ROCOR CALLS FOR REMOVING LENIN'S BODY FROM RED SQUARE AND DEMOLISHING MONUMENTS TO HIM
Interfax-Religiia, 13 March 2017
The Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR), on the occasion of the centenary of the revolution, called for freeing residential areas from monuments to Lenin and the center of Moscow, from his body.
"One of the symbols of the reconciliation of the Russian people with the Lord could be the liberation of Red Square from the remains of the chief persecutor and tormentor of the 20th century and the destruction of monuments erected to him. These are all symbols of disorder, tragedy, and wreckage of our god-given state. The same should be done also with the names of cities, provinces, and streets, which to this day are deprived of their historic titles," a letter of the Bishops' Synod of ROCOR says, which was quoted by its press service.
As noted in the text, the rapid development of Russia was halted "only by the revolution that was planned and supported by western countries."
"For this reason it should be recalled that today's relentless persecution of Russia on the part of 'western civilization' also existed 100 years ago and even much earlier. The world hated the Russian empire, the heir of sacred Orthodox Rus. Neither fidelity to the obligation to allies nor ever-readiness of Russian sovereigns for cooperation helped. The statement of the famous British leader Lord Palmerstone is typical: 'How difficult it is to live in a world when nobody is at war with Russia,'" the document says.
The authors of the letter declared that the revolution in Russia was "the fruit of forgetting and neglecting the faith of Christ and departing from the divinely ordained authority."
TALK IN RPTs ABOUT LACK OF AGREEMENT REGARDING BURIAL OF LENIN'S BODY
The titles of streets and metro stations should not bear the names of revolutionaries and persons guilty of mass murders, although it is also not necessary to hurry their renaming, thinks the chairman of the Department of External Church Relations (Otdel Vneshnikh Tserkovnykh Sviazei—OVTsS) of the Moscow patriarchate, Metropolitan of Volokolamsk Ilarion.
"I think that the people should decide, because renamings should accommodate people, but the church is not indifferent to this question, because we are talking about our national symbols. Names of terrorists, revolutionaries, murderers, executioners—these are the names that enter into history with a minus sign. And I hope that sooner or later we will all understand this," the metropolitan said on the broadcast of the program "Church and World" on the Rossiia 24 channel.
The hierarch of the RPTs acknowledged that in society "there still exists a definite division on this question, just as on the question of the removal of the body [Lenin's, ed.] from the mausoleum." "But it seems to me that renaming is possible when there exists a public consensus around it," he added.
Metropolitan Ilarion called it a "demagogic argument" to declare that renaming entails expenses from the municipal budgets, noting that "replacing tablets" is not "some very expensive event."
"The argument from habit? You know, habit is a serious matter; I still cannot get used to the new names of metro stations, although the renaming occurred a quarter of a century ago. But I am prepared to live with it; I am prepared to suffer from this for the sake of removing the names of executioners and criminals from our streets, squares, and titles of metro stations," the head of OVTsS noted.
Earlier the Moscow government, despite an appeal by Patriarch of Moscow and all-Rus Kirill, refused to rename the metro station Voikovskaia, named in honor of one of the initiators of the shooting of the family of Nicholas II. At the time the first hierarch noted that the names of criminals and terrorists should not be preserved in city place-names.
In February, the parish of the church of the Savior Image Not-made-by-hand in the Andronikov monastery sent to the mayor of Moscow a letter with a request to rename the metro station nearest the cloister from "Ploshchad Ilicha" to "Andrei Rublev." The station, which was opened in 1979, was named for Ilich Square located on the surface (now it is Ploshchad Rogozhskaia Zastava or "Square of Rogozh Tollgate"). (tr. by PDS, posted 14 March 2017)
THE RESTLESS LEADER: IS IT NECESSARY TO REMOVE LENIN'S BODY FROM RED SQUARE?
The Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR), on the 100th anniversary of the revolution, raised the question of the burial of Vladimir Lenin's body, proposing to remove it from the mausoleum on Red Square and also to get rid of revolutionary place names in the Russian federation. The idea did not evoke unanimity among representatives of the Moscow patriarchate, politicians, and experts, who disagreed in opinions regarding the necessity of such actions.
Appeal from overseas
The Bishops' Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia spoke out on Sunday with a statement in which it noted that "one of the symbols of the reconciliation of the people with the Lord could be liberation of Red Square from the remains of the chief persecutor and tormentor of the 20th century and destruction of monuments erected to him." The ROCOR thinks that in the same way "it is necessary to act with the titles of cities, provinces, and streets which have hitherto been deprived of their historic names." The text of the statement was published in all parishes of ROCOR.
However, the synodal Department for Relations of Church with Society and News Media of the Moscow patriarchate did not want to comment on the document, explaining that the letter "was addressed to the external world and not within the church." However, a month earlier the head of this department, Vladimir Legoida, noted that a survey regarding the future fate of Lenin's mausoleum is not a "super-principled moment" for the RPTs and it "will be resolved in time in a natural and calm manner." He said it is necessary "to wait just a little bit."
The Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia arose in the early 1920s as a Russian Orthodox emigrant church organization, which united a great part of the clergy that found itself in exile as a consequence of the revolution and civil war. It finally left membership in the Moscow patriarchate in 1927. Canonical communion between ROCOR and the RPTs was restored in May 2007 and now it is one of the self-administering churches of the Moscow patriarchate.
Communists for the "status quo"
"When I hear another statement about removing Lenin's body or attacks on the mausoleum—who would raise this question—one thought comes to mind: these people want to recall themselves and cannot find a better subject," the vice-speaker of the State Duma from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, Ivan Melnikov, thinks.
He noted that Lenin is the pride of world and national history, who was buried in accordance with all Orthodox traditions. "This (ROCOR's suggestion—ed.) is very petty. There is no popular support behind them and there will not be, because Lenin is not simply some achievement of the country, like the Great Victory or Gagarin, but the primary source of these legendary pages, the founder of that policy that raised Russia's fate to a new orbit," the deputy concluded.
His fellow party member Vladimir Kashin thinks that the ROCOR's appeal does not lie "in the spirit of Orthodox canons." He said that Lenin "was buried in accordance with Orthodox canons, proceeding from the decision of the supreme body of state power of which Russia today is the successor."
At the same time, according to a survey of the All-Russian Center for Study of Public Opinion, conducted last year, the majority of Russians on the whole agreed that Lenin's body should be committed to the earth. Of them, 36% advocated an immediate reburial in a cemetery, but 24% suggested waiting until the generation for whom he is dear passes. Thirty-two percent of those questioned advocated maintaining the "status quo."
However, sociologists note that two-thirds of Russians (65%) acknowledge that Lenin acted in the interests of a majority of citizens. Fewer than a quarter of respondents (23%) maintained the opposite opinion.
Symbolic dissonance
"The idea of removing Lenin's body from the mausoleum is conceived by those who propose it either as a symbolic, public act—for example, to link it to a date to get public resonance—or as a mystical, spiritual act. It is thought that the presence of this body is some kind of brake on the movement of the country forward," a clergyman of the cathedral of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God on Red Square, Archpriest Aleksei Semkin, thinks.
The symbolism consists not only in the fact the Lenin was put in a sepulcher having "a very strange religious type" not corresponding to the country and the views of people at the time when it was done. If one pays attention to the symbolism, then, he said, one can see that the mausoleum was set in a definite way: the flag of the USSR flies over it. The archpriest noted that in this way the sepulcher points to the fact that Lenin's work was the foundation of the soviet state.
He noted in conversation with the news agency that in the years of the USSR "this was understood logically." But now the archpriest thinks such symbolism evokes cognitive dissonance. "In general, one cannot remove (Lenin's body from the mausoleum—ed.). Simply enclosing it with a fence is to destroy the symbol as such. And half of the question is already resolved," the clergyman suggests.
