Voices from Russia

Friday, 10 April 2015

10 April 2015. It’s Holy Friday… Our Lord Christ Hangs On The Cross

Ilya Glazunov. Golgotha. from the triptych 'The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor'. 1983

Golgotha

from the triptych “The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor”

Ilya Glazunov

1983

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This is probably the most solemn day of the Church Year. Our Lord Christ hangs on the Cross. The wise thief didst Thou make worthy of Paradise, in a single moment, O Lord. By the wood of Thy Cross, illumine me as well and save me. What more need I say? Nothing frivolous today…

Please, do note the date of the painting. The religious revival was well under-way long before 1991. The Soviet state, in the end, wasn’t a barrier to Christ and His Church…

BMD

Tuesday, 12 August 2014

“Wake up, Ukraine! Wake Up, Russia! War has Come!”: An Interview with Fr Kirill Shkarbul about the War in the Donbass

00 Ilya Glazunov. Russia,  Wake Up! 1994

Russia, Wake Up!

Ilya Glazunov

1994

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Editor:

In the Ukraine, we don’t just merely face nationalist creeps… we face sheer evil. It’s time for decent Orthodox people to cut all ties with the UGKTs and “Ukrainian Orthodox”, as they support the enormities of the junta. We must stand tall for our coreligionists and tell their story to all who will listen to us. It’s the least that we can do… their blood soaks the sacred soil of the Rodina. It’s also time to condemn the traitors in our midst like Potapov, Paffhausen, Jillions, Larina, and Mollard (the last mooned over Gaza but refused to speak out against the rape of our blood-brothers in Novorossiya… bastard!).

It’s 1242… it’s 1380… it’s 1612… it’s 1709… it’s 1812… it’s 1941… we have a job of work to do…

BMD

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On 5 August 2014, Fr Kirill Shkarbul, the rector of the Russian Orthodox podvorie in Taiwan, arrived in Rostov Oblast to give humanitarian and pastoral assistance to refugees from the Donbass. Viktoriya Gorditsa, a student at MGU, interviewed Fr Kirill.

Viktoriya Gorditsa

Fr Kirill, could you comment on the events taking place now on the border between Russia and the Ukraine, as the world’s attention now focuses on what’s happening in the Donbass? What about the refugees? That’s why you came here.

Fr Kirill Shkarbul

Now, I’m in Rostov Oblast, near the fighting. I witnessed a mass exodus of people from [Novorossiya] to Russia. One can see fear and unspeakable sorrow in the eyes of people. The impression one gets is that they’ve experienced torture and execution, but still survived, having lost in family members, their country, and a meaning for their lives.

Gorditsa 

Why do you think that they became refugees? From what are they escaping?

Fr Kirill

People are running away from death. The junta physically destroyed people in Donbass and Lugansk.  Many people hear about it, but they don’t understand it in their hearts, because it’s impossible to understand what it really means until they come to kill you personally, until they begin to shell your home and drop bombs on you. These people tell you about how they collected pieces of their parents and children after the shells exploded. They tell you about the deaths of children who were 4-years-old, who were 8-months-old, how they witnessed the death of a pregnant woman praying on her knees, how they saw the death of a priest. They say that the so-called “National Guard” (sic) uses palm-sized fragmentation mines, not artillery shells, to kill innocent civilians. Many people tell you about their ruined lives. Many lost family members… they had to gather up their fragments scattered all over the field. My heart bleeds to hear it!

Gorditsa 

What do you think is the reason for what’s happening?

Fr Kirill

The reason is people became zombified through the devil’s seduction. Ukrainians would never have done what’s now happening in the Donbass if there wasn’t a mass frenzy. For Ukrainians, there were no more near and dear people than the Russians, and Russians felt the same about Ukrainians. However, propaganda was able to convince people to the contrary, it could transform a brother into an enemy. In both the Ukraine and Russia, politicians, the media, and educational programmes created artificial enmity between Ukrainians and Russians. The enemy of the human race blinded people and directed them to kill each other. People became victims of this blindness; they let the Tempter guide them.

