The confessor is not a confessor

The other day, the Rain television channel showed the film by Sergey Yerzhenkov and Vlad Pushkarev “Confessor. Lubyansky father Putin ”, whose hero was the bishop of Egorievsky Tikhon (Shevkunov) . A few days before the broadcast on the Radio Liberty website , an interview was published, which Bishop Tikhon gave Zoe Light . He claims that the film “Rain” “Custom” is the first in a series of future “custom” materials about the Russian Orthodox Church. When asked who can order such investigations, Bishop Tikhon did not answer. An interview with the light de facto became the announcement of the film, heating the audience interest, especially since the bishop refused to talk with the Rain correspondents. They got a film without a hero.

Both Svetov and the authors of the film are very interested in the role of Bishop Tikhon in the case of Kirill Serebrennikov. From the very arrest of the director, rumors circulated that the "hand of the Russian Orthodox Church" was involved in his persecution. The desire to prove this, apparently, was the reason for the creation of a film, the authors of which are putting on the audience emotions for lack of facts. Behind the scenes, Yerzhenkov claims: “Several interlocutors were told“ rain ”: the bishop repeatedly, during meetings with Putin, spoke unflattering about Kirill Serebrennikov. The director was installed at the beginning of the year, the sources close to the FSB told, and the dissatisfaction of the Vladyka could affect the decision on the beginning of operational actions. ”

We follow our hands: sources say that the bishop expressed dissatisfaction with Serebrennikov’s work in the presence of the president. Other (?) Sources say that the director has been in operational development since the beginning of the year. These are facts. And then the judgment of the authors of the film is given that there can be a causal relationship between these two facts. That is, the viewer expects an investigation of this connection, stored popcorn in anticipation of information, but receives another emotion.

Next, the words of Serebrennikov from the hall of the Basmanny Court, which were read by the actor, go with a direct gluing: “I found out that I was monitoring me, much earlier than from the case file. The waiters said: “You have a tape recorder there under the table.” That is, I knew about it. " At this time, a close -up screen shows a young monk with closed eyes, personifying either telepathic surveillance or a warning waiter. All. This is the culmination of the film, dramaticly correctly came to its middle. At the place where the evidence should be, there were speculation and manipulation of the viewer. Did you never have a “unflattering” bishop, sitting with the president at the same table? The authors themselves mounted the critical words of Shevkunov in the film about the Leviathan Zvyagintsev. And in an interview with the light, he says that Serebrennikov’s films - in particular, “Student” - did not watch, but assumes that this film is not anticlerical, but antipharician. Based on what should the viewer believe in anonymous sources and not believe Shevkunov? Just because the authors want?

The remaining 40 minutes - the same emotional attempt to answer the question " Who IS Mr.​ Shevkunov ? " The hero’s biography is diverse, therefore, a variety of episodes from his life have been typed, mounted in conditionally chronological order and voiced with meaningful hints. The conflict with the community Archpriest George Kochetkov, abandoned without evidence of the statement of the leadership of the Memory Society, that in the 90s, the young Shevkunov was associated with this organization, the collective farm belonging to the Sretensky monastery, the creation of his own seminary, the construction of the cathedral with an ignorant architect-according to the authors, should all this variegated about something, but what? So far, even a portrait is not obtained.

The methods used by the authors of the film, promoting experts for conversation under the camera, were previously characteristic only for producers of propaganda programs on federal channels.

The abstracts of Shevkunov’s influence are refuted by the chief expert-banker Sergei Pugachev, who once introduced Archimandrite Tikhon and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. In the film, the disgraced oligarch says: “Putin, of course, has no confessor. At least in my opinion, he is an unbeliever. ” He hints that the turn of the ministers is lifting an appointment with Shevkunov precisely thanks to his reputation as a presidential confessor - which is not true. But even the authors of the film cannot finish this conclusion to the end, preferring to make evaluative judgments such as "Bishop, the Zemannichi, left the answer."

