Is the reincarnation of General Rommel a “blessed” pedophile?

In what direction has the “Orthodox revival” moved in Russia, no longer controlled by the official Russian Orthodox Church?

Shocking news: in St. Petersburg, the court released a suspected pedophile from arrest because he is a “member of the SVO.” A closer study of the biography and views of the 31-year-old suspect, who several years ago changed his Russian first and last name to the German Claud Rommel, leaves a complex impression.

Before us is a kind of “hero of our time,” an explosive mixture of psychopathologies, official patriotism, conspiracy theories, Orthodoxy (official and esoteric), military romance, the Third Reich, and eroticism. And the damned question arises: Is Rommel a criminal or a victim of some more terrible, systemic crime? An anthropological experiment that puts power over the people with the active participation of the church corporation that serves it...

He was born in 1993 in Podolsk near Moscow (where he is still registered), and as a child his name was Alexander. After serving his military service (they say he received a shell shock), at the age of 20 he abruptly broke ties with his family and “changed his identity.” As Alexander-Klaud’s father Valery told reporters, his son officially changed his first and last name, telling his parents: “Your boy is no more.” In his videos on the channel, which has become popular among the Orthodox-patriotic community, Rommel presents a confused version of how he used to live in the body of a suicide (Alexander), but was freed from it. So to speak, he experienced reincarnation, for which he thanks the angels.

A new life took place in St. Petersburg, where Rommel met women and worked as a caretaker of the city Nikolskoye cemetery near the walls of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. The choice of identity is clearly related to the experience of military service, when, according to Cloud, he first found himself in the Donbass.

Just at the beginning of 2014, the Russian translation of the memoirs of Wehrmacht Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, “The Infantry is Advancing. Events and Experiences" .

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Erwin Rommel

In 1939–1940, Rommel served as commandant of the Fuhrer's headquarters, then commanded German-Italian forces in North Africa, earning the nickname Desert Fox. In 1943 he was assigned to Northern Italy, and in 1944 to Northern France. He was seriously wounded during the Allied landings in Normandy, which did not prevent Hitler’s entourage from accusing Rommel of participating in a conspiracy against the Fuhrer. The Field Marshal committed suicide and was buried with military honors.

However, our hero is not the exact namesake of Hitler’s general. The name Cloud, under which, as he says, he is even given communion in the Russian Orthodox Church, is not in the Orthodox calendar. More precisely, there it is transmitted by the Latin form Claudius (translated as “persistent”). Rommel’s success in the Orthodox blogosphere seems to justify the choice of name...

Fame came to him thanks to miraculous phenomena at the Nikolskoye cemetery, which you can believe in or not.

The most famous of the apparitions allegedly occurred around 5 a.m. on February 27, 2021, at one of the graves, where Cloud saw a bright light while walking around the cemetery. I decided that the hooligans had lit fireworks, took the phones and a rubber baton and headed towards the light source. However, coming closer, Rommel saw... John of Kronstadt (Orthodox saint, died in 1908). Although the luminous old man did not introduce himself, Rommel identified him as such, and when he tried to photograph John, he disappeared “with a loud bang.” But he did not disappear without a trace. On the snow that had melted from the heavenly light lay a photo that Rommel picked up, but it soon disappeared in his hands. The photo depicted 12 people - characters from Russian history, many of whom the caretaker knew nothing about, but remembered their names. For those who believe in miracles, the low level of historical education of the caretaker serves as proof of the veracity of his story.

The Russian Orthodox Church commission for the canonization of saints allegedly became interested in the phenomenon (although John of Kronstadt was canonized in the Russian Orthodox Church back in 1990). For her, Cloud recorded his first big interview , which received almost 150 thousand views. During March of the same year, Rommel claims to have had two more apparitions in the same cemetery, but he does not talk about them in detail. The visionary's fame quickly spread throughout Russia; admirers dedicated a website to Rommel, which lists his virtues - for example, he “has not eaten slaughtered food (fish, meat, eggs) for 6 years.” The young man also posts his own spiritual instructions on his VK page .

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John of Kronstadt

A symbolic image for the modern Russian Orthodox subculture, painted in apocalyptic tones and associated with a political agenda. The point is that Fr. John predicted the revolution and the catastrophe of Orthodoxy in Russia; his admirers were extremely anti-Soviet. The OGPU-NKVD-KGB systematically persecuted the “savage anti-Soviet sect of the Johannites,” which included part of the True Orthodox (Catacomb) Christians.

