodossi dall’interno per capirlo.

D: È per questo che gli accademici sono così negativi su di lui?

R: Gli accademici occidentali, come gli accademici sovietici, sono negativi su di lui, perché sono laicisti. Ad esempio, di recente ho letto ‘Crimea’, il libro dello storico britannico della Russia, Orlando Figes. Si tratta di un interessante libro sulla guerra di Crimea, con molti dettagli e fatti ben documentati, scritti come dovrebbero scrivere i professori universitari esperti. Tuttavia, l’autore parte da criteri non espliciti, puramente laici e occidentali, che dicono che dato che lo Tsar dell’epoca, Nicola I, non era un laicista occidentale, doveva essere un fanatico religioso, e che la sua intenzione era di conquistare l’Impero Ottomano. Attraverso il suo amore per i dettagli, Figes trascura il punto principale – ciò che fu in realtà la guerra di Crimea da parte russa. Tutto quello che riesce a vedere sono obiettivi imperialisti in stile occidentale, che egli attribuisce poi alla Russia. Questa attribuzione è una proiezione della sua visione occidentale.

Ciò che Figes fraintende è che le parti dell’Impero Ottomano alle quali era interessato Nicola I erano quelle in cui una popolazione cristiana ortodossa aveva sofferto per secoli sotto il giogo musulmano. La guerra di Crimea non era una guerra coloniale, imperialista russa per espandersi nell’Impero Ottomano e sfruttarlo, così come le guerre condotte da potenze occidentali per espandersi in Africa e in Asia e per sfruttarle. Era una lotta per la liberazione dall’oppressione – in realtà una guerra anti-coloniale, anti-imperialista. L’obiettivo era quello di liberare terre e popoli ortodossi dall’oppressione, non di conquistare l’impero di qualcun altro. Per quanto riguarda Nicola I come fanatico religioso, agli occhi di tutti i laicisti i sinceri cristiani devono essere “fanatici religiosi”. Questo perché i laicisti non hanno una dimensione spirituale. Sono sempre unidimensionali, incapaci di vedere oltre il proprio condizionamento culturale secolare, di ‘pensare fuori dagli schemi’.

D: Questa prospettiva laica occidentale è il motivo per cui gli storici accusano lo Tsar Nicola II di essere stato debole e inetto?

R: Sì. Questa è propaganda politica occidentale, inventata al momento e ancora oggi ripetuta a pappagallo. Gli storici occidentali sono istruiti e pagati da istituzioni occidentali e non possono vedere al di fuori di quella scatola. I seri storici post-sovietici hanno smentito queste accuse, inventate da occidentali e da occidentalizzati, ripetute volentieri dai comunisti sovietici, come giustificazione per lo smantellamento dell’impero dello Tsar. L’unica giustificazione per l’accusa che lo Tsarevich era ‘inetto’ è il fatto che egli era in un primo momento impreparato a essere Tsar perché suo padre, Alessandro III, morì improvvisamente e in giovane età. Ma presto imparò e divenne ‘adatto’.

Un’altra falsa accusa preferita è che lo Tsar diede inizio a guerre, vale a dire la guerra nipponico-russa, chiamata guerra russo-giapponese, e la guerra del Kaiser, chiamata prima guerra mondiale. Questo non è vero. Fu l’unico leader mondiale a volere il disarmo, a essere anti-militarista. Per quanto riguarda la guerra contro l’aggressione giapponese, i giapponesi, finanziati, armati e incoraggiati dagli Stati Uniti e dalla Gran Bretagna, hanno iniziato la guerra nipponico-russa. Hanno attaccato la flotta russa senza preavviso a Port Arthur – un nome che fa quasi rima con Pearl Harbour. E, come sappiamo, sono stati gli austro-ungarici, spinti dal Kaiser, che era alla disperata ricerca di una scusa per iniziare una guerra, a far scoppiare la prima guerra mondiale.

Ricordiamo che è stato lo Tsar Nicola che per la prima volta nella storia del mondo ha chiesto il disarmo a L’Aia nel 1899, perché poteva vedere che l’Europa occidentale era una polveriera, in attesa di esplodere. Era un leader morale e spirituale, l’unico leader mondiale di allora che non aveva ristretti interessi nazionali a cuore e non spingeva al riarmo a costo enorme. Invece, come Unto di Dio, aveva a cuore gli interessi universali di tutta la cristianità ortodossa, per portare a Cristo tutta l’umanità creata da Dio. Perché altrimenti fare dei sacrifici per la Serbia? Per sopravvivere, deve essere stato incredibilmente volitivo, come osservava, tra gli altri, il presidente francese Émile Loubet. Tutte le potenze infernali scatenate contro lo Tsar non sarebbero mai state scatenate per rimuoverlo se fosse stato un debole. Solo i forti devono essere distrutti, come confermato da coloro che lo hanno conosciuto a quel tempo.

D: Ha detto che era profondamente ortodosso, ma è vero che aveva ben poco sangue russo, non è vero?

R: Mi scusi, ma questa affermazione contiene una presunzione razzista, che si debba avere ‘sangue russo’ per essere ortodosso, un cristiano universale. Lo Tsar aveva, credo, un 128° di sangue russo. E con ciò? La sorella dello Tsar ha risposto a questa stessa sfida molto adeguatamente più di cinquant’anni fa. Intervistata dal giornalista greco, Ian Vorres, nel 1960, sua sorella la granduchessa Olga ha spiegato: ‘Forse gli inglesi chiamavano Giorgio VI tedesco? Non aveva una sola goccia di sangue inglese… Il sangue non è tutto. C’è la terra da cui sorgi, la fede in cui sei cresciuto, la lingua che parli e in cui pensi’.

D: Ci sono alcuni russi che oggi descrivono lo Tsar Nicola come un ‘Redentore’. Crede a questo?

R: Certo che no! C’è un solo Redentore, il Salvatore Gesù Cristo. Ciò che si può comunque affermare è che il suo sacrificio, e quindi quello della sua famiglia, dei suoi servitori e delle decine di milioni di altri che sono stati assassinati dai regimi sovietici e fascisti che seguirono, ha avuto un valore di redenzione. La Rus’ è stata crocifissa per i peccati del mondo. In effetti, le sofferenze dei russi ortodossi sono state redentrici nel loro sangue e nelle loro lacrime. Tuttavia, è vero che tutti i cristiani sono chiamati a riscattare se stessi vivendo in Cristo IL Redentore. È interessante notare che i russi pii ma non colti, che chiamano lo Tsar un ‘Redentore’ chiamano anche Rasputin un santo.

D: Parlando di questo, cosa dovremmo pensare di Rasputin?

R: Centinaia di libri sono stati scritti su Rasputin – quasi tutti da persone che non lo hanno mai conosciuto. Vorrei solo ripetere le parole dello stesso Tsar, ‘È un russo semplice, buono, religioso’, e le parole della sorella dello Tsar, granduchessa Olga,’ Non era né un santo né un diavolo… era un contadino con una profonda fede in Dio e un dono di guarigione’. Il fatto che Rasputin fu poi atrocemente calunniato, e, infine, nel dicembre del 1916 torturato da aristocratici russi – un segno di quanto era malata la classe superiore – e assassinato da spie britanniche, non fa che aiutarlo per l’eternità. Tuttavia, Dio non ha rivelato il suo destino dopo questo mondo. Noi non anticipiamo il giudizio di Dio. Quando quel giudizio sarà rivelato a tutti noi, allora saremo in grado di dire di più. Allo stato attuale, a mio avviso, è meglio tacere. Rasputin è ancora una figura misteriosa – lo lasciamo al giudizio di Dio.

D: Ma che dire di tutte le accuse che egli era un ubriacone, un ladro e un libertino?

R: Gli scrittori di romanzi sovietici e hollywoodiani, come il romanziere sovietico Radzinsky, amano questa immagine di Rasputin. Gli storici contemporanei all’interno della Russia de-sovietizzata hanno dimostrato che quasi tutte, forse tutte, queste accuse sono state calunnie, finzioni. Inoltre, non furono composti per screditare Rasputin – era solo una pedina nelle mani dei calunniatori – ma per screditare la Famiglia imperiale.

La loro logica era che se l’amico della famiglia regnante poteva essere presentato come un ladro, ubriacone e dissoluto, anche la famiglia doveva essere così, e quindi erano indegni, e i calunniatori avrebbero dovuto avere il potere. Tale calunnia era molto semplice e molto primitiva. I decadenti privi di alcuna profondità spirituale ci credevano perché volevano crederci, perché questi tipi preferiscono sempre calunnie, scandali e pettegolezzi alla Verità di Cristo.

D: Lei dice che dobbiamo lasciare Rasputin al giudizio di Dio. Vuole paragonare coloro che chiamano Rasputin un santo a coloro che chiamano Ivan IV e Stalin santi?

R: No. Chiamare quei personaggi santi, in particolare Stalin, è ignoranza e bestemmia. Questo è causato da un desiderio a sfondo politico di poche persone di fondere la vecchia mentalità atea sovietica con quella nuova ortodossa. Questo è impossibile, una totale confusione spirituale, analfabetismo teologico. D’altra parte, la questione di Rasputin è piuttosto un caso di alcuni individui con zelo ma poca conoscenza.

D: Se possiamo tornare al nostro punto principale, qual è l’importanza dello Tsar Nicola II, oggi? I cristiani ortodossi sono una piccola minoranza fra tutti i cristiani. Anche se egli fosse importante per tutti gli ortodossi, sarebbe ancora un interesse minoritario fra i cristiani.

R: Certo, noi cristiani siamo una minoranza. Secondo le statistiche, di sette miliardi di esseri umani sul pianeta, il numero di cristiani è di 2,2 miliardi – il 32%. E i cristiani ortodossi sono solo il 10% di tutti i cristiani, cioè solo il 3,2% della popolazione mondiale, circa uno su 33.

