21 June 2011. A Photo Essay. Russian PM Vladimir Putin and French Premier François Fillon Dedicate Monument to Russian Expeditionary Corps of WWI in Paris

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On 21 June 2011, PM Vladimir Putin and French Premier François Fillon attended the opening ceremony of a memorial to the soldiers of the Russian Expeditionary Corps, which fought on the Western Front assisting the French forces during World War I. The site of the memorial is in the Cours-la-Reine, a historic park on the right bank of the Seine (in the 8e Arrondissement, not far from Rue Daru, I believe that the closest Métro station is Alma-Marceau on Line 9: editor)…  not far from the Grand Palais and the Pont Alexandre III, named after the tsar who who instituted the Franco-Russian alliance. Prime Ministers Putin and Fillon approved an agreement to create the monument in November 2009. France paid for the cost of landscaping the selected Paris site and the installation of the memorial, whilst the Russian side paid for the production and delivery of the memorial sculpture. People’s Artist of Russia Vladimir Surovtsyov won the international competition for the design of the memorial complex. This memorial is a tribute by both Russia and France to the soldiers of the Russian First Expeditionary Corps, thousands of whom fell on French soil in one of the bloodiest wars in human history. France hasn‘t forgotten that, and it still honours the Russian heroes who contributed to the Allied victory over Germany. In 1916, when the first Russian infantry brigade marched down the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, the Parisians greeted them with thunderous applause and a “rain” of flowers. An enthusiastic reception was accorded to the Russian corps when it landed in Marseille. The French were grateful to Russia for its offensive operations in 1914 in East Prussia, which even helped to stem the German drive on Paris. Germany had to pull forces out of France to blunt the Russian invasion. The Russian Expeditionary Corps played an important role on the Western Front. All the troops who fought in France were worthy of their treaty obligations. Not once did they flee before the onslaught of the enemy. On the contrary, they always were on the offensive, and always displayed the finest fighting qualities. Among the officers of the Corps was the famous Russian poet Nikolai Gumilyov.

21 June 2011

Voice of Russia World Service

http://rus.ruvr.ru/photoalbum/52194261/52194272/

Editor’s Note:

This shindig and Dixie Fry took place in the 8e Arrondissement, a chi-chi part of Paris… Rue Daru is nearby, but Gabriel and the rest of the Renovationist nutters were left off the honoured guest list. I wonder why… does it have anything to do with the recent court case in France reiterating that St Nicholas Cathedral in Nice is the property of the Russian state, not Gabriel’s set of obnovlentsy lunatics in Paris? Don’t forget… SVS is neck-deep in the Parisian cesspit… ADS, Meyendorff, l’Huillier, and Vanya Behr were all part of that scurvy lot of hooligans. Remember… Gabriel persecuted poor Mme Plas… and His Holiness Kirill Himself remembered her upon her passing. You spit on her memory and her Golgotha if you believe anything emanating from SVS or Syosset.

You can have VVP and Mme Plas… or you can have Gabriel, Behr, and the SVS bravos. It’s your choice… you’ll find me behind Vladimir Vladimirovich, lighting a candle in memory of Lydia Plas. What about you?

BMD

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The Church Shall Update its Liturgical Language

The liturgical Language used in worship services in the Russian Orthodox Church will become more understandable to the modern listener. The Moscow Patriarchate issued a draft document on the reform of the Church Slavonic language…

Usages clearer to modern believers will replace many obscure words and expressions. The clergymen who carried out the revision of the liturgical texts said that this is a very important and necessary step. According to Archimandrite Kirill Govorun, the First Deputy Chairman of the MP Education Committee, “I’m certain that this’ll be useful not only in facilitating improved relations between the Church and civil society, but it’ll also aid in preserving our traditions. The document reflects the consensus of the majority of Local Orthodox Churches on how we can pass the traditional core beliefs of the Church to modern man. It’s a very complex matter. Indeed, on the one hand, the Church as a whole is the bearer of Tradition, and it has a long history, which is of great significance. On the other hand, we must somehow convey this wealth to modern society”.

