Sadly, there are dupes who write with fantasy and spite (in their own words) and love to attack the Russian Church – with official backing and funding. Thus, the Christianophobes and Russophobes Marcel Van Herpen and Orlando Figes, writing in English, and Nicolas Henin, writing in French, not to mention American neocons like Anna Applebaum and Richard Pipes, are foremost examples. They all constantly feed the Russophobe media in the UK, such as the BBC, The Times or The Daily Telegraph.
Some others like Michel Elchaninoff, Antoine Arjakovsky and Antoine Niviere belong to the sectarian ex-Russian Paris Exarchate, a few others can be found in the USA, in Finland and in Russia. Many are freemasons. Whether of Russian descent, but so westernized that they are in a state of adolescent revolt against the Christian Tradition of their abandoned country, or simply paid by Western spy agencies, they love to stir up scandal. Though given many opportunities to repent, with the support of political sponsors, they still justify themselves.
Yes, it is true that the damage done to the Russian Church and the Russian Lands, caused by the treason of their aristocratic and bourgeois forebears or other Western dupes (‘useful idiots’, as they call others when they were actually speaking about themselves) is enormous. Though the rates of the Soviet ABC of alcoholism, ‘bortion and corruption are now descending to (still catastrophic) Western levels and in some cases below them, there is still much to be done. Yes, it is true that there are a few modernist clerics in the Russian Church, hangovers from the Soviet period, who are either naïve or else fully conscious agents of neocon globalism and apostasy and actually support the heresies of the recent Crete meeting. But they are irrelevant. What is relevant is what is happening at the grassroots, among the patriots of Christ.
As Patriarch Kyrill announced on 1 August at the stone-laying ceremony of yet another Cathedral in Sarov, the 25th anniversary of the return of the relics of St Seraphim, in the last six years 5,000 new churches have been built and 10,000 new clergy have been ordained in response to the spiritual needs of the people. One wonders if this is not about the same number of heterodox churches that have been closed and the same number of heterodox clergy that have been lost in Western Europe in the same period. Yes, of course there is far to go, another 100,000 churches and another 100,000 clergy are required, but at least, however slowly, we are heading in the right direction. As for the hangovers from the Soviet period, they will die out (many already have) or else they will repent and be converted by the example of the people.