Anatoly Bershtein: "The authorities and the Russian Orthodox Church"

"...after the fall of Byzantium, Moscow picked up the imperial crown, tried it on itself and declared that it was the “Third Rome.” And added the extremely significant - “And there will never be a fourth.” It was then that Russian messianism was born. And Russian exceptionalism. All this led, as Klyuchevsky wrote, that Russia soon fell seriously and for a long time ill with an illness called eclipse by the universal idea: “The ancient Russian church society considered itself the only true believer in the world, the creator of the universe - its Russian God, unknown to anyone else. Those. opposed itself to Christian Europe and, as a result, lost the means of self-correction, and even the very compulsions to it." Then the "Josephites" in a difficult struggle defeated the "non-possessors", and a kind of deal was concluded: the church renounces its independent role and serves the authorities, and the state feeds The church has developed a kind of symbiosis that exists to this day. The Russian Orthodox Church will never decisively condemn or even fight the immoral government.