Tuttavia, se guardiamo teologicamente a queste statistiche, che cosa vediamo? Per i cristiani ortodossi, tutti i non-ortodossi sono ortodossi decaduti, che sono stati portati involontariamente dai loro capi, per tutta una serie di ragioni politiche, ragioni mondane di convenienza, a diventare non-ortodossi. Per noi, i cattolici possono essere definiti come ortodossi cattolicizzati e i protestanti come cattolici protestantizzati. Noi ortodossi indegni siamo il lievito che fa fermentare la pasta.

Senza la Chiesa, non c’è luce e calore dello Spirito Santo da irradiare al di fuori nel resto del mondo. Così come, anche se si è al di fuori del sole, si può ancora sentire la luce e il calore del sole, così anche il 90% dei cristiani che si trovano fuori della Chiesa sono ancora consapevoli degli effetti della Chiesa. Per esempio, la maggior parte di loro confessa la Santa Trinità e Cristo come il Figlio di Dio. Perché? A causa della Chiesa, che ha istituito tali insegnamenti molto tempo fa. Tale è la grazia della Chiesa, che risplende al di fuori di lei. Ora, se si capisce questo, inizieremo a capire l’importanza del leader del cristianesimo ortodosso, l’ultimo successore dell’imperatore Costantino, lo Tsar Nicola II. La sua deposizione ha cambiato tutta la storia della Chiesa, come anche il suo Golgota e la sua glorificazione di oggi.

D: Se questo è il caso, perché allora lo Tsar è stato deposto e poi ucciso?

R: I cristiani sono sempre perseguitati in tutto il mondo, come il nostro Signore ha detto ai suoi discepoli.

La Russia pre-rivoluzionaria correva sulla fede ortodossa. Questo era l’olio che faceva andare avanti il motore. Tuttavia, quella fede è stata respinta dalla massa della classe dirigente occidentalizzata, dall’aristocrazia, e da molti altri nella classe media in crescita. La rivoluzione è stata causata da una semplice perdita di fede, il motore si è fermato ed è esploso per mancanza d’olio.

Per la maggior parte le classi superiori russe volevano il potere per se stesse, così come i mercanti ricchi e le classi medie volevano il potere per se stessi e avevano così causato la rivoluzione francese. Dopo aver ottenuto la ricchezza, volevano salire il gradino successivo nella gerarchia dei valori – il gradino del potere. Nel contesto russo questa sete di potere, che era venuta dall’Occidente, è quindi basata, per definizione, su una cieca ammirazione dell’Occidente e sull’odio per la Russia. Questo si può vedere sin dall’inizio con figure come Kurbskij, Pietro I, Caterina II e occidentalizzatori come Chaadaev.

Questa mancanza di fede è stato anche ciò che ha avvelenato il movimento bianco, che è stato disunito dalla sua mancanza di una fede comune e vincolante nell’impero ortodosso. In generale, l’autocoscienza ortodossa era assente nel direttivo dell’élite russa, che vi ha sostituito surrogati vari, miscele stravaganti di misticismo, occultismo, massoneria, socialismo e ricerca di ‘verità’ nelle religioni esoteriche. Tra l’altro, questi surrogati sono sopravvissuti nell’emigrazione a Parigi, dove varie figure si sono distinte nella teosofia, nell’antroposofia, nel sofianismo, nel culto del nome e altre fantasie molto eccentriche, ma anche spiritualmente pericolose.

Questi avevano così poco amore per la Russia, che in realtà sono andati in scisma, rompendo con la Chiesa russa e trovando giustificazioni per farlo! Il poeta Bekhteev scrisse molto bruscamente di questo nella sua poesia del 1922, ‘Tornate ai vostri sensi, classi superiori!’, Paragonando la situazione privilegiata a Parigi a quella del popolo della Rus’ crocifissa in patria:

E ancora una volta i loro cuori sono pieni di intrighi,

E ancora una volta il tradimento e la menzogna sono sulle loro labbra,

E la vita scrive nel capitolo dell’ultimo libro

Il vile tradimento dei grandi che sapevano tutto.

Questi membri delle classi superiori (e non tutti erano traditori) sono stati sponsorizzati per principio dall’Occidente. L’Occidente riteneva che una volta che i suoi valori di democrazia parlamentare, repubblica o monarchia costituzionale fossero stati introdotti in Russia, questa sarebbe diventata solo un altro paese borghese occidentale. Per lo stesso motivo, la Chiesa russa ha dovuto essere protestantizzata, vale a dire spiritualmente neutralizzata, o meglio castrata, come l’Occidente ha cercato di fare con il Patriarcato di Costantinopoli e altre Chiese locali cadute sotto il suo potere dal 1917, non appena il patrocinio russo è stato rimosso. Questi atteggiamenti sono stati causati dalla presunzione arrogante che in qualche modo il modello occidentale possa essere universale. Per inciso, questa è la presunzione arrogante delle élite occidentali fino a oggi, mentre cercano di imporre i loro modelli in tutto il mondo, presentandoli come ‘Nuovo Ordine Mondiale’.

Lo Tsar, l’unto del Signore che rappresenta l’ultimo baluardo del cristianesimo della Chiesa nel mondo, doveva essere rimosso, perché stava bloccando la presa di potere del mondo occidentale e occidentalizzato. Tuttavia, nella loro incompetenza, i rivoluzionari aristocratici del febbraio 1917 persero subito il controllo della situazione e in pochi mesi il potere scese da loro al più basso del basso, ai criminali bolscevichi. Questi intrapresero un corso di massacro e genocidio, di ‘terrore rosso’ – così come in Francia cinque generazioni prima, solo che ora lo facevano con la tecnologia molto più micidiale del ventesimo secolo.

È stato in questo modo che il motto dell’impero ortodosso si è deformato. Vi ricordo che si tratta di ‘Ortodossia, Sovranità e Popolo’. Questo è stato deformato dai russi occidentalizzati e dai laici occidentali, sia allora che oggi, in: ‘oscurantismo, tirannia e nazionalismo’. I comunisti atei lo hanno deformato ancora di più in ‘comunismo centralizzato, dittatura totalitaria e bolscevismo nazionale’. Che cosa voleva dire, infatti, questo motto? Voleva semplicemente dire: ‘(pienamente incarnato) autentico cristianesimo, indipendenza spirituale (dai poteri di questo mondo) e amore per il popolo di Dio. Come ho detto sopra, questo motto è il programma spirituale, morale, politico, economico e sociale dell’Ortodossia.

D: Un programma sociale? Ma sicuramente la rivoluzione è nata perché c’erano tanti poveri e tanto sfruttamento tanto dei poveri da parte dei super-ricchi aristocratici, e lo Tsar era a capo di quella aristocrazia?

R: No, è proprio l’aristocrazia che si opponeva allo Tsar e al popolo. Lo Tsar ha donato gran parte della sua ricchezza personale e ha tassato i ricchi fino in fondo sotto il suo brillante primo ministro Stolypin, che tanto ha fatto per la riforma agraria. Purtroppo, il programma di giustizia sociale dello Tsar è stato uno dei motivi per cui molti aristocratici odiavano lo Tsar. Lo Tsar e il popolo erano uno. Entrambi sono stati traditi dall’élite occidentalizzata. Ciò risulta evidente dall’assassinio di Rasputin, che è stata la preparazione per la rivoluzione. In esso i contadini avevano intuito il tradimento del popolo da parte delle classi superiori.

D: Qual è stato il ruolo degli ebrei in questo?

A: C’è una teoria della cospirazione anti-semita, che dice che i soli ebrei erano – e sono – responsabili di tutto il male in Russia (e ovunque). Questo contraddice le parole di Cristo. Prima di tutto, gli ebrei che sono stati coinvolti nella rivoluzione russa – ed è vero che la maggior parte dei bolscevichi erano ebrei – erano apostati, atei, come Marx, e non veri ebrei praticanti. Tuttavia, quegli ebrei che sono stati coinvolti hanno lavorato fianco a fianco con non-ebrei atei, come il banchiere americano Morgan, o con russi e molti altri e dipendevano da loro.

Così, sappiamo bene che la Gran Bretagna ha organizzato la rivoluzione del febbraio 1917, applaudita dalla Francia e finanziata dagli Stati Uniti, che Lenin è stato trasportato in Russia dal Kaiser e finanziato da lui, e che le masse che hanno combattuto nell’Armata Rossa erano russe. Nessuno di questi era ebreo. Alcuni, prigionieri di miti razzisti, semplicemente si rifiutano di vedere la verità – che la rivoluzione era satanica e che Satana può usare qualsiasi nazionalità, chiunque di noi, per le sue opere velenose, ebrei, russi e non russi. Satana non favorisce alcuna cittadinanza, ma si avvale di tutti quelli che gli sottomettono la loro libera volontà per il suo ‘Nuovo Ordine Mondiale’, in cui egli sarà il Sovrano Universale del mondo caduto.

D: Ci sono russofobi che dicono che c’è continuità tra la Russia dello Tsar e l’Unione Sovietica comunista. È così?

R: Vi è certamente una continuità nella russofobia occidentale! Leggete le copie del quotidiano The Times del 1862 e del 2012, per esempio. Vedrete 150 anni di xenofobia. Sì, è vero che molti in Occidente erano russofobi molto tempo prima che nascesse l’Unione Sovietica. Ci sono tra tutti i popoli individui di mente gretta che sono semplicemente razzisti. Ogni nazionalità diversa dalla propria deve essere demonizzata, qualunque sia il loro sistema politico e comunque tale sistema possa cambiare. Lo abbiamo visto nella recente guerra in Irak. Possiamo vederlo ora negli articoli dei tabloid sulla Siria, l’Iran o la Corea del Nord, che cercano di demonizzare i popoli di questi paesi. Noi non prendiamo quelle menti ristrette sul serio.

