We all know how the Soviet Union unconsciously adopted the outward, cultural practices of the Russian Orthodox Church. Thus, instead of the Holy Trinty, Soviet Communism promulgated Marx, Engels and Lenin, iconographically presented as an indivisible three in one, a new Holy Trinity. It was blasphemous, since these three were not gods or even decent men, but quite vile people. Then, anyone watching film of a Mayday Parade in the old USSR notices at once the abundance of banners and red flags, which simply imitated the church banners and icons of Easter processions, which also take place around 1 May. Christmas too was substituted by pagan Soviet New Year drunkenness and overeating.

Then there was the substitution of Christ. Who was the new Christ? Lenin and then Stalin. First came the iconography of a benign-looking Lenin, whose chemically-preserved mummy is still on display in the centre of Moscow like unholy relics. Then after him came the iconography of a kind and fatherly Stalin, which was everywhere on streets and in schoolbooks of that age. Yet he was a mass murderer and an evil persecutor of the Church. Famously, the idolatry of Stalin even had to be denounced by Khrushchov as a personality cult – which is exactly what it was. Little wonder that President Putin said years ago that only someone without a brain would want to restore the collapsed Soviet Union.

However, some in the Russian Church unconsciously adopted the outward, cultural practices of the Soviet Union. Indeed, one part of the Soviet Union did not collapse in 1991 – the Moscow Patriarchate, the Soviet-period administrative superstructure of the Russian Church. Sadly, this administration has retained two elements of the old Soviet Union. The first is Soviet Centralisation. The USSR dissolved into fifteen separate republics – the Church did not. The result is anti-Moscow schisms in the Church in Orthodox parts of the old USSR which do not have their own independent Church, in the Ukraine, Moldova, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, with Russophobic discontent expressed in Belarus, Kazakhstan.

The second element that survived in the Moscow Patriarchate is Soviet-style personality cults. This can be seen in the statues of Russian saints. In 1976 I met the pious and talented sculptor Vyacheslav Klykov: I dared not tell him what I thought, that statues replace the statues of the Bolshevik monster Lenin. As such they are welcome, but statues are not a traditional part of Orthodoxy. For Orthodoxy free-standing statues are considered idolatrous. And this is precisely the danger of all personality cults. There exists an exaggerated cult of certain clerical figures, bishops, priests or monks. Among some it is enough for a man to be in a cassock and have a beard and he is already worthy of worship.

This attitude is concerning, for enchantment with mere people is always followed by disenchantment – disillusion always follows illusion. If this is news, read the Psalter. We have seen this clearly with the tragic story of Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfevev), whose photos have suddenly been removed and whose books are suddenly no longer on sale. ‘Put not your trust in princes, nor in the sons of men’. We can see it also in the situation of other clerical figures. Fr Andrey Tkachov is an example. Absurdly popular for really just an ordinary if well-read priest, his categorical and even extremist views are typical of one who comes from the complexed far west of the Ukraine, not of the average Orthodox.

His aggressiveness, lack of diplomacy and tact and just plain rudeness is shared by others and also gives rise to a cult following among the simple and unthinking. Fr Andrey is far from being the only such example of one engaged in broadcasts, podcasts and the writing of books and who makes a lot of money in this way. For instance, I know one Russian woman who never comes to church, but she does spend a lot of time on her computer reading the ‘prophecies’ of ‘holy elders’. This too is an example of personality cults. She told me that she prefers ‘elders’ with very long hair and very long hair. The attachment to externals is typical of the superficial and the neophyte, not of the rooted and the grounded.

As I have remarked many times, it took 75 years for the USSR to Sovietise and then fall and therefore it will take 75 years for de-Sovietisation to take place. 33 years after the dissolution of the USSR, the administration of the Moscow Patriarchate still retains the above two elements of the Soviet mentality. It is therefore no surprise that Ukrainians insult Russians by calling them ‘Moskali’ – Muscovites. It has long seemed to me that the top-heavy and highly centralised Moscow nationalist administration of the Russian Orthodox Church, with all its tiresome bureaucracy and taxes, is not something that is to be retained from the USSR. Nor are clericalist personality cults which are so close to idolatry.