Kiev Pechersk Lavra.
This is what Nicetas, Archbishop of Nicomedia, wrote in the 12th century about the Great Schism (1054) between Catholicism and Orthodoxy:
My dearest brother, we do not deny to the Roman Church the primacy amongst the five sister Patriarchates; and we recognize her right to the most honourable seat at an Ecumenical Council. But she has separated herself from us by her own deeds, when through pride she assumed a monarchy which does not belong to her office… How shall we accept decrees from her that have been issued without consulting us and even without our knowledge? If the Roman Pontiff, seated on the lofty throne of his glory, wishes to thunder at us and, so to speak, hurl his mandates at us from on high, and if he wishes to judge us and even to rule us and our Churches, not by taking counsel with us but at his own arbitrary pleasure, what kind of brotherhood, or even what kind of parenthood can this be? We should be the slaves, not the sons, of such a Church, and the Roman See would not be the pious mother of sons but a hard and imperious mistress of slaves.
Difference between then and now?
A millennium ago, the Vicar of Christ presided over a flock that was about as demographically predominant within Christendom as the Russian Orthodox Church is within Eastern Orthodox world today. As quasi-monarch of the European core, who could command European kings to crawl to him on their knees in penance, the Pope could afford to forget the “pares” part of “primus inter pares.” In contrast, Bartholomew I – His Most Divine All-Holiness the Archbishop of Constantinople, New Rome, and Ecumenical Patriarch, not to mention reserve officer in the Turkish Army – is ensconced in an infidel country and presides over a local flock of a few hundred ageing Greeks.
Now to be sure, even one man is a majority when God is on his side. Even so, when he is in such a precarious position, it pays to be extra careful to make sure that’s indeed the case.
This is something that Bartholomew I has patently ignored with his disastrous decision to enter communion with Ukrainian schismatics.
Its basis is a revocation of the Synodal letter of 1686, which granted the Patriarch of Moscow the right to ordain the Metropolitan of Kiev. Constantinople’s stated ultimate intention is to grant autocephaly (self-governance) to the Church of Ukraine; since the officially recognized Ukrainian Orthodox Church – Patriarchate of Moscow has neither asked for it nor will take it, this means it could only apply to schismatic Ukrainian churches, such as the Ukrainian Orthodox Church – Patriarchate of Kiev and the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church. At that point, Ukrainian nationalists will proceed to seize Ukrainian Orthodox Church – Patriarchate of Moscow churches.
This revocation is illegal and outrageous on account of a whole host of factors.
Historically, the Ecumenical Patriarchate has consistently insisted on one church in the lands of Rus’ (amusingly, the earliest example of ecclesiastical separatism came in the late 12th century from a region in modern day Russia, when Andrey Bogolyubsky attempted to take the Metropolitanate of Vladimir out of the jurisdiction of Kiev – an attempt that was rebuffed by Constantinople). After the Mongol invasions of 1237-40, the Metropolitanate of Kiev and All-Russia – a title it held until the 16th century – would gradually migrate over to Vladimir and Moscow – first in the 1250s, in response to the Uniate tendencies of Daniil Galitsky in Volhynia-Rus; and permanently so in 1299. Constantinople did recognize a Metropolitanate in part of the modern-day western Ukraine in 1301, but clarified that “Microrussia” (της Γαλίτζες της Μικράς Ρωσίας) was a daughter church of All-Russia. The Kiev Metropolitanate was canceled and reintroduced several times on account of nakedly political factors – namely, Polish and Lithuanian demands on Constantinople to avoid ordaining Orthodox hierarchies on those territories that looked to Moscow, on pain of the region’s forceful Latinization.