The Russian Church Abroad canonized John back in 1964 precisely with anti-Soviet connotations, and the Russian Orthodox Church - in 1990, in the context of an eschatological* understanding of the collapse of the USSR.

Rommel interpreted the appearance of the Kronstadt Elder as a call for repentance of the Russian Orthodox Church and for the canonization of a “hidden” saint - a contemporary of Fr. John Matthew Tatomir, whose crypt at the Nikolskoye cemetery he placed at the center of his sermon.

“Hidden” saint from Nikolskoye cemetery

Blessed Matthew Tatomir, a St. Petersburg ascetic of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, is classified as a “hidden” or “national” saint because he was not canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church. Different groups in and around the Russian Orthodox Church venerate different hosts of “hidden” saints—often this is of a “protest” or politically charged nature. In the alternative calendars one can find our contemporaries, such as the youth Slavik Chebarkulsky or Evgeniy Rodionov, who died in Chechen captivity, and ominous historical figures, such as Grozny, Rasputin and even Stalin. Church-related business is meeting the element of popular piety: for example, one of the pilgrimage companies offers the “Blessed of St. Petersburg” tour for a reasonable fee. The advertisement lists those missing from the calendars of the Russian Orthodox Church: “The Wanderer Daryushka, Matronushka Barefoot, Blessed. Matthew Tatomir, right. Grishenka and others.”

The cult of Tatomir has recently become widespread; almost nothing is known about this ascetic. The most complete publication about him is a 2021 article in the fundamentalist Rus Sovereign, co-authored by the same Cloud Rommel.

It is alleged that Matthew was born in 1848 near Kamenets-Podolsky in the family of an archpriest, graduated from theological school, moved with his father to St. Petersburg, but broke off relations with him by entering the university. Tatomir was expelled from the university for speaking in support of an opposition-minded professor; he went on a pilgrimage to Palestine, where he spent several years learning the ascetic life from hermits.

Returning to St. Petersburg, he settled in the crypts in the cemeteries of the Lavra, where he fell ill, and by order of the emperor (?!) he was moved to a good apartment, continuing his ascetic deeds there. The official church rejected Tatomir and refused to tonsure him as a monk, but the people reached out to him for healings and instructions.

John of Kronstadt allegedly visited Tatomir’s apartment many times. At the age of 49, the blessed one stopped accepting people, went into seclusion, and died in 1904.

Despite the difficult relationship with the official church, the laurels built a chapel over the place of his burial at the Nikolskoye cemetery, which has survived to this day. In Soviet times, pilgrimages were made to it, catacombs gathered, and in 1985, Metropolitan of the Russian Orthodox Church Anthony (Melnikov), without the consent of the authorities, dug up the relics of Tatomir and transferred them to a nearby cemetery church, where they lie to this day in a small ark. Modern parachurch mythology represents St. Seraphim of Vyritsky as a disciple of Matthew Tatomir, and Seraphim “begged for victory.”

This is how a bridge is thrown from the “hidden” saint preached by Rommel to the cult of the great victory and the North Military District, which Rommel ultimately fell for.

“Refined Love” - the path to SVO

The road to the Northern Military District ran for Rommel through a romantic and mystical friendship with the girl Angelina, to whom he dedicates every video and whom the Investigative Committee considers to be a victim in a criminal case.

The girl is the daughter of Cloud’s cohabitant Victoria (“the blessed one” is no stranger to carnal temptations, subscribes to Orthodox dating groups and periodically talks about “refined forms of love”), with whom he did not get along. In interviews, he sometimes talks about his wife without calling her by name, but it is difficult to understand for certain whether he is talking about Angelina’s mother.

The three of them began to live together immediately after the appearance of John of Kronstadt, in 2021, when the girl was only eight. At first she lived in her mother’s room, but then she moved to Cloud’s room, who began “raising” her. The girl treats her own mother with hostility and flatly refuses to live with her, as she talks about in videos from the orphanage that Rommel posts. The girl came to the shelter this spring, when she was already 11, at the insistence of her godmother, who allegedly succeeded in initiating a criminal case against Cloud.

