RUSSIA RELIGION NEWS


Kirill faults Ukraine for looking west

PATRIARCH OF MOSCOW ON WAR IN UKRAINE: UKRAINIANS HAVE LOST COMMON UNDERSTANDING OF THEIR OWN HISTORY
RISU, 11 November 2014

 "The tragic situation that has developed today in Ukraine is connected primarily with the fact that Ukrainians have lost a common understanding of their own history," Patriarch of Moscow and all-Rus Kirill declared while opening on 11 November the session of the World Russian National Sobor, whose main theme is "Unity of History, Unity of Russia, Unity of the People."

 "A nation that has become divided in the understanding of its own history becomes incapable of preserving unity. Unity and tradition as a force that transmits, inter alia, values and the cultural code of the nation, is the indispensible condition for a society in any historic period to maintain its integrity and its unity. Today we are observing in Ukraine such a tragic division that occurs when people lose a common understanding of their history which leads to splits and provokes civil conflict," the patriarch of Moscow emphasized.

He noted that the year 2014 has become dramatic for many countries and peoples. "In various regions of the planet, peaceful life has been placed under threat. People are perishing at the hands of extremists in the Middle East, and an internecine conflict is raging in the very center of historic Rus—in Ukraine. The year 2014 opened a new chapter in Russian history, a chapter that is complex, dramatic, and marking the end of  what may conditionally be called the postsoviet world," Kirill continued.

 In his opinion, the collapse of the postsoviet space is connected with the fact that in it "there has not developed a sustainable order based on mutual understanding and mutual respect of peoples who belong to different cultures and civilizations."

 "Those who consider themselves victors in the cold war impose on everybody that the course of development they have defined is correct and, moreover, the only one possible for humanity. Dominating the global space, they impose on the world their own understanding of economics and state structure and they try to suppress values of the ideal that differs from their values and ideas, which are connected with the ideas of consumer society," the Russian first hierarch thinks.

 So this is why the Russian people today must especially preserve the historic unity of Russia, the primate of RPTs emphasized. "We must not for a moment forget that this unity cannot be achieved by force alone. Its hopeful foundation, in the first place, must be the spiritual and moral community of people living in the country. The unity of the nation is inextricably connected with a unitary understanding of its common history, respect for common heroes, preservation of common monuments with a common celebration of anniversaries of victories and with sad anniversaries of tragedies," Patriarch Kirill teaches. This was reported by RIA Novosti. (tr. by PDS, posted 11 November 2014)


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