Gorditsa 

Can you give us your assessment of the current hostilities?

Fr Kirill

This war began to destroy the Ukraine and Russia. We must sound the alarm and wake up. This war isn’t a conflict waged against a small handful of “separatists”; it’s a war against the Ukraine and against Russia. The Ukrainian army carries out this war against the Ukraine. This is a great deception of the Enemy, causing a great insanity amongst the people, completely disorienting them, so, they go and kill each other.

Gorditsa 

Who’s to blame for the carnage now happening? It’s clear that Satan is to blame for all of it, but who amongst the people is the main source of evil?

Fr Kirill

Everyone receives temptation and bedazzlement from the Evil One in varying degrees; some struggle with these temptations and blandishments, others succumb to the temptation to evil, becoming channels of malevolence and murder. The greatest responsibility is upon those who kill others. We can say definitely that the enemies of the people are those who bombed civilians in the Donbass. The people who seized the levers of power authorised these things. Many locals from Lugansk and Donbass here in the refugee camp said that all thinking people know that deception and evil comes from the Ukrainian government… they could flee and save their families, or stand in the opolchenie against the child-killers and bandits who create such havoc amongst the people. No one wants to join a “Ukrainian Liberation Army”. This attitude amongst those who witnessed the activities of the “punishers” indicates that the source of evil is the government authorising this brutal genocide. Hitler bombed civilians in the USSR only during certain hours… therefore, people could hide. The Ukrainian government bombs without warning… so that it can kill as many as possible!

Gorditsa 

If they declared war on “terrorists”, then, why does the Ukrainian government bomb civilians?

Fr Kirill

People in the government and in the media spread a fable about “terrorists”… that’s what they call all Donbass people; indeed, they call all Ukrainians who don’t support a policy of hatred towards Russia “terrorists”. Almost all Ukrainians find such fulminations either funny or sad; many feel how false, artificial, and strained this accusation is. Refugees tell you that many Ukrainian soldiers who came to the Donbass to suppress “separatists” threw down their weapons, as they saw that “everything’s fine here”, people live their lives, and “they call all the people here so-called terrorists”… any road, only murderers would shoot at their own people. Thus, the claim of the Ukrainian government and media that much of the Ukrainian population is terrorists is utter nonsense! Specifically, it’s pure hokum; it’s a brazen deception, which even the most naïve can see through. Only hateful extreme radicals continue to repeat with demonic obstinacy, “Kill the terrorists!” Those who sold their conscience for money are the only ones to back them.

Gorditsa 

Why is there so much anger?

Fr Kirill

It comes from the demons. Today, the demons show us their true face… they no longer need to paint fairy tales of a prosperous and happy Ukraine in the EU. They lust for the death and suffering of the people, they need a complete looting, enslavement, and, best of all, destruction, of both the Ukraine and Russia. It’s time for all of us to wake up… they’ve unleashed war against all the peoples of the Ukraine and Russia. If you don’t kill them today, tomorrow, they’ll come to kill you. If you live in the Ukraine… then, you won’t kill “separatists”, you won’t kill Russians. You should kill the professional killers of any nationality directed by those in power and their puppets. Today, the Ukrainian government is a bunch of murderers, conducting total genocide against the Ukrainian people.

Gorditsa 

What can we do?

Fr Kirill

Firstly, we must defeat the devil in our hearts. We must repent; we must ask for Christ’s wisdom and admonition. Every Christian and every sensible person should realise that the policy of the present Ukrainian government is a demonic policy of genocide… that isn’t an insinuation… it’s a fact! We should take this to heart and shout it from the rooftops! We should do everything that we can to stop the so-called “Anti-Terrorist Operation”. They’re trying to brainwash us. A sense neither of Russianness nor of Ukranianness can save us. The devil can lead anyone or any people to self-destruction. Today, the Ukrainian people self-destructs. However, Russia isn’t to blame for this, rather, the blame lies on those who bomb civilians, who send young men to the slaughter, as cannon fodder… who then sell their bodies as biomaterial throughout Europe. The devil hates everyone, especially those who struggle with him. Nevertheless, only by confronting the devil can we save ourselves, can we save the Ukraine and Russia. The Kiev junta ordering the so-called “Anti-Terrorist Operation” must both repent and stop the repressions, or they should leave their posts. All the people of the Ukraine must help them do it.