Today, in Modern Russian, the Church Slavonic word живот (zhivot : life) has taken on the meaning of “stomach”, it, along with Greek loanwords such as потир (potir : chalice) and анкира (ankira : anchor) and other such words will soon be just history. Replacing them will be more comprehensible words for modern audiences such as жизнь (zhizn : life), сосуд (sosud : vessel), and якорь (yakor : anchor). Two brothers, the Christian preachers Ss Kirill and Mefody, laid down the original orthography and grammar of the language. From its very origins, Russian Orthodoxy considered the Church Slavonic language its sacred idiom of worship, such as Latin was for the Church of Rome. The central feature of such languages ​​is that they aren’t “living” spoken dialects, so, they don’t undergo development; therefore, they eventually become incomprehensible to the majority of people. In the English-speaking milieu, numerous translations helped to resolve this problem, including the so-called Simple English Bible, which uses only 3,000 words.

In 1962, the Vatican faced a similar problem, so, it gave official permission to translate liturgical rites in Latin into the various national languages. Some Local Orthodox Churches, such as in Serbia and Bulgaria, took the path of least resistance, they allowed parishes that wished to do so to conduct services in the modern vernacular. In Russia, the first translation of the Bible into Modern Russian appeared only in the 19th century. Archimandrite Kirill Govorun noted, “However, a revision of Church Slavonic usages took place throughout Orthodoxy’s formative period. As soon as we began to employ the first books translated into Old Church Slavonic, directly, they began to change. Scribes copied out the books; in the days before printing, real people had to sit down and write them out. In ancient times, no one manuscript copy was 100 percent identical to the original. The process of copying manuscripts was a living process of adaptation of language”.

A new edition of the Triodion (Slavonic: Триодь)*, one of the most important service books, will be the first example of the modern revision of Church Slavonic usages. This is a collection of texts for worship services in the Pre-Lenten, Lenten, Easter, and Post-Easter seasons. This collection of texts is one of the main service books of the Church. I should add that plans to revise this book using simplified language existed before the 1917 revolution. A committee led by then-Metropolitan Sergei Stragorodsky, who later became the Patriarch of Moscow and all the Russias, composed of leading Russian scholars and linguists began to work on the problem. However, the events surrounding the Revolution interrupted its work. Scholarly research and modern commentaries will underpin the upcoming redaction of the Triodion.

* In the Slavonic usage, the Triod refers to both the Triodion and Pentekostarion in Greek usage. We simply speak of a Lenten Triod and a Festal (“Flowery”) Triod… there’s NO need for English-speaking Russian Orthodox to ape Greek Orthodox practise… there’s nothing wrong with either title… we have our customary usage, they have theirs, and that’s all there’s to say on the matter.

BMD

21 June 2011

Milena Faustova

Voice of Russia World Service

http://rus.ruvr.ru/2011/06/21/52179593.html

Editor’s Note:

This is THE news of the week, insofar as religious affairs are concerned. It’s now official… the MP isn’t abandoning Slavonic in favour of modern vernaculars, it’s simply revising it somewhat to ease its intelligibility. That means that the faction around Vsevolod Chaplin has won, and the faction around Alfeyev has lost. Mind you, the Blunder is going to issue glowing encomiums on the new work… the ambitious little weasel is still angling to succeed KMG (he won’t… he’s the MOST unpopular churchman in Russia, even more so than Dmitri Banditsky). This isn’t good news for SVS and OCA Renovationists … don’t forget, the Blunder has been their intercessor and protector at the Centre. Again, the Real Church reaches for a measured and even approach. That’s why people such as ADS and Gleb Podmoshensky were crook crackbrained nutters… their very radicalism was opposed to the Urgrund and onotological imperative of the Church. The Church doesn’t fly wildly in this or that direction… it stays the course patiently… it retains as much of the past as it’s able to. It doesn’t hold a knife to the throats of parishes who balk at the idiosyncratic airy-fairy fancies of this or that theologian or self-appointed “elder”… do witness ADS and Mayfield… and do reflect on who won and who lost in that dispute, not just in human terms, but in spiritual ones.

