RUSSIA RELIGION NEWS

Russia Religion News Current News Items

---

Debate about Stalin defines church history

COMMENTARY:  DECANONIZATION OF STALIN
by Boris Kolymagin
Portal-credo.ru, 30 June 2009

The "anti-stalinist" interview of the new head of OVTsSMP, Archbishop of Volokolamsk Ilarion, provoked an ambiguous reaction within the "Orthodox community." Although, it would seem, the archbishop did not open any kind of Americas. Was Stalin a "spiritual monster"? Did he persecute believers? Did he unleash genocide of his own people? The questions, it seems, are purely rhetorical. Of course, no Kremlin occupant is guilty of the horrors of stalinism, but he bears personal responsibility for the fractured fate of millions.

After "perestroika" many former communists came to the church, bringing the spirit of this century into the churchyard, without overcoming within themselves "Egyptian slavery." Until now they have feared the truth. This also explains the hysteria of some Orthodox believers that arose after the "scandalous" words of the archbishop, who, incidentally, is especially close to and trusted by Patriarch Kirill. But the church cannot, for the sake of the fears and illusions of these believers, renounce the New Martyrs and their spiritual (including ideological) heritage, because it is founded on their blood.

The trouble is elsewhere. We are reminded of this only occasionally. At the time of, let's say, the visit by Patriarch of Moscow and all-Rus Kirill to the Butovo Polygon. During ordinary life the memory of the saints is almost nonexistent. Even in the places of their sufferings. For example, relatively recently on Solovki Island during reconstruction work graffiti of repressed persons sentenced to death was destroyed.

"Anzer is lost in thought and Muksulma also
has lost its gaze in the Brusniche expanse.
You have left me from the earthly wilderness
And from the bitter feat for God's assembly"

These lines by an unknown hypodeacon on the death of Holy Prelate Ilarion Troitsky for some reason suddenly resurface by association.

The problem of historical memory stands sharply before public consciousness, but it stands yet more sharply within the church. It seems the time for writing a new "GULAG Archipelago" has arrived. This perhaps is a collective monograph. It is necessary to comprehend the whole experience of the sacred, including the liturgical, behind the fences and barbed wire in the twentieth century. At the same time it is in a church context, without heed to which political forces may reap benefit from such an open conversation. Nevertheless without the truth the situation cannot be recovered. Also, without childlike simplicity.

Recently the writer of these lines encountered a curious note by the commissioner of the Council for Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church in Tambov. Reporting on the work he did, he complained against the Holy Prelate Luka (Voino-Yasenetsky) and confessed that the diocesan secretary spared the bureaucrat "from many unpleasant and difficult conversation with Archbishop Luka if one considers his many peculiarities and strangeness and occasional childlike naivete."

In that horrible time the bishop literally fulfilled the commandment "Be like children." And simultaneously another commandment: "Do not be like children in your head." Today we lack such a person in the supreme church leadership.

Archbishop of Volokolamsk Ilarion's words were received so painfully, perhaps, also because they were pronounced by a person who clearly does not possess the "childlike naivete" of the Holy Prelate Luka. But whatever may be, the church cannot follow the authorities into a narrow corridor of the "sovietization" of the historical memory, and it is simply vitally necessary for it to have its own space of understanding.

Especially in the context of the recent presidential order regarding intensifying the struggle with the falsification of the history of the fatherland. At first glance, this order has an external audience, the countries of the Baltic and Ukraine, but actually it was directly against the historical science of the fatherland.  Many soviet myths and mythology thereby receive a governmental infusion. However the campaign against "falsifiers" may strike the church also. How, for example, can one write about the Pskov Mission without fear of being accused of "distortion" of the partisan struggle? How does one speak about repressions and destruction of monuments of culture by soviet forces (they thoughtlessly destroyed, for example, the bell tower of the Joseph Volotski monastery) without fear of being accused of denigrating the heroic past?

In this regard Patriarch Kirill's assessment of the Second World War for Russia is important, of which in a certain sense Archbishop Ilarion's interview was a continuation. Kirill declared before a large audience the idea that the sacrifices borne during the Great Patriotic War were a direct consequence of the apostasy from God of the Russian people. This idea is literally not new and often was proclaimed in the religious underground in the 70s. And it is not a shame that it did not become an occasion for a broad debate in the Russian news media. It is important that it clearly signified the divergence between church and official historiographies.