Gorditsa 

Why is the Russian media silent, or, if it does say anything, only a very little?

Fr Kirill

Various Russian media are in different situations… some of them were bought off, others are disoriented, and others are intimidated or afraid to exacerbate the situation. Now, we’re at a point where silence could aggravate the situation. The media should loudly declare that the war against the Ukraine is a war against Russia, perhaps not de jure, but de facto. The Ukraine and Russia are parts of the same world; they aren’t enemies. This world is in flames, filled with exploding bombs and ballistic missiles, entire cities are in ruins, hundreds of thousands of refugees flee… and we watch soap operas and listen to the gibbering verbiage of politicians, think of tasty meals and beautiful clothes… but in Lugansk and Donetsk next door, there’s nothing in the shops, no electricity, no food, body fragments lie on the streets amidst bursting bombs and shells. It’s time to for us to wake up from our self-satisfied sleep… or it’ll happen to us, too! The demons exult, they long for more and more blood. We can avoid great sacrifices only if we come to our senses. Most of all, we must understand that this war is far more dangerous, brutal, and evil than the Great Patriotic War was, for this war is against all of us, against the Ukrainian people and against the Russian people! If we don’t understand this, the carnage in the Donbass is the beginning of the end, of the Ukraine, and of Russia, too.

Gorditsa 

Is there any hope that it’d end well?

Fr Kirill

For refugees who lost loved ones, health, homeland, and all their possessions, for people with shattered lives and emotions, they don’t see anything better. If we don’t wake up… we’d get the same suffering… or maybe even destruction. Much depends on what each of us does!

6 August 2014

IA Regnum

http://www.regnum.ru/news/1833351.html

Monday, 19 November 2012

19 November 2012. A Point to Ponder. THIS is Why Russia Remembers…

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A braying jackass on the Washington Post bloviated recently that Russian patriotism seemed based (to him) only on Victory Day. There’s much more to it, of course. Every year, bodies are found on the old battlefields… it brings the reality of the war home to a new generation. Russian patriotism has many roots, in fact. There’s the Baptism of Rus in the Dnepr… the Battle on the IceMinin and PozharskyGreat October… the Great Victory… Gagarin’s journey into space… indeed, it’s much more “rooted” than its American analogue.

Russia remembers… America refuses to… I think that I see a difference there. On the one hand you have a Rod Dreher and a Freddie M-G… on the other, you have a Valentin Rasputin and Ilya Glazunov… there’s no comparison, is there? Russia remembers… so should we…

BMD

Sunday, 20 May 2012

20 May 2012. Gleanings From My Mailbag…

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Editor’s Foreword:

I’m in plain type; my interlocutors are in italics.

BMD

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General definition of treating someone as a “mushroom”: Keeping someone in the dark and feeding them shit.

It’s a legacy of Stokoe’s Syosset days as a minor apparatchik. I’ve found him cold and calculating. I’ll speak up if Moriak tries to screw him, but I’ve no liking for him at all. He wants to get back in Syosset along with his gang, re-establish what he sees as the salad days of the OCA, and he’s a Renovationist nutter. Yet… as I say, I won’t be silent if they try to attack him. That’s clear. Sometimes you have to speak up for bastards… that’s the way of it. Fair is fair. I don’t like him and find him untrustworthy in the extreme (he’d betray anybody if he felt that it was to his advantage). Yes… he’s an ally… but one that bears constant watching. That’s what my grey hairs tell me…

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We’ve got to stick together… and realise that people are what they are, and they’re NOT going to change. You don’t have to agree with someone totally to work with them amicably (and even be friends!)… that’s obvious. That being said, though, Mark’s slippery… he’s the sort that USES people. Have a care in his presence… please…

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You have to understand that they’ve grown up in an environment suffused with secrecy and émigré politics. That’s led them to associate with rightwing nutters in the West, and all such sorts are “conspiracy theorists”. There are NO conspiracies… there are only associations of like-minded individuals. In any case, the powers-that-be smile at such lunacies… if people are chasing chimeras, they’re not making trouble for the First Families.