In the event, this eventually proved unavoidable. The latest Metropolitanate of Kiev, created in 1458, would eventually accept papal authority and transition into Uniatism in 1596 at the Union of Brest. While this church had been under the tutelage of Constantinople, that did not translate into a splintering of the Russian church; in 1516, the Patriarch Theoleptus I of Constantinople would continue to call the Metropolitan of Moscow Varlaam the “Metropolitan of Kiev and All Russia.” Meanwhile, the confirmation of the Moscow Patriarchate in 1589 implied its control over all the canonical territory of the Russian church. In 1620, Constantinople re-established Orthodox dioceses under the Metropolitan of Kiev for the Orthodox population of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Metropolitan held the title of “exarch”, a title that signified Constantinople’s acceptance that it was not acting within its canonical territory and that its representative was a temporary placeholder, meant to provide Orthodox services to the faithful while the Poles remained in control of Kiev and were not about to accept a Moscow-appointed Metropolitan. Although the Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus had full canonical rights over Kiev (the city being part of Rus) it did enter into negotiations with Constantinople to avoid any ill will once Kiev reverted to Moscow’s control for good in 1686. This was granted by the Patriarch Dionysius, who wrote that the Metropolitan of Kiev would henceforth owe “submission” to the Patriarch of Moscow and made no reference to or hint of the (as now claimed) temporary nature of that decision.
KP: Kiev Metropolitanate in 1686.
In any case, even if Constantinople had the right to reverse its decision – which it doesn’t – then it would only apply to the seven eparchies under its jurisdiction before 1686 (Kiev, Chernigov, Lutsk, Lvov, Przemyśl, Polotsk, and Mogilev), which constitute west and central Ukraine, and parts of Poland and Belorussia, today. It would not apply to Kharkov, which was already within the Russian Empire; or to Novorossiya, which would only be incorporated into the Russian Empire in the 18th century and to which Constantinople has no more rights to than Primorye.
That this is outrageous and unprecedented is backed up by the fact that none of the other Patriarchates appear to be going along with Bartholomew I’s adventurism. This apparently includes all the other ancient Patriarchates (Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem), as well as Serbia and Georgia. This is not so much because they really like Russia, or even oppose Ukrainian autocephaly as such – that is hardly plausible in the case of Georgia – but because of Bartholomew I’s chutzpah in basically proclaiming himself to have the powers of a Pope, ignoring the wishes of canonical Churches, reassigning canonical territories, and cancelling ancient treaties at will. What makes Bartholomew I’s actions all the more astounding is that in the past he has also vetoed Moscow’s attempts to give autocephaly to the Orthodox churches in America, China, and Japan. This has had directly negative effects on the spread of the Orthodox faith – China in particular doesn’t tolerate religious institutions headed from abroad, and some Russian Orthodox missionaries have been intimidated from preaching due to the threat of excommunication by Constantinople.
Granting autocephaly to the Ukrainian Church is just one more example of anti-Orthodox sabotage, seeing as its supporters read like a who’s who of anti-Orthodox bigots.
First, this includes Ukrainian politicians, including Petro Poroshenko, who has told the Washington Post, “Shortly, we will have an independent Ukrainian church as part of an independent Ukraine. This will create a spiritual independence from Russia.” They conflate the nation with the Church, and as such propound ethnophyletism, which was declared a heresy in Constantinople itself in 1872.
Second, as Arkady Maler points out, while Russian liberals love to condemn Russians propounding Orthodoxy – screeching “Caesaropapism,” “imperialism,” “pan-Slavism,” “political Orthodoxy,” etc. – as soon as there appears an anti-Russian project such as Ukrainian autocephaly, they change their tune and wax lyrical about the “theology of the Maidan,” “Kiev’s special mission,” “an independent nation needs an independent church,” “Putin is the anti-Christ,” etc. Meanwhile, they have recently discovered a new appreciation for the “universal Patriarch” of the “New Rome”, taking a short break from their prior rants about “Greek pride,” “Byzantine arrogance,” “Eastern barbarity,” etc. But this is just a short respite from their customary anti-Orthodoxy.
Third, many of the biggest supporters of Ukrainian autocephaly in the West are for all intents and purposes SJWs. The website Orthodoxy in Dialogue, for instance, wants Orthodoxy to get with the times and start sanctifying gay marriage:
We pray for the day when we can meet our future partner in church, or bring our partner to church.
We pray for the day when our lifelong, monogamous commitment to our partner can be blessed and sanctified in and by the Church.
We pray for the day when we can explore as Church, without condemnation, how we Orthodox Christians can best live our life in Christ in the pursuit of holiness, chastity, and perfect love of God and neighbour.