These words of the primate of RPTsMP sent the authorities a signal that the Moscow patriarchate will not go along with the Kremlin in everything in historical discussions. The interview of the head of OVTsMP simply confirmed this awareness.  (tr. by PDS, posted 30 June 2009)

Russia Religion News Current News Items

---

Debate in Russian church over Stalin

MISSION IN THE WORLD. "ANTISTALINIST" INTERVIEW OF ARCHBISHOP ILARION
by Konstantin Matsan, Nikolai Silaev
Ekspert Online, 15 June 2009

In the opinion of the head of the Department for External Church Relations [OVTsS] of the Russian Orthodox church [RPTs], Archbishop of Volokolamsk Ilarion, the church should become more open to society. An example of openness has been personally given by Patriarch Kirill, but his efforts alone are insufficient; work is needed in parishes.

--Bishop, already 100 days have passed since the enthronement of Patriarch of Moscow and all-Rus Kirill. What has changed in this time in relations between the church and society? Have any new trends appeared?

--The man who ascended the throne of the Moscow patriarchate is one who over the course of many years has been known as a missionary and enlightener. For a long time already he has actively collaborated with all spheres of civil society, he has had his own television broadcast, and he has regularly spoken out in the print news media. Even before his election to the patriarchal throne he was known and loved by millions of believers of the Russian Orthodox church throughout the world. He has earned authority in broad public circles. The unique experience which Metropolitan Kirill gained in the years of his work in the Department of External Church Relations and in close cooperation with the late Patriarch Alexis II thoroughly prepared him for this new role which he took on after election to the Moscow patriarchal throne. But the main thing is that he is a person who is absolutely devoted to the church; he does not have a personal agenda. He has laid all of his capacities and talents at the feet of Christ, as the holy prelate Gregory the Theologian expressed it.

Patriarch Kirill's enthronement gave a new impulse to the whole complex of relationships between the church and the external world.  Patriarch Kirill has very firmly and clearly placed tasks before his closest aides, bishops, clergy, and the whole church. At the same time he is a church leader not only by virtue of his position but also by the force of his personality. He is capable of inspiring people and mobilizing them for more active evangelistic and educational activity.

--In your view, what is the essence of the changes that the patriarch has introduced?

--Our problem consists in that we lack, as in the past, bridges connecting Orthodox parishes with the external world.

After all, what happens with a person who, moved by curiosity, inner dissatisfaction, or search for the truth, comes to an Orthodox church for the first time? At best, nobody bothers him there. He is given the opportunity to stand in the service and to look all around. He is not likely immediately to grasp the essence of what is happening. However, touched by God's grace and the atmosphere of the church perhaps he feels something. And he will come back. And then again. Then he begins to search books. And so gradually, by means of self-education, he will enter into the life of the church. This path is very long and complex. A person has to independently overcome a multitude of barriers separating him from the church world. Barriers are psychological, cultural, and linguistic.

In the worst of cases the person who comes in off the street into the church is confronted with downright rudeness. A babushka standing at the candle booth curses him.  She criticizes him for not crossing himself in the right way, or standing in the wrong place, or for the way he is dressed. And after dropping into the church two or three times the person loses all desire to return.

We must break up this mechanism of alienating a person from the church or of the indifferent expectation that he will come to church and overcome himself all the barriers. We must create such a system that would help unchurched people to gradually enter into church life. And the efforts of priests alone are insufficient for this. We need active laity. Our task is to mobilize laity for active missionary and enlightenment activity. I do not have in mind that such activity is not being done at all.  Of course it exists. There is a multitude of people who are working in this sphere and they are helping the priests and bringing people to God. But a completely different scale is needed.

--Hasn't there now arisen a disconnect between the rhetoric of the patriarch and the actual activity of parish priests?

--A great deal depends on the personality of a priest and the ruling bishop. If the missionary impulse issuing from the patriarch is not taken up in the proper form, if laity and clergy proceed from the thesis that we "testify to the truth of Orthodox by the very fact of our existence," then I think the task of drawing new people into the church will not be fulfilled. This thesis usually is advanced in rebuttal to protestant and sectarian preachers. Actually, we do not go about apartments and we do not urgently invite people to church, that is, we do not use aggressive and pressure methods of evangelism. But that does not mean that we should simply sit and wait with folded arms until people come to us by themselves. If after the resurrection of Christ the apostles had sat on Zion's hill and thought that they "were being witnesses for Christ by the very fact of their existence," I am afraid that Christianity would have died in the first generation. But the Savior's disciples went into the world and this determined the universal triumph of Christianity over the world.

--Are the recent meetings of the patriarch with youth an attempt to demonstrate new ways of developing the relationships between the church and society?