What worries me more are the paranoid conspiracy theorists in the OCA. When you think what they did to the Serbs by welcoming the Albanians! Kishkovsky may be the only brains left in the OCA… that’s saying something!

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I’ve seen the so-called “American Orthodox” trumpeting their attacks on Patriarch Kirill all over the internet. It’s merely thinly-disguised Russophobia hitched to the “mean machine” of rightwing extremism. I have a deep fondness and respect for Russia and for the Russian people, and I concur with Ilya Glazunov, “A Russian is anyone who loves Russia”. I stand with the MP and against the hypocrites of the West.

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“You can’t go home again”… although I wish that we could turn the hands of the clock back to 1980 and defeat Slobberin’ Ronnie. I fear that we’re going to pay a hard price for the affluent effluent’s greed. The ‘50s were a time of a fairer distribution… that’s all that there’s to say on the matter. It’s gone… not only this, but also the days of Captain Alexander at Jordanville and Metropolitan Leonty at St T’s. Nevertheless, we MUST look forward, not backwards, and FIGHT. That’s our duty…

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We’re on the same page… identical? NO! That’s NEVER the case. As for me, I realise it’ll take three generations to put the Church here to rights. Healing is SLOW. VERY SLOW. I fell and hurt my shoulder a couple years back, and it took a year to knit together just right. I followed my doctor’s orders and took my meds. As I did so, it allowed my body to heal itself. Now, it’s as good as new… but it took a whole year. Institutions are much more “unforgiving”… there’s such a thing as “corporate memory”, and it takes a long time to heal that. The generation that witnessed the abomination has to pass on before the healing’s over. That’s the way it is…

A friend wrote to me saying that “every” priest reads my website. That means that my responsibility’s the greater. I have to double-check things more thoroughly… I have to be careful as well as hard-hitting. It’s sad that the “official” news media in the Church in the diaspora is so poor… it’s good in the homeland. However, do remember that’s a result of the Rodina having been purged by the godless unbelievers, as a result, all the phonies are out of the Church now (we have some dumb jabronies and some clueless idiots, but NO Black Hundreds). We in the diaspora didn’t go through such a cleansing… ergo, we have all sorts of heretics and fanatics amongst us. They’ve taken over the Church… they think they “are” the Church (especially, SVS has an l’église c’est moi attitude, for instance). God’s justice grinds slowly, but it grinds exceedingly fine, they say. Don’t look at the official websites or listen to the seminaries… the sans-culottes are stirring, and “a spectre is haunting Europe“.

What is to be done?”

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A Portrait of a Sans-Culotte

Louis-Léopold Boilly

first third of the 19th century

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Note the supreme contempt in many clerical circles for the “people”… Freddie M-G, for instance, believes that we have to “follow the clergy in all things”. If we were to do that, the Church would fail… do remember the Iconoclasts, the Union of Brest, and the Russian Renovationists… the clergy supported the “wrong” side and the PEOPLE stood up for what was right!

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Apparently, Berezovsky’s running the anti-Kirill and anti-Church campaign in Russia. It’s his revenge for the Church’s lukewarm support for Putin. Of course, the West loves it… Berezovsky loves the West.

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That’s why I don’t care for konvertsy… “swims with the tide”… “that doesn’t prevent him kissing up to the EP when he wants to”. You just described the typical Angliochian to a tee. I know why they support Renovationism… that’s what passes for “traditional” amongst a certain set of Anglicans (the Stand Firm in the Faith lot). What we mean by Tradition, and what prideful former Anglicans mean by “tradition” are two diametrically opposite things.