Ora, passiamo alla questione della continuità. Dopo la generazione di oscenità dopo il 1917, una continuità è riemersa davvero. Questo è stato dopo che la Germania aveva di nuovo invaso la Russia in occasione della festa di Tutti i Santi glorificati nelle terre russe, nel giugno del 1941. Stalin si rese conto che poteva vincere la guerra solo con la benedizione della Chiesa, ricordando le vittorie dei russi ortodossi del passato, come quelle di Sant’Aleksander Nevskij e Dmitrij Donskoj, che ogni vittoria doveva essere la vittoria dei suoi ‘fratelli e sorelle’, del popolo, non dei suoi “compagni” e della sua idiota ideologia comunista. La geografia non cambia, quindi c’è continuità nella storia russa.

È solo che il periodo sovietico è stato un’aberrazione da quella storia, una caduta dal destino nazionale, in particolare nella sua prima generazione violenta. Ciò che è importante è che il modo in cui l’Unione Sovietica ha agito è stato tanto perverso, non necessariamente quello che ha fatto, ma come lo ha fatto. Sono rimasto colpito dalle parole della sorella dello Tsar, la granduchessa Olga, che nella sua biografia del 1960 ha dichiarato: ‘Ho sempre seguito la politica estera sovietica con grande interesse. Quasi nulla è diverso dal corso adottato da mio padre e da Nicky’ (da Alessandro III e Nicola II). La differenza è che la politica sovietica ha lavorato con la violenza e le menzogne, le politiche dello Tsar lavoravano attraverso la pace e la sincerità.

D: Ci può fare un esempio di questo?

R: Che cosa sarebbe successo se la rivoluzione non avesse avuto luogo? Sappiamo (e Churchill lo ha espresso molto bene nel suo libro, ‘The World Crisis 1916-1918′) che la Russia era sull’orlo della vittoria nel 1917. È per questo che i rivoluzionari sono intervenuti a quel tempo. Avevano una finestra di tempo molto stretta in cui operare prima che avesse inizio la grande offensiva della primavera del 1917.

Se non ci fosse stata la rivoluzione, la Russia avrebbe sconfitto gli austro-ungarici, il cui esercito multinazionale e soprattutto slavo era comunque sul punto dell’ammutinamento e del collasso. Poi la Russia avrebbe respinto i tedeschi, o meglio i loro signori della guerra prussiani, a Berlino. In altre parole, la situazione sarebbe probabilmente stata simile a quella nel 1945 – con una sola eccezione vitale. Vale a dire che gli eserciti dello Tsar avrebbero liberato l’Europa centrale e orientale nel 1917-18, non invadendola, come nel 1944-45. E così avrebbero liberato Berlino come avevano liberato Parigi nel 1814, in modo pacifico e rispettoso, senza gli errori e le ubriachezze commessi dall’Armata Rossa.

D: Che cosa avrebbe potuto succedere, allora?

R: La liberazione di Berlino, e quindi della Germania, dal militarismo prussiano avrebbe sicuramente portato alla smilitarizzazione e alla regionalizzazione della Germania, al ripristino di qualcosa della Germania pre-1871, la Germania di cultura, musica, poesia e tradizione. Questa sarebbe stata la fine del Secondo Reich di Bismarck, che a sua volta era un revival del Primo Reich dell’eretico militarista Carlo Magno e che ha portato a sua volta direttamente al Terzo Reich di Hitler.

Se la Russia fosse stata vittoriosa, ci sarebbe stata un’umiliazione del governo tedesco / prussiano, il Kaiser sarebbe stato inviato in esilio, forse in qualche isola remota come avvenne per Napoleone. Ma non ci sarebbe stata alcuna umiliazione dei popoli tedeschi, il risultato del terribile trattato di Versailles, che ha portato direttamente agli orrori del fascismo e della seconda guerra mondiale. E che, tra l’altro, ha portato direttamente al Quarto Reich dell’Unione europea di oggi.

D: La Francia, la Gran Bretagna e gli Stati Uniti non si sarebbero opposti ai rapporti della Russia vittoriosa con Berlino?

R: Francia e Gran Bretagna, impantanate nelle loro sanguinose trincee o forse ormai raggiunti i confini francese e belga con la Germania, non avrebbero potuto obiettare, perché la vittoria sulla Germania del Kaiser sarebbe stata soprattutto una vittoria russa. Per quanto riguarda gli Stati Uniti, non sarebbero mai entrati in guerra, se la Russia non fosse stata prima messa fuori combattimento – in parte per il finanziamento degli Stati Uniti ai rivoluzionari, questo va detto. E questo di per sé è il motivo per cui gli Alleati hanno fatto del loro meglio per eliminare la Russia dalla guerra, perché non volevano una vittoria russa. Tutto quello che volevano dalla Russia era carne da cannone per esaurire la Germania, al fine di prepararla per la sconfitta da parte degli Alleati, in modo da poter finire la Germania e prenderne il controllo.

D: Gli eserciti russi si sarebbero ritirati da Berlino e dall’Europa orientale poco dopo il 1918?

R: Sì, certo. Ecco un’altra differenza con Stalin, per il quale la ‘Sovranità’, il secondo elemento nel motto dell’Impero ortodosso, era stata deformata in totalitarismo che significava l’occupazione, l’oppressione e lo sfruttamento per mezzo del terrore. Dopo la caduta degli Imperi tedesco e austro-ungarico, ci sarebbe stata una libertà per l’Europa orientale con trasferimenti di popolazione nelle aree di frontiera e la creazione di nuovi paesi senza minoranze, come una nuova Polonia riunita, Cechia, Slovacchia, Slovenia, Croazia, Russia carpatica, Romania, Ungheria e così via. Ciò avrebbe creato una zona demilitarizzata in tutta l’Europa centrale e orientale.

Questa sarebbe stata un Europa orientale con frontiere razionali e protetto, evitando così gli errori degli Stati conglomerati come le future, e ora passate, Cecoslovacchia e Jugoslavia. Per quanto riguarda la Jugoslavia, nel 1912 lo Tsar Nicola aveva già istituito un’Unione dei Balcani, al fine di evitare ulteriori guerre balcaniche. È vero, questo non era riuscito a causa degli intrighi del principino tedesco Ferdinand in Bulgaria e gli intrighi nazionalisti in Serbia e Montenegro. Possiamo immaginare che, dopo una prima guerra mondiale, in cui la Russia era stata vittoriosa, una tale unione doganale, istituita con frontiere eque, avrebbe potuto diventare permanente. Coinvolgendo Grecia e Romania, avrebbe potuto finalmente stabilire la pace nei Balcani, dalla libertà garantita sotto il protettorato russo.

D: Quale sarebbe stato il destino dell’impero ottomano?

R: Gli Alleati avevano già concordato nel 1916 che alla Russia sarebbe stato permesso di liberare Costantinopoli e controllare il Mar Nero. Questo è solo ciò che la Russia avrebbe potuto ottenere sessant’anni prima, evitando i massacri turchi in Bulgaria e in Asia Minore, se non fosse stato per l’invasione della Russia in Crimea da parte di Francia e Gran Bretagna. (Ricordiamo come lo Tsar Nicola I fu sepolto con una croce d’argento raffigurante Aghia Sophia, la Chiesa della Sapienza di Dio, ‘in modo che in cielo non si dimenticasse di pregare per i suoi fratelli d’Oriente’). L’Europa cristiana sarebbe stata finalmente liberata dall’oppressione ottomana.

Gli armeni e i greci dell’Asia Minore sarebbero anche stati protetti e i curdi avrebbero avuto un proprio Stato. Ma più di questo, gli ortodossi della Palestina e gran parte della futura Siria e Giordania sarebbero giunti sotto la protezione russa. Non ci sarebbe stata nessuna delle guerre permanenti che vediamo nel Medio Oriente di oggi. Forse le situazioni dell’Irak e dell’Iran di oggi avrebbero potuto essere evitate. Le implicazioni di tutto ciò sono enormi. Possiamo immaginare una Gerusalemme controllata dai russi? Anche Napoleone ha riconosciuto che ‘colui che controlla la Palestina, controlla il mondo intero’. Questo è noto oggi in Israele e negli Stati Uniti.

D: Quali sarebbero state le implicazioni in Asia?

A: Pietro I aveva aperto una finestra sull’Europa. Era il destino di Nicola II di aprire una finestra sull’Asia. Nonostante la sua generosa costruzione di chiese in Europa occidentale e in America, aveva solo un interesse limitato nell’Ovest cattolico / protestante e nelle sue estensioni nelle Americhe e in Australia, perché questo aveva e ha solo un interesse limitato per la Chiesa. In Occidente, c’è stato e c’è relativamente poco potenziale di crescita per il cristianesimo ortodosso. Infatti, oggi, solo una piccola percentuale della popolazione mondiale vive nel mondo occidentale, anche se questo copre un vasto territorio.

L’obiettivo dello Tsar Nicola di servire Cristo era quindi più interessato all’Asia, in particolare all’Asia buddista. Aveva cittadini ex-buddisti nell’impero russo che si erano convertiti a Cristo, e sapeva che il buddismo, come il confucianesimo, non è una religione, ma una filosofia. I buddisti lo chiamavano ‘Il Tara (Re) bianco’. Così ha lavorato con il Tibet, dove è stato chiamato ‘Chakravartin’ (‘Il Re della Pace’), Mongolia, Cina, Manciuria, Corea e Giappone, paesi dal grande potenziale. Era anche preoccupato dell’Afghanistan, dell’India e del Siam (Thailandia). Il re del Siam, Rama V, aveva visitato la Russia nel 1897 e lo Tsar aveva impedito al Siam di diventare una colonia francese. Questa era un’influenza che si sarebbe diffusa in Laos, Vietnam e Indonesia. In termini di popolazione di questi paesi hanno quasi la metà del mondo di oggi.

In Africa, con un settimo della popolazione mondiale di oggi, lo Tsar aveva relazioni diplomatiche con l’Etiopia e la proteggeva con successo dal colonialismo italiano, intervenendo anche a nome del Marocco e anche dei boeri in Sudafrica. Il suo odio di quello che gli inglesi avevano fatto ai boeri, uccidendoli nei campi di concentramento, è ben noto. Possiamo pensare che deve aver pensato la stessa cosa del colonialismo francese e belga in Africa. Era anche rispettato dai musulmani, che lo chiamava ‘Al-Padishah’, ‘Il Gran Re’. In generale, le sacrali civiltà orientali avevano molto più rispetto per ‘lo Tsar bianco’ che per l’Occidente borghese.

