______________________________
Editor’s Foreword:
Braying jackasses in the Western press have issued a chopped version of this interview (Langley’s harping on a sentence or two, that’s all). Here’s the full megillah as the Russian media reported it. His Holiness is NOT in favour of the miniscule minority in Russia that wants to turn Russia and its resources to the tender mercies of Globalised Capitalism so that they can profit personally (indeed, he believes Neoliberalism’s a fraud, and has said such explicitly). Indeed, he makes it clear that he opposes the oligarchs and everything that they stand for. In short… here’s the real deal. You can believe Sophia Kishkovsky and her ilk in the Western media, who gave you only a cherry-picked quote or two, or, you can believe me, who gave you the full article. It’s up to you…
BMD
******
In response to the debate on the outcome of the elections to the RF Gosduma, Patriarch Kirill Gundyaev of Moscow and all the Russias urged all to show wisdom in calling for a dialogue between the government and society in Russia. In a Christmas interview on the TV channel Russia-1 that aired on Saturday His Holiness said, “People should be able to express their disagreement, but they shouldn’t yield to provocations and destroy the country, for we’ve reached the limits of keeping one another at arms length… those in authority should hold a through dialogue and listen, to put society on the right course, and, then, all will be well for us”. In Patriarch Kirill’s opinion, each person in a free society has the right to express their views, including opposition to the actions of the authorities, saying, “If people are deprived of this right, they perceive it as a restriction of liberty, it’s very painful… but we must show wisdom in doing it”.
Drawing a historical parallel, the patriarch suggested, “If the demonstrations prior to the 1917 Revolution had ended in peaceful protests, not being followed by a bloody revolution and fratricidal war, today, Russia would have more than 300 million people and would be on the same level as the USA in terms of economic development, or even higher. We weren’t able to maintain our balance and we lost our heads. We destroyed our country. Why did this happen? To put it simply, political forces seeking power very cleverly used the just protests of the people”. In this regard, His Holiness recalled the appeals of “democrats” in the late Soviet era calling for the destruction of the Nomenklatura, to chase out all those who drove “black Volgas”, and other such things. He said, “Indeed, thousands marched under this slogan… what happened? Those in power abandoned their ‘black Volgas’ and traded them in for a ‘black Mercedes’; they changed their spots and shared the resources of the country amongst themselves. It was a classic example of how easy it was to tempt a person [to do the wrong thing]”.
He said, “The same thing happened in connection with the 1917 Revolution. ‘Take from the plunderers’. After that, people broke into apartments, destroyed estates, and put the torch to the country. Where did the stolen goods go? The new élite got their hands on it, and did the people really begin to live better?” Patriarch Kirill believed that the task of the present day is “to protest in the right way, which would then lead to a correction of policy. That’s the main thing. If the government is insensitive to the expression of protest, that’s a very bad sign”.
7 January 2012
Interfax-Religion
Voices from Russia 
You must be logged in to post a comment.