Sophia Kishkovsky (and all the other First Family sludge) has faith in the Almighty Dollar… I have faith in Almighty God… I seem to see a slight difference there…
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Editor:
Sophia Kishkovsky strikes again… yes, she’s the mercenary journalist daughter of Lyonyo Kishkovsky. She didn’t take the by-line, but “Sophia Kishkovsky contributed reporting”… that is, she couldn’t resist attacking the church of her birth. The First Families show their usual contempt for the Truth, for the Faith, and for the Motherland. Of course, they have theirs and that’s all that counts… the rest of us are their playthings, dontcha know. “We admit no crime or wrongdoing”… reflect on the fact that Lyonyo never defended any victims of abusive priests… and the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. What does that tell us about Ms Kishkovsky? However, I believe her to be worse than her father is. Her father sold out for power in the OCA and for scraps from the Anglo table. She sold out for a minor post at the Times… and has to repeat the latest party-line exactly, down to the last jot and tittle.
Read this rubbish. Read all of it. Reflect that a member of the OCA/ROCOR First Family apparat vetted and approved it. We have traitors in our midst. There’s nothing else to say… I’ll have more to say at the end of this. READ IT. It shows the depth of contempt that the Kishkovskys, Potapovs, Schmemanns, Hopkos, Gans, and Oussorgines have for all of us.
BMD
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The pilgrims tramped toward the storied monastery by the thousands… chanting prayers, singing, and embracing the kind of nationalist fervour that President V V Putin seeks to harness as his own. The official reason for the trek to the Trinity-St Sergei Lavra, the seat of the Russian Orthodox faith (sic) and the country’s original monastery (sic), was to commemorate the 700th birthday of its founder and namesake. However, amidst that tide of pilgrims… official estimates hovered around 30,000… swirled diverse political and religious currents related to Mr Putin’s effort to cast himself as the defender of traditional values, a campaign that’s been more pronounced since Russia’s involvement with the Ukraine.
The birthday celebrations in Sergiyev Posad emphasised St. Sergei’s role in shaping a unified Russia, a narrative that dovetails with the nationalism and conservative morals (sic) that Mr Putin espouses. Some historians and church figures cry foul, however, over what they call Kremlin efforts to reshape the saint’s legacy, to enhance their political goals, to foster what one critic called “an official cult”. Irina Karatsuba, a historian who often aligns herself with unpopular causes, said, “They’re creating a myth around St Sergei, making him out to be an obedient servant of the Russian state, which he was not. He’s one of the important embodiments of what was and is the best in Russia, but the way they’re trying to link him to the Russian state is nonsense; it’s political manipulation”.
The pilgrimage illustrates one way that Mr Putin is trying to use Russian Orthodoxy as a tie that binds Russians together, analysts said, fashioning a fresh ideology for his continued rule after 14 years as either president or prime minister. His participation in the St Sergei celebration last month was on live national broadcast feeds. Church officials said they wanted St Sergei to serve as an example of spiritual hope for Russians in their daily lives. The Russian Orthodox Church resurrected after the 1991 collapse of the USSR, ending 70 years of often brutal Communist repression. The church seems only too happy to hitch its halting rebirth to Mr Putin’s fortunes, hoping to attract more adherents. Although 80 percent of the 140 million Russians identify themselves as Russian Orthodox culturally, the number who actually attends church is tiny. The church says that it’s nearly 10 percent, but experts say that it’s long hovered around 3 percent.
Another reason for St Sergei’s elevation is the current crisis in the Ukraine. The birth of the Russian Orthodox faith dates back to St Vladimir the Great, Grand Prince of Kiev, and the mass baptisms performed at his behest there in 988, bringing Christianity to what then became Holy Rus. However, Geraldine Fagan, author of Believing in Russia: Religious Policy After Communism, noted that now that Russia and the Ukraine are locked in a proxy war, the government and the church realise that the physical link to an important religious symbol is being severed. Because those roots… not to mention the relics of St Vladimir himself… are in the territory of an estranged neighbour, Ms. Fagan said that Russia appears to be casting St Sergei as his replacement.
In the late 14th century, aside from founding the first monastery (sic), St. Sergei of Radonezh persuaded the Russian princes to stop their murderous, internecine fighting and concentrate on throwing off the Mongol yoke. V R Legoida, the head of the MP Synodal Information Department (SINFO), said, “St Sergei was the beginning not just of Russian monasticism or the Russian spiritual tradition. In many ways, he’s the source of Russia itself”.