The methods used by the authors of the film, promoting experts for conversation under the camera, were previously characteristic only for producers of propaganda programs on federal channels. This is how they persuaded to participate in the film of the professor of the St. Petersburg Theological Academy, the famous church historian and doctor of theology, Archpriest George Mitrofanov: “The producer of the“ rain ”called and said that they want to take interviews about the reunification of the Russian Orthodox Church with the church abroad. I was surprised that for the sake of this it was necessary to send a correspondent to St. Petersburg, but they insisted. Sergei Yerzhenkov arrived, I realized on questions that he was not very well oriented in the topic, and with his reflex of the teacher for half an hour explained to him about the entire context of the reunification of churches. And then he suddenly asked if it seems to me that Archimandrite Tikhon used me. I answered what got into the film: being a clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church, I participated in the unification process, which I considered it right. I did not know anything about the film, as that he would be dedicated to Bishop Tikhon. So if anyone used anyone, then Sergey Yerzhenkov is me. ”

The authors of the film also acted approximately the same with the former responsible editor of the magazine of the Moscow Patriarchate Sergei Chapnin: “They called me from Rain and asked for an interview for three hours, saying that a multi-part film about the church in the 90s was being prepared and that is why they need such an unimaginably large interview. I talked about the problems of the period of church revival, and then at the end they asked me a few questions about Shevkunov. Of course, as part of the history of the Church of the last 30 years, Bishop Tikhon is an important figure, but that the whole film will be dedicated only to him, I was not warned. ”

Of course, this does not follow that everything that is shown in the film is not true. Perhaps there is even more truth than the authors themselves understood. The fact that the bishop is connected with the special services is not a secret. Perennial cooperation in the program and the Russian House magazine with the KGB-Lieutenant Nikolai Leonov in the 90s seemed marginal eccentricity, and in the zero it became for the father, and then Bishop Tikhon Tikhon. The presence at the services in the Sretensky monastery of security forces with recognizable faces, such as Serdyukov’s, and even more with faces unrecognizable, but characteristic, obvious for the parishioners and for the Yoys. For many years, the current Minister of Education and Science Olga Vasilieva taught for many years; However, in parallel, she also taught with the main internet chief opponent Shevkunov-at the St. Filaret Institute of Archpriest George Kochetkov.

Bishop Tikhon is a pragmatist. And he is unlikely to have a rational motive to use such a resource as contact with the president to persecute one of the directors that he does not like.

Bishop Tikhon also does not hide his aesthetic views: the director of Serebrennikov is obviously not close to him, like most of the modern culture. The choir of the Sretensky monastery gives concerts in Crocus City Hall and Barvikha Luxury Village ”with a repertoire from the Soviet stage, and Shevkunov has repeatedly admitted that he likes Leonid Derbenev’s songs, in which he finds Christian content.

At the same time, Bishop Tikhon is a pragmatist. And he is unlikely to have a rational motive to use such a resource as contact with the president to persecute one of the directors that he does not like - this gives nothing to his career, nor the church, nor specific projects. A well -fed predator does not rush to prey just like that. And Shevkunov is full. In seventeen cities of Russia, the permanent exhibition parks “Russia is my story” are opened on the basis of multimedia exhibitions, which Bishop Tikhon every November holds in the Moscow Manege with many hours of lines and sincere folk love. In the regions, local local history museums will even reorient these parks. This is the most successful ideological product of the post-Soviet time-ultramodern exhibition technologies are found with pop-up, fragmented into fragments with a version of history, where a great country floats like a ship, under the direction of wise rulers, overcoming the external threats of the West and the betrayal of internal mass enemies. With quotes from Putin, Pushkin and Solzhenitsyn. The total circulation of the book “The Non -Saints” is already more than three million copies - also an ideological product, but purely Orthodox, about proper piety and obedience; De facto this book is the catechism of modern mass Orthodoxy, the image of faith. Erzhenkov in the film has repeatedly hinted that Shevkunov is an unfinished, failed director. But in fact, he directs a giant performance on the stage of all post -Soviet Russia, perfectly coinciding with the spirit of time.

Two main memes about Shevkunov - “Confessor of the President” and “The successor of the Patriarch”. In an interview with Zoe, he says the same thing as Pugachev in the film: Vladimir Putin does not have a confessor, and Bishop Tikhon himself is simply entering a certain close circle. However, for almost 18 years, he, having never stumbled, neatly has been using the myth who grew up from the journalistic Bonmo.

