
_______________________________
When the people (народ) remember their moral revival under St Sergei, it makes political revival possible, as it renews the essential living rule that our political foundation is strong only if it sustains its moral force.
V O Klyuchevsky
Today, all Rus, the entirety of the Russian World, celebrates the 700th anniversary of the birth of St Sergei Radonezhsky, a prayer-warrior of the Russian Land, a great statesman, a key figure in our country’s history. It’s gratifying to know that thousands of pilgrims gathered in Sergiev Posad for the occasion, and millions of our fellow citizens pay tribute to and give respect to our illustrious compatriot in these days, as well.
His great faith and his continual service to others and to the Motherland played a key spiritual role in the victory of the united Russian forces on the Kulikovo Field; it made St Sergei a symbol of the Russian World, a personification of national revival and of the victory of light over darkness. The saint blessed Grand Prince Dmitri of Moscow before the battle, predicted his victory, and sent such warrior-heroes as Peresvet and Oslabya to fight in the campaign, who had taken monastic vows as Aleksandr and Rodion. However, when the prince hesitated whether to proceed to the Don, cutting off retreat, the Great Starets once again encouraged him to dare to do a podvig. He sent a letter blessing him to march to the Don, not to retreat, to dare…
Today, this call… “Don’t retreat, dare”… inspires us to fight for a revival in our divided motherland, surrounded by foes and beset by various sanctions.The battle with Mamai in the Don Land, at Nepryadva, wasn’t merely a struggle between the Horde and the Rus. The border wasn’t ethnic, it wasn’t religious; rather, it was moral and geopolitical.The men of Moscow, of Vladimir, of Suzdal, of Yaroslavl, of Rostov, from all of Muscovite-Vladimir Rus marched to the Kulikovo field under a Red Banner; they went forward under a red and gold banner with the image of the Saviour “Not Made by Hands”. Along with the men of Rus marched men from Lithuanian Rus… from Smolensk, Polotsk, and Bryansk. This combined army crushed not just the hordes of Mamai, it also brought low those Westerners, Genoese and Teutonic Knights, who fought under his banners.
It was a geopolitical confrontation, repeated many times later in Russian history. The balance of power on the Kulikovo Field resembles the current situation, where Good, Order, and Unity face Evil, Chaos, Aggression, and Adventurism. Now, destructive forces in Malorossiya and Galicia, the “temniks” with Euromaidan and Western allies, the New World Order gendarmes of the USA and Romano-Germanic Europe confront multinational Russia, insurgent Novorossiya, likeminded Belarus, and those Ukrainians who revere our common past.
However, St Sergei gave not only spiritual leadership in that great battle of ancient times; he still affects current times, after seven centuries of veneration. Peering into Russian history, into the very fabric of our national culture, we find that the remark of the philosopher Pavel Florensky is just… there isn’t a single thread that doesn’t lead to St Sergei, to this seminal source. Our moral ideology, our conception of statehood, our painting, our architecture, our literature, our schooling, our science… all these facets of Russian culture meet in St Sergei. In his personality, our people realised themselves… the nexus of our cultural and historical place, its essence, and its main tasks. Only then, realising itself, did it have a right to independence and greatness.
One can’t separate the concept of “Holy Rus” from the veneration of St Sergei. One can’t separate his name from his foundation, the Trinity-St Sergei Lavra, the most sacred site of the Russian people, the “spiritual fountainhead of our Motherland”. Through a new self-identity, the dying New Rome passed its genius to the young Russian people. St Sergei awakened this transition, in greatness of spirit and creativity, along with such like-minded saints as Aleksei and Kiprian of Moscow, Dionisy of Suzdal, Fyodor of Rostov, renowned podvizhniki and disciples of St Sergei, who founded a quarter of all Russian monasteries. These monasteries became centres of spiritual enlightenment, these podvizhniki enriched agriculture, construction, and crafts, laying the foundations of a mighty state. He bequeathed great selflessness, inspired service to the Motherland, spiritual elevation, and continuous moral improvement to our monastics and ordinary people… he became the intercessor for the rulers and people of the Russian Land. His hard work, patience, humility, purity of soul, and unfeigned love for all… he left his personal example to his monastic brethren and to his spiritual children.