St Sergei has long received homage as a humble figure, content to spend his days in prayer and dressing like a beggar. He turned down the job of leading the church, but received the unique title of abbot for all Russia. Margarita Popova, a 48-year-old English teacher who travelled 17 hours by bus with her teenage son from their home near Volgograd for the anniversary, said, “He’s a great personality in Russian history. Russia before Sergei Radonezh and Russia after was perhaps two different Russias”. Ms Popova said that ordinary people don’t have the time to pray for themselves, for Russia, and for the world constantly. The monks who do so follow a tradition started in the Russian Orthodox Church by St. Sergei. Often, people consider him the original starets, a Russian word that means a monastic spiritual leader, one who has achieved tangible experience in the future kingdom of God {no, it means “elder”; the definition given is only one of several… the author shows his ignorance here: editor}.
Beyond spiritual matters, the crowd at the birthday commemoration at the monastery here, 45 miles north of Moscow, was unquestionably in the Putin camp. Many compared him to a tsar, and meant it as a compliment. Vladimir Bubelev, 60, an officer in the naval reserves wearing a brass pin showing the profile of Nikolai Aleksandrovich, the last tsar, on his lapel, said, “He just hasn’t been anointed, but his powers are greater than those of Tsar Nikolai. On many questions he acts like a monarch… he makes correct and deliberate decisions. This is very good. Plus, he’s a believer!”
As it happened, the birthday of St Sergei and the anniversary of the death of Tsar Nikolai fell within a couple of days of each other in July. The church made Tsar Nikolai and his immediate family saints in 2000. The tsar’s 1917 overthrow was for many Orthodox faithful the last time that a God-anointed ruler governed Russia. Mr Bubelev believed that when the tsars ruled, Russia evoked both nobility and morality. The Romanovs deeply revered both St Sergei and a later 19th-century monk, St Seraphim of Sarov, also worshiped by the Russian Orthodox (sic). Mr Bubelev said, “They helped the tsars rule Russia in the right way… they made Russia rich. The tsars went to their relics and asked for God’s help, and they succeeded. Thank God, Mr Putin’s asking for their help now”. However, Ms Karatsuba, the historian, pointed out that the Romanov rulers also tried to elevate the concept of Holy Rus as a national ideal in their campaign to stall political reform in the 19th century. She noted that turned out badly for them in 1917.
Still, the Slavic nationalism prevalent among the faithful makes them a natural base of support for Mr Putin’s policy that all ethnic Russians are worthy of protection wherever they are. That’s been his stated reason for championing the cause of anti-Kiev insurgents in the southeastern Ukraine (sic). Dmitry Markov, 28, a buyer for a mobile-phone company who attended the St Sergei commemoration, said, “We’re all one people, we’re all part of Holy Rus. Any person, regardless of where he lives, if he’s Russian in spirit, he must be defended by his president, by his country, because he’s an indivisible part of the nation”.
Mr Putin, who attended the anniversary celebration less than 24 hours after a civilian plane disaster in Ukraine that many blamed on Moscow, addressed the faithful for only about five minutes. He lauded the “patriotic, national, and moral resurgence” inspired by the monk, including his campaign to build monasteries as both spiritual centres and real fortresses to protect Russia, saying, “His wise and solid words as a mentor and guide were a spiritual pillar and support during a difficult time of foreign invasion and internal discord. It was then that he spoke his prophetic words, ‘Our salvation lies in love and unity’. This appeal, filled with unshakable faith, helped to unite Russia’s lands and stamped itself forever on our people’s soul and in our historical memory”.
The commemoration, planned for years, provoked some quiet grumbling within the church itself, however, that it was too elaborate. With a war raging next door, critics said that they could’ve spent the money on better things. Patriarch Kirill Gundyaev himself led the 10-mile procession that started the commemoration, beginning from the monastery at Khotkovo, the burial place of the saint’s parents, to the Trinity-St Sergei Lavra. The patriarch walked under a white umbrella carried by a young priest, and during a break in the march closeted himself away from the adoring throng in an air-conditioned mobile home. Michael Storojinsky, 53, a religious music producer, explained why he walked for five hours under the relentless summer sun, “Faith without deeds is dead. I was a Communist in the days when the Communist Party said it was battling religious superstition. The party placed itself on the pedestal that was meant to be occupied by God”.