We pray for the day when our priests no longer travel around the world to condemn us and mock us and use us as a punching bag.
We pray for the day when the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church of Christ ceases to be our loneliest closet.
In another recent powerful take, they advised Kavanaugh to apologize to every woman he has hurt – even if he can’t remember it.
Consider going to every woman who claims that you have assaulted or otherwise harmed her in the past—or against whom you even suspect that you might have transgressed—and say, “I’m sorry. I may not remember the incident, but clearly I hurt you. Please forgive me. In every contact I have with others, and especially with women, I will try to do better in the future.”
Apparently, lying is now a Christian virtue. Even Lindsey Graham is more based than this.
Finally, former US diplomat James Jatras notes that all the usual Atlanticists support Ukrainian ethnophyletism for nakedly geopolitical reasons.
The Western proponents are as crassly honest about the political aspects as the Ukrainian politicians. The German ambassador in Kiev, not known to have any particular theological acuity, opined in July, that autocephaly would strengthen Ukrainian statehood. The hyper-establishment Atlantic Council, which hosted Denysenko on a recent visit to Washington, notes: “With the Russian Orthodox Church as the last source of Putin’s soft power now gone, Ukraine’s movement out of Russia’s orbit is irreversible.”
This is the same logic – encapsulated in the drive to create West-friendly Orthodox structures – that governed Polish and Lithuanian relations towards Orthodoxy in the current Ukraine during the late medieval and early modern era.
Likewise the US State Department, after a short period of appropriately declaring that “any decision on autocephaly is an internal church matter,” last week reversed its position and issued a formal statement: “The United States respects the ability of Ukraine’s Orthodox religious leaders and followers to pursue autocephaly according to their beliefs. We respect the Ecumenical Patriarch as a voice of religious tolerance and interfaith dialogue.”
While avoiding a direct call for autocephaly, the statement gives the unmistakable impression of such endorsement, which is exactly how it was reported in the media, for example, “US backs Ukrainian Church bid for autocephaly.” The State Department’s praise for the Ecumenical Patriarchate reinforces that clearly intended impression.
Quite apart from its active efforts to spread the poz all around the world, US State Department is responsible for more Christian martyrs in the 21st century than any other entity apart from Islamic State. Thanks to its destruction of Iraq and opposition to Syria’s legitimate government, it has contributed greatly to the greatly accelerated extinction of Orthodox Christianity in the Middle East. In Christian terms, it would not be an exaggeration to call it a servant of Satan.
So this makes the question of why Bartholomew I has come out against most of the rest of the Orthodox world, including its largest and richest Patriarchate, in favor of heretics and blasphemers such as Ukrainian ethnophyletists, God-hating Russian liberals, “Orthodox” gay marriage activists, and virulently anti-Christian foreign Powers all the more puzzling.
James Jatras has a plausible, if depressingly banal, explanation: Money.
There may be more to the State Department’s position than meets the eye, however. According to an unconfirmed report originating with the members of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (an autonomous New York-based jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate), in July of this year State Department officials (possibly including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo personally) warned the Greek Orthodox archdiocese (also based in New York but part of the Ecumenical Patriarchate) that the US government is aware of the theft of a large amount of money, about $10 million, from the budget for the construction of the Orthodox Church of St. Nicholas in New York (This is explained further below).
The warning also reportedly noted that federal prosecutors have documentary evidence confirming the withdrawal of these funds abroad on the orders of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew. It was suggested that Secretary Pompeo would “close his eyes” to this theft in exchange for movement by the Patriarchate of Constantinople in favor of Ukrainian autocephaly, which helped set Patriarch Bartholomew on his current course.