È significativo che in seguito anche l’Unione Sovietica si oppose alle crudeltà del colonialismo occidentale in Africa. Anche qui c’è continuità. Oggi ci sono missioni ortodosse russe in Thailandia, Laos, Indonesia, India e Pakistan, così come chiese in Africa. Penso che il gruppo contemporaneo BRICS, Brasile, Russia, India, Cina e Sud Africa, sia anche molto rappresentativo di ciò che la Russia avrebbe potuto raggiungere 90 anni fa, come membro di un gruppo di paesi indipendenti. In effetti, l’ultimo Maharaja dell’Impero Sikh, Duleep (Dalip) Singh (+ 1893), aveva chiesto allo Tsar Alessandro III di liberare l’India dallo sfruttamento e dall’oppressione britannica.

D: Così l’Asia avrebbe potuto essere colonizzata dalla Russia?

R: No, sicuramente non colonizzata. La Russia imperiale era anti-coloniale e anti-imperialista. Dobbiamo solo confrontare l’espansione russa in Siberia, che fu fondamentalmente tranquilla, con l’espansione europea nelle Americhe, che fu fondamentalmente genocida. Gli stessi popoli – i nativi americani sono fondamentalmente siberiani – sono stati trattati in modi totalmente diversi. Naturalmente, ci sono stati in Siberia e nell’America russa (Alaska) sfruttamenti di mercanti russi e di cacciatori di pellicce ubriaconi che si comportavano come cowboy nei confronti della popolazione locale. Questo lo sappiamo dalla vita di Sant’Herman d’Alaska e dai missionari in Russia orientale e in Siberia, come Santo Stefano di Perm e San Macario dell’Altai, ma questo non era la regola e non ci fu alcun genocidio.

D: Tutto questo è molto bello, ma non è molto rilevante parlare di ciò che avrebbe potuto essere. È tutto ipotetico.

R: Sì, è ipotetico, ma l’ipotesi ci può dare una visione per il futuro. Potremmo visualizzare tutti gli ultimi 95 anni di storia del mondo come una pausa, un’aberrazione catastrofica di grandezza tragica che ha ucciso centinaia di milioni di persone. Questo perché il mondo è diventato sbilanciato dopo la caduta del baluardo della Russia cristiana, la cui caduta è stata attuata dal capitale transnazionale, al fine di creare un ‘mondo unipolare’. E questo è solo il codice per il Nuovo Ordine Mondiale di un governo mondiale, cioè un’universale tirannia anti-cristiana.

Solo se si capisce questo, si può avere una visione per il futuro. Questa visione è quella di supporre che dopo il luglio 2018, possiamo ancora essere in grado di riprendere da dove avevamo lasciato nel luglio 1918, e raccogliere insieme i frammenti e le oasi di civiltà ortodossa in tutto il mondo, prima della fine. Per terribile che sia la situazione attuale, c’è sempre la speranza che nasce dal pentimento. Il pentimento significa tornare indietro, e questo è ciò di cui abbiamo parlato, riprendere dal punto in cui il mondo ha deviato in quella terribile notte epocale a Ekaterinburg nel luglio 1918.

D: Quale sarebbe il frutto di tale pentimento?

R: Un nuovo impero ortodosso, centrato in Russia, con Ekaterinburg, il centro del pentimento, come capitale spirituale, e quindi la possibilità di riequilibrare tutta questo tragico mondo squilibrato.

D: Potrebbe essere accusato di essere troppo ottimista?

R: Sì, questo è molto ottimista. Ma guardi quanto è successo nell’ultima generazione, dal momento della celebrazione del millennio del Battesimo della Rus’ nel 1988. La situazione del mondo è stata trasformata, anzi trasfigurata, con il pentimento di abbastanza persone della vecchia Unione Sovietica da cambiare tutto il mondo. Gli ultimi 25 anni hanno visto una rivoluzione, l’unica vera rivoluzione, una rivoluzione spirituale, il ritorno alla Chiesa. Supponiamo che la prossima generazione continui in quel pentimento rivoluzionario? Dato il miracolo storico che abbiamo già visto, che sembrava un sogno ridicolo per noi che sono nati durante i timori nucleari della guerra fredda e possiamo ricordare gli anni ’50, ’60, ’70 e ’80 spiritualmente cupi, perché non dovremmo prevedere almeno alcune delle possibilità sopra citate?

Nel 1914 il mondo è entrato in un tunnel. Durante la Guerra Fredda abbiamo vissuto in quel tunnel e non abbiamo potuto vedere luce né dietro di noi, né di fronte a noi. Oggi siamo ancora nel tunnel, ma ora possiamo effettivamente vedere un barlume di luce davanti a noi sulla strada. Certamente questa è la luce alla fine del tunnel? Ricordiamo le parole del Vangelo: ‘Con Dio tutto è possibile’. Sì, umanamente, tutto quanto sopra è molto ottimista e non vi è alcuna garanzia di nulla. Tuttavia, l’alternativa a quanto sopra non è solo pessimista, è apocalittico. Il fatto che il tempo è breve è la nostra principale ansia. Ci affrettiamo in una battaglia contro il tempo. E questo deve essere un monito e una chiamata per tutti noi.

The Glimmer of Light on the Road Ahead: On Tsar Nicholas II and the Restoration of the Christian Imperium

The following contains replies to various comments and questions in recent e-mails from Russia, Holland, Great Britain, France and the USA

Q: Why are there so many misunderstandings about Nicholas II and so many strident criticisms of him?

A: In order to understand Tsar Nicholas II, you have to be Orthodox. It is no good being secular or nominally Orthodox, semi-Orthodox, ‘hobby Orthodox’ and retaining your unconverted cultural baggage, whether Soviet or Western – which is essentially the same thing. You have to be consistently Orthodox, consciously Orthodox, Orthodox in your essence, culture and world view.

In other words, you have to have spiritual integrity – exactly as the Tsar had, in order to understand him. Tsar Nicholas was profoundly and systematically Orthodox in his spiritual, moral, political, economic and social outlook. His Orthodox soul looked out on the world through Orthodox eyes and acted in an Orthodox way, with Orthodox reflexes. So we too have to be Orthodox from inside in order to understand him.

Q: Is that why academics are so negative about him?

A: Western academics, like Soviet academics, are negative about him because they are secularists. For example, I recently read the book ‘Crimea’ by the British historian of Russia, Orlando Figes. This is an interesting book on the Crimean War, with many well-researched details and facts, written as senior academics should write. However, the author starts out from unspoken, purely Western secularist criteria, that since the Tsar of the age, Nicholas I, was not a Western secularist, he must have been a religious fanatic, and that his intention was to conquer the Ottoman Empire. Through his love of detail, Figes overlooks the main point – what the Crimean War was actually about from the Russian side. All he can see is Western-style imperialist aims, which he then attributes to Russia. This attribution is a projection of his Western self.

 What Figes misunderstands is that the parts of the Ottoman Empire which Nicholas I was interested in were those where an Orthodox Christian population had for centuries suffered under the Muslim Yoke. The Crimean War was not a colonial, imperialist Russian war to expand into the Ottoman Empire and exploit it, like those conducted by Western Powers to expand into Africa and Asia and exploit them. It was a struggle to liberate from oppression – in fact an anti-colonial, anti-imperialist war. The aim was to free Orthodox lands and peoples from oppression, not to conquer someone else’s empire. As for Nicholas I being a religious fanatic, in the eyes of secularists all sincere Christians must be ‘religious fanatics’. This is because secularists do not have a spiritual dimension. They are always one-dimensional, unable to see beyond their own secular cultural conditioning, ‘to think outside the box’.

 Q: Is this secular outlook why Western historians charge Tsar Nicholas II with being weak and unfitted?

 A: Yes. This is Western political propaganda, invented at the time and still parroted today. Western historians are educated and paid by Western Establishments and cannot see outside that box. Serious post-Soviet historians have disproved these charges, invented by the Western and the Westernised, gladly repeated by Soviet Communists, as their justification for the dismantlement of the Tsar’s Empire. The only justification for the charge that the Tsarevich was ‘unfitted’ is the fact that he was at first unprepared to be Tsar because his father, Alexander III, died suddenly and at a young age. But he soon learned and became ‘fitted’.

 Another favourite false accusation is that the Tsar started wars, namely the Japano-Russian War, called the Russo-Japanese War, and the Kaiser’s War, called the First World War. This is untrue. He was the only world leader who wanted to disarm, he was anti-militaristic. As regards the war against Japanese aggression, the Japanese, financed, armed and encouraged by the USA and Britain, started the Japano-Russian War. It attacked the Russian Fleet without warning in Port Arthur – a name that almost rhymes with Pearl Harbour. And, as we know, it was the Austro-Hungarians, urged on by the Kaiser who was desperate for any excuse to start a War, who triggered the First World War.

 Let us recall that it was Tsar Nicholas who for the first time in world history had urged disarmament at The Hague in 1899, because he could see that Western Europe was a powder keg, waiting to explode. He was a moral and spiritual leader, the only world leader then who did not have narrow, national interests at heart and was not rearming at huge cost. Instead, as the Anointed of God, he had at heart the universal interests of all Orthodox Christendom, to bring to Christ all God-created mankind. Why else make sacrifices for Serbia? To have survived, he must have been incredibly strong-willed, as, among others, the French President Émile Loubet remarked. All the powers of hell unleashed against the Tsar would never have been unleashed to remove him if he had been weak. Only the strong have to be destroyed, as is confirmed by those who knew him at the time.

 Q: You say that he was profoundly Orthodox, but it is true that he had very little Russian blood, isn’t it?