--The patriarch is setting an example for the whole church. But one person is not sufficient for conducting the truly titanic work that is necessary for a genuine churching of society. It is very important that the missionary imperative be felt and embraced at other levels, at the level of bishops, clergy, laity, and monastics. The patriarch's call to an active, vital position, to active proclamation of Christ and Christian moral values must inspire all members of the church.

--Today there exists a multitude of youth movements which parade along the streets with placards and call for, let's say, "striking down homosexuals." The participants of such actions project themselves as Orthodox. This isn't the kind of "active laity" that the church needs, is it?

--No. Active does not mean aggressive. That person is active for whom faith in Christ occupies first place and who all his life strives on the basis of Christian values. An active layperson is inspired by the religious ideal not only within the walls of the church but also in ordinary life and he strives to conduct it in accordance with the law of the gospel. And he doesn't have to be an evangelist in a purely technical sense of going somewhere and preaching something. He must first of all witness to Christ by his form of life, by his behavior, by his good deeds. "Let your light so shine before people so that they see your good deeds and glorify your father who is in heaven,"Ñthese words of Christ were addressed to all Christians who are called to be salt of the earth and light of the world.

An aggressive position is completely inappropriate for the church. We must fight with sin in all of its manifestations, but first of all within ourselves and only in a secondary way in the people who surround us. Fighting with sin in others, of course, is much easier than within ourselves. Our neighbors and all the people around us we should and can help, but primarily by our personal example and by our form of life.

The church very clearly says that sin is sin. The church denies that sin should be accepted as a norm. But we must not be hostile in relations with people who are leading a sinful form of life. Because sin from a Christian point of view is a disease. And it is necessary to relate to such people as to a sick person, that is, to show him sympathy and tolerance. Fight with sin but sympathize with the sinner. Sympathy does not consist in saying to the sick person that he is healthy and does not need healing nor in not prescribing medicine for him. On the contrary, sympathy consists directly in naming the disease with its proper name and making a correct diagnosis and providing medical help. And this is the mission of the church. John Chrysostom spoke of the church as a spiritual hospital. One goes to the church for healing. Our task is to heal the spiritual ills of the individual and society. And to do this does not require aggressive means.

--How do you plan to develop the system of church education? For on one hand, it is the way of preparing priests who are capable of conducting more active work with the world, but on the other hand, secular and religious education have little in common on the professional level.

--In the church there is going on a real debate about whether it is necessary to accredit the ecclesiastical schools, that is, to make it so that their diplomas are recognized by the state. Opponents of accreditation advance the following argument:  if our diplomas are recognized by the state then our seminarians will not become priests but will get their education and then depart into the world. I would give this answer to that: if a person does not want to become a priest, then he won't, regardless of whether his diploma is recognized or not. But if a person has received a religious education, let's say, at St. Tikhon Orthodox Humanities Institute, and he does not become a priest but an active layman, for example, a governmental minister or cultural figure, then what's wrong with that? The church should enlighten the whole world. And the task of church education is to educate and mold these people who would become salt of the earth. In the parishes. In administrative offices. These are the people who should occupy the most diverse spheres of public life. They should have the most diverse professions. They should be missionaries in accordance with the apostles' example.

Because of this debate, the resolution of the problem of accreditation of church schools has been, in essence, put on the back burner for several years. Only now, with the accession of the new patriarch, this work has begun in full force and, I hope, will be successfully concluded.

I am convinced that we must expand the boundaries of church education and not be afraid that the people whom we educate will not become priests, will not serve at the altar, but will, for example, as secular specialists with a good religious education, serve the church in their own way in their field. These people will become, if you will, our "agents of influence" in the world and they will help to bring Christian moral values at those levels of society which, perhaps, are not touched by direct preaching and mission of clergy.

--How do you assess the relations between the church and the state in the prerevolutionary years? Today it is common to be nostalgic about those times and to view them as a kind of ideal.

--If everything had been good in the prerevolutionary church, then there would not have been the massive departure from it in the revolutionary and postrevolutionary period. Perhaps there would not have been a revolution itself. It seems to me that the causes of the spiritual crisis that led to the revolution are very well disclosed in his memoirs by Archpresbyter Georgy Shavelsky. He was the head of the military chaplaincy, was close to the imperial family, and personally conversed with the sovereign. And he knew the church extremely well at all levels. His memoirs constitute, in essence, a collection of facts. He shows the great degree of spiritual decomposition that existed in both the church and the Russian state.  He shows the enormous distance that separated the imperial family and the people, despite the ardent love that members of the tsarist family had for the people and the desire to be close to them and to understand them. He shows the chasm that existed between the church and its upper leadership, on one hand, and the real world, on the other. It seems that there was much that was positive in the prerevolutionary position of the church in the state. But to try to recreate the prerevolutionary situation now is not necessary in any case. We should create a new model of church-state relations, which would exclude those negative phenomena in church and public life that led to the revolution.

