What Kind of Christianity do Russians Protect?

Name: What Kind of Christianity do Russians Protect?
Uploaded: 2024-04-25
Duration: 32 s
Description: In our previous article ‘On Religious Freedom in Ukraine’, we quoted far-right politician, Marjorie Taylor Greene, saying that Russians seem to protect Christianity. In this and future articles we will investigate this claim by considering some history and beliefs of the Russian Orthodox Church, the

Юрій Попченко

25 Квітня, 2024, 18:46

In our previous article ‘On Religious Freedom in Ukraine’, we quoted far-right politician, Marjorie Taylor Greene, saying that Russians seem to protect Christianity. In this and future articles we will investigate this claim by considering some history and beliefs of the Russian Orthodox Church, the dominant Christian denomination in Russia.

Since the times of the Russian Tsar, Peter the Great, the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) was subordinated to the state through the “Holy Synod” created by Peter in 1721. For the following centuries, the ROC not only supported Russia’s imperial policy and wars, but was itself a conductor of this policy among the peoples conquered by Russia. Russian Orthodox priests were essentially agents of colonization, imposing the Russian language, culture, and submission to Russian rulers on the subjugated. After the Bolshevik revolution in 1917 ROC came even more under the control of the state thanks to Metropolitan Sergius, who went to cooperate with the godless communist authorities[1].

Stalin’s night meeting with the hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church on September 4, 1943, which revived the ROC

Before the outbreak of World War II, most of the priests were repressed and were either killed or imprisoned. At the height of World War II in 1943, Stalin recreated the Russian Orthodox Church and, to control it, formed the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church, appointing the bloody KGB agent, Colonel Karpov, as chairman[2]. The reason he did this was because the German authorities contributed to the revival of religious activities in the occupied territories that had been persecuted under Soviet rule. And Stalin believed that the church as an institution could be used by the Soviet government, both in the USSR and beyond[3].

In the mid-1960s, the Religious Affairs Council was created, which made decisions on the registration or deregistration of religious organizations, on the opening and closing of places of worship, and liaised between the USSR government and religious organizations in the country and abroad. All clergy in the Soviet Union were required to be registered with the Council, which controlled the governing bodies of all religious organizations, including the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church. All Orthodox hierarchs in the Soviet Union were forced to cooperate with the KGB.

General Secretary Brezhnev with hierarchs of the ROC

“Neither bishops nor priests were ordained without the consent of the KGB. All appointments had to be coordinated with them. That is why there was a registration. The bishop’s decree was invalid if there was no registration. Therefore, in order to have registration, it was necessary to negotiate with them so that they agreed to the ordination of a bishop and the appointment of a priest,” said Ukrainian Patriarch Filaret on Radio Liberty in 2012[4]. Until the end of the USSR, the positions of deputy chairmen of religious organizations were held by officers of the active KGB reserve, who were employees of the 4th department of the 5th directorate of the KGB.

Under Khrushchev, the recruitment of clergy as secret agents of the KGB spread to the lower levels of the church structure. Not only the episcopate, but also a significant part of the rank-and-file clergy, as well as lay people serving in the church – altar boys, singers, watchmen, cleaners – were passed through the recruitment sieve of the special services. The recruitment of clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church acquired such a scale that it was already difficult to distinguish when they were resolving religious issues, KGB issues, or party issues.

ROC Delegation to the WCC Assembly in New Delhi (1961)

This process became especially strong after the Russian Orthodox Church joined the World Council of Churches (WCC), the Christian Peace Conference (CPC) and other international organizations in 1960s. The KGB infiltrated agents and influenced the assemblies and policies of the World Council of Churches (WCC)[5]. This can be judged from reports stored in the Central Archives of the KGB. The Fifth Directorate of the KGB was actively involved in influencing the policies of the WCC from 1967 to 1989[6]. For example, the 1983 WCC General Assembly in Vancouver, Canada, was attended by 47 KGB agents to ensure the election of an “acceptable” candidate for the post of General Secretary. The main centers of KGB activity under the ROC umbrella were the Christian Peace Conference, headed for many years by the former Patriarch Alexy II (Ridiger), and the Department for External Church Relations.