 A: Forgive me, but that statement contains a racist presumption, that you have to have ‘Russian blood’ to be Orthodox, a universal Christian. The Tsar was, I believe, one 128th Russian by blood. And so what? The Tsar’s sister answered this very challenge very adequately over fifty years ago. Interviewed by the Greek journalist, Ian Vorres, in 1960, his sister, the Grand Duchess Olga explained: ‘Did the British call George VI a German? He had not a drop of English blood in him…Blood is not everything. It is the soil you spring from, the faith you are brought up in, the language you speak and think in’.

 Q: There are some Russians today who describe Tsar Nicholas as a ‘Redeemer’. Do you believe that?

 A: Certainly not! There is only one Redeemer, the Saviour Jesus Christ. What can however be argued is that his sacrifice, and therefore that of his Family, of his servants and of the tens of millions of others who were murdered by the Soviet and Fascist regimes that followed, was redemptive. Rus was crucified for the sins of the world. Indeed, the sufferings of Russian Orthodox have been redemptive in their blood and in their tears. However, it is true that all Christians are called on to redeem themselves through living in Christ THE Redeemer. Interestingly, the pious but not well-educated Russians who call the Tsar a ‘Redeemer’ also call Rasputin a saint.

 Q: Speaking of this, what should we think of Rasputin?

 A: Hundreds of books have been written about Rasputin – nearly all of them by people who never knew him. I would only repeat the words of the Tsar himself, ‘He is a simple, good, religious Russian’, and the words of the Tsar’s sister, Grand Duchess Olga, ‘He was neither saint nor devil…he was a peasant with a profound faith in God and a gift of healing’. The fact that Rasputin was later atrociously slandered, and finally in December 1916 tortured by Russian aristocrats – a sign of just how sick the upper class was – and assassinated by British spies, only helps him in eternity. However, God has not revealed his destiny after this world. We do not pre-empt the Judgement of God. When that Judgement has been revealed to us all, then we will be able to say more. At present it is, I think, best to keep silence. Rasputin is still a mysterious figure – we leave him to the Judgement of God

 Q: But what about all the charges that he was a drunkard, a thief and a debauchee?

 A: Soviet and Hollywood fiction writers, like the Soviet novelist Radzinsky, love this image of Rasputin. Contemporary historians inside deSovietising Russia have proved that virtually all, perhaps all, of these charges were slanders, fiction. Moreover, they were made up not to discredit Rasputin – he was only a pawn in the hands of the slanderers – but to discredit the Imperial Family.

 Their logic was that if the Friend of the ruling family could be presented as a thief, drunkard and debauchee, therefore the Family must also be like that, and that therefore they were unworthy, and that they the slanderers should have power. Such slander was very simple and very primitive. People, decadent and without any spiritual depth, believed in it because they wanted to believe in it, because such always prefer slander, scandal and gossip to the Truth of Christ.

 Q: You say that we should leave Rasputin to God’s Judgement. Would you compare those who call Rasputin a saint to those who call Ivan IV and Stalin saints?

 A: No. To call those figures saints, especially Stalin, is ignorance and blasphemy. This is caused by a politically-motivated desire among a few to merge the old atheist Soviet mentality with the new Orthodox one. That is impossible, total spiritual confusion, theological illiteracy. On the other hand, the Rasputin question is rather a case of a few individuals with zeal but little knowledge.

 Q: If we can come back to our main point, what is the relevance of Tsar Nicholas II today? Orthodox Christians are a small minority among all Christians. Even if he were important to all Orthodox, he would still be a minority interest among Christians.

 A: Of course, we Christians are a minority. According to the statistics, of seven billion human beings on the planet, Christians number 2.2 billion – 32%. And Orthodox Christians are only 10% of all Christians, so only 3.2% of the world population, about one in thirty-three.

 However, if we look at these statistics theologically, what do we see? For Orthodox Christians, all Non-Orthodox are lapsed Orthodox, who were brought involuntarily by their leaders, for all sorts of political reasons, worldly reasons of convenience, to become Non-Orthodox. For us, Catholics can be defined as Catholicised Orthodox and Protestants as Protestantised Catholics. We unworthy Orthodox are the leaven that leavens the lump.

 Without the Church, there is no light and warmth of the Holy Spirit to radiate out into the rest of the world. Just as, even though you are outside the Sun, you can still feel the Sun’s light and warmth, so too the 90% of Christians who are outside the Church are still aware of the effects of the Church. For example, most of them confess the Holy Trinity and Christ as the Son of God. Why? Because of the Church which established such teachings long ago. Such is the grace of the Church that shines out of Her. Now, if we understand this, we will begin to understand the importance of the leader of Orthodox Christianity, the last successor of the Emperor Constantine, Tsar Nicholas II. His deposition changed the whole history of the Church, as also his Golgotha and his glorification today.

Q: If this is the case, why then was the Tsar deposed and then murdered?

A: Christians are always persecuted in the world, as our Lord told His disciples.

Pre-Revolutionary Russia ran on the Orthodox Faith. This was the oil that made the whole engine run. However, that Faith was rejected by the mass of the Westernised ruling elite, the aristocracy, and many others in the growing middle class. The Revolution was caused by a simple loss of faith, the engine ground to a halt and exploded for lack of oil.

 Most of the Russian upper classes wanted power for themselves, in the same way that wealthy merchants and middle classes wanted power for themselves and so caused the French Revolution. Having obtained wealth, they wanted to mount the next rung in the hierarchy of values – the rung of power. In the Russian context this lust for power, which had come from the West, was therefore based by definition on a blind admiration of the West and a hatred of Russia. This we can see from the very beginning with figures like Kurbsky, Peter I, Catherine II and Westernisers like Chaadayev.

 This lack of faith was also what poisoned the White Movement, which was disunited by its lack of a common and binding faith in Orthodox Tsardom. In general, Orthodox self-consciousness was absent in the Russian governing élite, which substituted various surrogates for it, whimsical mixtures of mysticism, occultism, freemasonry, socialism and a search for ‘truth’ in esoteric religions. Incidentally, these surrogates lived on in the Paris emigration, where various figures distinguished themselves in theosophy, anthroposophy, sophianism, name-worship and other very eccentric, but also spiritually dangerous fantasies.

 These had so little love for Russia that they actually went into schism, breaking away from the Russian Church and justifying themselves for so doing! The poet Bekhteev wrote very sharply of this in his 1922 poem, ‘Come to your senses, upper classes!’, comparing the privileged situation in Paris to that of the people of crucified Rus in the homeland:

 And once more their hearts are full of intrigue,

And once more treachery and lies are on their lips,

And life writes into the chapter of the last book

The vile treason of the grandees who knew it all.

 These members of the upper classes (and not all were traitors) were sponsored from the beginning by the West. The West considered that once its values of parliamentary democracy, republicanism or constitutional monarchy were introduced into Russia, it would become just another bourgeois Western country. For the same reason, the Russian Church had to be Protestantised, that is spiritually neutralised, or rather neutered, as the West has tried to do with the Patriarchate of Constantinople and other Local Churches fallen under its power since 1917, as soon as Russian patronage was removed. These attitudes were caused by the arrogant presumption that somehow the Western model could be universal. Incidentally, this is the arrogant presumption of the Western elites to this day, as they try to impose their model worldwide, presenting it as the ‘New World Order’.

 The Tsar, the Lord’s Anointed representing the last bulwark of Church Christianity in the world, had to be removed, as he was blocking the power grab of the Western and Westernised world. However, in their incompetence, the aristocratic revolutionaries of February 1917 soon lost control of the situation and within a few months power had descended from them to the lowest of the low, to the criminal Bolsheviks. These set out on a course of massacre and genocide, of ‘red terror’ – just as in France five generations before, only now with far more murderous, twentieth-century, technology.

 It was in this way that the motto of the Orthodox Empire was deformed. I remind you that this is ‘Orthodoxy, Sovereignty and People’. This was deformed by Westernised Russians and Western secularists, both then and now, into: ‘Obscurantism, Tyranny and Nationalism’. Atheist Communists deformed it even further into ‘Centralised Communism, Totalitarian Dictatorship and National Bolshevism’. What did this motto in fact mean? It simply meant: ‘(Full-bodied, incarnate) Authentic Christianity, Spiritual Independence (from the powers of this world) and Love for God’s People. As I have said above, this motto is the spiritual, moral, political, economic and social programme of Orthodoxy.

 Q: A social programme? But surely the Revolution came about because there were so many poor people and so much exploitation of the poor by the super-rich aristocrats, and the Tsar was at the head of that aristocracy?

 A: No, it was precisely the aristocracy that was opposed to the Tsar and the people. The Tsar gave away much of his personal wealth and taxed the rich to the hilt under his brilliant Prime Minister Stolypin, who did so much for land reform. Sadly, the Tsar’s programme of social justice was one of the reasons why many aristocrats hated the Tsar. The Tsar and the people were one. They were both betrayed by the Westernised elite. This is clear from the assassination of Rasputin, which was the preparation for the Revolution. In it the peasants rightly saw the betrayal of the people by the upper classes.

 Q: What was the role of the Jews in this?

 A: There is an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that only Jews were – and are – responsible for everything bad in Russia (and everywhere else). This contradicts the words of Christ. First of all, the Jews who were involved in the Russian Revolution – and it is true that most of the Bolsheviks were Jews – were apostates, atheists, like Marx, and not real, practising Jews. However, those Jews who were involved worked hand in hand with Non-Jewish atheists, like the American banker Morgan, or with Russians and many others and depended on them.

 Thus, we know full well that Britain organised the Revolution of February 1917, applauded by France and financed by the USA, that Lenin was transported to Russia by the Kaiser and financed by him, and that the masses who fought in the Red Army were Russian. None of these were Jews. Some people, captives of racist myths, simply refuse to see the truth – that the Revolution was Satanic and that Satan can use any nationality, any of us, for his poisonous works, Jews, Russians and Non-Russians. Satan favours no nationality, but makes use of any who surrender their free will to him for his ‘New World Order’, in which he will be the Universal Ruler of the fallen world.

 Q: There are Russophobes who say that there continuity between the Tsar’s Russia and Communist Soviet Union. Is that so?