--Today the liberal part of society says that the state has become ecclesiastical and leans toward Orthodoxy as almost the state religion. Doesn't it show a different tendency when the Orthodox church snuggles up to the state? Do you see here a danger from the point of view of the ability of the church to exist independently and not depend on politics?

--In my view, nobody is now inclined in that direction. Neither the church toward the state nor the state toward the church. There is separation of church from state which is discernable at both the juridical and the political level. The state does not interfere in the internal life of the church. And the church does not participate in the political struggle and does not show support for one or another party. The church is open to interaction with all. Any political figureÑin office or in oppositionÑmay be a member of the church.

I do not think that the state is risking becoming clericalized, nor the church, a state church. But at the same time it is necessary to take into account the fact that the popular phrase "multiconfessional state," which often is applied to Russia, does not take into account the obvious reality that a majority of Russians belong to the Russian Orthodox church, even if they do not attend church regularly. Around 80 percent of citizens of Russia identify themselves with the Orthodox church. And that means the Russian church is the religion of the majority. At the same time, we have millions of people who belong to other confessions or do not profess any faith. We should respect everybody and be cordial to all. We should create a unified cultural space. But it is impossible to forget that it is the Orthodox church that, over the course of centuries, exerted the decisive influence on the formation of the spiritual pattern of Russia and the Russian people.

--But it cannot be denied that the church has certain firm ties with the state.

--The church and state have very many common tasks, connected primarily with the spiritual and material welfare of our citizens. There are tasks which cannot be solved in isolation. For example, the demographic problem. It is impossible to solve it only by way of material resources or social rhetoric on television. This requires the joint efforts of state and church. At the same time, when I am talking about the church I am also talking about the cooperation of the church with traditional religious confessions. In this regard representatives of the traditional religious confessions have views that, as a rule, are very similar and at times identical.

--A recent statement of Patriarch Kirill devoted to the victory in the Great Fatherland War evoked a rather sharp criticism, including from people in circles near the government. The patriarch was criticized for assessing the victory as a miracle, while the hardships of the war were a recompense for apostasy from God. The patriarch was criticized also for not sufficiently assessing the role of Stalin and the Bolsheviks. To what degree are you prepared to refute such criticism?

--I am ready to refute it and, even more, I am ready to provoke a wave of criticism against me when I express my personal opinion about Stalin. I think that Stalin was a monster, a spiritual freak, who created a horrible, antihuman system of administration of the country, built upon lies, violence, and terror. He unleashed genocide against the people of his own country and he bears personal responsibility for the death of millions of innocent people. In this regard we fully equate Stalin with Hitler. Both of them brought into this world so much grief that no amount of military or political successes can redeem their guilt before humanity. There is no essential difference between the Butov Polygon and Buchenwald, or between the GULAG and Hitler's system of death camps. And the number of victims of Stalinist repressions is fully equal to our losses in the Great Patriotic War.

The victory in the Great Patriotic War was really a miracle, because before the war Stalin had done everything he could to destroy the country. He annihilated the entire upper leadership of the army and as a result of massive repressions he led a once mighty country to the brink of extinction. In 1937, when the census of the population was taken, the country was short tens of millions of people. Where had these millions gone? Stalin destroyed them. The country entered the war almost lifeless. But, despite all of the monstrous repressions, the people displayed unprecedented heroism. How can this be called anything but a miracle! The victory in the war was the victory of the people. The people who showed the mightiest will to resist. The miracle of victory in the war was the great manifestation of the strength of the spirit of our people, that neither Stalin nor Hitler were able to break.  (tr. by PDS, posted 28 June 2009)

Russian original posted on Portal-credo.ru, 26 June 2009

INTERVIEW OF ARCHBISHOP ILARION WITH "EKSPERT" JOURNAL:  PRIVATE OPINION OR NEW POLTICAL CREED?
by Andrei Rogoziansky
Russkaia liniia, 25 June 2009

--Andrei Bronislavovich, what do you say about the recent statement in the magazine "Ekspert" by the head of the Department of External Church Relations, Archbishop Ilarion Alfeev and, in particular, about his historical assessment of the personality of Stalin?