The Orthodox Church of St. Nicholas was the only non-World Trade Center building to be destroyed in the 9/11 attacks (along with a priceless collection of icons and relics donated to it by Nicholas II). After lengthy legal battles, the Port Authority agreed to its reconstruction in 2011; by the end of 2017, almost $37 million had been donated. But in December 2017, all that money vanished, and construction came to a halt; the results of an audit ordered by the archdiocese was inconclusive. This opens up some possibilities:
If the State Department wanted to find the right button to push to spur Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew to move on the question of autocephaly, the Greek archdiocese in the US is it. Let’s keep in mind that in his home country, Turkey, Patriarch Bartholomew has virtually no local flock – only a few hundred mostly elderly Greeks left huddled in Istanbul’s Fener district. Whatever funds the Patriarchate derives from other sources (the Greek government, the Vatican, the World Council of Churches), the financial lifeline is Greeks (including this writer) in what is still quaintly called the “Diaspora” in places like America, Australia, and New Zealand. And of these, the biggest cash cow is the Greek-Americans… It’s an open question how much the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s shaking down the Greeks in the US to pay for extravagant boondoggles like the 2016 “Council” contributed to the financial mess at the New York archdiocese, which in turn may have opened them up to pressure from the State Department to get moving on Ukraine.
It would be an exceedingly sad and ignominious end to see the lingering remnant of a glorious empire do give in to blackmail and foreign pressure. We can only hope that God will not punish them as severely as for the Council of Florence.
In the meantime, the Russian Orthodox Church has decided on a strong response, having already suspended Eucharistic communion with Constantinople. It is fully within its rights to do so. By supporting schism, Constantinople has entered dialogue with anathema, and as such has fallen under anathema itself. Now is the perfect time for Russia to reemerge as the Third Rome and take leadership of Orthodox Christendom.
Bart gambled. Like most gamblers, he is likely to lose. Serves him right.
Heresy must be punished.
Serbia and Georgia will not side with Constantinople against Moscow for one simple reason. They both have ethnophiletist schisms caused by overambitious impostors, the kind Moscow is dealing with in Ukraine.
Serbia has a schism in every former Yugoslav republic, and Georgia has a schism in Abkhazia. The Russian Orthodox Church supports the Georgian Church in the claim over Abkhazia. The Russian Orthodox Church also supports the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church in its hold over parishes of Crimea and Free Donbass. Attempts of parishes to transfer to Moscow proper are being ignored because a change in government and borders is not a reason to shatter the Church structure.
Note that the ancient patriarchates of Alexandria and Antioch are not linked to a nation or state.
Everything needs to be done according to rules set up by Church councils. What Constantinople is doing is an audacious attempt to grab influence in Ukraine. And I am not certain they will deliver upon autocephaly.
It does not behoove a nationalist like our host Anatoly Karlin, to deny a community feeling its nationalism, to have its own distinctive religious community
This priestly turf war on Judaic-style religo-legalistic grounds, citing dusty old texts, being used to oppose nationalist impulses, does not add lustre to Christian institutions
Kiev may be tyrants over the Donbass … but Ukrainian speakers have a right to their own religious devotional framework, as far as most people are concerned
Is it not Christian to follow the better ideas of the Prophet Paul in the Bible, and favour “The freedom of a Christian”? … Did not the Prophet Mohammad say in the Qur’an, “There is no compulsion in religion”? … Would be nice if these ideas were respected
The Abrahamic religions are prone to tyranny, and we are seeing that here in this petty priestly squabble
They can have their own religious community but not in the Orthodox Church, for that they have to follow the rules, which they do not.
Nobody is denying them the right in fact. They have structures they have themselves created, they are just not recognised by anyone else than Constantinople.
I am not sure about this. The Kiev regime appears determined to have its pet Church, and will use the power of the law, and its tonton macoutes, the Ukrainian nationalists to drive the Moscow Patriarchate from Ukraine.
We may soon only see Ukrainian Orthodox Church under Moscow Patriarchate in Crimea and Free Donbass.
Will no one rid us of this turbulent BS?
As an atheist, I’m kind of lost here. Why is a Turkey-based church considered “first among equals”? And am I reading this correctly: this “Patriarch” decided to antagonise the world’s largest group of Orthdox Christians to save himself from criminal investigation? Really?
Fuck. This. Shit.
If the Patriach himself couldn’t care less about the future of his religion, there is no reason why I should.
I certainly hope, we’ll stop referring to it as the “Ukrainian Church” in that case. This bugs me.
This is so incredibly boring. As is the whole Ukraine topic in general.
