Metropolitan

... The Black Horde "Berkut" inexorably entered the light of the Winter Maidan, flowed on the institutskaya river, leaked to the house of trade unions ... It seemed a few minutes - and everything would be over, the darkness would absorb the still luminous area and crush the last impulse to freedom ... And at that moment we heard church nabat. The bells of the Churches of the Mikhailovsky Golden Monastery of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate called tirelessly - and, as if responding to their call, the first, while the undermined streams of citizens, which turned into the real sea and scattered the Black Maces near the borders of the Maidan, were drawn to the square from all the still not blocked streets of the Ukrainian capital.

At the moment when they scored the bells, I suddenly heard a quiet prayer next to me. He looked around. The man with whom I met those days prayed, - a priest of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, he came here himself - but, as he said, from God's blessing - to encourage the parishioners who came from the east and south of the country, from Dnepropetrovsk, Odessa, Donetsk, Simferopol. Maidan, and upward, to the golden dome fading in the darkness

“Miracle,” he told me, “miraculously the Lord.”

And at that moment, at this very important moment for the future of Ukraine, the faces of two elders - Patriarch Filaret and Metropolitan Vladimir appeared before my eyes. They arose only for a moment - at that moment there was no way to think. But I knew that the shepherds were not sleeping. I saw in front of me a clear and hard gaze of the patriarch, saw his resolutely straightened figure, frozen by the window. And he saw a silently crying Metropolitan, with all his heart, striving for the bells of such someone else and such his monastery and knowing that the bells of his church are silent ...

I remembered this scene, learning about the death of the Metropolitan. Perhaps, for several centuries, there has not yet been a more tragic and complex figure in church history: a simple Ukrainian guy who became a priest and a metropolitan of the Russian Orthodox Church fell, compared with the torment of Patriarch Nikon. I would even say that the torment of Patriarch Nikon was caught up with Metropolitan Vladimir and became a cross, which he carried to his Calvary for several decades.

To see this, you need to realize: the very concept of "Russian Church" is the same mythology as "Russian world". Of course, the Russian Church was - before Nikon. But the patriarch, concerned about the integration of the Kyiv Metropolis, turned the Russian Church into Ukrainian, told church books and the whole tradition of his own country the content of the Byzantine, that is, Kyiv. Russian Orthodoxy could not withstand this breakdown. It flashed a bonfire of Old Believer resistance, a cry of Habakkuk, a frenzy of the boyar Morozova, monastery and exile. It degenerated into the sin of collaboration and worship of Caesar, who abolished the patriarchate and turned the Church into the ministry.

Vera - alive and not persuading power - lived in the empire only on Ukrainian and Belarusian lands. And then new, red Caesars came, legalized disbelief - and who knows, the church would have managed to survive at all, if not for the Great War, which imperiously demanded not the crackling commissar lies, but of God's truth. But when the church returned, it again turned out to be Russian, but the Ukrainian one: it is enough to see the statistics of church communities and temples of military and post -war periods to understand in which territories it was still alive.

The Patriarch did not behave as a politician, but as a shepherd and in some surprising way he brought up a church for people in a once atheistic country-and the Lord, as you know, lives only in such a church

The connection of Ukrainian pastors with believers - and the sincere faith of many of them - turned them into the strongest "party" of the Russian Church. And at the first in the post -war history of the free church cathedral in June 1990, the Russian Patriarch was supposed to have a Russian church. But he did not appear. It was on that cathedral that the first clash of the future patriarch of Kyiv and the future Metropolitan of Kyiv occurred for the first time. Metropolitan Filaret was a locomotive, the actual head of the Church in the last years of Patriarch Pimen. And his confidence in his own law on the patriarchate was unconditional. Metropolitan Vladimir believed that the pressure of Metropolitan Filaret and the obvious relationship of the locomotor with the Kyiv department turned him into a much more compromise figure between the "Ukrainian" and "Russian" parties. Both of them were mistaken.

The voices of the “Ukrainian” parties disconnected between the two most popular metropolitans, the voices of the “Russian” party, on the contrary, were connected to prevent Khokhla ”. I well remember that cathedral, far from Christian humility, almost Congress of the CPSU in the Holy Danilov Monastery. I remember talking about cars and apartments, that ominous whisper swirling in the corners: “It would be better for a German, not for the“ Ukrainians ”. So it happened. There was another year remained before the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the first step to the split of the Russian Orthodox Church was already taken.

Metropolitans reacted differently to their defeat. Filaret, with his inherent fury, realized that the time of the symbiosis of the Kyiv and Moscow churches was completed, and headed for the creation of a new local church. I admit that for many years I saw the mistake of an experienced church policy in this haste and only last winter I realized that the Patriarch behaved not as a politician, but as a shepherd and in some surprising way he brought up a church for people in a once atheistic country-and the Lord, as you know, lives only in such a church. For a church, in the temples of which there is God, a question of canonicality, which determines the value of the temple for those in whose souls the disbelief has ceased to be fundamental. Metropolitan, Vladimir, agreed with the role of the guard - the conviction that only an alliance with the Ukrainian church makes the ROC the church of the surviving faith.

Arriving in Kyiv, the Primate discovered that with Metropolitan Filaret from the new autonomous church of the Moscow Patriarchate, all living things had gone. He remained along with disoriented priests who did not understand how to replace the authentic faith with the advantages of canonicality - and along with reckless conjuncturers using the church department for enrichment and reptile to those in power, to all this old new elite in raspberry jackets, with heavy crosses on bullish necks. And then the Metropolitan made a difficult but only possible decision. Let the Patriarch Kiev build his church next to him, but he, Metropolitan Vladimir, will become a church himself, his prayer will support those who have confused and shorten the forgotten about God. And the Metropolitan suffered his cross - among the hungry and false, among the sympathetic and not trusting, among the disappointed and hoping - under the attentive gaze of his excreted ally, the patriarch of Kyiv.

The most difficult trials were in recent years. The new Patriarch of Moscow, to whom the Ukrainian priesthood actually gave the throne in the hope of his sharp mind, realism and understanding of all the complexity of church tasks, turned out to be overwhelmed by a thirst for secular glory, the dream of patriarchate not in the Russian Church, but in the Russian world and the Third Rome. The Patriarch decided to become the head of the Ukrainian Church, pushing the Metropolitan from his own throne - and who knows how this crazy confrontation would end if it were not for the serious illness of the Ukrainian Primate.

The new President of Ukraine, the zealous parishioner Viktor Yanukovych and turned out to be a bandit at all. The disturbing elders in the laurel and on Athos, bringing gifts and setting services, Yanukovych treated the church as a store to lure sins. And the fact that for the Metropolitan the Church was the God's house was for Yanukovych and his surroundings the reason for the persecution and mockery of the old man. Yanukovych's reign became the time of the slow murder of the Metropolitan. And when the elder was weakened and his prayer subsided, the Antichrist spread his wings, enjoying the souls of the Ukrainian and Russian rulers. And the Church of the "Russian World" died, created by Patriarch Kirill. And the Ukrainian metropolitan died.

Nevertheless, he was right in his spiritual feat and in his faith. This world is not for the glory of the Antichrist, but for the glory of God. And the descendants will say: Patriarch Filaret created the church in our land, and Metropolitan Vladimir created the church in his soul. And they stopped evil on the approaches to the borders of our hearts and our hearts, because a quiet prayer stops evil no worse than a nabat. I know that Metropolitan Vladimir prayed whenever Patriarch Filaret beat in the bells.

Vitaly Portnikov - Kyiv journalist, observer of radio freedom

Opinions expressed under the heading "Law" may not reflect the point of view of the Radio Liberty editorial