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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