All the more reason why Russia should invade the Ukraine and put an end to this.
It’s especially frustrating when I make interesting comments in open threads and people just keep babbling about the Ukraine.
This post just made me nostalgic for Poland-Lithuania
Since political, linguistic and economic fights have not been enough, why not add a religious fight? That will really get the Ukrainians going at each other.
Historically, deep schisms like this are not resolved by sitting around a table and coming up with a compromise. Always be vary of Greeks bringing ‘gifts’… The whole Byzantium fiction has been preserved for almost 600 years by good will, (mostly) from Russia. I guess turning into a Greek diaspora forum is at this point the most likely outcome. But is that what most Greeks really want?
Once again we can’t take Russia’s side because of Macedonia. It’s all so tiresome…
Anyway I fully agree that CIAniggers should not have any say in the matters of Orthodox Christian people. The very thought is absurd.
I didn’t know that Bart was a Turkish army officer, that’s the cherry on top.
Haven’t read much of the open thread. How much of this is attributable to Mr. Hacks low effort boomer comments? Surprised AK hasn’t banned him yet.
I doubt that, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is a legitimate structure, approved by the Moscow Patriarchate, and it’s territory is canonically defined.
There is also AP (who is quite intelligent to his credit) and then several extremely hostile Russians. The Russian commenter “Gerard2” in particular is cartoonishly belligerent.
I am opposed to banning Mr. Hack or anyone else. That would be an act of cowardice.
And banning Mr. Hack would require us to rename Hack’s Law, which would be very unfortunate.
He’s actually dumb as a brick.
Then again, he’s an Ukrainian-American i.e. a doublenigger.
It doesn’t have to include Crimea though. Crimea has no historical relation to the Ukraine.
We have an idiotic situation whereby Moscow Patriarchate continues to treat Crimea as part of UkSSR.
Personally, I don’t give a hoot about thousands of gods in various religions (infinite number, if you include Buddhism). As far as Bart goes, suffice is to say that he is a “Patriarch” of Constantinople, which does not exist for a few hundred years. Could have been a Patriarch of Atlantis.
Don’t look for logic where there is none. We are talking religion, after all.
Very possible, but Moscow could also — indeed, it absolutely should — borrow a page from the American playbook and set out a “red line” here.
How about announcing that any hostile takeover of a Patriarchate of Moscow church means war?
It could even announce the targets in advance. “For every church you target, we will bomb this or that barracks/arms factory/Koncha-Zaspa mansion (and any retaliation on Russian soil will be avenged tenfold).”
Categories of dumb or smart do not apply to Ukies. Ukies exist in their own Lalaland. However, just like schizophrenics, they might appear normal unless you touch upon the issue where their screw is lose.
AP is not dumb at all.
Be objective, even if you don’t agree. Which I certainly don’t–I’ve made my opposition to the Ukraine very clear.
I am sure Karlin would support my assessment of AP.
Russia won’t do it. Just like in Donbass, Ukraine residents will fight each other. Apparently, Porky and Co decided that civil war in Donbass does not provide sufficient smokescreen for their thievery, so they are trying to provoke a religious war all over the unfortunate territory that used to be Ukraine. They have nothing to lose: each one of them earned a noose on his/her neck many times over.
I have Mr Hack on my ignore list. It solved the problem for me. Gerard2 may be rude and disregards English grammar, but it’s nowhere near as offensive as copypasting anti-Russian cliches from Western MSM. This is what Mr Hack does. The dude is a literal Zio-bot, not a single original thought in his tiny brain.
I didn’t know that a church was destroyed on 9/11.
The church should have been rebuilt before the Trade Center was.
Wishful thinking and inaccurate reporting
Valuable comment.
I agree with most of your post Anatoly, but the 1872 proclamation against ethno-phyletism was more or less at the direct behest of the sultan to try and neuter religious zeal of Serbs and Bulgars against their turk overlords.