--I think that it is a rather significant statement. Until now the church has restrained itself from strong assessments of this history of our fatherland in the twentieth century. And that is not because such topics are forbidden.

--Why?

--In Russia much has been said and written about the Stalinist period.  "The truth about repressions," which would have been unknown or sensational, or which would give a new word and somehow give a new twist to soviet historyÑas far as I know, it just does not exist. Or virtually doesn't. Let historians correct me if that is not so.  So far the church has tried to restrain itself, being more sensitive in comparison with others. It hasn't shot down the soviet past in order to find favor conventionally in Russia.

--Then what is the sensation of the interview?

--Of all the things that Fr Ilarion could have talked about he chose Stalin and his tone was categorical

--In other words, the statement claims to be programmatic.

--Yes, possibly.

--What has changed and what do you think brought about Fr Ilarion's desire "to shoot"?

--Within the hierarchy there has blossomed a greater desire to play a role in politics. And to operate from within. So it is time to theorize. We saw this recently when one of the ideologues of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, E. Ligachev, sent an open letter to the patriarch. Some would like to set the Russian Orthodox church in opposition to the authorities and others to stand by the authorities. The political situation has intensified and will intensify. So that it is all very understandable. In recent years many programmatic documents have been written, good ones, conceptual ones, beginning with the Foundation of a Social Doctrine of RPTs and the like. The problem is that they exist somewhat outside of the actual practice of Russian politics. Many things, the theoretical propositions of these documents can be interpreted, as desired, in favor of some as well as in favor of others. The conversation is about an ideal, improved Russia, but it is not clearly stated who is to blame and what is to be done. Now, thanks to Master Ilarion, this has been clarified for us.  At least, who is to be blamed, has been clarified.

--Should the church clarify its position?

--Yes. The time has come, and more direct statement are expected of the hierarchy of RPTs regarding who it is with. It is time to burn bridges with some and to function more closely with others. The ideological messages within the church are diverse. For example there functions a body like the World Russian Sobor. At one of the last meetings of the sobor there was adopted, with the cooperation of the present patriarch, a document like the "Russian Doctrine." Which was interpreted by some politicians as chauvinistic. Naturally they were upset on this account.

--And for you, if it is not a secret, how do you regard Stalin?

--I consider him to be the personification of his difficult times. That does not justify him. Among my relatives on my mother's side, everyone was repressed. The demons of violence reaped an abundant harvest in those years. It is important to understand that there was no other sovereign state in this specific historic period. Or, like the Russian bourgeois republic in 1917, it would have been monumentally crushed. Totalitarianism was the social historical form for the first half of the twentieth century and a bit later, and not only in USSR and Nazi Germany. Society of all the large countries of the world existed in a totalitarian format, including USA, England, Japan, etc. The others were colonies or were occupied.

Read the history of prewar United StatesÑeverything, what you will, from semiprisoner coerced labor to industrial coupons and prohibition. Raids, purges. Millions disappeared without a word. One simply prefers not to recall.

--Do you want to say that Stalin was not the key.

--Yes, just so. And therefore Archbishop Ilarion's statement, which was on the whole structured personally against Stalin seems somewhat strange. As if the bishop had the goal of gaining the advantage and not analyzing the topic. What is this, literally, "he created an antihuman system"? Or, "he unleashed genocide"? This is simply reductionism, if one talks about the methodology of historical investigation. It is necessary to view the conditions. What was required in government administration and society then was a completely determined human form. So if there appeared at the apex of the pyramid, instead of Stalin, Kirov, or Trotsky, or Kamenev, or somebody elseÑthe differences in the scale of violence would have been limited. As they say, people with "vegetarian tastes" did not survive in this system. The mood of the time as a whole was not vegetarian. And when it came to this that this was the mood of the majority and it had to become a subject of criticism.

--Some think that without Stalin it would have been worse.

--One cannot say anything for certain about this. In leadership in the years of war Stalin showed himself strong. By the end of the war the soviet command was simply exemplary. While, for example, the Germans or English had historically possessed more worthy military personnel and schools. It would be unthinkable to deny such facts since they have been officially acknowledged by others.

--Archbishop Ilarion says it was a "miracle."

