Aphenation of evil

The discussion about the appearance of the name of Stalin at the Kurskaya metro station, which coincided with the 70th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, was very lively. However, only three came from noticeable public institutions against “creeping restoration”: “Memorial”, “Yabloko” and the Russian Orthodox Church. The Holy Synod did not speak out (for now?), But the head of the Synodal Department for the relationship between the Church and Society Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin made a clear statement at the press conference:

In the iconic places symbolizing respect for a particular figure on the part of the state and society, there is no place for images and quotes related to people who are guilty of death of a large number of innocent people who destroyed others without accusation and court.

This was by no means an emotional reaction of an intelligent person who learned that the former instructor of the CPSU MGK Dmitry Gaev, who found himself in the heads of the Moscow Metro, began the struggle for the reconstruction of the historical appearance of his economy with the restoration of Stalinist symbolism, which was attended by abundantly in it.

Vsevolod's father expressed the opinion of the main ideological core of the church, the church "mainstream", formulated in previous years, but clearly voiced in recent months, already in the patriarchate of Cyril (Gundyaev). With the exception of individual Fricis priests on the St. Petersburg and Moscow outskirts, drawing the icons of Stalin and thinking on the pages of anti -Semitic leaflets about his “hidden monasticism”, the right and left church intellectuals are one in one - Stalin is evil, Stalinism and fascism are quite comparable.

The influential conservative Archpriest Vladimir Vorobyov, the rector of St. Tikhonovsky Humanitarian University and the chief lobbyist of the Russian Orthodox Church in the promotion of the “foundations of the Orthodox culture” to schools, in an interview with the official website of the Moscow Patriarchate, reports:

Now, when the ideologies of the twentieth century, such as communism and fascism, have compromised themselves, the peoples that have lost faith are quickly decomposed. . But in our people, faith was preserved thanks to the feat of the new martyrs, those who in the twentieth century defended faith at the cost of their lives.

The famous liberal priest Georgy Kochetkov on the "white" Internet portal "Chredo.ru" says :

It is impossible to tear off the history of Nazism or Italian fascism from the ideological influence of the Soviet regime, conscious and unconscious ... It is no coincidence that there are people who believe that the entire German-fascist system was, in a sense, the fruit of the Soviet regime, anti-Russian and at the same time, in principle, in the principle of anti-human. And of course, the anti -church - there is nothing to talk about this ... And when the statues of Lenin or Stalin are somewhere - this is a slap in the face of public opinion ... and the history of our country. But in fact, the world. This is the same as if they put the Fuhrer’s statue in Berlin, and Mussolini in Italy, saying: "This is our story."

And finally, the head of the department of external church ties, Archbishop Ilarion (Alfeev) in the June interview with the secular "expert" unequivocally declared, causing fire to himself:

I believe that Stalin was a monster, a spiritual freak who created a terrible, anti -human control system of a country built on lies, violence and terror. He unleashed genocide against the people of his country and bears personal responsibility for the death of millions of innocent people. In this regard, Stalin is quite comparable to Hitler. Both of them brought so much grief to this world that in any military or political successes it is impossible to atone for their guilt before humanity. There is no significant difference between the Butovsky training ground and Buchenwald, between the Gulag and the Hitler system of death camps.

Neither then nor later the official reaction to this statement was an official reaction. Otherwise, the Russian authorities reacted to the visit to Patriarch Kirill during his recent Ukrainian tour of the Holodomor memorial: President Medvedev said that Cyril was offended in Ukraine and that, they say, this is one of the reasons for the Kremlin’s refusal to send the ambassador to Kyiv. The leaders of the Moscow Patriarchate clearly did not expect such a “settings” and are now trying to get out of an extremely disadvantageous situation: they did not want to look in the eyes of the flocks of the Russian authorities who have experienced humiliation from Ukrainians.

This conflict situation highlights the problem of the role of the church in society. No matter how much show on the TV of blessed plots about the provincial clergy, no matter how much money for temples, the church is a large social structure that will always protect their interests primarily, and not fulfill the wishes of someone else's uncle, even if it is called the President of the Russian Federation. These interests may coincide with the state ones, but can, as in the case of the glorification of Stalin, disperse significantly with them.

What is the reason for the current stubborn church anti -Stalinism? Memory of repression? About the death of hundreds of thousands of priests and church activists under the wheels of a party-state machine? About the death of millions of parishioners from consciously arranged hunger and criminal incompetence? Yes, but only partly. No wonder the memory of the persecution of the Church in the Russian part of the Russian Orthodox Church is very selective: the Khrushchev’s “heaven” assault with the closure of the forty percent of the churches and the landing of dozens of clergymen is practically not remembered (in any case, the first persons).

The desire to make a small business on the memory of victims of repression? It's warmer. For example, the Patriarch recently visited Solovki and demanded to curtail the State Museum, restore everything and that’s all (that is, the most profitable tourist destination in the Russian North) to give the church:

Everyone should take part in the restoration of Solovki - the state, business, and the church, and just citizens, because in a sense we are all in debt of those who were loyal to Christ even to death here.

Of course, the Solovets of the 1920s, sent there primarily for the non-recognition of the Soviet regime, would be a lot surprised that on their suffering they want to earn noted Sergians, who worked with the KGB with all their conscious life. And the Socialist -Revolutionaries, the Mensheviks, Trotskyists and other political opposition would be surprised even more, who in abundance at that time on Solovki, but did not associate themselves with Orthodoxy.

However, a generational factor plays a significant role in church anti -Stalinism. With the death of Patriarch Alexy II - a Russian young man who grew up in an atmosphere of the post -war Stalin scholar -patriotism and, until his death, avoided the acute theme of collaborationism (which during the war, part of his relatives and spiritual teachers, for example, became Archpriest Alexander Kiselev, who became the confessor of the ROA), a secret ban on the discussion and comparison of Stalinism and Fascism, and and fascism were lifted in the church. On anti -Stalinist rhetoric as a whole. In addition, in the 2000s, the generation of Frontovik priests, by the end of their life idealizing the times of their youth and incapable, naturally, naturally, to compare their comrades in weapons with the Nazis, was finally departed (this is very indicative of the spiritual evolution of the famous denunciatus, Dimitry Dudko).

Now the authorities in the church are taking the "generation of 1989" - the intelligent and semi -intellectual youth, who came to the church from the world of informals, journalists and musicians, brought up on the perestroika press. For this environment, there was no doubt about Hitler and Stalin’s equal responsibility for the massacres of European citizens - rock musicians Alexander Bashlachev in the Absolute Wachter (1984) and Konstantin Kinchev in the Totalitarian rap (1990) formulated these sentiments absolutely clearly, and General Vlasov was a hero who threw the pistool of the totalitarian system. They served as a beggarly salary in poor parishes, enthusiastically engaged in the restoration of memory of their predecessors, rural priests set to the wall in 1937.

Now, due to age, the presence of at least some education and decent practical experience, they - cynics from the outside and idealists in the soul become the head of the diocesan departments, departments and cathedrals. For them, Stalin is a “monster, spiritual freak”, and this has to be considered not even such a radical patriarch.