 A: There is certainly continuity of Western Russophobia! Read copies of The Times newspaper from 1862 and 2012 for example. You will see 150 years of xenophobia. Yes, it is true that many in the West were Russophobic long before the Soviet Union came into being. There are the narrow-minded among all peoples who are simply racist. Any nationality other than their own must be demonised, whatever their particular political system and however that system may change. We saw that in the recent Iraq War. We can see it now in the tabloid reports on Syria, Iran or North Korea, which try to demonise the peoples of those countries. We do not take those narrow minds seriously.

 Now, let us turn to the question of continuity. Following the generation of obscenities after 1917, continuity did re-emerge. This was after Germany had again invaded Russia on the Feast of All the Saints who have shone forth in the Russian Lands in June 1941. Stalin realised that he could only win the war with the blessing of the Church, by recalling the victories of Orthodox Russians in the past, like those of St Alexander Nevsky and Dmitry Donskoy, that any victory would have to be the victory of his ‘brothers and sisters’, the people, not of his ‘comrades’ and his idiotic Communist ideology. Geography does not change, so there is continuity in Russian history.

 It is just that the Soviet period was an aberration from that history, a falling away from national destiny, especially in its violent first generation. What is important is the way that the Soviet Union acted that was so perverse, not necessarily what it did, but how it did it. I was struck by the words of the Tsar’s sister, the Grand Duchess Olga, who in her 1960 biography stated: ‘I have always followed Soviet foreign policy with great interest. Hardly anything in it is different from the course adopted by my father and by Nicky’ (by Alexander III and Nicholas II). The difference is that Soviet policy worked through violence and lies, the Tsar’s policies worked through peace and sincerity.

 Q: Can you give an example of this?

 A: What would have happened if the Revolution had not taken place? We know (and Churchill expressed it very well in his book, ‘The World Crisis 1916-1918’) that Russia was on the verge of victory in 1917. This is why the revolutionaries took action then. They had a very narrow window in which to operate before the great spring offensive of 1917 began.

 Had there been no Revolution, Russia would have defeated the Austro-Hungarians, whose multinational and mainly Slav army was on the point of mutiny and collapse anyway. Then Russia would have pushed back the Germans, or rather their Prussian warlords, to Berlin. In other words, the situation would quite possibly have been similar to that in 1945 – with one vital exception. That is that the Armies of the Tsar would have liberated Central and Eastern Europe in 1917-18, not invading it, as in 1944-45. And so they would have liberated Berlin as they liberated Paris in 1814, peacefully and respectfully, without the errors and drunkenness committed by the Red Army.

Q: What could have happened then?

A: The liberation of Berlin, and so of Germany, from Prussian militarism would surely have led to the demilitarisation and regionalisation of Germany, restoring something of pre-1871 Germany, the Germany of culture, music, poetry and tradition. This would have been the end of the Second Reich of Bismarck, which itself was a revival of the First Reich of the militaristic heretic Charlemagne and which led directly in its turn to the Third Reich of Hitler.

 If Russia had been victorious, there would have been a humiliation of the German / Prussian government, the Kaiser being sent perhaps into exile to some remote island as was Napoleon. But there would have been no humiliation of the German peoples, the result of the terrible Treaty of Versailles, which led directly to the horrors of Fascism and the Second World War. And that, by the way, has led directly to the Fourth Reich of today’s European Union.

 Q: Would France, Britain and the USA not have objected to victorious Russia’s dealings with Berlin?

 A: France and Britain, bogged down in their blood-soaked trenches or perhaps by then reached the French and Belgian borders with Germany, could not have objected to this, because the victory over the Kaiser’s Germany would above all have been a Russian victory. As for the USA, it would never have entered the War, if Russia had not first been knocked out of it – partly by the US financing of revolutionaries, it must be said. And that in itself is why the Allies did their best to eliminate Russia from the War, because they did not want a Russian victory. All they wanted from Russia was cannon fodder to exhaust Germany, in order to prepare it for defeat by the Allies, so that they could finish Germany off and take it over.

 Q: Would the Russian Armies have retreated from Berlin and Eastern Europe soon after 1918?

 A: Yes, of course. Here is another difference with Stalin, for whom ‘Sovereignty’, the second element in the motto of the Orthodox Empire, had been deformed into Totalitarianism and that meant occupation, oppression and exploitation by terror. After the fall of the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires, there would have been freedom for Eastern Europe with population transfers in border areas and the establishment of new countries without minorities, like a newly-reunited Poland and Czechia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Carpatho-Russia, Romania, Hungary and so on. This would have created a demilitarised zone throughout Eastern and Central Europe.

 This would have been an Eastern Europe with rational and protected frontiers, so avoiding the errors of conglomerate States like the future, and now past, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. As regards Yugoslavia, in 1912 Tsar Nicholas had already set up a Balkan Union in order to avoid further Balkan Wars. True, this failed because of the intrigues of the German princeling Ferdinand in Bulgaria and nationalist intrigues in Serbia and Montenegro. We can imagine that after a First World War in which Russia had been victorious, such a Customs Union, established with fair borders, could have become permanent. Involving Greece and Romania, it could at last have established peace in the Balkans, its freedom guaranteed as a Russian Protectorate.

Q: What would have been the fate of the Ottoman Empire?

A: The Allies had already agreed in 1916 that Russia would be allowed to free Constantinople and control the Black Sea. This was only what Russia could have attained sixty years before, preventing Turkish massacres in Bulgaria and Asia Minor, had it not been for the Crimean Invasion of Russia by France and Great Britain. (We recall how Tsar Nicholas I was buried then with a silver cross depicting Aghia Sophia, the Church of the Wisdom of God, ‘so that in heaven he would not forget to pray for his brothers in the East’). Christian Europe would at last have been freed of Ottoman oppression.

 The Armenians and the Greeks of Asia Minor would also have been protected and the Kurds would have had their own State. But more than that, Orthodox Palestine and much of the future Syria and the Jordan would have come under Russian protection. There would have been none of the permanent war that we see in the Middle East today. Perhaps the situations of today’s Iraq and Iran could have been avoided. The implications of this are huge. Can we imagine a Russian-controlled Jerusalem? Even Napoleon recognised that, ‘he who controls Palestine, controls the whole world’. This is known today to Israel and the USA.

 Q: What would the implications have been in Asia?

 A: Peter I opened a window on Europe. It was the destiny of Nicholas II to open a window on Asia. Despite his generous Church-building in Western Europe and the Americas, he had only a limited interest in the Catholic/Protestant West and its extensions in the Americas and Australia, because it had and has only a limited interest in the Church. In the West, there was and is relatively little potential growth for Orthodox Christianity. Indeed, today, only a small proportion of the world population lives in the Western world, even though it covers a huge territory.

 Tsar Nicholas’ aim to serve Christ was therefore more concerned with Asia, especially with Buddhist Asia. He had former Buddhist citizens in the Russian Empire who had converted to Christ, and he knew that Buddhism, like Confucianism, is not a religion, but a philosophy. The Buddhists called him ‘The White Tara’ (King’). So he worked with Tibet, where he was called ‘Chakravartin’ (The King of Peace’), Mongolia, China, Manchuria, Korea and Japan, countries of potential. He was also concerned with Afghanistan, India and Siam (Thailand). The King of Siam, Rama V, visited Russia in 1897 and the Tsar prevented Siam from becoming a French colony. This was an influence that would have spread to Laos, Vietnam and Indonesia. In population terms these countries have nearly half of today’s world.

 In Africa, with a seventh of today’s world population, the Tsar had diplomatic relations with Ethiopia and successfully protected it from Italian colonialism, also intervening on behalf of Morocco and also the Boers in South Africa. His detestation of what the British did to the Boers, killing them in concentration camps, is well known. We can think that he must have thought the same about French and Belgian colonialism in Africa. He was also respected by the Muslims, who called him ‘Al-Padishah’, ‘The Great King’. In general, sacral, Eastern civilisations had far more respect for ‘the White Tsar’ than the bourgeois West.

 It is significant that later the Soviet Union also opposed the cruelties of Western colonialism in Africa. Here there is also continuity. Today there are Russian Orthodox missions in Thailand, Laos, Indonesia, India and Pakistan, as well as churches in Africa. I think that the contemporary BRICS group, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, is also very representative of what Russia could have achieved 90 years ago, as a member of a group of independent countries. Indeed, the last Maharaja of the Sikh Empire, Duleep (Dalip) Singh (+ 1893), had asked Tsar Alexander III to free India from British exploitation and oppression.

 Q: So Asia could have been colonised by Russia?

 A: No, definitely not colonised. Imperial Russia was anti-colonial, anti-imperialist. We only have to compare Russian expansion into Siberia, which was basically peaceful, with European expansion into the Americas, which was basically genocidal. The same people –native Americans are basically Siberians – were treated in totally different ways. Of course, there were in Siberia and in Russian America (Alaska) exploitative Russian merchants and drunkard fur trappers who behaved like cowboys towards the local population. This we know from the life of St Herman of Alaska and missionaries in eastern Russia and Siberia, like St Stephen of Perm and St Macarius of the Altai, but this was not the rule and there was no genocide.

 Q: All of this is very well, but it is not very relevant to talk about what might have been. It is all hypothetical.

 A: Yes, it is hypothetical, but hypotheses can give us a vision for the future. We could view the whole of the last 95 years of world history as a hiatus, a catastrophic aberration of tragic magnitude that has killed hundreds of millions. This is because the world became unbalanced after the fall of the bulwark of Christian Russia, whose fall was implemented by transnational capital in order to create a ‘unipolar world’. And that is simply code for the New World Order of a One World Government, that is, a Universal, anti-Christian Tyranny.

 Only if we understand this, can we have a vision for the future. This vision is to suppose that after July 2018, we may still be able to resume where we left off in July 1918, and gather the fragments and oases of Orthodox civilisation worldwide together, before the end. However terrible the present situation is, there is always the hope that is born of repentance. Repentance means going back, and that is what we have been talking about, resuming from where the world left off on that terrible, world-changing night in Ekaterinburg in July 1918.

