The gate of the kingdom

“The laurel did his job,” one foreign Russian Orthodox nun responded to the message of the death of the head of the Russian Orthodox Church in her blog. The unification of the Russian Orthodox Church with the Russian Orthodox Church really became the most important and vivid act of this, in general, in a generally inconspicuous and little-known doped of man.

The fate of Metropolitan Lavra reflects the collective biography of the entire “second generation”, who dominated the foreign Orthodox Church from the 1950s to the 1990s. It consisted of children of Russian emigrants born and brought up in the Russian environment (including in Russian schools) abroad, and their peers who left the USSR during the Second World War. The future metropolitan was brought up in Czechoslovakia in Czechoslovakia at the ROCZ mission and left his homeland with her, fleeing the advancing Soviet troops. Soon he ended up in the United States, where the ROCZ transferred its management center from Europe. Further, a quiet, executive, working monk, who lived with large bosses, made a standard church career: an inspector of the seminary; rector of the monastery; the younger bishop responsible for the general church office; An independent bishop, heading the diocese and at the same time the "spiritual center" of the Church - the Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville. So, when by 2001, the charismatic head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Vitaly, got those around him with his hyper -conservatism, dictatorship and eccentricities, he was ready to organize the majority of replacement - a gray official of the church office without obvious ideas, addictions and talents. Who could have thought that the matter would turn out so.

ROCZ was created as an ideological product. Together with various public and political organizations of Russian emigrants, it constituted a "real Russia", which, by virtue of "temporary circumstances" was abroad. The numerous first wave of emigration could afford to create an environment in which it was possible to “remain Russians” and believe that the foreign environment is a temporary thing and the day and hour will come when the grateful Russia will perceive spiritual values ​​that are carefully preserved in a foreign land (and worthy of reward the keeper). The fact that every year there are fewer emigrants and even more so their children shared these ideas, tried not to notice. Having received an impressive feeding at the expense of the new wave of emigrants after the war, mostly young people, ROCZ perked up.

The “second generation” remained as imperishable confident in its correctness and putting “Russianness” as the cornerstone of their faith. Handful of Metropolitan Lavra, the ROCZ website in 2004 with a reverence reported that the most important value left by the future head of the Church as his teacher was a cross presented by the Union of the Russian people - the leading pre -revolutionary black -intensive organization.

It was the strict ethno -nationalist attitudes, and not the love of the Julian calendar, ROCZ brought out of the process of interaction between the world's largest religious organizations, which intensified after the Second World War and led to a noticeable decrease in interfaith tension in the Christian world. And this process was by no means added ROCZ parishioners. In the 1980s, many of her parishes were on the verge of extinction. And the forces for the mission in Russia (which began with the fraternity of the official representatives of the ROCZ with the "memory" of Dmitry Vasiliev) was no longer.

At the same time, nationalism, backed up by practical considerations, turned out to be precisely what ultimately brought the ROCA closer to the Russian Orthodox Church. And the last merits are more here. The Russian Orthodox Church is headed by a practically peer Metropolitan Lavra, a pupil of Russian emigrants and active nationalists who tried to Russify the Estonian Orthodox and reorient them to Moscow. But if Vasya Skewl was in Jordanville in 1947, then Alyosha Ridiger in Leningrad.

During the patriarchate of Alexy II, the Russian Orthodox Church significantly changed its ideological face. The point is not only in the courteous heart of the ROCZ of a fierce confrontation with Catholics and Protestants, which began immediately after the food rations received from them were eaten. And not in the canonization of the royal family, to which the leadership of the Moscow Patriarchate went with a grinding of Zubny under pressure from the fundamentalists. The Russian Orthodox Church, which previously represented the Orthodoxy of the polyetonic USSR, really became an ethno -national church not only by name, but also in fact. Forgetting about the needs of thousands of Ukrainian and Moldovan parishes, about the mission among non -Christian peoples, it defends the interests of the Russian and Russian state in the form in which it understands these interests. And it is not surprising that from the Russian Orthodox Church, the main negotiator with the ROCZ became a prominent church nationalist and the failed "confessor of the president" Archimandrite Tikhon (Shevkunov) close to Lubyanka.

Therefore, the “second generation” of the ROCZ, although carefully and with many insurance, leaned on the strong presidential hand of the “Russian nationalist in a good sense of the word”. The transfer of an ideological relay occurred. The tsar is now the name of the "national leader", but with a similar replacement, the ROCZ agreed back in the 1930s. And the laurel in this regard really did its job. Another question is what happened as a result.

The unification of the churches is a whipping media -losung. However, the Russian Orthodox Church could not completely absorb the weak, but competitor in the struggle for the brand of Russian Orthodoxy. She refused to unite whole dioceses of the Russian Orthodox Church - in Ukraine and South America. Many parishes have retained independence from Moscow - especially in Russia, the USA and Australia. True, they have not been able to create a stable united structure.

It is more significant that the conditions under which the bulk of the ROCZ has united is such that it is not difficult to refuse them. The church completely retained its structure, self -government and property. Whether the ROCA will become a “normal” part of the Russian Orthodox Church - a big question, and the next generation of believers and clergy will be solved. Their grandfathers and great -grandfathers emigrated from Russia or from the USSR. Their parents were expected to return to Russia. They themselves, who grew up in the West, often already in “international” families, look at Russia as a country of “high culture”, but are not at all prone to ethnonitionalism as such, or even more so, to reconciliation with morals that reign in the Russian state and intra -church policy.

This is in the ROCZ a working monk, who became an inspector of the seminary, was not shy, if necessary, to get out in the barn. In the Russian Orthodox Church, such hard workers may become inspectors, but do not grow to bishops. The noble style of the lord and the servility of the church people, the “subcutaneous” style of church policy and the rude shutting of the mouths to critics - have yet to get acquainted with all this clergy. As, however, and closer to find out Russian officials and promising Moscow sponsors.

And on the basis of this experience, they will be able to evaluate what the real merits of the Metropolitan Lavra buried today were.