My, oh my…a well written thread about the religious goings on in Ukraine and already 3 comments devoted to my astute observations, and I haven’t even made a comment yet? It’s well written (I suspect that Karlin had a lot of help writing it, because 1) he doesn’t exhibit an interest in Christian religious matters. 2) He just got off of a very colorful acid trip, that might mitigate against this sort of self imposed torture.). Thanks guys for making a ‘hack’ like me feel so important! 🙂
Oh, you simply MUST be a Jew. Only a Jew could be as sly as you are being here.
First of all, you are cleverly attempting to use “nationalism” as a way to defend something (Maidanism) that is ANYTHING but nationalist, since its definition of ‘nationalism’ involves kowtowing and opening up that famous file neoliberalism.txt.
Second, you accuse Bartholomew’s opponents of following “dusty old texts” while simultaneously accusing them of using “Judaic” logic. Well, what is Judaic logic? Oh, I know! Judaic logic, ala the Talmud, is when you take something (like the Old Testament) and say it means whatever you want it to mean, not what it really says and what disciplined scholars always said it meant. Do not try to Jew up this discussion. Bartholomew is the one ignoring the law. Christians follow the law – the whole point, the real point, of Christ’s Church is to be the place where we find the sacraments necessary for following the Law, the Logos.
Out of the hen house! Back to your nest in the canebrake, you intellectually Jewish fox!
P.S. It remains to be seen whether the Ukrainian “people” actually support this schism. Most may not recognize the heretics as legit…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=visu17PdwfE
Although I think that you’ve got Hack’s law down correctly, you’re not helping matters much. In the last open thread, I tried to get you to open up on matters other than Ukraine, and you weren’t really conversational. I even tried to appeal to your over sized ego and referred to you as a modern day ‘F. Scott Fitzgerald’. And this is all the support that you can show for me, while the sharks nip at my feet? 🙁
Oh, Tennessee. The cry of the atheist for “logic.” How adorable. Cardinal Newman and Dostoevsky would each have you skinned, gutted, and ready for the fire in a few minutes.
Just like Sweden and its Bonnier Bishops.
All the more reason that Saudi Arabia should invade Sweden and put an end to it.
Oh wait, they’re not getting Saudis, they’re getting Somalis instead.
That’s exactly what I mean. Only a religious person would consider this course of action logical. Some inmates of the lunatic asylum would agree with those religious people.
Although this thread was written professionally, and not altogether in Karlin’s more direct style (did he really write it?), perhaps my initial positive reaction to it was a bit premature. As one starts to dissect its contents it really starts to unravel quite drastically!
I took a look at the website that Karlin tries to use to buttress his misleading comment, and although there may indeed be sinister SJW’s at work there, nowhere do I see any articles there that glowingly promote the Ecumenical Patriarch’s moves in Ukraine? Strange…
And what possibilities has our super sleuth uncovered? The answer also lies in the piece that he quotes for support:
No ‘clear answer’ but more speculations that only serve to fuel the imaginations of the Mike Averkos of the world! Come on Karlin, you can do better than to rely on RT for your ‘original’ ideas!
This is mostly off topic. Although I do have an interest in religion in general,
sectarian disputes don’t interest me at all.
I rarely post here for several reasons, (1) I’m too busy working on my latest
book; (2) The frequent nastiness of some commenters, Gerard2, and sometimes
utu and even reiner Tor, turns me off. This is part of a bigger problem: compared
to Sailer nobody here seems to be having any fun. Americans know that they created
a great civilization (and if you don’t believe me, you should’ve lived in the U.S. in
the 1960s and ’70s as I did, when America was a great middle class society of 200
million, no small achievement. Now unfortunately the U.S. is in severe decline) and
can afford to be confident and have fun (3) The more I post, the more people who
know me can identify me, and I don’t want that.
I have a low opinion of the current state of humanity. I think that maybe 80%
of human history can be explained by regarding humans basically as smart chimps.
