Russian Orthodox Church demonstrating its presence

Cathedral of Christ the Saviour over Moscow River. Moscow (Russia).  (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When we see documentaries about the ex-Soviet states we are confronted with the quantity and size of Russian churches and the holy images on buses and taxis.

On the buses and taxis people at first after the end of the Soviet Union could find adverts for all sorts of human pleasures.  The dashboard standard in the 1990s was soft porn which as the 2000s wore on, got superseded by "holy images" as a visible sign of social change in post-Soviet Russia.
Sometimes we have the impression that the Russians have found back religion and that the churches are getting enough visitors. But from people who recently went to Russia this may be an incorrect picture.

With the exceptions of major holy days, however, churches are not full. One of the curious characteristics of resurgent Orthodox Christianity is that, while the vast majority of citizens of the Russian Federation identify themselves as Orthodox, this is not reflected in church attendance. {In Search of Believers}

The end of communism has allowed the church to demonstrate its presence in a way that the Soviet authorities would never have permitted. Mühling’s interest in the story of an icon painter shot by the Soviets leads him to the New Martyrs’ Church at Butovo, just beyond the southern edge of Moscow’s urban sprawl. During the purges of the 1930s, it was here that in 14 months, some 20,000 people were shot and buried for crimes against Soviet power. Mühling’s encounter with the church’s priest, whose own grandfather had been among those killed, is a fascinating piece of personal and social history. {In Search of Believers}

 In 2007, as BBC Moscow correspondent, James Rodgers, Senior Lecturer in Journalism at City University London, where he lectures on the History of Journalism and the Reporting of Armed Conflict, visited the church to report on the ceremonies, which were held to mark the 70^th anniversary of the start of the killings.

Among the impressions gathered that day, two remain with me above all. Firstly, given that this was such a traumatic period in the country’s past, how few people were actually there: hundreds only, just a stone’s throw from a city of some ten million. Secondly, that no senior officials were present. Mr Medvedev, then prime minister, was not among the crowd nor was President Putin. Mühling’s telling of what unfolded there, and the links between past and present – there is also an encounter with an elderly resident of a nearby dacha settlement, who dismisses the deaths at Butovo as ‘a few priests’ – could have been even better had he reflected a little on the way that wider Russian society today seems not to pay much attention. {In Search of Believers}

> Continue reading:  In Search of Believers,
concerning James Rodgers 's review of A Journey into Russia (Haus Publishing, 2015) by Jens Mühling 

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Putin's Handy use of the Russian Orthodox Church

The nave of Holy Trinity Orthodox Cathedral, the Cathedral Church of the Diocese of Chicago and the Midwest, Orthodox Church in America, Chicago, Illinois looking east toward the iconostasis. Designed by Louis Sullivan, built 1899–1903. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Since the communist state dissolved, some communist may mourn about what they lost. Several Russians are not better off than before in the Soviet Union.

In the Soviet Union it was the state which had the strings in their hands. Today in a certain way the strings may have changed hands into the ones of the Russian Orthodox priests. But they are just the puppet-strings of the man in power.

For some years now president Vladimir Putin knows to direct everything according to his dictatorial will. He also very well knows what he needs to have his acts agreed with by the majority of the people. For this reason he holds a very firm grip on the Russian Orthodox Church which raised from the ashes as if it was never forbidden in the Soviet Union.

In spite of Putin’s firm grip on power and the absence of credible opposition in the country, Putin can’t risk another uprising like the one in 2011.{Christianization of Warfare: Putin’s manipulation of history}

The last few years we could see that Putin is slippery as an eel. He knows that by giving food and games he can win the people. Not providing them with enough money to stay alive it probably thinks it is much safer to give people hopes and some institutions where they can go to to loose themselves in thoughts of better times.
It is only with the help of the church that Putin could rally most of the Russians on his side despite some disgruntlement in some sections of orthodox Slav society.

The fact that the Russians generally do not display religiosity in public shouldn’t deceive us from the reality; the orthodox Christianity is the part of “Russian identity”, comparable with “Turkishness” that also, in some degree, means Islam.{Christianization of Warfare: Putin’s manipulation of history}

In the tradition of Stalin and Lenin, Putin knows to direct his country and bring it in the adventures he loves, in the hope to become a bigger personality to be remembered in history.

Obviously, he would not go for the erstwhile soviet communism or socialism anymore. People could say the whole lot of things; though in reality Russians are prone to easily buy the glorious age of the soviet empire, without favouring its Marxist-Leninist value system.{Christianization of Warfare: Putin’s manipulation of history}

Putin has found a very good solution by searchings deep inside Russian history, where he finds the Russian Orthodox Church, an institution that despite some oddities is still worth eulogizing because of its resilience even during the protracted Soviet era.

The church, despite its rise in Russia just during the middle ages, had served as the only “national” identity; majority of Russians could remember and accept it more than the defunct Marxist value. It teaches them, amongst others, that mother Russia is always in danger from outside barbarians, and it is one of their sacred duties to do preemptive strikes far away to save the nation. {Christianization of Warfare: Putin’s manipulation of history}

People do love tradition and lots of spiritual rituals. They love all the ostentation the Orthodox Church is offering them. In those churches they can burn candles and ask for blessings.
The priest have lots of time in a long service to convince people their national leader is doing the best for the country and is fighting against the godless people in the East.
As in the old times the Russian Orthodox Church has found the barbarians to fight against and to ask their churchgoers to fund their necessary tasks to protect the nation for further decay by such ungodly people.