Priest Gleb Yakunin, Member of the Supreme Council of the Russian Federation and member of the Investigating Commission

After the collapse of the USSR, the Commission of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the Russian Federation to investigate the causes and circumstances of the State Emergency Committee (coup d’etat on August 19-21, 1991) discovered facts of the use of the Russian Orthodox Church by the KGB for its own purposes.

The KGB used clergymen traveling abroad to carry out KGB intelligence assignments, as well as to surveil and accordingly influence foreign religious figures traveling to the USSR. Through the Department of External Church Relations, KGB agents traveled abroad and carried out assignments from their leaders. The nature of the assignments testifies to the Department’s transformation into a hidden center of KGB agents among believers. Through these agents, international religious organizations were kept under control, in which the ROC participated: the World Council of Churches, the Christian Peace Conference, the Conference of European Churches, the relations of the ROC with the Vatican. The publishing department of the Moscow Patriarchate was also controlled by KGB agents. For many years, the department was headed by Metropolitan Pitirim (Konstantin Nechaev), who was an agent Abbot of the 4th department of the 5th directorate of the KGB. Father Tikhon (Shevkunov), who was friends with intelligence general Leonov, also worked in the department.

Patriarch Kirill II with President Putin

Despite the Commission’s recommendations the Russian Orthodox Church to “introduce into the canonical and civil statutes prohibitions on the secret cooperation of senior officials of the Church with state bodies,” she has not repented of and has not cleansed herself of its criminal past until today. The current patriarch (Metropolitan of Smolensk and Kaliningrad) Kirill Gundyaev is KGB agent Mikhailov. Metropolitan Methodius of Voronezh – KGB agent Pavel. Metropolitan of Kiev Filaret (Denisenko) KGB agent Antonov. Metropolitan of Minsk Filaret – KGB agent Ostrovsky. Metropolitan Nikodim (Rotov) – KGB agent Svyatoslav. Metropolitan of Volokolamsk and Yuryev Pitirim – KGB agent Abbot. Metropolitan Yuvenaly (Poyarkov) – KGB agent Adamant. Archbishop Clement of Kaluga – KGB agent Topaz[7]. Only the Lithuanian Archbishop Chrysostomos found the courage to openly confirm his agent past under the nickname “Restorer”, telling the newspaper about his 18-year collaboration with the KGB[8]. Instead, the Russian Orthodox Church got involved in illegal and dirty economic activities in the 1990s: trade in tobacco[9], alcohol[10], crude oil[11], and diamonds[12], with tobacco being imported into the country duty-free as “humanitarian aid,” which led to the “Tobacco Scandal”[13].

Since the 1990s, conservative radical extremists have had power in the Russian Orthodox Church. Some of their beliefs include: 1) adherence to the idea of the Pskov elder Philotheus (15th century) that “Moscow is the Third Rome.” Hence 2) political and religious craving for the restoration of monarchy, empire and church-state harmony in Russia, which allegedly existed before 1917; 3) extreme hostility to non-Orthodox: Catholics, Protestants and others; 4) hostility to the West, to its political-social order, to Western culture, especially to the United States and NATO;

Russian Orthodox fascists Rally. The banner reads in Greek: Orthodoxy or death.

5) rejection of democracy, democratic freedoms, human rights and especially freedom of conscience. At the Archbishop’s Council of the Russian Orthodox Church in August 2000, the concept of extreme rejection of the right to freedom of conscience was adopted: “The assertion of the legal principle of freedom of conscience testifies to the loss of religious goals and values by society, to mass apostasy and actual indifference to the cause of the church and the victory over sin”; 6) anti-Semitism, the belief that Jews are to blame for all of Russia’s misfortunes. Metropolitan John (Snychev) was a convinced anti-Semite, believed in the authenticity of the “Protocols of the Sages of Zion”, in the world conspiracy against Russia and Orthodoxy – the stronghold of the true struggle against the Antichrist and Satan: “The Russian man now sees the Jew as both judge and executioner. The Russian man insists: The Jews have ruined Russia…”.