2 August 2014
Neil MacFarquhar
Sophia Kishkovsky
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/03/world/europe/from-pilgrims-putin-seeks-political-profit.html?_r=0
Editor:
Irina Karatsuba is an unimportant figure with no official standing in academe, Church, or the state. I believe that she’s the daughter of the famous mathematician A A Karatsuba. In short, she’s a minor and inconsequential figure. Geraldine Fagan is cut from the same cloth… she’s been associated with various Langley “pro-democracy” fronts and is a known acquaintance of Victor Potapov. No doubt, Victor helped Sophia to get in touch with her (just as he helped JP find a ghostwriter at the Washington Times). You see, Potapov’s son attends Lyonyo’s parish on the Island. When I said that the OCA/ROCOR First Family apparat is incestuous, it almost fits the bill literally. Gan… Kishkovsky… Potapov… Jillions… there’s no difference, they socialise together, they marry amongst themselves, and they live in a little world divorced from the reality of life in the OCA and ROCOR parishes. It’s why the OCA is only 40 percent of its 1964 peak, and why the ROCOR almost imploded in the 90s (only the arrival of the New Russians saved them).
There are elements in the OCA and the ROCOR that’ve sold out to the enemies of the Church and the Rodina. The above is but a foretaste of what they believe in. The don’t care for us, they don’t care for the Motherland, and they don’t care about Christ and His Holy Church. “If you can’t eat it, drink it, smoke it, or screw it, forget it”… that’s their effectual motto. Have a care… the times are evil.
BMD
Voices from Russia 
Twelve Junta Soldiers Rally to Russia
Tags: Donetsk, Donetsk People's Republic, Gukovo, Lugansk People's Republic, Novorossiya, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, OSCE, political commentary, politics, Rostov Oblast, Russia, Russian, Ukraine
Orthodox Socialism in the DNR… the left-hand sign appears to be, “They ask for help”, the right-hand sign is “DNR: People’s Republic economics without oligarchs and corruption”. Note well that the rightwing pukes who try to ally the Church with the Republicans have NO images to back up their assertions. This “bolshie” (thanks for calling me that, Dreher, it’s the first correct thing that you’ve said in ages) does have images to back up her statements.
Take a GOOD look… the Church is FOR Socialism and AGAINST Crapitalism. ‘Nuff said!
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On Sunday, Vasili Malayev, spokesman for the Rostov Oblast FSB Border Service said that twelve junta soldiers laid down their arms and crossed into Russia in Rostov Oblast, saying “They laid down their arms and crossed into Russia at the Gukovo border checkpoint. Now, we’re investigating why they did this. The soldiers crossed into Russia on Saturday, they were from the Ukrainian Army’s 72 Mechanized Brigade”. There were previous instances of junta troops rallying to Russia. In late July, more than 40 junta troops left their units and asked the DNR and LNR opolchenie to help them escape to Russia because they didn’t want to fight against their own people. All the junta troops came through the Donetsk border post in Rostov Oblast. They thanked the opolchenietsy who helped them. The Russians gave them meals and an opportunity to rest. Most of the junta draftees asked for permission to go home via Russia despite the fact that they’d be “wanted” in the Ukraine. Two of the junta soldiers asked for Russian citizenship.
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On Sunday, Vasili Malayev, spokesman for the Rostov Oblast FSB Border Service told us that two junta shells hit a building at the Gukovo border checkpoint in southern Rostov Oblast, seriously damaging it. He said, “At about 17.30 MSK on Sunday, a second shell exploded at the border point, damaging the building”. The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) confirmed on that a Russian border checkpoint had twice come under shelling on Sunday. When the shelling began, journalists from Zvezda TV were working at the checkpoint.
Zvezda said, citing correspondent Vasili Kuchushev, “It happened when we were shooting videos of the checkpoint. At first, we heard explosions at a distance but at about 17.30, we heard a powerful blast, saw a flare, and fragments scattering about the sky. It happened some 20 metres away from us. Honestly, it scared us. We had to drop our car to clear off. Border guards inside the checkpoint said they also had heard the explosion and the sound of fragments beating against the roof”.
Earlier on Sunday, OSCE observers came under shelling at this checkpoint. A shell fired during combat operations on adjacent Ukrainian territory exploded at the Gukovo checkpoint. The OSCE confirmed that the Gukovo checkpoint came under shelling. Meanwhile, Border Department spokesman Malayev said, “Those OSCE representatives who were at the border checkpoint stayed at their places and continued their work”. No one was hurt in the incident. OSCE observers began to arrive in Rostov Oblast in late July. Two observers are on duty at the Gukovo and Donetsk checkpoints around-the-clock. The OSCE observer team will fully deploy by 16 August.
3 August 2014
ITAR-TASS
http://en.itar-tass.com/russia/743361
http://en.itar-tass.com/russia/743378