Right saints

Last week, at a meeting of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church, three decisions were adopted, clearly demonstrating the further transformation of the leadership of the Church into a legal organization of a fascist type.

San Bishop received the rector of the Moscow Sretensky Monastery Archimandrite Tikhon (Shevkunov) closely connected with the Black Hundred organizations. For at least one and a half decades, the socio -political reputation prevented him from moving from church “officers” to “generals” - despite the successes in propaganda activities (the publishing house of the Sretensky monastery is the largest in the Russian Orthodox Church) and close ties in the state establishment. Now the decency is rejected, and the path to a large church career is open.

Another decision of the Synod formed a joint commission of the Russian and Bulgarian Orthodox churches on the canonization of the Archbishop of the Bogucharsky Seraphim (Sobolev). It is emphasized that it was created on the personal initiative of Patriarch Kirill, who turned to the head of the Bulgarian church with the corresponding request on May 5. The emigrating from Russia and became one of the leaders of the Bulgarian Church, Seraphim is known not only as the actual founder of modern Bulgarian monasticism. He is the author of many Xenophobic works, demonstrating (like that of Putin and Mikhalkov, philosopher Ivan Ilyin) a mixture of modern Russian nationalism and hatred of the other people. In the 1930s, he actively fought with the theologians of the School of the Parisian Sergius Institute, insisting on the abandonment of any inter-confessional cooperation. Well, of course, like the other "Karlovites" - European bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church - actively collaborated with the Nazis. What did not prevent him, as a Russian patriot, after the war, equally successfully cooperate with the Stalinist regime.

The most noticeable Russian student and nominee Sobolev was a young emigrant priest, known to us as Archpriest Vsevolod Spiller. To a large extent, under the influence of the ideas of his teacher, he returned from Bulgaria to Moscow in 1949, where he was an influential church official as deputy head of the Association. However, then his ideas conflict with political reality and he, preserving the post of rector of the Moscow Church of Nikola in the Kuznets, became an equally influential figure in unofficial church life. In particular, he actively supported the structures of church resistance, which tried to combine right views with human rights rhetoric for the sake of gaining more independence as a whole.

A group of young students from Wednesday of the Moscow intelligentsia formed around the spiller. In the early 1980s, they became priests, by the middle of the decade they came into confrontation with their former comrades who chose a more liberal image of the church future, during the years of perestroika founded the most successful church-educational project of a new era called the St. Tikhonovsky Orthodox Institute, and in the early 2000s, as a result of a large and successful intrigue, they became a leading ideological grouping in the RPC. Representatives of this group held many posts in the leadership of the Church and to this day control at least two positions of the general church level. One of these priests is known for its aggressive xenophobic and extremist rhetoric (and involvement in at least one large violent action) the head of the Patriarchal Commission on Family and Youth Affairs, Archpriest Dmitry Smirnov. He actually performs the functions of the church curator for the extremist group "God's will".

There is no doubt that the prospects for the canonization of the Archbishop Serafim (Sobolev), and therefore, a church blessing to reprint and popularize his works, is the result of the activities of the Corporation of the Holy Tikhon Institute (now the Orthodox Holy Tikhon Humanitarian University). Moreover, the rector of the PSTU, Archpriest Vladimir Vorobyov, one of the main students of the spiller, was part of the banknization commission.

And finally, the third ideologically significant accomplishment of the Synod was the resolution on the report of Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, chairman of the synodal department on the relationship of the church and society, "with proposals for counteracting neoism." The Synod ruled: "Consider the reasonable concern of the intensified spread of neo -humanity in the countries of the canonical responsibility of the Moscow Patriarchate, including in the cultural and information sphere. To emphasize the need for more active work at the general church and diocese levels in order to refute neo -language delusions. This work must be carried out primarily with young people, communities of athletes and sports fans, communities of athletes and sports fans. Participants in military-patriotic clubs, law enforcement officers and persons in places of imprisonment. "

This is the answer to the failure of the Moscow Patriarchate with "socially close" categories of youth in recent years. Despite the desire of the patriarchy to turn the energy of right-wing extremists and militarists in the youth environment for their benefit, realizing the concept of military sports clubs in parishes (and in each region there are necessarily such a pair of pieces), it is more and more noticeable that, from the point of view of extremists, the position of the Russian Orthodox Church does not suit Pasomoy. The symbol of this was the sensational refusal of the popular Russian nationalists in the environment of boxer Alexander Povetkin from Orthodoxy and actually declared by him through publicly demonstrated tattoos and amulets a transition to neoism.