We’re tribal, aggressive, revengeful, territorial, and status-seeking – preoccupied
with who is superior, who is inferior. However, I don’t consider myself a
misanthrope because I think humanity has great spiritual potential. I realize that
the value judgments I sometimes display here are a bit unusual. I’m not impressed
by scientific or technological achievements. What I admire in individuals or
nations are signs of enlightenment or holiness. Humanity doesn’t need more
scientists, engineers, or (God help us) economists or sociologists. It needs
more people who are enlightened and have a healing presence. Low levels of
social dysfunction are a proxy (but not a substitute) for holiness, so I use this
form of evaluation often. Hence, logically, I champion Central Europe – Western
Europe (incl. Germany) became morally discredited by colonialism and
transatlantic slave trade, it has blood on its hands. Russia became somewhat
morally discredited (as posted before, I tend to go easy on Russia due to its
horrible geographical challenges) by its historical despotism and lawlessness.
Central Europe, basically V4 with a possible addition of Austria, is a Catholic
(or culturally Catholic) bloc of countries that largely exemplify the Aristotelian
principle of moderation, which is the essence of virtuous behavior.
The root problem may be an excessive unity between religion and national identity. This is a universal phenomenon — but especially noticeable in Eastern Europe. Poland and Catholicism comes to mind along with the separation of Russia and the Ukraine — and now, the need for them each to have their own patriarchate.
As I say, this happens elsewhere as well — but in the West, the problem isn’t as acute. From Ireland to Hungary, Catholic states manage to get along without each having their own Pope. Germany manages to be both Catholic and Protestant without tearing itself apart.
Etc. Religious affiliation doesn’t have to coincide with national boundaries. Perhaps if the Russian state didn’t tend to regard the patriarchate as a peculiarly Russian national property, the Ukraine wouldn’t feel compelled to establish its own church.
😀 😀 Ain’t gonna happen…
A couple of weeks ago ‘szopen’, one of the commenters here posted a number of
poignant comments about his travails with atheism. Here’s my response. I hope
he reads it.
My answer is empirically based as I have a serious interest in transpersonal theory,
expanded states of consciousness, Kundalini awakening, and psychedelics. By the
way, to answer one of my critics, I grew up on classical music, still love it (e.g.,
neoromantic music represented by Zbigniew Preisner (born Zbigniew Kowalski –
he famously took his wife’s surname) but, as Terence McKenna reminded us,
“culture is not your friend” (because it may keep us from the pursuit of enlightenment).
Hence I’m not particularly impressed by nations like Germany that made big
contributions to music. Put 100 million people (number of German speakers)
in the best location in Europe, and they will produce a lot of interesting music.
Germany probably inflicted more suffering on Europe (esp. its neighbors like
Poland, and to a lesser extent France) than any other nation, in its 1200-year
history. My own family suffered deeply due to German invasions.
But to get to my main topic, as a scientist I believe in progress (although science is
slowing down, e.g., nobody is making great discoveries in physics anymore).
Hence I also believe in progress in the area of religion. Therefore, logically,
I consider religions that originated thousands of years ago like Judaism,
Christianity, Islam, or Buddhism, outdated. I realize this is a forceful statement, and
elements of those religions may still be valid and helpful. However, we can
do better. At this point we have access to spiritual technology which is extremely
transformative. For example, Kundalini awakening.
To experience Kundalini (or inner energy) awakening, as thousands of people, incl.
myself, have done is probably the most wondrous experience a human being can have.
The safest way to do it is to apprentice yourself to a yoga master who can awaken your
Kundalini instantaneously, safely, and effortlessly. One can also do it through
meditation but this is a laborious process, often fraught with danger. There are
indications that the Awakening of Kundalini may be similar (if not identical) to the
Descent of the Holy Spirit as described in the Acts of the Apostles. Many books have
now been published about the nature of the Kundalini energy.
Needless to say, one can also make a lot of progress through self-effort, i.e., through
meditation, contemplation or prayer. Speaking of prayer, the question of the existence
or nonexistence of God is almost totally unimportant. On the spiritual path you work
with energy and consciousness. Most people ultimately conclude that consciousness
is the primary reality. Many physicists like Einstein,for example, reject God as a person but
accept the impersonal definition of God as the rationality imbedded in the laws of physics.
None of this is important. What counts is progress along the path. One sign of awakening
is that you can stare at bare tree branches in early March, when Nature is about to
reawaken, for hours – the experience of sensing the energy around the branches is
so profoundly satisfying. Ultimately, you will perceive the ecstatic energy field
around human beings (not to be confused with auras) that will transfix you, and make
you realize that all of us are divine beings having a human experience.