The bishop himself claims that he knows exactly who was the first to call him the confessor of the president. There are versions that it was Andrei Kolesnikov, Mikhail Leontyev, an unknown author of the Expert magazine, a correspondent of the Muscovy television channel and so on. Obviously, this happened no later than the summer of 2000. Because already in August, on the eve of the Jubilee Bishop Cathedral, MK journalist Sergei Bychkov, without any doubt, calls the Archimandrite Tikhon the “confessor of the president” then and believes that it is he who lobbies the canonization of the royal family, which should take place in this cathedral. And a year later, the correspondent of the Keston News Service Geralda Feigan takes an interview with the deputy chief of the main department of the internal policy of the administration of the President of the Russian Federation Maxim Meyer, who answers the question of the confessor Tikhona: “This is absolutely not true either in relation to Putin himself or even in relation to his wife” (Russian retelling of the interview is here ). So since then everyone is lost in conjectures - taking into account the fact that the “functionality” of the confessor in Orthodoxy has not been formalized in any way.

Bishop Tikhon, if he really gets into the patriarchs, will have a serious competition from non -public, but from this no less sophisticated bishops in intra -church intrigues.

As for the "successor of the Patriarch", it is still more complicated here. It must be borne in mind that each description of the “electoral layouts” inside the episcopate is not a prognosis, but rather fixation of the present moment. Elections occur only in the event of the death of the patriarch, and this is the only thing that in the literal sense in the hands of God.

So, at the end of the nineties - the beginning of the zero, all church analysts joked about the struggle of Cyril with Methodius. The influential Metropolitan of Voronezh and Lipetsk Methodius seemed to many more likely candidate for the patriarchal throne than the ambitious Metropolitan of Smolensk and Kaliningrad Cyril. And the one who later became a real competitor of Cyril, Metropolitan Clement, Metropolitan - in those years was just one of his employees in the department of external church ties. If the election happened in 2002, Methodius would probably become a patriarch. But at the end of 2008, when the real election campaign began, they forgot about him for five years - at first Patriarch Alexy sent him to manage the dioceses of the Russian Orthodox Church in Kazakhstan, and now he wears the modest title of Metropolitan of Perm and Kungursky.

The fact that it is now really happening inside the Bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church is much more difficult to judge than before the election of Patriarch Kirill: in 2008, the bishops in the Church were 196, and as of November 2017, their number was 406. The current patriarch doubled the episcopate for nine years of his ministry, so that the new applicant for the patriarchal will have to agree with twice as much number electors. All of them are clearly not enough - money: the poor dioceses sawed into several parts cannot provide the level of income to which the previous generation of the bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church and which the newly ordained bishops were clearly counted on. But it is obvious that Bishop Tikhon, if he really gets into the patriarchs, will have a serious competition from non -public, but from this no less sophisticated bishops in intra -church intrigues.

Despite the fact that the relations of Bishop Tikhon and the Kremlin are built in parallel to the relations of the Patriarch, he is always extremely correct in relation to the latter and does not demonstrate his interest in church government. But in the summer of this year, the editor-in-chief of Echo of Moscow, Alexei Venediktov, published a strange post in telegram : he claimed that the multi-asset for the appointment of Bishop Tikhon was played first by the rector of the surveyed Church of the Isaac's Cathedral, then the Metropolitan of the St. Petersburg and a permanent member of the Synod, and then the Patriarch Kirill will be shifted and Shevkunov will be shifted in his place.

Bishop Tikhon, commenting on this assumption to reporters, said that “did not interpret the prophecies of Venediktov,” however, as a refutation, he expressed an argument that only a bishop, who managed the diocese, while Tikhon himself, is just Vicar, deputy patriarch, can be elected by the Patriarch. But in the charter of the Russian Orthodox Church, its main document, there is no such condition (see paragraph 17). That is, formal obstacles to be chosen, even if the elections take place tomorrow, Shevkunov does not. But why for this to become the abbot of the St. Isaac's Cathedral, being already a governor of the most successful Moscow monastery, a mystery. The light idiocy of Venediktov’s post suggests that someone sent a signal to someone through him.

A few days later, Alexei Venediktov again wrote in his telegram channel about Bishop Tikhona (Shevkunov). This time arguing that it was he who influenced the decision to transfer the premiere of the Nureye ballet in the Bolshoi Theater. This was the starting point of conversation about Shevkunov’s involvement in the Serebrennikov case. And four months later, precisely in those days when the audience from the night took the line for tickets for the first shows of Nureyev , the film “Rain” about the “Lubyansky priest” was broadcast.