During the Putin’s dictatorship, the ROC’s servitude to the imperial regime has reached a new level of cooperation and militarization. In 1995, the Synodal Department for Cooperation with the Armed Forces and Law Enforcement Agencies was established[14]. Priests of the Russian Orthodox Church started conducting official ceremonies of blessing of banners, missiles, ships, in particular soldiers and weapons sent to war.

Russian prists blessing ballistic intercontinental missile

After Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow visited the Strategic Missile Control Center, he appointed St. Barbara as the heavenly patroness of these missiles, apparently so that the missile, God forbid, would not miss Washington or Berlin. Archpriest Konstantin Tatarintsev of the Synodal Department for Cooperation with the Armed Forces anathematized pacifism and declared that nuclear weapons only bear the stamp of original sin when they are built without Orthodox prayer. U.S. nuclear weapons made without Orthodox prayer have been called “satanic.” There was even an idea that since Soviet missiles were made in the city of Arzamas, St. Seraphim of Sarov, who lived there a century earlier, is the heavenly patron saint of weapons of mass destruction. Moreover, in a number of speeches these missiles, designed to destroy millions of civilians, were called “our guardian angels”.

On May 9, 2020, the Main Cathedral of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation was opened, “dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War (WW II), as well as the military feats of the Russian people in all wars.” [15] In addition to traditional Orthodox icons, the cathedral blasphemously features images and mosaics of battle scenes from Russian military history[16].

The cathedral is located in the Patriot Park, which has Victory Field[17] open-air museum, and is surrounded by the 1-mile-long Memory Lane memorial[18]. On June 13, 2021, Patriarch Kirill, in his message on the first anniversary of the dedication of the cathedral, promised Russian soldiers eternal life for dying in the war: “Therefore, go forth boldly to fulfill your military duty and remember that if you have laid down your life for your Motherland, for your friends, as the Holy Scriptures say, you will be with God in His kingdom, in His glory, in His eternal life.”[19]

Therefore, it is not surprising that from the very beginning of the Russian imperialist aggression in Ukraine in 2024, the Russian Orthodox Church supported and blessed this war. Some priests blessed mobilized soldiers and military equipment before sending them to the front by sprinkling them with “holy water.”

https://slovoproslovo.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/blahoslovlyayut-na-vbyvstvo.mp4?_=1

Others, such as Archpriest Andrei Tkachev (a graduate of the Faculty of Special Propaganda of the Military Institute of the USSR Ministry of Defense in Moscow), called in his sermon for dying in the war against Ukraine: “A soldier’s death is the best death of all… It is better to die for your Motherland with arms in hand, like a hero, like a man. Andif you also pray before death, ‘Lord, have mercy on me,’ your soul goes to heaven.”[20]

Russian prists blessing equipment and soldiers

Others, such as the director of the Radonezh Orthodox radio station, Yevgeny Nikiforov, called on TV shows to incinerate Ukrainians with the Solntsepek (Sunblaze) multiple rocket launcher system (the deadliest in Russia)[21]. Yet others have gone to the front as chaplains to encourage Russians to fight against Ukrainians. To control all military chaplains participating in the war against Ukraine as part of the Russian troops, on April 5, 2023, Patriarch Kirill appointed Dimitry Vasilenkov as the chief priest of the “special military operation” (i.e. war)[22].

When mobilization was announced in Russia, Patriarch Kirill in his sermon on September 25, 2022, in an Islamist-jihadist fashion, promised all those who died in this war the forgiveness of all sins, “ For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son (John 3:16). Gave to what? To death!.. At the same time, the Church realizes that if someone, driven by duty, by the need to fulfill an oath, remains faithful to his vocation and dies in the fulfillment of his military duty, he undoubtedly commits an act tantamount to sacrifice. He sacrifices himself for others. And that is why we believe that this sacrifice washes away all the sins that a person has committed.”[23] In addition to that, ROC recruits parishioners for war against Ukraine. The Security Service of Ukraine has exposed the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church on the creation of its own private military companies in Russia to participate in the war. One of these private military companies called St. Andrew’s Cross operates on the basis of the Kronstadt Naval Cathedral in St. Petersburg[24]. Also, the ROC is committing war crimes by participating in the placement of forcibly deported Ukrainians, including children, in its monasteries and charitable institutions.[25]

After Russia passed a law on discrediting the Russian Armed Forces on March 4, 2022, which criminalizes anti-war stances[26], the Russian Orthodox Church began persecuting priests who opposed the war. Thus, a church court defrocked Archpriest Alexei Uminsky for refusing to read Patriarch Kirill’s special prayer[27] for victory in Russian-Ukrainian war, “On Holy Rus”.[28] Moscow priest Ivan Koval was defrocked for replacing the word “victory” with the word “peace” in this prayer.[29] They were both accused of perjury.