This great Russian podvizhnik had a multifaceted life full of spiritual creativeness. Service, faith, and Motherland, the people and the state drove the life and deeds of St Sergei. St. Sergei’s “quiet and gentle sayings” could act on the most callous and hardened hearts, reconciling warring rulers, softened the manners of his spiritual children, “causing repentance without exasperation” (V O Klyuchevsky). “The hand of Sergei stretched out like a deep river, a quiet stream” (Epifany the Wise). Nevertheless, he was determined and adamant when the Motherland was in danger.
In a famous speech delivered over a century ago, The Meaning of St Sergei for the Russian People and State, prominent historian V O Klyuchevsky said, “One of the hallmarks of a great nation is its ability to rise to his feet after a fall. No matter how hard the humiliation, at the appointed hour, it’ll gather its scattered moral strength, and embody it in one great man or in a few great people who’d put it back on its temporarily-lost direct historical road… in bringing forth the memory of St. Sergei, we examine ourselves compared to his moral reserves. The great builders of our moral order bequeathed them to us, we update them, adding to them as we spend them”. We must do the same… check our spiritual roadmap, update our moral stock, replace incurred expenses, overcome spiritual schisms, comparing our historical era to our great ancestors and teachers. After all, historical fate sets before us a choice… we can stay in the marketplace of evil, or, we can flee from that, not retreating, to find solid ground in the works of righteousness and justice. Much serious effort lies ahead of us, but our great guide St Sergei Radonezhsky is with us, inspiring and enlightening us with the light of Goodness, Truth and Truth.
17 July 2014
G A Zyuganov
Head of the KPRF faction in the RF Gosduma
Chairman of the KPRF Central Committee
KPRF.ru
KPRF official website
http://kprf.ru/party-live/cknews/133045.html
Editor:
Let’s not dwell on things nor shilly-shally about. You may follow G A Zyuganov in the above text, or, you may follow Victor Potapov’s foolish attack on I V Stalin on the ROCOR official website. You MUST choose… you MUST choose one or the other. Your choice is between Orthodox Socialism and the Theomachistic Free Market (with its “Evangelical”/Mormon/Pentecostalist fellow travellers)… there’s nothing else on offer. You may follow G A Zyuganov, HH, V A Chaplin, and V V Putin… or you can follow Victor Potapov, Jonas Paffhausen, Chad Hatfield, Lyonyo Kishkovsky, and Michael Dahulich. The choice is yours… I can’t make it for you.
Choose well…
BMD
Greetings of First Secretary G A Zyuganov to Orthodox Christians on Easter
Tags: Christ, Christian, Christianity, civil unrest, Communist Party of the Russian Federation, Easter, Eastern Orthodox Church, Gennady Zyuganov, Great Patriotic War, KPRF, Kulikovo Field, Orthodox, Orthodoxy, Pascha, patriotic, patriotism, political commentary, politics, Religion, Religion and Spirituality, Resurrection, Russia, Russian, Russian culture, Russian history, Russian Orthodox Church, Ukraine, Ukrainian Civil War, VOV, war and conflict
_______________________________
Dear brothers and sisters, compatriots, comrades and friends!