You see, if you already “know”, you won’t learn. They’re all “scholars”, dontcha know! As for me, I’ve learnt tons since I started my site. It requires research, and that means that one learns, especially, if one’s on the track of the truth. If all that you’re doing is mouthing your oddbod opinion and pious platitudes, you sink deeper into prelest with each post (such as one sees with Freddie M-G, Dreher, and Honeycutt). Sad, ain’t it? They’re on the hell-bound train, and not only do they not know it, they insist that we join them! Note this well… all of the American Angliochians have ties to Gleb Podmoshensky in one way or another (Paffhausen, Dreher, Freddie M-G, Jensen, and all the HOOMies, amongst others, have direct ties to him). They hate sodomy (supposedly)… and yet look at who’s their guru! One of the most questionable sorts ever to exist in the American diaspora (Lebedeff admitted in a public post on the Indiana List that the deposition for serving under suspension was a dodge… which they used to keep certain things hidden)!

Live and learn, eh?

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Patrick Reardon and David Bleam (both AOCANA convert priests) went to Syria for Philip Saliba and wrote glowing reports on Assad… it was printed in the archdiocesan magazine.

That’s because if they didn’t, Philip would bore ’em a new arsehole. They’re all punk cowards as far as I’m concerned.

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You KNOW how it is… the closeted gay blades make the most noise. I think that they canned Frederick because he was catching on. Watch for MAJOR disillusionment amongst some of the konvertsy when they find out. They’re beginning to catch on… do note that the Centre’s not bankrolling the OCA… a friend of mine said, “We know what’s going on. We take the LOOONG view”. That’s all he wrote… but I think that you know what he means.

By all means have more than one… but remember Aquinas’ dictum, ad usque hilaritatem… once you get “nice”, don’t overdo… or you’ll pay the next day. I speak from EXPERIENCE…

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Love BT (more like Hatred BT) sums up EVERYTHING that’s wrong with the OCA… They hate Russia, they hate Tsar St Nikolai, and they hate Putin. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot…

Also… they LOVE the Godless West, the Uniates, and the Almighty Dollar. FOUR DAYS for a Holy Synod meeting… why, the Centre’s content with one day for a meeting (shades of Clemenceau commenting on Wilson!)! Paffhausen’s turning on his allies… he’s a goner.

Of course, the opposite of Russia is the Godless West, the opposite of St Nikolai are the Uniates, and the opposite of Putin is the Almighty dollar, Mammon himself

Yes… and they’re drowning… as I say, JP’s turning on his last allies. My only question is, “Who’ll be JP’s Bennigsen?” “It ain’t personal… it’s only business”… but it won’t save them. I think that His Nibs is on to them, but he’s letting them cut their own throats. Nevertheless, the melon’s ripe for the plucking…

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I can’t believe that some want Gerasim as Bishop of the Diocese of the South of the OCA… I’m shocked, but many people don’t know about his ties with Gleb Podmoshensky.

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There IS a serious fight… over the USA. The EP is serious when it claims the USA as its own. The Centre’s not going to stand for that, and that may be the pretext for it shutting down the OCA (St Fagomyr’s has been quasi-EP ever since the Schmemanndorff days). It IS serious…

I know it’s serious, but the MP was here first… in Sitka AK! So, the EP doesn’t have a claim. It’s all about money, Barbara… the Phanar’s broke… they need American money…badly.

The GOAA IS the EP… full stop. That’s why it’ll NEVER allow an “autocephalous” Church in the USA… the OCA wasn’t an autocephalous Church, it was nothing but an MP dependency with big ideas (which caused its downfall and demise). 99 percent of the EP’s money comes from rich Greeks, and the rich American Greeks transmit Washington‘s orders to the Phanar… think of George Stephanopoulos and his interference in ROCOR internal affairs (through his sister, who was a nun in the ROCOR, but left it after the 2007 reconciliation).

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I don’t know when… the older I get the easier it is for me to say, “I don’t know”. One of the good things about running a news site is that you LEARN. It’s an education… truly, if you pay attention to what you report. Remember, most “journalists” aren’t REPORTERS, they’re COMMENTATORS. I seek out REALITY… not OPINION. It’s chastening at times, and always enlightening…

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