Prophet outside the fatherland

Andrei Kuraev was included in the register of "foreign agents". Why should the Kremlin put pressure on the theologian?

At the beginning of the Christmas period, the most important in the church calendar, the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation recognized the “ino -agent”, perhaps the most vivid and ambiguous Russian theologian - Andrei Kuraev. Can this be considered persecution for faith?

On the one hand, this could be expected. The wayward Orthodox intellectual Protodiacon Andrei Kuraev has been in a systemic conflict with Patriarch Kirill for many years and criticizes the Russian power-with a religious and moral point of view, which is especially sensitive to her.

On the other hand, until the evening of December 22, the illusion remained that the Kremlin regime would not introduce its rude repressive methods in such a delicate and complex sphere as theology and religious ethics. But this seal was also removed: by the decision of Kuraev, the Ministry of Justice clearly stated that in Russia the state will now determine that there is truth, and even traditionally Orthodox concepts and approaches, if they do not serve to strengthen the regime and “achieve their goals”, will be subjected to repression.

The conformist-intricate mass of the Russian Orthodox Church, headed by Kirill Gundyaev (back in Soviet times, earnestly served the KGB under the agent pseudonym Mikhailov) is now least interested in the gospel and morality, zealously participating in the new Kremlin cult. The main task of at the end of November, chaired by the Patriarch of the World Russian People’s Cathedral, was not something religious, but the search for the new state ideology of Russia.

The totalitarian regime, which does not tolerate free thought and pluralism of ideas, inevitably comes to the prohibition of religious thought, recognizing only one function for nominally religious institutions - the ideological servants of the regime. What kind of gospel or theology can be here?

Understanding all this, Kuraev admits that he is “under foreign influence”. First of all, we are talking about a book, written far beyond the borders of the Russian Federation and very dangerous for its current authorities, about the Gospel.

There, for example, there are words that overturn the entire pathos of “Svo”: “Return your sword in its place, for everyone who took the sword will perish with the sword” (Matthew 26:52).

Christ, whom the Russian Orthodox Church theoretically considers his head, did not encourage revenge, armed struggle for the territory, “denacing”, etc. On the contrary, he commanded not to resist the evil, to substitute his left cheek to the one who beats on the right, to give everything to those who are trying to select only part. Finally, he called the sons of God peacekeepers, and not the incarnators of the war. As Vladimir Putin, who was once deified in the current Russian Orthodox Church, commenting on the feat of the saints Boris and Gleb, obedient to the commandments of Christ: “They went on and waited for them to be killed. This cannot be an example for us. ”

Did Putin understand that his words relate to Christ, who also did not resist his executioners, but as a result, the resurrection defeated death? Does Patriarch Kirill understand that choosing the Putin's “scale of values”, he directly renounces Christ and leads the Russian Orthodox Church from him? Kurayev gave obvious answers to these questions every day - apparently, elected from above for such a “prophetic ministry” in the era of the death of the Russian land.

“There is no prophet without honor, unless in their country ... If they drove me, they will drive you too,” Christ warned his disciples. Under the pressure of these persecutions in early November, a 60-year-old Fr. Andrei Kuraev was forced to leave his Moscow environment, break the usual ties and move to Prague - not quite a foreign city for him, where Kuraev studied at the school at the Soviet embassy for several years when his parents worked in the editorial office of the international magazine “Questions of Peace and Socialism”. “My Moscow world is destroyed,” he repeated bitterly in those days. “Living outside the Russian Federation” became one of the reasons for the awarding of Kuraev by the stigma of “Inoage”, which is indicated by the Ministry of Justice.

Other reasons: “inaccurate information” about the policy of the bodies of the Russian Federation, speeches against “Svo”, the distribution of messages of other “foreign agents”, publications at foreign information sites. As usual, the Ministry of Justice does not indicate which state the agent “became” Kuraev or how his “agent” activity was paid. Contrary to the initial plan of the Law on “Ino -Agents”, in today's Ugar, they are already underway to understand such details. The signs of “foreign agency” were reduced to two: disagreement with the Kremlin’s policy and contacts with abroad. The level of primitive, worthy of some "red terror" ...

Kuraev suspects that the Moscow Patriarchate achieved the assignment of the status of “Ino -Agent” - in order to ironly guarantee the non -return of the truth -bearing on its “canonical territory”, in the Russian Federation.

Now Kuraev is in Europe on a 90-day Schengen visa, which expires in January, and obtaining the status of “foreign agent”, according to him, gives moral and legal grounds to ask the Czech Republic of refuge.

At the beginning of the full -scale invasion, Kuraev was fined for the use of the word “war” on the blog. Since then, he wrote and spoke out extremely carefully - "within the framework of the current legislation." Contrary to the unfounded statements of the Ministry of Justice, Kuraev did not distribute the materials of other “foreign agents”, did not speak about politics or military operations. In an interview with Novy-Europe, he so formulated the “program” of his life in emigration: “To stay in the ordinary line for me, reflection on the topics of ethical-religious, religious, cultural ... nothing earthly for a religious person can be absolute.”

He emphasizes his belonging to European culture, and if it is now unacceptable for the authorities of the Russian Federation, then there is some logic in their decision. But then the final cleaning of Russian school and university programs, libraries and museums from the works of Western writers, thinkers and artists - only a matter of time. In modern Russia, two cultural and intellectual reality also coexists “inertia”, and this causes obvious discomfort to the dementia of power.

