On May 14 (Day of Anger), scores of anti-government protesters tried to camp outside parliament — only to be detained by police and later released.
Business as usual, huh? Not exactly.
It turns out police also dismantled that Russian Orthodox tent church that had been there since 2005. Yeah, since the Orange Revolution, for Christ’s sake! Now that should grab Patriarch Kirill’s attention!
Or maybe he had secretly blessed the whole operation? To kind of separate Yanukovych from his favorite church? At least for anyone willing to buy it. I mean Dura lex, sed lex v. Cuius regio, eius religio.
Who knows, maybe this little trick will help Patriarch Kirill save on travel and pack bigger crowds in Ukraine. Without resorting to Photoshop.
One dictator at a time. That’s how the EU does business.
That’s why the dictator next door ended up home alone, unwelcome and underappreciated.
Meanwhile, the dictator-indoor bombarded Barroso, Ban Ki-moon and other Western dignitaries with tin-cup hospitality. Later, he accompanied Medvedev and Patriarch Kirill on their Chernobyl pilgrimage.
Lukashenka: You know, frankly speaking...uh...not so frankly, actually...uh...you ask this question to Yanukovych: Why is the Belarusian president not present at their event? You ask them. Uh…unfortunately...uh...there’s plenty of lousiness to the current leadership of Ukraine. Uh...I’m not going to be fishing for an invite, and to be some kind of, you know, what you may call it...uh...a sidekick of some kind is not what I’m going to be either — of either one president or the other. That’s why this question — why no Lukashenka — one should ask Yanukovych this question. As for...jerks like Barroso and others...just who is Barroso? There was some Barroso in Portugal, then they kicked him out, put him in the European Commission or some other place. That’s why I couldn’t care less about it...uh...whatever blabber came from some European official someplace. There’s a thousand of them. Uh...and the most important thing is...well, it’s probably easier for me to speak here — you can see it and you know it — that...these are holy days for me.
Holy moly! What a stab in the back from the land where Yanukovych's father was born.
And what a cold shower for pan-Slavic unity. Or maybe acid rain?
Putin [addresses Russian bikers in Russian]: Tomorrow is Russian Navy Day. Let me greet all navy personnel with this holiday! [applause] And tomorrow Ukrainian and Russian naval personnel will be together — just as they were together — just as our peoples were together for many many centuries, in times of trials and tribulations. And tomorrow they will be together. And for this I want to give special thanks to the leadership...of Ukraine, most notably to President Yanukovich Viktor Fiodorovich [Rus: second name, first name, patronymic], both for the decision...[roar of applause]...both for the decision on the Russian Black See Fleet and for the overall atmospherics that he creates in relations between our peoples, between the brotherly peoples of Ukraine and Russia.
I want to ask you for a favor. And to make a wish too. Take care of yourselves — yourselves and those around you. Let us say no to reck...reckless racing and reckless driving. [raises voice] L-o-n-g l-i-v-e U-k-r-a-i-n-e! L-o-n-g l-i-v-e R-u-s-s-i-a! Long live the bike! [parting shot in lower-voice comic-sounding Ukrainian]
Woo hoo! Long live the legacy of Russia's Ukrainization!
As Patriarch Kirill went from Kyiv to Donetsk, his “tough love” sermons went from argumentative to aggressive. His 10-day pilgrimage of Ukraine turned into a political campaign event, not quite as advertised.
In Donetsk, his point man was the region’s pro-Russian presidential candidate Viktor Yanukovych, who staged a royal reception for him. An orchestra hailed Patriarch Kirill with “God Save the Tsar” and “The Patriotic Song” (Russia’s anthem 1990-2000). (Not exactly a Ukrainian repertoire, isn’t it?)
A live-broadcast public church service gathered tens of thousands of people and saw Yanukovych — the ultimate heaven-sent candidate — ride Patriarch Kirill’s coattails.
Patriarch Kirill: It won’t enter anyone’s head to use political or national or cultural or other arguments to justify the breakup of a family, the divorce of a husband and wife, the orphanage of children under living parents. No arguments...no human ideals can justify a schism. No human dream, no political idea, no national ideal during the two thousand years of Christianity has ever been achieved and realized through division of the body of Christ. Where there is division, there is blood flowing out, there is energy lost, there is unity separated, there app...appea...appears factionalism in place of unity, and lost is the ability, among other things, to achieve goals set for the people, for the nation, for the state.
“Where there is division, there is blood flowing out...” Wow! That’s a piece of powerful Christian imagery! In other words, “you do this, we do that,” right?
Your Holiness, are you aware of the East-West Schism? Have you ever heard of Muscovy’s self-proclaimed “Third Rome” title? Before asserting itself over Kyiv, hadn’t the church in Muscovy split from Constantinople — and, for that matter, from the Kyiv Metropoly — in 1448?
Do you think it’s Christian of you to wear a €30K watch while keeping most of your congregation in the dark — and as poor as church mice? Who benefits?
When I say “pastoral visit,” I don’t load this term with any paternalism whatsoever, with any “looking down on” whatsoever. I came here as a pilgrim.
I learn constantly and it's not a cliche: I like hearing people's voices, conjugating this diverse choir of human thought. When I say “pastoral visit” — I came here as a pilgrim, to pray and ponder with the congregation.
—Patriarch Kirill I of Moscow on his visit to Ukraine
In other statements, Patriarch Kirill poses as a boss, not as a pilgrim or a preacher. After all, thanks to a twist of history, he runs Ukraine’s biggest church: the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate).
I took the liberty of dissecting some of his statements.
President Yushchenko: Naturally, the greatest aspiration of the Ukrainian people is to live in a unified, whole, local, first-apostolic church.
Naturally, President Yushchenko overstated his case. The church is hardly the #1 value in any secular industrial society: The quality of life is. Nevertheless, having a unified church that does not take orders from the Kremlin would be good for Ukraine’s independence.
And bad for the Kremlin.
Patriarch Kirill: This church, Mr. President, does exist. There is an local church in Ukraine. If there wasn’t, there would be no Ukraine today. There’s no imperialism here whatsoever, no domination of one over the other. There’s a clear Orthodox ecclesiology here: the Patriarch is the father — for everyone. Regardless of the color of the passport in your pocket, the state we live in — he is the father of all who belong to the Orthodox Church that falls under the single jurisdiction headed by the Patriarch.
Your Holiness, are you elaborating on Lenin’s famous quote “Есть такая партия!” (“There is a party like that!”)?
Speaking of history, I thought Christianity came to Moscow via Kyiv, not the other way around. Also, I thought the church in Moscow had been part of the Kyiv Metropoly until proclaiming itself autocephalous in 1448. Why do you think that Moscow’s efforts to secure independence from Constantinople are holier than Kyiv’s efforts to secure independence from Moscow?
On top of that, I thought Moscow was founded by the Prince of Kyiv, and not the other way around. Which brings us to the ultimate question: Are you here because of Christ or because of Caesar?
President Yushchenko and Patriarch Kirill exchanged the above statements while attending the Holodomor Memorial on June 27 — each in their own way, as you can see. After all, the Holodomor is something that Russia rarely recognizes, much less claims any responsibility for.
No wonder, Patriarch Kirill, who presides over the pro-Russian branch of Ukraine’s Orthodoxy, said the following about the Holodomor:
A famine, a terrible famine wrought by concrete political causes and complicated by, also, natural cataclysms led to great numbers of people perishing — in Ukraine, Povolzhye, North Caucasus, Southern Urals, Western Siberia, Kazakhstan. It’s a common hardship of the entire people that lived, at that time, in one country.
Patriarch Kirill also expressed hope that “the tragic circumstances of our history will not foster the development of fraternal hate-mongering historiography.”
Your Holiness, sweeping genocide under the rug is not a brotherly thing to do.
Technically, the Jews who perished at Auschwitz, Treblinka, Buchenwald and Babyn Yar and the Germans who killed them had lived in one country: The Third Reich. Now, according to some historians, up to 150,000 Jews served in the Wehrmacht. Moreover, the Germans certainly killed more Slavs than Jews. Does that relegate the Holocaust to a non-event? Does that dilute Germany’s moral responsibility for the Holocaust? Did a million of Russians starve during the Blockade of Leningrad because of “natural cataclysms?” Bad weather? Crop failure?
According to your logic, probably yes. According to German law, definitely no.
Keeping in mind that Russia is the sole legal successor to the Soviet Union, how can we be sure it won’t happen again if we dilute responsibility?
As Patriarch Kirill basked in publicity, his bag of tricks grew all the more paternalistic, moralistic and apologetic. It exploded in a live-broadcast prime-time interview on Inter, Ukraine’s #1 television channel, on June 29.
Just a few quotes, gleaned from various sources (unfortunately, I didn’t watch the interview):
When nowadays I’m being told that in order to acquire the Ukrainian national self-identity, we need new names that divide Ukrainian believers — I’m not even talking about Russians and Ukrainians — but names that divide Ukraine itself, this logic eludes me.
I am deeply convinced that in Ukraine there should be no experimenting with names that divide the country itself.
Your Holiness, I don’t recall John Paul II being that judgmental and mentorial toward Ukrainians during his June 2001 visit here. That’s despite the fact that Poles and Ukrainians had fought each other bitterly throughout history and have different historical perspectives.
Or how about this one:
Recently, the Council of Europe adopted some resolution that places Nazism and Stalinism on an equal footing. I’m no proponent or defender of that Stalin era. But here’s what we should now perhaps think about. Both Nazism and Stalinism are repressions, including those against their own people, as is the case with many other regimes that existed. But how does Nazism differ from any other system? It differs by its hate-mongering.
Your Holiness, are you saying Stalinism involved less hate-mongering — and perhaps more humanism? Based on what calculus? If we compare the number of Russians (alone) who died from Stalin’s repressions with the number of Germans who died from Hitler’s repressions, which number will be greater — much greater? Moving on:
Stalinism is a repressive regime and, in a sense, a criminal regime because as a result of this regime’s actions innocent people were dying. That said, it was the Soviet Union that laid the biggest sacrifice on the altar of liberating both its own country and the entire world from what had posed a threat to the entire human civilization.
So, to prevent the 25 million lives lost by the Soviet Union in WW II from falling into oblivion, one should describe Stalinism as the lesser of two evils? And we can talk about the Soviet Union's liberation of Eastern Europe from Nazism without mentioning the strings attached by Stalin? Can we remember our human sacrifice — unmatched by any Western or Eastern country — by repressing the facts of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact?