--One does not rule out the other. Yes, it was a miracle. Of course, a miracle. Victory in the Great Fatherland War was a miracle. Fr Ilarion has spoken correctly. Zhukov was a miracle. Rokossovsky was also a miracle. Military technology and weaponry, the best in the world, built under the most difficult of conditions, at the same time as the attack of the German forcesÑagainst, a miracle. And the chief miracle is that the Lord God did not turn away from the "soviets." That for us still remains a kind of enormous event. What I am not sure about is who of the historians will turn out to have spoken correctly.

--How do you think one should approach a description of a most complex epoch so as not to engage in excess?

--Someone takes account of the evil deeds of Stalin; someone else points to the good that he did. This does not mean anything since Stalin has already played his role. In my view it is necessary to leave Stalin and deal with why and from whence there are antihuman tendencies that grow up and flourish in society. Some of these produce many things in the world, including totalitarian tyrannies. If we quit picking on Stalin, who is a very convenient evildoer for many to describe, then it will surely turn out that our society and we ourselves today have given rise to similar trends. That is, let's say, under Stalin it was considered that an individual was the dirt and materials for state construction, although abortions were considered an immoral phenomenon. Or abandonment of orphans was considered immoral. Now Stalin and repressions are viewed as criminal, although to perform an abortion or to abandon an orphan is justified by public opinion. What has changed in essence? Have things become better or worse? . . .  (tr. by PDS, posted 28 June 2009)


ANTISTALINIST MYTHOLOGY AGAINST REALITY
By Alexander Eliseev
Russkii obozrevatel, 19 June 2009

In his extremely polemical interview the head of OVTsS, Archbishop of Volokolamsk Ilarion repeated the old liberal-perestroika scenario according to which the "good" nation triumphed despite the "bad" Stalin. However such an approach is devoid of logic.

Stalin stood at the head of a rigidly centralized, mobilized state. All the threads of administration came to his hands and therefore it is possible and necessary to name Stalin the creator of the Great Triumph with every good reason. And this attempt to present Stalin as a great evildoer leads to the question:  "And why was it necessary to fight for this monster?" In this way many persons have reached the justification of the Vlasov phenomenon.

At the same time another question can reasonably arise:  "What kind of nation is this that tolerated such a horrible leader? Why did the nation that was capable of defeating Hitler not want to throw off Stalin?"

And here is yet another liberal myth repeated by the archbishop:  "The victory in the Great Patriotic War was really a miracle, because before the war Stalin had done everything he could to destroy the country. He annihilated the entire upper leadership of the army and as a result of massive repressions he led a once mighty country to the brink of extinction."

The question arises: what kind of miraculous leadership was it that was annihilated by the "evildoer" Stalin? It couldn't be a Tukhachevsky, could it, who attacked Tambov peasants with gas but suspiciously lost the Polish campaign? Or perhaps we are talking about Yakir, who was one of the chief organizers of "decossackization" in the time of the civil war? All of these "heroes of the civil war" were capable only of intrigueÑin a contest for power.

There exists an enormous number of direct proofs pointing to the existence of a military conspiracy against Stalin. (The majority of them have been collected and summarized by the very interesting investigation of A. Kolpakida and E. Prudnikov "The dual conspiracy. Stalin and Hitler. Failed putsches")  Here are the most basic.

Already long before 1937 there were several intelligence reports (along the line of OGPU-NKVD and GPU) telling about Tukhachevsky's conspiracy. According to French Prime Minister Daladier, People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs Litvinov told Stalin about the conspiracy. This also is stated in a secret letter to Czech President E. Benes from his ambassador to Berlin, Mastna. The same information is contained in a letter of the French ambassador to Moscow, Coulondre, to his Berlin colleague. The deserter Orlov after the war also confirmed that the conspiracy of Tukhachevsky against Stalin really took place.

But what is especially interesting, in my view, is the evidence of the director of political intelligence of the Reich, V. Shellenberg, who reported about secret (from the political leadership) contacts of soviet and German military figures.

Stalin was able to win in this struggle by the "party" of Tukhachevsky, from which came the repression of the military figures. But removing such people from leadership meant not weakening the army but precisely strengthening it. It was by establishing full control over the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army that Stalin was able to make it completely professional (before 1939 there had existed the so-called "territorial police system").

In respect to personnel we had in 1941 an army that was better than that which existed before 1937. And it was created in 1939-1941 by Stalin, taking advantage of the breathing space provided to him by the soviet-German rapprochement.

In those same years he transferred the army to a cadre basis, creating the system of "armies of protection" (186 divisions, of which 16 represented division of the second strategic echelon). It was in their zone that Hitler had to abandon his rapid attack and was force to reject his idea of lightning war (blitzkrieg) on which he had constructed all of his strategy.