Kuraev’s biography predetermined the bright intellectual trace that he left in the Orthodox culture of the late XX - early XXI centuries. She could become a symbol of the return of the Russian intelligentsia to Christianity after the collapse of Soviet atheistic ideology. It could, if this return was not torpedoed by the Moscow Patriarchate faithful to the Kremlin and Lubyanka ...

In 1984, Kuraev graduated with honors from the Faculty of Philosophy of Moscow State University, where he specialized in scientific atheism. Studying in the 4th year, he secretly baptized in the Church of the Nativity of John the Baptist on Presnya, which then also secretly visited for several years. Having abandoned the graduate school of the Institute of Philosophy of the USSR Academy of Sciences, the zealous neophyte got a watchman at the Moscow Theological Academy in the Trinity-Sergius Lavra-to go down on a social elevator to the floor for entering the seminary (in the USSR they tried not to take people with higher education-all the more so brilliant). In 1988, Kuraev graduated from the Moscow Theological Seminary and was sent to continue his education at the Theological Department of Bucharest University, where the Romanian patriarch ordained him to the rank of deacon. Returning to Moscow in 1990, he became a referent of the newly elected Patriarch Alexy II and began to teach at Moscow State University, and soon headed the theological and philosophical faculty of the created Russian Orthodox University.

The specific priestly environment did not perceive Kuraev as “its own”, therefore, as a result of intrigue in 1993, he was not ordained a priest and lost the position of referent by the patriarch, focusing on an academic career, which was brilliant: two dissertations (by theology and philosophy), the title of professor, work in Moscow State University and Orthodox universities, membership in various kinds commissions of the Russian Orthodox Church and the expert council at the State Duma ...

The end of the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s is the era of the intensive “tour” activity of Kuraev, when different dioceses vied with vying to him, and he made lectures in crowded halls. In the same years, the main books of Fr. Andrei: “Call of ecumenism”; "Gifts and anathema"; “Occultism in Orthodoxy”; “How to do anti -Semite”; "Satanism for the intelligentsia"; "Tradition. Dogma. The ceremony ”and others. He became the author of the first school textbook on the“ Fundamentals of Orthodox Culture ”. At the peak of his popularity, at the end of 2008, Kuraev actively joined the election campaign of Metropolitan Kirill (Gundyaev), who decided to become a patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church after the death of Alexy II. Despite the very ambiguous sediment, which was left by the campaign in church memory, and to the subsequent tough conflict with the Patriarch, Fr. Andrei claims that he still does not consider his actions a mistake at that time.

The current - “disgraced” - the period of his biography began in 2012-13, symbolically coincided with the return of Putin to the eternal rule. First, Kuraev condemned the Pussy Riot scouring campaign, which arranged a “punk-summer” in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior precisely as a protest campaign against Putin’s return, and then began to expose a “blue lobby” in the episcopate of the Russian Orthodox Church. The ill -wishers still suspect Kuraev of the selfish motives of those revelations, since a number of key characters who have a completely unambiguous reputation in the church remained outside the field of view of the Truth -Great.

Be that as it may, Kuraev threw a shadow at the Patriarch himself, after which he quickly lost all his posts (including secular - at Moscow State University) and turned into a depth deacon of the Moscow diocese.

Contacts with him became “toxic” for bishops, the “tour” in the dioceses ceased.

The final chord of the Kuraevsky career was associated with the beginning of covid quarantine, when, according to about. Andrei, as a result of the unreasonable panic actions of Cyril (in particular, the mass prayer in the Elokhov Cathedral), the rector of this cathedral, Archpriest Alexander Ageikin, died from the coronavirus. The Patriarch forbade Kuraev in the ministry and betrayed it to the church court, which took place at the beginning of 2021 and recognized the protodiacon worthy of the deprivation of the dignity (separation). Only in April 2023, Kirill decided to approve this resolution, and now he is officially considered a layman in the Russian Orthodox Church. He himself says that he managed to move under the homophore of another bishop, and does not even exclude his accession to the Patriarchate of Constantinople, the head of which, according to canons, has the right to consider the appeals of clergy from other local churches for the non -legal decisions of his priesthood. In any case, if the Prague emigration of Kuraev is delayed, he will be on the “canonical territory” of the Orthodox Church of the Czech lands and Slovakia, which is the satellite of the Patriarchate of Constantinople.

Kuraev, as a thinker, is too original and independent so that you can enter it into some party or make an icon out of it. It is uncomfortable not only for the patriarchy and the Kremlin. For many years, notes were heard in his lectures and interviews, which can be interpreted as anti -Semitic, Islamofobic, homophobic or chauvinistic (according to the same “Ukrainian issue”). But the dramatic processes that have accelerated in Russia over the past 10 years (and especially in 2022–23) helped Kuraev adjust the “distortions”. Back in 2014, he condemned the annexation of Crimea, predicting that it would bring the Russian Federation more problems than dividends.

The Russian government uses the status of “in agent” as a repressive instrument, but in the case of Kuraev, its use refers not only to this personally taken personality. Of course, the “in agent” will become for Fr. Andrei is a kind of “crown” - as in the Orthodox tradition they call the heavenly reward received through suffering or even martyrdom here on Earth. But in this case, the “foreigner” is essentially declared the whole tradition of the intellectual, reflective theology, which dates back to Russia to the religious philosophy of the Silver Age, was preserved by the Orthodox thinkers of the Russian abroad and began to revive with a creak in their homeland in the 90s. In the person of Kuraev, a verdict of this particular tradition is pronounced - the current Russian government is not only not needed, but also hostile. A dead rusty screening was put in place of living faith and philosophical search.