According to media reports, Rommel is suspected of rape; he himself claims that he gave the girl a “medical massage.” The investigation believes that the visionary’s objects of interest could have been other girls, whom he mentions in passing in his videos and whose photos he posts on his blogs.

As Novaya managed to find out, Rommel’s guardianship over Angelina was not formalized. After the child was taken from him, Cloud signed a contract with the Russian Armed Forces and, out of harm’s way, went to the Northern Military District zone.

The story of Angelina, it seems, pushed Rommel to the “feats of arms” for which he was “spiritually preparing.” In his publications, he promotes the conspiracy theory of “sacrifice in Donbass.” “Why did God bless the Russian army, or more precisely, the command, to start the Northern Military District?” - he asks a question. And he answers: “A dark ritual sacrifice took place, somewhat similar in level to the murder of the royal family.” In this case, according to Rommel, the ritual was performed by Ukraine in the interests of the satanic West. “God was waiting for repentance from the Ukrainian people in order to remove the seal of inevitable punishment from them,” he writes. “But since repentance did not occur, punishment came in the form of the Russian Armed Forces, acting as God’s “angel of death.”

Rommel’s video from the front line received two and a half million views, where he “live” narrates how a Ukrainian “bird” covered him and a comrade, he covered his comrade with his body and was left without a leg. By some miracle, Rommel quickly ended up in the hospital, where it turned out that his leg was not blown off, only his foot was damaged by shrapnel. As a hero, with a bandaged leg and on crutches, he was recently honored in a profile show on NTV. The presenter asked awkward questions about the family, the girl and the photo shoot with models (it turns out that there was such an episode in the life of the “blessed one”), he answered evasively.

Rommel was arrested on September 30, and the federal media reported that he was facing a prison term of “up to life.”

Even under the current “wartime laws,” pedophiles or suspected pedophiles have no chance of concluding a contract with the Russian Armed Forces. But bad luck - Rommel had already imprisoned him, and on October 1 the court released him on bail from the commander of the military unit in Luga.

A positive image of a romantic hero-teacher-visionary is created both by the federal media and by Rommel’s fellow Orthodox esotericists, such as Malofeev’s “Constant Grad”.

After his release in the courtroom, Rommel promised: “I will go into the toughest storms. They don’t come out of there alive.” They say I will atone with blood.

In my memory, this is the first time in the Russian Federation that an accused of pedophilia with a person under 12 years of age has been released from custody. Despite the accusations brought against Rommel, at the end of September he met with schoolchildren, told them about his heroism and about blessed Tatomir, starting with a recitative set of pious phrases: “Christ is among us - both is and will be!..”

Velikoretsk Orthodoxy

Another example of painful throwing, in the classic expression of A.A. Zhdanov, “between the boudoir and the prayer room”?

The Rommel phenomenon gives reason to talk about the direction in which the “Orthodox revival” in Russia, no longer controlled by the official Russian Orthodox Church, has moved.

The man to whom John of Kronstadt appears and who serves Blessed Matthew declares himself the reincarnation of General Rommel and the “son of the Illuminati.” But he is not sent for a psychiatric examination, but is invited to federal channels and accepted into the Armed Forces, where he is assigned the call sign “Saint.”

An active personal life and “medical massages” for a 10-year-old girl do not prevent him from calling himself “blessed” and citing his piety as an example: “I fasted a lot, I don’t use swear words, I don’t drink, I don’t smoke.”

Rommel calls the Velikoretsk religious procession the place of spiritual formation (his and Angelina’s) - an annual Orthodox-esoteric event, which brings together Tsarebozhniks, catacombs, Old Believers of various consents, prophets, healers, visionaries... To catch the popular element of deep Orthodoxy, you don’t need to watch the official channel “ Spas" or read the "Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate", but in the summer you need to go to the village of Velikoretskoye, Yuryansk district, Kirov region, where in the 15th century the miraculous icon of St. Nicholas, and move with thousands of crusaders on a 150-kilometer journey.

Not all participants in this action can formulate its purpose, but during the multi-day procession they willingly introduce each other to the lives of “hidden” saints, prophecies about the imminent end of the world, living prophets and healers. After the next Velikoretsk religious procession, Rommel himself spoke in the language of a post-Soviet prophet: “Certain actions are also required with the Russian Orthodox Church MP... The special services are working quickly and neutralizing many misfortunes. However, this year we will have to face new players who, alas, are more cunning... The Velikoretsk religious procession through the prayers of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker will save Russia.”