 Q: What would the fruit of such repentance be?

 A: A new Orthodox Empire, centred in Russia, with Ekaterinburg, the centre of repentance, as its spiritual capital, and so the chance to rebalance this whole tragic, unbalanced world.

 Q: You could be accused of being far too optimistic?

 A: Yes, this is very optimistic. But look at what has happened over the last generation, since the celebration of the millennium of the Baptism of Rus in 1988. The situation of the world has been transformed, or rather transfigured, by repentance among enough of the people of the old Soviet Union for the whole world to change. The last 25 years have seen a revolution, the only true revolution, a spiritual revolution, the return to the Church. Suppose the next generation continues in that revolutionary repentance? Given the historic miracle that we have already seen, which seemed like a ridiculous dream for us who were born during the nuclear fears of the Cold War and can remember the spiritually grim 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s, why should we not envisage at least some of the possibilities outlined above?

 In 1914 the world entered a tunnel. During the Cold War we lived in that tunnel and we could see neither light behind us, nor in front of us. Today we are still in the tunnel, but we can now actually see a glimmer of light on the road ahead. Surely this is the light at the end of the tunnel? Let us recall the words of the Gospel: ‘With God all things are possible’. Yes, humanly, all the above is highly optimistic and there is no guarantee of anything. However, the alternative to the above is not just pessimistic, it is apocalyptic. That time is short is our chief anxiety. We hurry in a battle against time. And that must be a warning and a call to us all.

 

 

 

The Road from Damascus: From Recent Correspondence

Below we present points from correspondence of the last two months, anonymously and arranged thematically as questions and answers.

Q: What are your thoughts as we enter 2013?

A: My thoughts turn both ahead and also back to 2014, the centenary of the great European suicide. This was the disaster of 1914, from which Europe has not only not recovered, but from which it has fallen and falls ever further. The consequences of that War and its disastrous Treaty of Versailles were numerous, not least the guarantee of a Second War, but also:

If in the First World War Russia had defeated Germany and Austro-Hungary, as it was about to in 1917, the whole of world history would have been different. The Jews, who had already suffered terrible pogroms in Vienna and Berlin before that War (much worse than those in Poland, the western Ukraine and Bessarabia), would have been protected. In turn, there would have been no holocaust and no reason to establish Israel. The whole Middle East quagmire that exists today and the results of the manipulative Western divisions of the Ottoman Empire would not have come into existence.

There would have been the promised independence for Poland, Finland and the Baltic States, but with protection for their Orthodox minorities, autonomy for the Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, Armenia and other peoples. There would never have been the disastrous centralism of the Soviet period. There would have been freedom at last for Carpatho-Russia, protection for the Orthodox Balkans, freedom for Constantinople and liturgies in the Church of the Holy Wisdom, and protection for Orthodox Asia Minor. Both the Armenians and Greeks in what later became Turkey would have been protected from genocide. No masonic Greeks and Romanians would have catholicised the Church calendar and split the Diaspora. There would have been no Turkish invasion and occupation of Cyprus and the Orthodox of the former Ottoman Empire, as in Syria, would have been protected.

Q: That brings us to today’s situation in the Middle East?

A: Precisely. After the recent wars lost in Iraq and Afghanistan and staring bankruptcy in the face, the West now faces the disastrous consequences of its meddling in Yugoslavia, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and perhaps in Bahrain. The ‘blowback’ is enormous, as we see in Mali. Now come the consequences of meddling in the rest of the Ottoman Empire – in Turkey and Syria, not forgetting the Kurds, so mistreated by European colonialism in the carve-up of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War.

It is said that members of the French and British special services have already been killed in Syria, though this has been hushed up by the governments involved. There are 1500 members of US Sp3ecial Forces in the Jordan alone. Who knows? The 65,000 terrorist mercenaries in Syria belong to 29 different nationalities, according to the UN. Recently many Tunisians, another 5,000, have been flown into Syria and armed by the CIA, financed by the oil monarchies, especially by anti-Iranian Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia has made space in some of its prisons and sent criminals to fight in Syria. It is curious that the only well-known European politician who has spoken out against the allying of the West with Muslim terrorists in Syria is the French Marine Le Pen. She has had the courage to say that the Western-encouraged ‘Arab spring has been followed by the Islamist winter’. Interestingly also, no-one in the West has dared to speak against support for the Syrian people by China, only for the support offered by Russia.

Q: Why has the West spoken against Russian support and not against Chinese support?

A: China is due to become the world’s greatest economic power within the next ten years. It may also by then have become the world’s largest Christian country. The anti-Christian West is frightened of this. It is less frightened of Russia, which it still associates with the decadence of the 1990s. This is a mistake. Today’s Russia has been rising since 2000. In 2000 Russia had its revelation, since when it has been on the road from Damascus; the West is still on the road to Damascus, it has still not had its revelation, which it is purposely avoiding. Russia and the West have already passed each other by on that road, heading in opposite directions, Russia heading towards Jerusalem, the West heading towards Babylon.

Q: From a spiritual viewpoint, why are the events in Syria so important?

A: Because Syria is very close to Jerusalem and, spiritually, Jerusalem is the centre of the world, the beginning – and the end.

Q: If we can come back to what you said originally about Russia’s potential victory in the First World War, why did it not win?

A: The Western aims in that War were twofold – the defeat of Germany and then of Russia. The Western elites knew perfectly well that Russia, unimpeded, would become the World’s greatest power by 1950 and its Orthodox Christian culture would then stand at the centre of Europe and of the world. The Russian Empire was already in advance of much of the West by 1914, and not only in terms of agricultural and industrial production. For example, 85% of its inhabitants were literate by 1917, thanks largely to the stupendous achievements of the last Tsar.

But Russia had to be destroyed before it destroyed Germany and then freed the Slav peoples from Austro-Hungarian oppression and the Orthodox peoples of the Near and Middle East from Ottoman oppression. So Rasputin, the symbol of the Russian Orthodox people, was murdered by the British (as we now know from Andrew Cook’s book, ‘To Kill Rasputin’) and the Revolution was organised by the British ambassador to St Petersburg, Sir George Buchanan, with the open support of Lord Milner, Balfour and Lloyd George. Russia could be brought down, because it was no longer necessary to the Allies – they knew that the USA would enter the War on their side, as soon as Russia was destroyed.

Q: Is there any chance that today’s Russian Federation could re-establish a sort of Orthodox Empire, as it could have done, had it been victorious in 1917?

A: Every Empire has problems. European models of Empire were too centralised, which provoked rejection on their fringes. In turn, the Soviet Union was a far more extreme and oppressive form of European Empire. In the territories of the pre-1917 Russian Empire, we should be hoping to see the emergence of a looser and voluntary Eurasian Confederation, not a Union or an Empire. However, at present only Belarus and Kazakhstan are taking part in this organisation. There is far to go.

Q: Eastern Europeans – though not necessarily their governments – have become disenchanted with the EU and have been rejecting the European Union since the Euro disaster. There is even talk of the UK leaving the European Union. Do you think any of these countries would want to join a Eurasian Confederation?

A: EU Eastern Europe is more or less bankrupt. Estonia will soon have no money to pay for any services, because so many of its tax-paying younger people have had to emigrate, mainly to Finland and Sweden. Half of Latvia and Lithuania seem to be in the UK or Germany. Whole villages and towns in the Baltic States are now populated almost entirely by pensioners and almost worthless blocks of flats are locked up, their owners abroad. There is no work.

Even ethnic Estonians and Latvians are cursing Gorbachov and would like the Soviet Union back. Then they had an excellent education system and free, quality health care – far better than the rationed, emergency only health system in the UK today. Eastern European politicians, as in Poland, say that their unemployment is relatively low, but that is only because millions of their young people have emigrated. The situation is similar in Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania, where real youth unemployment is over 50%. However, at present there is no real alternative to the EU for EU Eastern Europe. That is the challenge facing the Russian Federation, to set up a viable alternative to the EU.

And I think that this also concerns the UK. The internal realignment necessary for the UK elite to follow the people and quit the EU is unlikely at present, but perhaps largely because there is no realistic alternative. To go from being a US / German colony, as is clear from recently-expressed negative US and German attitudes to UK desires for freedom from the EU straitjacket, to being an independent country in association with a loose Eurasian Confederation is a very big step. But who knows?

Q: What are your thoughts regarding President Putin?

A: He is a phenomenon of the post-Soviet period, so inevitably there is light and also some dark with him. However, he does have one great leading idea, that of rebuilding national unity, retaining the best of the old Soviet Union and restoring the best from the old Imperial Russia. This is why he had the remains of the great Russian Orthodox philosopher Ivan Ilyin and also White émigré leaders brought back to Russia. Now he is restoring pre-Revolutionary regiments and honouring the Russian victims of the First World War. This is the future, not the Communist past.

Currently, for example, the Russian Communist Party asserts that it made only one mistake during its tyranny – the persecution of the Church under Stalin. This is an outrageous lie. Its evils began in 1917 under the mass murderer, Lenin. There was civil war and artificial famine, causing cannibalism. Communist persecution continued right up until the 1980s. Stalinism continued long after Stalin; the Khrushchov period was especially awful. It is a lie to call the genocide of tens of millions a ‘mistake’. That genocide also includes Stalin’s crass mismanagement of the Soviet armed forces before and after the German invasion. Millions of Russians and others died then because of his incompetence. The Soviet period was quite possibly the worst crime in world history – not a mere ‘mistake’.

Q: What will happen after Putin?

A: Who knows? He could be succeeded by another politician, with or without Soviet tendencies, more or less positive. That is not what we want. What we want is the restoration of the Orthodox Monarchy. However, it is unclear whether Russia will be ready, spiritually mature, for that by the time that Putin has disappeared from the scene.

Q: Patriarch Kyrill has been criticised by some in the Diaspora as a liberal. What would you answer?