This is a sign of life in the Church. It’s GOOD…

BMD

MP Proposed Revisions in Church Slavonic Liturgical Language

Editor’s Foreword:

This was the only item that I could find on this today (and I did look in all the usual nooks and crannies)… interestingly enough, it WASN’T on the Russian language side on RIA; it was only on the English side. Moreover, there was no mention of this on patriarchia.ru or Interfax… although one could perhaps explain it by the fact that this post came out at 18.28 MSK (15.28 UTC 10.28 EDT 07.28 PDT), a late time for a news release. Nevertheless, this is an important news item… it means that everything issued by SVS on the 1918 Sobor and its supposed proposed change of the liturgical language to Modern Russian was corrupt and false. No small beer, that…

BMD

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The MP is preparing a revision of its liturgical language, and it circulated a draft document on the role of Church Slavonic in modern church life amongst the dioceses, which is available for discussion on the internet. “Church Slavonic is a very important means in the Church to keep unity and traditions. However, on the other hand, we can amplify the understanding of liturgical texts written in Church Slavonic”, a senior Church official, Archimandrite Kirill Govorun, said on Monday. “We proposed that more complicated words from Church Slavonic be replaced with simpler ones, using the same language, and that we use easier syntactic constructions. The general tendency is to make the message that the Church carries to modern society more transparent and understandable. That’s why we’re revising the Church Slavonic language”, said Fr Kirill, who is the First Deputy Chairman of the MP Education Committee. In particular, one of the changes stipulates that “zhivot”, which means “life” in Church Slavonic, but means “stomach” in modern Russian, will be replaced with the standard Russian word “zhizn”, and some Greek words will be replaced with their Russian equivalents. The current Church Slavonic used in services derives from Old Church Slavonic developed by Ss Kirill and Mefody in the 9th century. The older language’s pronunciation and orthography were adapted, and newer forms replaced some of the original words. The Patriarchate of Moscow and all the Russias is the largest of the Orthodox Local Churches; it’s the world’s second largest Christian body after the Roman Catholics.

20 June 2011

RIA-Novosti

http://en.rian.ru/art_living/20110620/164728015.html

Editor’s Afterword:

All during ADS’ time at SVS, one kept hearing about how the 1918 Sobor was going to change the liturgical language to Modern Russian, and how the MP was going to make such a change “as soon as it was free”. This reveals that to be pure moonshine and utter BS. There are going to be some revisions in usage, in fact, they’re going to be far more minor than the adjustment made by Kievan scholars in Slavonic usage in the 17th and 18th centuries (one of the reasons why the Old Ritualist schismatics split from us, by the way). The scale of the proposed revision proves ADS and Paul Meyendorff to be liars, at least as far as the 1918 Sobor is concerned. One must keep in mind that the 1918 Sobor adjourned before it adopted any act binding on the Church. That is, it left no canonical legislation, which means that it’s of antiquarian interest only. Don’t forget… ADS had an agenda… so does Mr Meyendorff… do recall his maunderings about “liturgical fundamentalism” (whatever the hell that vague construction means).

This proves that the Real Church, yet again, is taking moderate and measured steps. Always be suspicious of those who offer radical nostrums… whether in religion (like Paul Meyendorff) or in politics (like Paul Ryan). Someone WILL reap a benefit from it all (both in religion and in politics)… and it WON’T be you… think on that.

BMD

Editor’s Postscript:

I read a confirmatory article today in Russian on the VOR website… beyond backing and amplifying the above information, it gave more detail on who issued the statement. Archimandrite Kirill Govorun is from the UOC/MP, and was the head of the UOC/MP DECR, recently. He’s very close to Metropolitan Vladimir Sabodan. That means that the project has the blessing of both KMG and Vladimir… this is a DONE DEAL. I’ll translate the Faustova article after I get home from work. It’s important because it’s from VOR (a quasi-official state corporation)… just as MP and KP give you the “vox pop slant”, NG gives you the self-important chattering classes slant (not as important in Russia as in the West), and patriarchia.ru gives out the Church’s official word (and Interfax is the easiest to navigate for religion news).

BMD