Easter Sunday celebrates the triumph of life over death, of eternity over extinction, loyalty over oblivion. These bright days of the beloved people’s holiday of Easter fill young and old, our towns and villages with joy and gladness. Coincidentally, this spring, common historical experiences unite us. Seven decades ago, the peoples of our country won a globally fateful victory of good over evil. Before our eyes, during these paschal days, the Immortal Regiment marches by… our fallen… “trampling down death by death”… they live forever, on watch and on patrol in our memory. The veterans are still with us, those lucky ones who returned despite all the deaths. We’re together… the living and the dead… we, their descendants, and those who seven decades ago came to grips with the forces of evil who tried to crucify the Motherland…
Soldiers aren’t born. They fight to the death, for what’s holy and right… those who were only recently workers and farmers, students and teachers. They didn’t do it for glory; they did it for the sake of life on earth. From the beginning of those bitter days, their mothers, wives, sisters, and children took their places, working tirelessly in the rear. However, for the people, the holy war wasn’t a trifle; everyone made a strong contribution to the cause of saving the country and the world from enslavement and destruction. As our ancestors once did at Kulikovo and Borodino, at Poltava, the Battle on the Ice, Izmail, and Sevastopol, our grandfathers and fathers did at Khalkhin Gol, through the Kursk Salient, Mamaev Kurgan, the Bryansk forests and swamps to Prague and Berlin. We went on to win, though love and mercy, in a merciless war.
The victory won in that bright spring of 1945 showed a historical continuity, of the Russian spirit and of Soviet patriotism. In those happy spring days, the people of Europe bowed their heads to the courage and sacrifice of the Soviet soldier, and gave thanks for their redeemed world. It’s written, There is no greater love than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends (Gospel according to St John 15.13). Then, it seemed that we burned out the “brown plague” with fire and sword; that we’d put it down forever and everywhere. The victors returned to their still-smouldering homes… reviving our country demanded selfless efforts from veterans, widows, and orphans. The triumph of life and the resurrection of the people and of the motherland followed the tragedy of death.
With a unanimous cry, our multiethnic country burst forth and rushed towards the heavens. In those same spring days, on 12 April 1961, the first Russian officer, a Soviet Communist with a lovely disarming smile, the grandson of Putilov workers, a peasant partisan’s son from Bryansk, looked at the Earth from the window of a spacecraft. Yu A Gagarin spent 108 minutes looking at the Earth, amazed at its beauty and fragility. The Soviet people on Earth watched the flight of the “Vostok” and praised the podvig* of our scientists, engineers, designers, and workers who created the space industry. The podvigs of the people led to the greater podvig, to create a new civilisation of benevolence, of humanity, of serving the people. Despising past grievances and betrayal, in this victorious era, we fought for universal disarmament and world peace. “Peace on Earth*!” we wrote on their victory banner.
Now, in this seventieth spring of the victory, a cold light arose… again, Evil put us to the test. It couldn’t take us by force, so it tried to shove us to our knees with lies, scorn, slander, and pieces-of-silver. History repeated itself… as farce, not a tragedy. In the fraternal Ukraine, poisonous seed sprouted from the teeth of the once-defeated Nazi dragon. In the motherland of the Young Guard, in the Donbass, those who honoured our historical memory clashed with the successors of the ravishers of our motherland, in a battle for life and death. Again, we see the frontline of the confrontation between good and evil, and the anti-fascist warriors can only draw upon their own strength and on the solidarity of people of goodwill. We believe that you can’t rewrite history, that you can’t cover it up, and that you can’t embroider it… consciousness will reject corroding lies, and the truth will prevail. We will never deny our glorious heritage… only historical truth makes us a people. We must keep in mind that the leadership should remember that one could only direct Russia with an enlightened head, a pure heart, and a good soul. We should encourage them to be worthy and to do the will of the people, striving for truth, justice, and creativity. We hope that the younger generation will follow the true traditions of their elders, to continue to fight for peace, genuine democracy, a just world order, human rights, and the dignity of citizens. Then, no dark forces will prevail against us.
Therefore, we’ll win!
I give greetings on this Easter Sunday to all Orthodox Christians! I wish you peace, joy, and new achievements towards the revival of our Motherland.
Christ is Risen!
G A Zyuganov
Head of the KPRF faction in the RF Gosduma
Chairman of the TsK KPRF
11 April 2015
KPRF.ru
KPRF official website
http://kprf.ru/rusk/141384.html