Obviously, the balanced position of the Russian Orthodox Church in the Ukrainian conflict and its rejection of public anti -Ukrainian rhetoric also caused discontent among patriotic right -wing radicals and caused their rejection from the church leadership. No wonder Vsevolod Chaplin, whom Bourne’s neo-Nazi group in the late 2000s considered a candidate for the role of a victim “for betraying the interests of the Russian people”, is now worried about the religiosity of fans, police and convicts.

But maybe in this case the Moscow Patriarchate and actually cares about the morality of youth? This could be allowed if the patriarchy and the Patriarch did not personally hire those very right -wing fans and neo -Nazis to their service as personal security. And in the text of the Synod’s solution there is not a word of condemnation of “sports fans” - but they create idols for themselves and worship them, which is a direct violation of the commandment “do not create an idol”.

These decisions of the Synod, beating at one point, are, in my opinion, signs of the fascist of the leadership of the Church. "Fascization" in this case is an academic term that describes the process of indocation of the subject of public space with a certain complex of ideas and practices. Being under the rule of the communist regime, the Russian Orthodox Church in its ideological development has been frozen for seven decades and is now taking the same stages that have passed large Christian churches in Europe throughout the twentieth century. If, under Alexia II, the “premoder” mystical Black Hundreds prevailed, then the ROC of the era of Cyril went into the stage of modern fascist experiments characteristic of Europe of the 1920-1930s. The reasoning of the church hierarchs about the role of the “national leader”, about the “unity of the people”, about the sacred duty of war, about the special rights of collective entities, more important than individual rights, and even special attention to young people - all this from that era and from that rhetoric. As well as militarized youth organizations in church communities.

Therefore, everything that is connected with the Russian confession of fascism and other versions of right-wing radicalism, which was very popular in the Russian emigration of the 1920-1930s, is now only welcome in the church. And the latest decisions of the Synod testify to this.

In itself, "fascization", being a big problem for the church, is not of paramount importance to society. The church is numerically small and too fragmented by organizationally and ideologically so that such processes affecting primarily its administrative apparatus can have a real impact on Russian policy at the federal or even local level. No matter how someone in the church leadership would like to command strict columns of militants who want to sign up in the ranks of these militants, and besides just like that, less and less. Therefore, there are much more generals in this army than soldiers.

Meanwhile, the process of fascization, with all its unacceptability for modern society, has a variety of consequences. Fascism itself was a revolutionary movement for its time, one of the options for catching up of modernization. It carried not only anti -democratic and xenophobic impulses, but also the destruction of obsolete social institutions and partitions, paved the way for new technologies, built social elevators and opened up opportunities for young people.

In this regard, the activities of Patriarch Kirill and his team does not look so unambiguous. The ideological component of Cyril’s reign and his gross mistakes in information policy shade for external observers what was made by the efforts of the Patriarch and his like -minded people within the church over the past five years. Reforming the administrative apparatus of the Russian Orthodox Church (the creation of the Supreme Church Council, a change in the number and functions of departments), the creation of quasi -deputy institutions (inters -suffering presence, church courts, congresses of various categories of the clergy), unification of church legislation, a significant increase in the number of bishops and, finally, withdrawal from the most old -regime forms of confession (the fight against old age, mysticism, mysticism, mysticism, mysticism, mysticism, mysticism. Superstitions, open ethnic and confessional xenophobia), the course on the active attracting of educated youth - all this lays the foundation for further transformation of the Russian Orthodox Church into a more modern church.

For a huge number of ordinary (and not very) priests and laity, all these games with black-winged militants and open Russian-nationalist rhetoric are not only unacceptable at all, but rather absolutely not important in comparison with some other truths and values ​​that they associate with Orthodoxy. Everyday worries about the Sunday school, the dining room for the homeless, finally, about their pockets for them are much more important than ideological "bends" of the leadership of the Moscow Patriarchate. Moreover, even within the framework of the church, it is unable to ensure not only the flushing of the brain in the right direction, but even a clear transmission of signals about its wishes.

Thus, the real needs and concerns of these people in a modern post -industrial society allow you to formulate completely different priorities in the activities of Orthodox communities, which is seen from above. Sooner or later (the account here is not for years, but on the "five -year plan") these priorities will come to an obvious contradiction with the moods of the ruling top of the church and its few, but radical supporters in the field. And then they will be in the Russian Orthodox Church and their “second Vatican Cathedral”, and “theology after the Gulag”, and priests “fed pancakes” of aggressively tuned visitors, and everything else that modern Russian society expects from the Russian Orthodox Church.