The New Year and Christmas holidays have thundered past. It couldn't be said otherwise — they have indeed thundered past. And it's not just about the "Nutcracker" and the "strike of retribution." That is, it's about them too, of course. In the sense that all this happened around the Nativity of Christ, according to the calendar close to the Orthodox. And since it's about Christ, it's also about the commandments. And there's one that says: "Thou shalt not kill". In the version of political Orthodoxy, intended to affirm the messianism of the Russian people and professed by official figures, Russian servicemen "by the Lord's commission are fulfilling this very mission — protecting the Fatherland, saving the Motherland and its people". That is, the orders of the President of the Russian Federation are equated with the commissions of the Savior, who suddenly forgot that he is not a pocket deity of just one ethnicity and carried a message to the masses, which centuries later would be called humanistic. The meaning of Christianity is profaned, although not for the first time, as it is not for the first time that children of different nations, considering the privatization of higher power and the military means of injuring others, wrong Christians, as their patriotic duty, go into battle with the name of the same Lord on their lips. Sometimes it seems that humanity is simply not worthy of its world religions.
"Why have many "set themselves against us"?" — the patriarch asks. As they say, "what happened?"
Incidentally, it should be noted that reflections on the meaning of Christmas were the only verbal intervention by Vladimir Putin throughout the holidays. Missiles and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs spoke for him, incinerating Trump with their statements, who kidnapped the friend of all people of goodwill (as well as Russian oil oligarchs) and the well-known keeper of traditional values, Mr. Maduro. Apparently, the Kremlin considered that the best PR for Putin would be deafening silence in response to the suspiciously hostile and extraordinarily effective behavior of the American president within the zone of influence that the Kremlin considered its domain. It was fundamentally impossible to formulate a response because Trump must remain a friend of the Kremlin, even if he clearly showed how impressive an enemy he can be. All that remained was to interpret the meaning of the Christian holiday in an unconventional way.
"Set themselves against us"
At Christmas, as taught by Joseph Alexandrovich Brodsky, "everyone is a bit of a magi". And simultaneously with a kind of Christmas sermon about "the Lord's commission", delivered by the head of state before a select officer special audience, the patriarch Kirill addressed his flock through an interview with the "Russia" channel and TASS (i.e., in full "symphony" of state and church). The hierarch, long known for his technological instructions regarding the fact that death on the battlefield washes away all sins. Well, it certainly removes the conviction. But the other fragments of the conversation surpassed even the most radical previous statements of His Holiness.
"Why have many "set themselves against us"?" — the patriarch asks. As they say, "what happened?", if everything was normal. Who was disturbed by this normality, if even the West, which brought capital, jobs, technologies, mutually beneficial cultural projects to Russia, not at all reduced to the sexual obsessions of the Russian authorities, put up with the obviously authoritarian nature of Putin's regime and the violations of human and civil rights recorded in the second chapter of the Constitution of the Russian Federation? The patriarch's explanation:
"...we represent a very attractive alternative of civilizational development. We offer values that the West has abandoned and continues to abandon. We offer not to expel the Christian faith, as is happening now in the West..."
Well, fine, you represent an alternative, so keep representing it, but not with the same methods used since February 2022. When asking the ironic Stalinist question "How many divisions does the Pope have?", it should be remembered that the flock of the same hated Catholic Church is difficult to measure in such an extravagant way — their, the Pope's spiritual divisions, are certainly more than Putin's. And influence is measured by soft, not iron force. Where, when, and in what way is the Christian faith expelled in the West, is decisively unclear. Usually, the Russian Orthodox Church means same-sex relationships, but it seems that the West does not concentrate painfully on this plot.
In modernized societies, including Russia, the same demographic, specifically demographic, processes occur, which are far from militant policy — declining birth rates, aging population, more responsible attitude towards planning life trajectories, raising and educating children (even if it diverges from the ideas of Malofeev, Dugin, or some Orthodox priests who called for having more children so that it wouldn't be so regrettable if they die in war).
V. Putin and Patriarch Kirill. Photo: Press Service of the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia / O. Varov
What is wrong with this very West? Civilization? Could it be that the patriarch reads Huntington so "religiously" to consider the clash of civilizations inevitable? Again, modernized, post-heroic, democratic societies, not warring with each other and placing the value of normal life above the "value" of heroic death, have much in common. If not to awaken resentment in them. But there are rulers who can awaken the dormant demand for Sonderweg, a special path and the combing of national ego. A special path is always blood and violence. Civilization is not a kokoshnik and bast shoes, not sobornost and balalaika, but those very ten commandments, including "Thou shalt not kill."