In addition, in the two prewar years Stalin strengthened the industrial base of the interior regions of the country. Between the Volga and the Urals he created the petroleum base, "New Baku." In Siberia and in the Urals were erected the duplicate factories permitting the production of vehicular, chemical, and petroleum industry. He expanded the Magnitogorsk metallurgical combine and completed construction of the Nizhnetagil metallurgical factory.

But two years were too little. Several more years were needed in order to get the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army into shape.

Well, finally, about the scale of the repressions. The archbishop maintains: "And the number of victims of Stalinist repressions is fully equal to our losses in the Great Patriotic War." Again, this exaggeration is completely in the spirit of liberal-perestroika propaganda. Historians have long ago established the precise number of repressed persons.

Here is the basic document, a memorandum presented to Khrushchev on 1 February 18954. It was signed by the Procurator General R. Rudenko, Minister of Internal Affairs S. Kruglov, and Minister of Justice K. Gorwhenin. "The document says that according to data existing in the MVD of USSR, in the period from 1921 to the present, that is, to the beginning of 1954, for counterrevolutionary crimes 3,777,380 persons were convicted by the College of OGPU and troikas of NKVD, special conference, Military Colleges, courts, and military tribunals, of whom 642,980 received the supreme penalty, 2,369,220 were confined in camps and prisons for terms of 25 years or less, and 765.180 were exiled or deported. It indicates that of the total number of persons arrested for counterrevolutionary crimes roughly 2.9 million persons were convicted by the College of OGPU, troikas of NKVD, and special conference (i.e. extra-judicial organs), 877 thousand were convicted by courts, military tribunals, special colleges and the Military College. At the present time, the memorandum says, 467,946 persons were incarcerated in camps and prisons, convicted of counterrevolutionary crimes, and besides this there were in exile after serving sentences for counterrevolutionary crimes 62,462 persons, sent there by order of MGB and the Procurator of USSR." (V. Zemskov. "Political repressions in USSR.")

Many patriots who occupy antistalinist positions should seriously reconsider before repeating hackneyed phrases engendered in the period of perestroika in pro-western circles. Isn't it strange that such patriots often are aligned with those who love to shout about the "threat of Russian fascism"?  (tr. by PDS, posted 29 June 2009)

Russian original posted on Portal-credo.ru site,  26 June 2009


PSEUDOPATRIOTIC IDEOLOGY CREATING SYMPATHY FOR STALIN HAS BECOME DOMINANT IN THE CHURCH
Portal-credo.ru, 29 June 2009

Opponents of the chairman of OVTsSMP, Archbishop of Volokolamsk Ilarion, who sharply condemned in his interview with the journal "Ekspert" the soviet dictator Stalin, comparing him with Hitler, "wish to reject the biblical proposition that God really rules the world." That opinion was expressed in his blog by the famous evangelist of RPTsMP, the director of the St. John  of Kronstadt Soul Clinic Center and of the church of St. Daniil in Kantemirov in Moscow, which is under construction, Fr. Daniil Sysoev, a correspondent of Portal-credo.ru reports.

The activist in the missionary movement, who is famous for his anti-Muslim and anti-Old Believer attacks, decided to participate in this way in the debate over the attitude of RPTsMP toward Josef Stalin, for whom veneration has been expanding recently in church circles.

Fr Daniil thinks that supporters of Stalin who call themselves Orthodox deprive the Great Patriotic War of its "moral and spiritual contents," and "instead of understanding what God was punishing residents of USSR for," prefer to "cast off reason and blindly take confidence in irrational patriotic ecstasy." The result of such an approach, the priest thinks, will become a spiritual indiscriminateness of Russian people in the time of the "next war," when "Russian people will not be able to discern in it the hand of God."

At the same time, Fr Daniil Sysoev recognizes that the quasi-patriotic ideology of the stalinists "has become dominant even in the church, among those who have been captured, as in ancient Israel, by allegiance to the kingdom of this world instead of to the kingdom of heaven."

The evangelist recalls that "our ancestors did not consider it antipatriotic to recognize that 'it was for our sins that God sent the Tatars to Rus.'" At the same time Fr Daniil thinks that ancient Russian Christians were not patriots. "They nevertheless strove for heaven and thus were able to view their fate not from the point of view of political expediency but with the eyes of God." (tr. by PDS, posted 29 June 2009)



OPEN LETTER FROM DOCTOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE V.B. PAVLENKO TO ARCHBISHOP ILARION

Your Eminence

I cannot help but express my position, as a parishioner and citizen, regarding your interview and the evaluations of the activity of J.V. Stalin expressed in it.