Putin is a graduate of soviet intelligence academy. He knows how to manipulate/herding people into his frame. So when he wants to legitimize his war, he would brand name the adventure to make it as a war against the Orthodox Church. With his autocratic apparatus he then spreads that framing, using everything including Christening and blessing the aircrafts and the missiles being used in Syria while presenting that his war against ISIL in Syria is also the orthodox’s war. {Christianization of Warfare: Putin’s manipulation of history}

However, the question that must be baffling to Putin and his war veterans shamelessly involved in killing the innocent Syrians is whether his manipulation of history by linking Russian warfare with orthodox Christianity would ever succeed. The reply is definitely in the negative, particularly in view of the majority of the Russians living with communism in depth of their hearts. Thus, the course of action adopted by Putin in his present war games would force him to meet his Waterloo, Inevitably. {Christianization of Warfare: Putin’s manipulation of history}

In discussing the Moscow Patriarchate Russian Orthodox Church (MPROC) in the context of modern foreign and domestic policy of Russia, it should be noted that, any large religious organization is a complex and multi-faceted mechanism that can hardly be clearly defined in terms of the political preferences of all its members. {How Russian Church serves Kremlin propaganda}

However, we should recognize that at the moment the official involvement of the Russian Orthodox Church (first and foremost – its highest Church hierarchy) in the political process is so great, that the Church in many ways has become one of the common elements created by the Kremlin propaganda machine. {How Russian Church serves Kremlin propaganda}

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Maker of most popular weapon asks for repentance

In the world we can find many designers of instruments that can kill human or animal beings. they manage to create a thing able to destroy elements of nature, parts of the creation.

We can wonder how such creators can feel.

Just six months before his death in December Mikhail Kalashnikov described his struggling with the “unbearable spiritual torment” of knowing the carnage the AK-47 rifle wreaked upon the world.

The AK-47, the iconic assault rifle,  best known as the Kalashnikov [Avtomat Kalashnikova (Russian: Автомат Калашникова)], is widely regarded as one of the best - and deadliest in the world. It is is a selective-fire, gas-operated 7.62×39mm assault rifle, first designed in 1945 in the Soviet Union by Mikhail Kalashnikov and in 1948 it became introduced as the fixed-stock version into active service with selected units of the Soviet Army.


Mikhail Kalashnikov was born in 1919 to a farming family in rural Russia. His family was viewed unfavorably by the Soviet establishment and deported to Siberia where the young Kalashnikov was forced to hunt with his father's rifle to feed the family. He was a self-taught tinkerer who combined innate mechanical skills with the study of weaponry to design arms that achieved battlefield ubiquity.
Seeing the drawbacks of the standard infantry weapons at the time, he decided to construct a new rifle for the Soviet military. During this time Kalashnikov began designing a submachine gun.

Mikhail Kalashnikov himself personally negotiated many contracts for weapons exports and licensing.  Over the course of his career, he evolved the basic design into a weapons family.
He created the AKM , the RPK, the general-purpose PK machine gun.

On his 90th birthday on 10 November 2009, Kalashnikov was named a "Hero of the Russian Federation" and presented with a medal by President Dmitry Medvedev who lauded him for creating "the brand every Russian is proud of".

In the months before his recent death, the world's greatest gun-maker Mikhail Kalashnikov suffered 'unbearable' pain over the lost lives caused by his weapons, an extraordinary new letter reveals.  
He sought urgent spiritual guidance from Russia's top churchman on whether he was guilty in the eyes of God, according to his emotional appeal to the Orthodox Patriarch.

"The pain in my soul is unbearable,"

he wrote.

 'If my machine gun has taken lives of people, does it mean that it is me, Mikhail Kalashnikov, aged 93, the son of a peasant, an Orthodox Christian, who is guilty of the deaths of people, even if they are enemies?'

"The longer I live, the more often that question gets into my brain, the deeper I go in my thoughts and guesses about why the Almighty allowed humans to have devilish desires of envy, greed and aggression. Everything changes, only a man and his thinking remain unchanged: he's just as greedy, evil, heartless and restless as before!"

In his letter to Kirill, which was reproduced by the Russian daily Izvestia on Monday morning, the aging designer explained how he turned to God as he grew older.

Mr Kalashnikov wrote that he his conversion began with the sense of “excitement” he felt when he first entered a church at the age of 91, later being baptised into the Orthodox faith.

A spokesman for the Church said Patriarch Kirril had welcomed the letter and even written a reply.

“This letter was very welcome at a time of attacks on the Church. The Patriarch thanked the legendary designer for his attention and position and answered that Mikhail Timofeevich was himself an example of patriotism and appropriate attitude to the country,”

Patriarch Kirill’s spokesman Alexander Volkov told the paper.

When we look at the answer we only can find it strange that those who call themselves man of God can give such a reply:

"If the weapon is used to defend the Motherland, the Church supports both its creators and the servicemen using it."

The poor excuse of Mr. Alexander Volkov did not help:

“He invented that weapon for the defence of the country, not for the use of Saudi Arabian terrorists.”

This clearly should let the members of that church think about the closeness of that church with the Creator and should wonder how much love they have for the Creation of the Supreme Being.

It is good to notice that this reply may not have comforted the dying Kalashnikov, who began visiting Church at the age of 91 in his working hometown of Izhevsk. At his old age perhaps the sense of responsibility for what one does came to him and made him question all his previous actions.

Even when Kalashnikov would not have killed any people himself, he should have been aware of what the tanks he worked at, the guns he designed and let been manufactured would have done to many people and destroyed many families. His designs remains eminently deadly to this day.

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