"The question is over-ripe"
"Actually this topic is not simply timely but over-ripe. This should have been done back in the 1990s," thinks the chairman of the Byzantine club "Katekhon" in the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences, political scientist Arkady Maler. The expert called ROCOR's statement absolutely logical and natural, since it was because of its categorical rejection of the soviet regime that it broke communion with the patriarchate.
"Actually the reunification with the ROCOR was the result, in the first place, of its recognition of the absence of soviet authority in Russia. But we now see, ten years after the reunification, that the same Lenin is in the mausoleum," Maler told RIA Novosti.
He called the anniversary of the revolution a "good occasion" for removing Lenin's body from the mausoleum and, for example, "renaming Leningrad province St. Petersburg or Sverdlovsk province Ekaterinburg." At the same time the political scientist is sure that this would not evoke real problems in society now. "There will be a couple of communist rallies and that's all. This is not a matter about which society will really be divided or there will be disorders," the expert noted.
The expert called the existence of monuments connected with leaders of the revolution ,and also place names, a shame. Among other things, Maler says, this contradicts Orthodox doctrine for which the communist movement was antichristian.
Lack of consensus in society
The Russian Orthodox Church has for a long time already advocated changing place names connected with leaders of the revolution. For example, in February of this year the parish of the church of the Image of the Savior Not-made-by-hand in the Andronikov monastery sent to the mayor of Moscow a letter with the request to rename the subway station closest to the cloister, from "Ploshchad Ilicha" to "Andrei Rublev."
Before this, the Moscow government, despite an appeal by Patriarch of Moscow and all-Rus Kirill, refused to rename the "Voikovskaia" metro station, which was named in honor of one of the initiators of the shooting of the family of Nicholas II: Peter Voikov. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobianin stated that the question of renaming was decided by Muscovites themselves on the website "Active citizen." For maintaining the existing name were 53% of the participants voting in the survey, more than 161,000 persons.
"The church is not indifferent to this matter, because we are talking about our national symbols. The names of terrorists, revolutionaries, murderers, executioners—these are names which have entered into history with a minus sign. I hope that sooner or later we will all understand this," thinks the chairman of the Department for External Church Relations (OVTsS) of the Moscow patriarchate, Metropolitan of Volokolamsk Ilarion.
Metropolitan Ilarion
called it a "demagogic argument" to declare that renaming
entails
expenses from the municipal budgets, noting that "replacing
tablets"
is not "some very expensive event."
However he
acknowledged that in society "there still exists a definite
division on
this question, just as on the question of the removal of the
body [Lenin's,
ed.] from the mausoleum." "But it seems to me that renaming is
possible when there exists a public consensus around it," he
said on air
with the Rossiia-24 television channel.
History of the
mausoleum
For the day of
Lenin's burial, 27 January 1924, a wooden mausoleum was built
near the Kremlin
wall. It was designed by Aleksei Shchusev, a famous church
architect. Among his
works are the Protection cathedral of the Mary-Martha convent in
Moscow, the
church of Sergei of Radonezh on Kulikovo Field, and also the
building of the Kazan
railway station.
The mausoleum
acquired a stone façade in the 1930s. From 1953 to 1961, Joseph
Stalin's body
also was located in it.
Today Lenin's
mausoleum is open for visitors. Preventive activities are
conducted in it, as a
rule, once every two years. The practice of conducting scheduled
biochemical
activities for preserving Lenin's body has existed from the time
of the
building of the structure.
The director of the
Research and Training Center of Biomedical Technology of the
All-Russian
Institute of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants, Valery Bykov,
explained for RIA
Novosti that the work of maintaining the proper condition of
Lenin's body is
conducted systematically. He explained that "it is to the
anatomical image
that the main attention is devoted so that there will be no
deterioration."
Lenin's body is in a
transparent sarcophagus, which was made according to the design
and drawings of
the engineer Nikolai Kurochkin, the creator of the ruby glass
for the Kremlin
stars. (tr. by PDS, posted 15 March 2017)
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