A: I can remember that the then Metropolitan Kyrill was criticised publicly at the 2006 All-Diaspora Council in San Francisco for his ecumenistic and liberal reputation. At that time no-one challenged that thought – we all felt much the same. However, people change – that is the nature of the Church, at the centre of which stands repentance, though the modernists will not admit that, because in their pride they do not have the repentant spirit, thinking like Protestants that they are ‘already saved’.

Today we are looking at Patriarch Kyrill. Given the overview of the international Russian Orthodox Church that only a Patriarch can have and the responsibilities that he bears, he has changed. I think the concerted series of attacks on the Russian Church of 2012, orchestrated by the pro-Western media inside and outside Russia, and not without foreign finance, have changed him even more. He now knows exactly where his friends are and where his enemies are.

The ecumenists and renovationists, left-overs from the Soviet period inside and outside Russia, have lost the remaining support they had. It is now clearly understood that these are only the frontmen of Western Protestantism, ultimately Eastern-rite Protestants, Neo-Uniats, financed or at least encouraged by the Western Secret Services and the Western media which those Secret Services control. In April 2012 Patriarch Kyrill publicly condemned this ‘fifth column’ of ‘traitors in cassocks’.

Their only purpose is to divide the Church, as they have done especially in the Ukraine, where they have been financed by dollars. All divisions of the Church merely play into the hands of anti-Orthodox and weaken the Church. Hitler knew this and so do the CIA and its embassies in Kiev and Moscow. Some of those who have taken part in these divisions are ambitious and unscrupulous careerists. Tragically, some of those who have followed them in their divisions are truly pious but very naïve, not seeing that the cause that the support is gravely spiritually tarnished.

Q: Many of us have been disturbed by some events inside Russia, for example the continued activities of Fr George Kochetkov’s neo-renovationist group, or the strange opinions of Deacon Andrei Kuryayev. What do you say?

A: These are all adolescent distractions inside Russia, examples of spiritual immaturity. For instance, Fr George Kochetkov’s group is tiny. All these problems concern a small minority who were baptised and ordained in the 1990s and never fully integrated the Church. For example, the concept of merging Christmas and the New Year is fantasy and betrays the still Soviet mentality of its author. This shows ignorance of the age-old liturgical cycles of the Church. But nobody takes such fantasies seriously and they will die out. They are convert froth. Our interest is in the vast and immortal ocean of Orthodoxy, not in the passing froth on the seashore, which is here today, gone tomorrow.

Q: There has been controversy recently as to whether Tsar Nicholas is not a martyr, but a passion-bearer. Do you have any views?

A: Technically speaking, a martyr is one who had been killed for the Faith by Non-Orthodox; a passion-bearer is one who has been killed for the Faith by lapsed Orthodox in a state of apostasy. However, in reality, the word ‘martyr’ is used for all those killed for the Faith, which is why we talk about the ‘New Martyrs and Confessors’, not the ‘New Passion-Bearers and Confessors’.

In the Soviet context, we know that many of the Red murderers, Stalin for instance, were baptised Orthodox. Most of these were Slavs, but among the murderers there were also Latvians, Hungarians, Jews and others who were not Orthodox. So technically speaking, many of the ‘New Martyrs’ were at the same time ‘New Passion-Bearers’. And, in this sense, the Tsar was both a martyr and a passion-bearer. In general, none of the Soviet obscenities could have occurred without the co-operation of lapsed Orthodox, without apostasy. On the other hand, the whole Soviet ideology came, like the Revolution itself, from the West, which organised and financed it.

But what a pedantic question this is! All the more so when we know that only the Russian Church makes such a distinction. The Greek Church calls them all martyrs, that is, ‘witnesses’ for the Faith. In England St Edward the Martyr will always be called so and not a ‘passion-bearer’, which technically he was. In everyday life the Tsar Martyr will always be called universally, both inside and outside Russia, the ‘Tsar-Martyr’. This is an argument about words.

Q: Do you think that the little dissident groups, all split among themselves, who did not accept the reuniting of the Russian Orthodox Church six years ago, will ever return to unity?

A: I do not know. I would answer them with the prophetic words of Metropolitan Philaret on 10/23 September, 1974 in his Reply to Alexander Solzhenitsyn:

‘If the liberation of Russia were to take place and unity with a restored Orthodoxy and canonical hierarchy were to take place, then we would consider ourselves part of the Russian hierarchy’.

I would add that, historically speaking, such dissidence is in any case increasingly irrelevant when we put it into the context of the spiritual meaning of the huge new emigration from Russia and Eastern Europe, which has transformed our situation in the Diaspora over the last six years.

Q: What do you mean by ‘the spiritual meaning of the new emigration’?

A: The first emigration of post-1917 numbered between one and two million. It was very mixed. Some in it were Church-minded, but a large part of it and of the White Movement in general was not Church-minded, only politically-minded. Let us be clear: among the ‘Whites’ were those very people who had brought about the collapse of the Monarchy. They were not ‘White’ at all. This is absolutely clear from documents and Church Councils of the time, from politically-coloured splits of the period in France and the North America and the famous report of St John of Shanghai on the spiritual state of the Russian immigration at the Second All-Diaspora Council. Some of these people I met in their old age. I repeat: They were not White at all.

Today’s post-Soviet economic emigration is far greater than the post-1917 one. It has a huge task of witnessing to Orthodoxy before an atheistic Western world, of saving what is best in dying Western culture. Russians and Eastern European Orthodox have seen atheism, they have lived through it – they already know that the naïve West, with its persecution of Christianity, political correctness, abortion holocaust, single-sex marriage and pedophilia, has set out on a false path. We have advance knowledge of the folly that the West is creating for itself. This means that we could still save the West from itself. That is what our whole task and calling is, and has been, for the last forty and more years. This is our spiritual meaning, the spiritual meaning of ROCOR, as we set out the uncompromised, but also multinational and multilingual, Orthodox Tradition before the Western world and its aberrations.

Q: What were the results last October of the London Conference of all the Russian Orthodox bishops in the Diaspora?

A: Just as there were deviations in the old emigration, so there are also deviations in the new emigration. Some of its elements manifest a certain nationalism, often, strangely enough, a Soviet one, a sympathy with atheism! Such nationalism will only turn into a ghetto and die out. Other elements, like a few individuals at the new seminary in Paris or among some older elements, manifest a pro-ecumenical attitude, again a hangover from the Soviet period.

Clearly, these extremes have to be ironed out before the parishes which are still for the moment under the Patriarchate of Moscow, even though they are outside Russia, can join ROCOR. Their existence is canonical disorder and it is preparatory work towards their merging with ROCOR that was the real purpose of the October Conference. Through it, the vestiges of the Soviet period, when the Centre in Moscow was paralysed by persecution, are being transformed.

Fortunately, most in the new emigration share in neither of the above extremes and certainly such extremes are unknown in the best of ROCOR. We understand that Russian Orthodox means not only those who are by blood Russian and Orthodox, but all those who in spirit, world view, culture and state of soul, confess Russian Orthodoxy. There have been many examples of this in Russian history – Pushkin, who was part Ethiopian, Barclay de Tolly and Lermontov, who were Scottish, General Bagration, who was Georgian, or Levitan the painter. Yet they were all Orthodox in their cultural reflexes.

Q: What is happening with the new Russian Cathedral in Paris?

A: There has been a planning dispute about the appearance of the new Cathedral, aspects of whose design displeased some, including in ROCOR. This problem should be sorted out fairly quickly. Our prayer is that the new Cathedral will be dedicated to Tsar Nicholas and all the New Martyrs and Confessors and that it will become the centre of the future Western European Metropolia. That would be justice and an act of repentance before and by the whole Orthodox Diaspora. May God grant this and may our prayers be heard.

Q: Could a Western European Metropolia be constructed by another of the Local Orthodox Churches, and not the Russian?

A: Let us be realistic. Apart from the Russian Church, the other Local Churches are too small and simply cannot provide the necessary infrastructure, finance and know-how. But size is not the only important thing. Apart from quantity, there is also quality. Such a Metropolia will be constructed on the Tradition, not on decadence of practice, not on communion without confession, not on an abbreviated Liturgy, not on the Catholic calendar, not on intercommunion etc.

In other words, a Metropolia will be built neither on the conservative extreme of ethnic exclusivism, nor on the liberal extreme of compromises with the heterodox world. It will be built on the maximum, not on the minimum. This house will be built on rock, not on sand. Such a Metropolia must have in part a monastic background, not a background of compromises with the Orthodox Tradition – and there is only One Orthodox Tradition above all nationalities. We have seen the failure of the OCA experiment, which was built on an ‘All-American’ phyletism, on an imitation of the heterodox world and renovationist compromise. Such a minimalist ‘sand’ experiment does not work – and it will not work in Western Europe either.

Q: And do you think that this Metropolia will actually come into being in the near future?

A: I think it is highly likely. It is Patriarch Kyrill’s desire.

Q: How do you know that?

A: Apart from others who have told me, he told us that, face to face, in Moscow, last May.

Q: And what about a ‘Western Orthodox Church? Will that ever exist?

A: This seems to me to be less likely – and for lack of time. Western Europe has recently become the scene of persecution of the Faith. The Depardieu incident, when the French actor was given Russian nationality as a result of the persecution of all initiative, may be the start of something much bigger. It may be that many other Western cultural workers of talent may yet flee to Russia because of the persecution of Christian-based Western culture by political correctness. This was after all prophesied by St Seraphim of Vyritsa. The best of European culture may yet be saved by Russia, an Empire of the Spirit.

Sadly, this Western persecution of Christianity is not a matter of if, rather of when. So there simply may not be time to see a Local Church evolve in Western Europe. Let us be honest, the number of native Western Orthodox is tiny; we are far outnumbered by Eastern European Orthodox. Why? Because only very few Western people are interested in Christ and His Church. I am constantly contacted by Russians who want to know about Western saints and Western traditions and who want services for these saints, but, sadly, not by Western people. This is a sobering fact and all should know it. The Church is always built on the sober truth, not on fantasies.

1/14 January 2013