Russian strongman Vladimir Putin has made much of Russian Orthodoxy as a moral paragon, while intentionally omitting in his alternative history that Christianity came to Russia from Kyiv and that the Muscovy Patriarchate was established at gunpoint after the Muscovites kidnapped the Ecumenical Patriarch.
An interesting question for the uninformed is whether the Russian Orthodox Church in the Russian Federation or abroad is in essence a religious institution or simply a tool of Russian imperialism. In the United States this matter is quite vague as the Russian Orthodox Church has never registered as a foreign agent with no repercussions from the United States Departments of State or Justice.
Similarly, the accommodation or treatment of the Moscow Church by the Catholic Church in Rome and Pope Francis in particular has been bizarre at the very least. The Pope has not accorded any such special treatment to other religions, but he has met with both Russian strongman Vladimir Putin and his surrogate Patriarch Kirill. He has also voiced his concern about the banning of that institution in Ukraine because it is a Christian church.
For much of the Cold War, American intelligence services served as a vehicle for Russian anti-Communist disinformation insisting that Russians were a captive nation within the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. In fact, the Central Intelligence Agency worked tirelessly without much success to establish a level of cooperation between the nations comprising those listed in the Captive Nations Week Resolution and the Russian anti-Communists. I am not sure whether the few Ukrainians in the United States collaborated with the CIA in this regard because they were duped or simply went along for the money. Probably both.
In any event the Russian Orthodox Church was an integral part of this conspiracy. The Russia Publishing Co. based on Canal Street in New York City published a monthly magazine RUSSIA. Its December 1952 issue carried an article by Archpriest Peter G. Kohanik, entitled THE BIGGEST LIE OF THE CENTURY “THE UKRAINE”. This purported religious leader wrote:
“We must openly state that no American should participate in meddling in the internal affairs of other countries. Of course, we dislike the abhorrent bolshevism (sic)and its sinful work in Russia and all over the world, but this does not mean that we should also hate Russia and her people. In trying to destroy bolshevism (sic), we have no right whatever to undermine the former Great Russian Empire by striving as the ‘Ukrainian’ Separatists do (assisted by good and honest, but misled Americans) to detach from her the ‘Little Russians’ (known at present as ‘The Ukraine’) only because some arrogant Galician aggressors, instigated by Polish and Austro-German enemies, deliberately changed ‘Little Russia’ into ‘Ukraine!’”
Fast forward to March 27, 2024. A Cathedral Congress was held in the Hall of Church Cathedrals of The Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow under the Chairmanship of the head of the Supreme Council of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia. The following Order was issued:
“The special military operation is a new stage of the national liberation struggle of the Russian people against the criminal Kiev regime and the collective West behind it, which has been conducted on the lands of South-western Russia since 2014. During the SVO (sic) the Russian people defend their lives, freedom, statehood, civilizational (sic), religious, national and cultural identity, as well as the right to live on their own land within the borders of a single Russian state. From a spiritual and moral point of view, a special military operation is a Holy War, in which Russia and its people, defending the single spiritual space of Holy Russia, fulfill the mission of “Holding”, protecting the world from the onslaught of globalism and the victory of the West that has fallen into Satanism.”
The more things change, the more they remain the same. Seventy-two years have passed. The archpriest was an anti-communist. The patriarch was a communist and a KGB agent. With the dissolution of the USSR he changed his affiliation from the KGB to Putin and the FSB, and from a Bishop he became a Patriarch.
The Russian Orthodox Church is not a religious institution. It never was and it never will be. It is an agency of the Russian Empire irrespective of the Empire’s form or name. There is no spirituality to it. There is no God in it as well. It is simply another policing mechanism and propaganda tool of the empire. Is it effective? Just ask the Pope! Don’t ask American intelligence agencies because they have no clue or, perhaps, they are simply playing both sides.
December 10, 2024 Askold Lozynskyj