Your opinion is your personal point of view. It can be whatever you like. But speaking with the authority of a church person representing the upper hierarchy, you do not have the right to speak out so hastily as you have.

Meanwhile, your statements about Stalin are not simply outrageous and tactless. They are discrediting and provocational.

According to the evil irony of fate, it is not Stalin who has been subjected to discrediting; his authority is enormous even today. And it is not even you personally who is discredited as a person who has permitted himself to arrogantly ignore the opinion and feelings of fellow countrymen who include Stalin within the threesome of leading historic figures of Russia throughout all of its history. And a person who has used for public abuse and insult of a leader the worst, vulgar expressions that are not fitting for a church hierarch but for atheists on television who deliver information about Stalin from their own family account as some kind of "historic revelation."

What has been discredited by your presumptuous and ill-considered act, unfortunately, is the thousand-year authority of the Russian Orthodox church, which you, your eminence, have betrayed in favor of the current (as it seems to you) political environment.

I do not have the right not to emphasize especially that you have desecrated the memory of Stalin not at just any time but on the eve of the nationwide memorial of the victims of the Great Patriotic War and also the Sunday of All Souls Resplendent in the Russian Land. And also on your name-day, against the background of the greetings sent to you for the occasion by His Holiness Patriarch of Moscow and all-Rus Kirill, wishing you, besides all the rest, more WISDOM.

Who gave you, an Orthodox hierarch, the right to spit on the history of our fatherland, to belittle and tread underfoot those who consider Stalin a distinguished state and historical figure, who did a great deal, inter alia, for the restoration of the authority of traditional values? Who was occupied from the middle of the 1930s with the liquidation of the Communist Academy, the introduction of the honorary title of "hero of the Soviet Union," and finally the liquidation of the so-called "Leninist Guard," etc.

Or do you, your eminence, prefer Trotsky, with his ideas of the universal "conflagration" of world revolution, which Russia was supposed to stoke with an armload of firewood and which was rescued from such a fate by the Stalin whom you reviled? If not, then why did you extol the Trotskyite marshals led by Tukhachevsky, who incidentally in his time betrayed the Russian tsar because he did not receive the medal of St. George?

Do you not know about the contacts of Trotsky with Hess, about his instructions to Radek, the sense of which was the preparation of the breakup of our country in favor of Germany, Japan, and other states in exchange for the aid of Hitlerites in the overthrow of the stalinist regime? Such ignorance is impermissible in a clergyman of your rank! What's more, it is inexcusable, the intentional silence about and ignoring of definitive historic facts and their distortion and the use of a "double standard," which is more appropriate not to Orthodoxy but to other, primarily secular, cults and traditions.

For you, Master, are the ideas of Academician Sakharov dearer than the heritage of Acting Patriarch Metropolitan Sergius, Patriarch Alexis II, and other bishops, whose service to Russia, its history, and the church is incomparably greater than yours?

I cannot help but pose the question for you that served as the leitmotif of a famous historic speech:  "Is this stupidity or treason?"

But perhaps this was a political order from certain forces who today are applauding by all means your invectives?

Incidentally, the opposition between the people and the government that you adopted is a favorite approach of globalists of any type. And the historic parallels, like "transformation of the imperialist war into a civil war," suggest themselves here.

It is symptomatic: like Khrushchev, who started with the struggle against the "cult of personality" and then turned his intellectual efforts to a revision of the stalinist heritage in the relations between the state and the church, you blithely segued into a criticism of the Great Martyr Tsar Nicholas Alexandrovich. Give an account of yourself, Master: are many believers prepared to agree with the point of view expressed by you concerning the "enormous distance separating the tsarist house and the people" and about the "impossibility of recreating the prerevolutionary situation"?  Can a modern priest, who is well acquainted with where the opportunist supporters of the Provisional Government led the Russian Orthodox church, not be a monarchist?

So the topic of Stalin in the history of our fatherland amazingly is interlocked with the topic of monarchy, from the positions of both historic retrospective and, I am sure, prognosis.

Your eminence!

Ilarions come and go. What remains are faith, the church, the Russian people, and Russia, our fatherland. Orthodox traditions have survived and outlived a lot. Even the sin of iconoclasm.

And we shall survive this also.

(tr. by PDS, posted 29 June 2009)

Russian original posted on Portal-credo.ru site, 25 June 2009


Russia Religion News Current News Items

---