Former ROC hieromonk John Kurmoyarov was sentenced to three years in prison on charges of spreading “fakes” about the actions of the Russian Armed Forces and government agencies.[30] Under the same article, the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation opened a criminal case against the former president of the Russian Baptist Union and vice president of the World Baptist Alliance, Yuri Sipko (he managed to escape before his arrest and is hiding abroad).[31]

This is the kind of ‘Christianity’ that Russia Protects.

The essence of Russian Orthdox Church in one picture

[1] Most of the information is based on two books: “Conspiracy of Scoundrels. Notes of a Former KGB Lieutenant Colonel” by Vladimir Popov and “The Historical Path of the Orthodox Taliban” by priest Gleb Yakunin. Excerpts from the first and the full text of the second book in the original can be found here: Записки бывшего подполковника КГБ: Русская православная церковь и спецслужбы (gordonua.com); Священник Глеб Якунин, “Исторический путь православного талибанства” (vehi.net)

[2] Как Сталин возрождал РПЦ в войну – Ведомости (vedomosti.ru); Как в 1943 году встреча Сталина с иерархами РПЦ изменила положение верующих – Родина (rodina-history.ru)

[3] «Вам, Сталину, мудрому, Богопоставленному Вождю». Как РПЦ прислуживала власти в СССР (theins.ru)

[4] «Виймає пістолет і каже: ми можемо вас розстріляти» – Філарет розповів про співпрацю церкви і КДБ (radiosvoboda.org)

[5] Christopher Andrew, «KGB Foreign Intelligence from Brezhnev to the Coup» // Wesley K. Wark (ed), Espionage: past, present, future?, Routledge, 1994. Read the book at Espionage (defence.lk)

[6] Appendix: Recent Revelations About Soviet Active Measures (archive.org)

[7] In the KGB archives, a card was found for the agent ‘Reader,’ who turned out to be the head of the Latvian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Alexander: В архіві КДБ знайшли картку на ім’я предстоятеля Латвійської православної церкви (radiosvoboda.org)

[8] “Российская газета” № 52/388 за 1992 год, стр. 7. Can be accessed at «Российская газета», 1992 г., 52 (388) – Ельцин Центр (yeltsin.ru)

[9] “Табачный митрополит // Неклассический диссидент – Компромат.Ру / Compromat.Ru

[10] Винодельческое предприятие РПЦ получило лицензию на продажу алкоголя (interfax.ru)

[11] На чём зарабатывает РПЦ: нефть, гостиничный бизнес, торговля и попрошайничество | Эхо России (ehorussia.com)

[12] Митрополит из табакерки // Как-никак, а без Гундяева никак! – Компромат.Ру / Compromat.Ru

[13] Табачный скандал — Википедия (wikipedia.org)

[14] Победа (pobeda.ru), it’s website’s name in Russian means “victory”

[15] Main Cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces – Wikipedia

[16] Главный Храм Вооруженных сил РФ открыли в Подмосковье. Что увидят прихожане? Фотогалерея — Новая газета (novayagazeta.ru); Главный храм Вооруженных сил Российской Федерации парка “Патриот” снаружи и внутри – Удачи и свободы Вашему Я! — LiveJournal; Главный храм Вооруженных Сил Российской Федерации – Главный Храм Вооруженных Сил Российской Федерации (hram.mil.ru)

[17] Музей под открытым небом «Поле Победы» в парке «Патриот», посвященный обороне Москвы в 1941 году – Агентство городских новостей «Москва» – информационное агентство (mskagency.ru)