"...We see, especially in Western countries, the moral degradation of the younger generation. "If there is no God, then everything is permitted", and therefore, in addition to moral degradation in interpersonal relationships, socially dangerous phenomena such as drug addiction spread..."
— the hierarch argues. That is, in the country of Russia, there is no problem of drug addiction. All evil comes from the West. And so it has been for many centuries, judging by the writings of the ideologists of Russian uniqueness — from the fighters against "Latinism" in medieval Russia and late Slavophiles to the authors of editorials in "Pravda" and the speechwriters of current leaders fighting against "Anglo-Saxons."
Why does the patriarch think that it is in the West that "the degradation of the younger generation" is happening? And what about us? Is it still "the spiritual above the material"? And we hear this in a country of very significant income, property, and regional inequality, where we are taught life by people whose wealth is decidedly unprecedented. A thief, says the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, is an immoral creature. But how many criminal cases are there now against representatives of the elites — almost everyone has a dossier. The Ministry of Defense case, Starovoit's suicide, endless regional-scale corruption scandals. And all these people worked wonderfully as "candlesticks" with solemn faces during the Christian holidays. So, in the patriarch's logic, practically the entire Russian elite is immoral? Perhaps, in this, one can agree with him.
The Sanctification of 1937
The patriarch praises the feat. But why can't feats be performed in peaceful life — "in work, in the search for a path, in heartfelt turmoil", as one truly Orthodox writer and poet said, "making the whole world cry over the beauty of my land". Who glorified Christmas like no other in the great poem "The Christmas Star."
Why is it necessary to die for the Motherland, equated with the regime of personal power, and not live for one's country, but not the regime?
Isn't this — the affirmation of life, not death — the "main mechanism of Christmas", about which another great Russian poet, also persecuted by the authorities, and also Jewish... As, by the way, was the Savior himself. But that's not the point now...
Well, finally, without 1937 — our main supporting traditional value — nowhere. You can only love the Motherland in agreement with the authorities. In fact, the authorities, like the dominant church, are the Motherland in the patriarch's logic. And those who are not with us will be punished in full contradiction with the Basic (not divine) law, that is, the Constitution, and even the current Criminal Code:
"...there are concepts associated with the very ability and possibility of the state to exist. Around these ideas, these concepts, there must necessarily be public consensus. If someone falls out of this consensus, there is such a definition: a traitor to the Motherland, with all the ensuing legal consequences..."
Thank God, we talked about important, even main things. About consensus. And in response to the question of "journalist" Kondrashov: "Can Ukrainians be forgiven?" Read this question again. Believe in its reality. Believe that there is a person who can ask such a question. The interview is widely circulated and available...
These people are spiritual shepherds. They teach us morality. Instead of Andrei Sakharov, Sergey Averintsev, Dmitry Likhachev, Yuri Levada... All who could answer have died. Or were killed, with an ax, like Father Alexander Men. And therefore everything is permitted.
Leo Tolstoy, one of the justifications for the greatness of Russian culture, wrote about all this in the pamphlet "Think!", dedicated to the horror of the Russo-Japanese war. And about those who exclude supporters of peace from society:
"...And behind them (the soldiers. — A. K.) go doctors, sisters of mercy, who somehow believe that at home they cannot serve simple, peaceful, suffering people, but can only serve those people who are engaged in killing each other. Those who remain at home rejoice at the news of people being killed, and when they learn that many Japanese have been killed, they thank someone they call God.
And all this is not only recognized as a manifestation of high feelings, but people who refrain from such manifestations, if they try to reason with people, are considered traitors, betrayers, and are in danger of being scolded and beaten by a frenzied crowd of people who have no other tool to defend their madness and cruelty than brute force..."
However, what about Tolstoy. He was excommunicated from that very Russian Orthodox Church back in 1901, three years before the scorching pamphlet "Think!", anatomizing the pompous logic of those who forbid others to love the Motherland with open eyes — that is, its people, not its leaders and official shepherds.
The Christmas Star — forgive us, is ours, common. It cannot be nationalized by the union of sword and cassock, shamelessly privatized by wealthy people, talking about the predominance of the spiritual over the material. Leaders and hierarchs cannot reinterpret the truly Christian view of Christmas by Boris Pasternak and Joseph Brodsky in their favor. After all, "if Herod knew that the stronger he is, the more certain, the more inevitable the miracle". What a miracle is — there is no need to explain to those who do not overturn the meaning of words.
*Andrey Kolesnikov is considered a "foreign agent" by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation.