Moscow. USSR. Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repressions. Civil funeral rites in Lubyanka Square. Photo ITAR-TASS / Andrei Solovyov
Finally! The Russian Orthodox Church has announced a day of commemoration “for all Orthodox Christians who suffered at the hands of the godless Soviet authorities”.
According to sources close to the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church, “the hierarchs resolved to establish October 30 as a day of special commemoration for all those who were innocently killed or imprisoned” during the years of Soviet rule.
This is significant in my estimation. For one thing, the language used –i.e. “godless Soviet authorities–is quite bold. It indicates that the Church is now mature enough to call a spade a spade. It also indicates that the political situation in the Russian Federation is anti-communist enough to not have to placate that particular ideology.
To those who have been to Russia in the recent past, this should come as no surprise as the Christian revival is clearly obvious.
And let it be said, that the Russian revival stokes the fears of many of Istanbul’s partisans. Take for example this unhinged secularist screed put out by the OCL (Orthodox Christian Laity): “Letter of June 8, 2021”, which can be accessed at https://www.ocl.org. If I didn’t know any better I would have thought it was written by the late Zbigniew Brzezinski of sorrowful memory.
To be sure, we can assume a safety that chronological distance provides; by this I don’t mean freedom from reprisals per se but the passing of the last of the Soviet-compromised hierarchy.
In any event, it bespeaks maturity which is badly needed in today’s world.
For more on this story, please go to:
https://orthochristian.com/142066.html
I look forward to seeing the iconography for this feast!
Me too!
I’m not sure they’re calling it a feast or that it will have distinctive iconography. Most ROCOR churches already have icons of the Royal Martyrs and there is an icon of the New Martyrs in Christ the Savior in Moscow which is also commonly available:
https://www.uncutmountainsupply.com/icons/of-saints/by-name/p-r/icon-of-the-new-martyrs-of-russia-1rm15/
We already have a feast day for this: Sunday nearest February 7th, the date Metropolitan Vladimir of Kiev was martyred
ROCOR canonized them in 1981. The MP followed suit in 2000, but had canonized a few during the 1990’s.
This announcement is a cause for great joy. I am stunned. (in the best possible way) Finally, the Soviet Communist demons are exposed and condemned. Their victims are officially remembered. Will the world’s redemption start here in Russia? Or will the godless west snuff it out? Glory be to God for all things!
It is worth noting, lest too much be made of a single phrase, that the journal of the holy synod does not use the term “godless soviet authorities,” that appears to be the description of the Orthochristian editors.
http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/5837973.html (see No. 70)
Great news! Glory be to God!
Using the term “godless” to describe the Bolsheviks/Soviets is nothing new in Russia. This has been a common term used by even leading hierarchs in Russia for decades now. So I don’t see this as significant at all. It seems nice, until you realize that the upper hierarchy of the Moscow Patriarchate refuses to release many archives from the Soviet period relating to their involvement with the KGB. They also refuse to recognize the canonization of St Joseph of Petrograd which was done by ROCOR along with the rest of the New Martyrs in 1981. When Moscow canonized New Martyrs in 2000 they refused to recognize St Joseph. Patriarch Kirill not long ago performed a weird consecration of a statue of Patriarch Sergius. So… we’ll see if they recognize the remains of the Royal Family in November, who they refused to recognize as martyrs, as ROCOR rightfully did, instead calling them “passion-bearers”… but anyway I don’t wish to be negative here, any commemoration of the victims of communism is a good thing, for sure.
Now all they have to do is get rid of Lenin’s ridiculous body in the Kremlin — bury it off in some obscure grave somewhere — and Russia’s Christian resurrection will be even further on its way.
As an American and as a Russian Orthodox Christian (who has no Russian blood whatsoever), I have no shame at all in stating that Russia’s Christian resurrection brings me great joy. It brings me great sadness that this occurs as America is well on its way of fully rejecting its western Christian heritage.
But perhaps, in God’s mercy, Russia’s Christian resurrection can help bring about salvation to the American people in a way that we cannot currently discern. Unlike many of my countrymen, I have never suffered from “Russophobia.” Even in the ’80s and ’90s as a young man, it was always crystal clear to me that the real Russia rested in the Russian expatriate movement and in the Russian underground inside Russia — that the Brezhnevs, Khrushchevs, et al. were pathetic imposters.
Over the last few decades I have sadly experienced (sometimes the hard way) that many of my American friends simply cannot see anything good in anything Russian – an idea that runs so deep in American/British culture. This Cross – this inability to see anything good in anything Russian – is so difficult for many Westerners to overcome. We Orthodox Americans may want to try to help them bear it.
FTS, if I may second your sentiments. Like you, I have no Russian blood in me (although according to Ancestry.com I’m 14% “Eastern European” (to me that means Slavic). Further, I am an unrepentant Cold Warrior, meaning I hated Communism, Marxism, Leninism, and Socialism in all its forms. I agreed with Reagan that the USSR was “the evil empire”.
However, like Reagan, I never bore any animus to the Russian people (or any of the other races and nations that were trapped behind the Iron Curtain). Not a bit. And like Reagan, who viewed his mission in life was to take down the Evil Empire, he did so with the purpose in mind to free the Christian peoples who were enslaved and not to conquer them or worse, degrade them (as we are presently doing to ourselves as well as the rest of Christendom).
I pray that the Russian people will forgive us for our present Atlantacist delusion which seeks to nip their resurgent Christianity in the bud. We need their prayers so we can find the strength to depart from our present demonic ways.
Off topic, but today, 450 years ago, Catholic forces of the Holy League, under the command of Don Juan de Austria, defeated the Ottoman armada in Lepanto, stopping Muslim expansionism in the Mediterranean and its incursion into Western Europe.
I think this is definitely a significant step. It is also the church’s way of slapping down those miscreants on the Russian left who are trying to create an unholy marriage of Stalinism and Orthodoxy (the likes of Alexander Prokhanov and Nikolai Starikov).
Given the chaotic way the USSR fell apart, leaving many people destitute, many Russians separated from their own people, and baiting the forces of globalism to extend a unipolar hegemonic block in the eastern European space, there are various forms of neo-Soviet nostalgia still lurking about, trying to reconcile the irreconcilable. The church is the only significant moral force in Russian society that can get people to take a healthy and sober look at their past, and this commemorative day (long overdue) will be a healthy anchor for this continued process of reflection.
It is not sufficient to simply be an anti-communist: one must be pro-Christian first and foremost. This is something that cannot come from the National Endowment for the Democracies, RFE/RL, or the Open Society Institutes of George Soros, for they seek to replace one godless poison with another.
Very good news. For myself, on October 30th I’ll be commemorating all victims of communism everywhere, and those around the globe threatened, directly or indirectly, by its incursions now, as it’s not over yet.
PHILARET DENISENKO, REHABILITATED BY CONSTANTINOPLE, SERVES WITH SCHISMATIC GREEK HIERARCH:
https://orthochristian.com/142328.html
I wonder if the other Local Churches want Philaret “rehabilitating” for them. Because he will.
No, I think that Philaret is actually thumbing his nose at Constantinople, and the Church of Greece by serving with the Greek schismatic hierarch mentioned in the article. (The ‘rehabilitated’ or ‘rehabilitation’ that they speak of is really past tense.)
He, Philaret, actually considers himself separate from the OCU now. But the OCU still considers him as being with them. Lat’s face it, they’re basically waiting for him to quietly die, then they’ll swoop in and seize what few churches and monasteries that he has left. (Not sure how that will work out here in the U.S. though? There are still a couple of churches in the Chicagoland area that are still with the ‘Kiev Patriarchate’.
And about how many OCU clergy and parishes in Ukraine belong to the OCU vs. the remnants of the UOC-KP? Did few of KP Filaret’s members leave the OCU with him?
I wonder how the CP parishes in the US are treating the handful of KP parishes in the US now that the CP has recognized the KP hierarchs, including “KP” Filaret.
After P. Bartholomew recognized KP Filaret as a metropolitan and not a patriarch, and recognized the OCU, KP Filaret left the OCU. Then a Ukrainian court announced that the KP was dissolved, but then KP Filaret removed his signature from the dissolution. OCU representatives had a meeting on July 8, 2019 (after KP Filaret left the OCU) with CP representatives on the status of KP Vicariate parishes in the US, but it didn’t conclude anything.
“Archpriest” Bogdan Zgoba, secretary of the UOC-KP vicariate in the United States, said in February that KP Vicariate parishes in the US won’t become part of the OCU because the CP’s Tomos to the OCU only gives the OCU jurisdiction in Ukraine.
spzh.news/en/news/77483-vikariat-upc-kp-v-ssha-i-kanade-u-pcu-net-prav-na-nashi-prihody
In Feb. 2021, KP Filaret issued a statement reiterating that the KP parishes in the US are not under the OCU.
I don’t understand why the Constantinople Patriarchate (CP), including the UOC-USA, would not be in automatic communion with the KP Vicariate once the CP reinstalled the KP hierarchs.
In the case of the MP and the OCA, the CP’s reasoning is that it recognizes the MP as canonical and that it therefore by extension recognizes the OCA’s hierarchs and clergy as therefore canonical, even though it does not recognize the OCA per se as a legitimate jurisdiction.
Here is some more of the chronological of the CP’s stance on the KP:
In October 2018, the CP “reinstated” the KP and claimed that the CP was now asserting jurisdiction over Ukraine. I don’t know if this means that it recognized all of the KP bishops and clergy at that point. But according to Wikipedia, the CP’s position was that although it recognized the KP hierarch Filaret and recognized the KP’s sacraments as valid, it did NOT recognize the KP itself, which seems like a bit of a strange contradiction, ie. it sounds like a contradiction in recognizing a church’s sacraments as valid without recognizing that church or its leaders as valid.
The UOC-KP and UOAC united into the OCU on 15 December 2018.
Then on January 5, 2019, the CP gave a Tomos of Autocephaly to the OCU. Based on the CP’s reasoning then towards the MP and OCA, apparently the CP would recognize the OCU/KP parishes in the US as a result of the CP recognizing the OCU.
The OCU’s Tomos from the CP says that the OCU does not have any canonical parishes outside Ukraine. However, based on the CP’s treatment of the MP and OCA, the mere fact that the CP does not recognize another Church (eg. MP or “OCU”) as having jurisdiction in the US does not automatically prevent the CP from recognizing that Church’s clergy (eg. MP clergy in the US) or “daughter” churches in the US (eg. OCA).
Then in June 2019, the KP leader Filaret left the OCU, and in February of this year, KP parishes in the US said that they are staying under Filaret and not joining the OCU.
Does the OCU recognize the KP parishes in the US as legitimate, or have they declared them “schismatic”?
“I don’t understand why
the Constantinople Patriarchate (CP)…”
Neither do I.
“Does the OCU recognize the KP parishes in the US as legitimate,
or have they declared them “schismatic”?
I have no idea – and I suspect they don’t either….
As well as St Nicholas Church in Philadelphia — it had a long history with the Russian Orthodox Diocese in America, then the Metropolia/OCA. Then it bolted for the “Kiev Patriarchate” a couple of years ago.
Terribly sad. Beautiful historic building. I was at a friend’s wedding there about 20 years ago.
Now it’s some “patriarchal cathedral” with the anathematized Philaret’s group; the website:
https://www.stnicholaseoc.org
And, speaking of totalitarian oppression, I just read this on the present purges.
I had debated nomenclature for some time. Are they more like fascists or communists? Arguments arise for either label. But the article says it best really. They are a new phenomenon, echoing and reminiscent of several older ones: Globalist-capitalists or, for short, “globalists” or “globos”.
There is deep, deep irony involved here. Early socialists militated against the phenomenon of value added within a nation; i.e., within a specific territory, if capitalists ply their trade and charge more for produced goods than the value of the labor, etc. used to produce them, in the long term the middle and lower classes end up so impoverished that they cannot afford the goods and the system collapses – or so the theory goes. So the enemies of this system are socialists who advocate redistribution of wealth within a definable (closed border) state and govt ownership of the means of production.
Fast forward. Globalists essentially are trying the same trick, which was defused by the welfare state, on a global scale. Allowing other countries unfair trade advantages and outsourcing production from the US to cheaper labor markets, combined with open borders, is the same system as above, more or less, on a global scale. Yet the heroes and villains have changed now.
Now the nationalists who advocate fair trade, secure borders and American made are the enemies of the globalist system, the new heroes.
The current Purge is the reaction of the Western liberals to the onslaught of Christian Nationalism from the East and from within (Trump, conservative Christians, etc.). It was inevitable as their end game in any case. Liberalism is slow walk socialism. And liberals sensed they were running out of time given Trump, MAGA and what has happened in Eastern/Central Europe. They decided the jump to totalitarian control had to occur now if it was ever to succeed since its antithesis was gaining ground against the slow walk.
It is not strictly communistic since they have harnessed big business. They have substituted race for class in the Marxian dynamic. In some ways, they are classic fascists. Hitler co-opted business as well and we all know of his racism. But Hitler’s racism was not self hatred. They hate themselves and all those who do not share in the lie, the unvaxxed. That is the neurosis of these globos. The globo elite are not “white” but rather liberal demigods, above such categorizations, as a true vanguard should be.
In any case, the clash was inevitable and we should be thankful that the heat has been suddenly turned up so that we will not continue to be slow boiled frogs but rather have a chance to jump out of the cauldron and attack the cooks/kooks.
Death to the Globo-Fascist Borg
and Glory to God for all things.
There is a persistent rumor circulating that the Supreme Pontif of the east, Kyrie, Kyrie. Bartholomew of Constantinople , in an angry outburst, has ordered his subjects to cease and desist from wishing Philaret Disensko to live for many, many years!
I found this refreshing. Aussie TV is enchanting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8Ei1QOr__o
There are those who are ready to throw in the towel, so to speak, as a reaction to the election of 2020. I am not one of them. Cluck the Benedict Option. Open warfare is much preferable. Even Vaclav Havel’s “Parallel Polis” seems unduly deferential IMHO. It is not that we cannot live side by side with the liberals anymore. It is that they are malignant and dangerous. So they must be permanently defeated.
First of all, upwards of two thirds of the country is with us – us being MAGA for purposes of this exercise. The last election, contrary to all appearances, was a Trump landslide, probably even victorious in places like California. The hard, cold fact is that it was stolen. The video shows it. The changes in the numbers during the tallying in the night show it. All statistical evidence shows it. And Lindell’s PCAP’s clearly detail it.
Now, why the denial from the MSM and both the Democratic and Republican Establishment when the massive, extensive fraud is demonstrable? Ask yourself, “What is their alternative?” They can stand there like fools and try to convince us our eyes are lying OR they can pack up and go home without salaries, sinecures or influence.
Because what happened is a coup d’etat – outright treason – and if the details were allowed to be spelled out in front of God and everybody it would be universal knowledge that the Democrats are deranged, totalitarian monsters – which is in fact the case – and that the entire system is completely rigged from top to bottom. That’s why the judiciary is running interference for them. They know they’re monsters and they wouldn’t hesitate to pack the courts. The fix is in.
Exposing it would be like casting light on a vampire. This would destroy the moral standing they sorely covet in order to enact their infernal agenda. So they can never admit the truth and it must be marginalized into a conspiracy theory of the Right. But it’s becoming more and more undeniable as time passes. Three things that cannot be long hidden are the sun, the moon and the truth – and the Steal happens to be objectively true; that’s what actually physically happened, all protestations to the contrary notwithstanding – and such activity inevitably leaves a trail of evidence.
This is the hill to die on because it clearly demonstrates that Democrat = Bolshevik and that they care nothing whatsoever about the sentiments of normal people, only their sick ideology. This can kill them as a party.
Deranged, totalitarian monsters.
Alas, we cannot hide from them in the catacombs. They would afford us no such luxury even if we desired it. This is a zero sum fight to the finish. Part of the realization should be that they have dominated since FDR. They just morphed in their ideology, but their ideology is already dominant so there’s no reason to retreat now since it’s always been this way. We just haven’t been particularly consciously aware of it.
Well, good morning!
Dan Rather, Walter Cronkite, Ted Koppel, Peter Jennings, countless actors, actresses and academics – from Rob Reiner to Taylor Swift to Cher to Noam Chomsky to your favorite poli sci professor in college – all reprehensible evil minions . . . all your favorite series from the golden era of TV and cinema, Morgan Freeman, Matt Damon, Jimmy Stewart, Henry Fonda and on and on.
November 2020 may seem like a great loss and when it happened some of us had to pause to get our bearings due to the obvious implication that if they could do it once, they might be able to do it repeatedly and indefinitely. However, that became increasingly less likely as time passed and the smoke cleared.
RINO’s, Establishment Republicans as well as Patriot Republicans all have a stake in stopping the Steal from becoming Democratic policy. You will notice, Republicans prevailed in down ballot races even though Trump “lost”. You see, the Steal was accomplished with the complicity of RINO’s and Establishment Republicans (McConnell, Cheney, etc.). They did not want to disenfranchise Republicans except with respect to Trump.
Democrats needed the cover of Establishment Republicans to sell the Steal to preserve public order. But if the entire Republican Party leadership were turned MAGA, no such cover would be forthcoming. They could not get away with it without instigating a bloody civil war.
And that is the cataclysmic event that the Left sees on the horizon. They are not hallucinating or deluded. Many of them are cold hard political operatives who can add and read the incoming data:
https://www.reviewjournal.com/sports/betting/donald-trump-now-betting-favorite-to-win-2024-presidential-election-2459354/
And incidentally, this is what Dreher is up to these days:
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/trump-zmirak-metaxas-beta-males/
To which one can only reply: Perhaps Democrats are promising to only steal elections in which the hard Right stands to prevail and will allow conventional Republicans to carry on. If so, Trump is still right. Burn it down. Either the Steal is exposed and the Democrats are universally acknowledged to be the naked emperor in disgrace or . . . they prevail as the Uniparty.
Those are the stakes in any case. Why not clarify the issue?
If I can’t have Trump (or DeSantis) as president, I’ll take ChiCom Joe or Kamala over Mitch or Paul Ryan any day of the week. Better a devil who will self destruct than an enabler who will merely prolong the political establishment’s dominance.
You’re absolutely right, Misha. The election of another cuckservative RINO as president will only buy the Demsheviks more time. A completely inept President Kamala would be the right antidote for the completely inept Creepy Joe.
Basically, the rest of the Normie-Americans need to get it “gooder and harder”. Only then will the narrative change from liberalism to realism.
“There are those who are ready to throw in the towel, so to speak, as a reaction to the election of 2020. I am not one of them.”
The election theft is passe, and the USA as whole is being written off, because the “vaccines” have shifted a critical mass of people’s thinking about where we are on the prophetic timeline. Even a Jewish man like Kunstler can’t help seeing it and implying it with the title of this October 8th article, The Mark of the Beast:
https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/the-mark-of-the-beast/
His Eminence Archbishop Elpidophoros hailed the choice: “I am personally grateful, and grateful on behalf of the entire Church and all human beings of good will, to these brilliant scientists. Through their leadership, the hard work of their teams and by the grace of God, they have been leaders in producing and delivering life-saving vaccines. No one this year is more deserving of this prestigious award than these three men, who have done so much to bring the world out of this scourge that has devastated so very many lives.”
Meanwhile:
https://seed167.bitchute.com/VlCvPqU7aADC/n6CUHGRc15eg.mp4
Perhaps: “…your favorite poli sci[-fi] professor in college” ?