The root of the conflict between popular piety and official churchism is that the latter does not satisfy a living religious feeling, a thirst for the otherworldly “here and now.” This is how it was in pre-revolutionary Russia, and this is how things stand today, after 35 years of “Orthodox revival.” For the popular faith, the feeling of the imminence of the end of the world is important, which for the official church has turned into an abstraction, into a “theological symbol.” Patriarch Kirill, in his attempts to impart apocalyptic meanings to the North Military District, explains the call to “fight until victory” by the fact that “victory” will delay the end of the world, and we will still be able to live a familiar and comfortable earthly life. The bearers of official churchism are often successful people, built into the system, beneficiaries of the privileged position of the Russian Orthodox Church, while the bearers of popular religiosity are for the most part socially disadvantaged, humiliated by the authorities, rejected by the church establishment.

Rommel’s spiritual and mystical quests did not meet with much understanding in the Russian Orthodox Church, and the issue of canonizing Matthew Tatomir, who he preached, is not yet on the agenda. The Patriarch is more concerned not with “folk” saints, but with official saints, whose images are in demand within the framework of the myth of a great and invincible Russia - Admiral Ushakov, Generalissimo Suvorov... The category of holiness itself receives a pronounced military-political connotation in the official church.

“Your own holiness will justify any abomination in yourself.”

The church environment, which is close to Cloud Rommel, received the news of his arrest with confusion. Bishop of the “alternative” Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church Gregory (in the world - Doctor of Philosophy Vasily Lurie), who is familiar with the caretaker of the Nikolskoye cemetery, told Novaya that he considers it unlikely that Rommel committed the crimes accused of him. It is very difficult to separate “pedagogical” from “pedophilic” in this case, the line is barely noticeable, and it is difficult to trust the child’s words, the bishop says. He considers Cloud a naive person, somewhat misguided, but sincere. Based on this, he rejects the assumption that Rommel could have come up with a story about the appearance of John of Kronstadt, but considers a psychiatric examination of the suspect necessary, wondering why it has not yet taken place.

Commentators on Orthodox blogs are predictably divided into two camps. “An Orthodox warrior will not record himself on his phone or write blogs,” says Vasily Zverev. - This is from vanity and pride. And if you see yourself as special, then you will allow yourself and justify any abomination in yourself. Like Stavrogin in “Demons”. Some are shocked: “I liked him as an Orthodox warrior. Now I found out what he really is. What is going on in the world, who to believe?” - writes Polina. But the majority sympathize with Rommel: “The 31-year-old guy wants nothing more than to die?.. Give him a chance to prove his innocence.” A popular version is that Cloud’s former partner “decided to pocket his large military payments and put him in jail.”

Religious scholar Nikolai Mitrokhin sees in the image of Rommel the ideal archetype of current Russian propaganda: “Cloud is, of course, from Connon MacLeod (the film and then the series “Highlander”)... The mascot of the mountain tank troops. How can you keep someone like that in jail during the Russian offensive?” To all that has been said, we can add immunity to the topic of “pedophilia in the church,” which was developed after dozens of scandals of this kind, and was also present in Russian history (for example, in the era of Ivan the Terrible). Sometimes it seems that a little more - and this phenomenon is also recognized as “traditional”...

...By law, the degree of Rommel’s guilt must be determined by the court, the case is classified, and we do not have enough materials to draw conclusions. Of course, there are big problems with the judicial system in Russia, and the latest laws on the removal from trial and investigation of the absolute majority of accused/suspects, if only they express a desire to go to trial, deprive us of the remnants of criminal law. However, in theory, they still did not plan to take pedophiles into the Northern Military District. In the case of Rommel, the last word belongs to psychiatrists - too much in the biography and rhetoric of this guy indicates inadequacy.

But no matter what the examination decides, the question will remain open: in a system where evil is declared good and death is the only meaning of life, is it possible to distinguish crime from heroism? Are there any criteria left?

* From the Greek “ἔσχατος” (“ultimate, last”). Theological teaching about the end of this world.