I recommend the collected works of Ken Wilber and Michael Washburn.
The West has been able to create a system which, through the supremacy of secular law, accommodates different cultural elements.
Unfortunately, East Europeans by virtue of their stupidity were never able to create such accommodating nations.
Note that the most successful nations are Switzerland and Singapore, which are multiethnic, and multireligious.
My iPad needed recharging, so let me add that Ken Wilber is America’s most
translated philosopher. Many of his books, esp. Sex, Ecology, Spirituality (1995),
are classics in the field. Don’t waste your time reading old philosophers, except for
historical reasons. The writings of people like Kant or Hegel or Marx are almost completely
worthless because they are based on the assumption that the only state we have access to is
ordinary waking consciousness, and that’s a lie. Of course, they knew nothing
about expanded states of consciousness. By the way, Ken Wilber’s model(s) are
based to a large extent on the writings of the Polish-German philosopher
Jean Gebser (1995-1973), esp. The Ever-Present Origin.
Another highly recommended writer is Michael Washburn, esp. his work
The Ego and the Dynamic Ground, which is another classic. Unlike Wilber
who is focused on theory, Washburn stays close to the lived human experience.
For example, his description of Regression in the Service of Transcendence
is one of the best I’ve seen.
Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention A Course in Miracles (1976),
all 1350 pages of it, widely regarded as the New Testament for the The Third
Millennium. In addition to the theory part it actually shows you how to
transform your consciousnes in 365 lessons. The Course is mainly aimed at
those Christians who are dissatisfied with traditional Christianity. By the way,
it has nothing to do with New Age, as is often characterized.
In the 1930s Poland was 15% Ukrainian, 10% Jewish, 3% German, etc.
In fact, Poland was multiconfessional for most of its history, and it seems
to be returning to that condition. There may be as many as 2-3 million
Ukrainians in Poland now, nobody knows for sure. 200,000 Israelis
visited Poland in the summer of 2017. Reasons given: shopping and food.
Probably hundreds of thousands of American Jews visited Poland in
2017 as well. It appears that de facto Poland is returning to the concept
of the Polish-Lithuanian Republic, with a smaller territory, of course.
Western Europe and the United States, are, as everyone knows,
in severe decline, partly due to the multiculturalism that has gone
too far. Of course, much of the multiculturalism was due to the
horrible Western European legacy of colonialism and slave trade
which Central and Eastern Europe, to their credit, never engaged in.
Factually incorrect.
Firstly, the Russian Orthodox Church is the church organization that always had a strict stance on granting autocephaly whenever possible, while Constantinople always wanted to treat the Church as its property. (E.g.: There is “Byzantine Church in America”, but no “Russian Church in America”, what used to be the Russian Church was granted autocephaly fifty years ago.)
Secondly, there is already an autonomous Ukrainian Church. It is autocephalous in everything but name. The reason they don’t take that last step of formality is because the Ukrainian Church itself doesn’t want to lose this modicum of protection. Being left at the mercy of the insane Ukrainian political establishment is not something anybody wants.
This is simply untrue. The canonical territory of the Serb Orthodox Church covers the entire former Yugoslavia (Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Macedonia and Serbia including Kosovo). Within this area, there are three schismatic groups – the “Croatian Orthodox Church”, the “Montenegrin Orthodox Church” and the “Macedonian Orthodox Church”. The first two are completely irrelevant groups (especially the “Croatian Orthodox Church”), with a handful of supporters (usually former communists who didn’t see the inside of a church since 1945). The leaders are defrocked Serb priests and monks with histories of stealing church funds and similar misdeeds.
In Montenegro, the government is made up of former communists who as godless materialists have naturally evolved into what people here would call globohomo or neoliberalism.txt. One of the ways they maintain their power is by stoking identitarian divisions among the population, which leads them to keep their bastard creation, the so-called Montenegrin Church, on life support. Whenever they need to distract the population from the fact that the rulers haven’t changed since 1945, they stage a few public incidents. Apart from that, that group of Yugoslav Communist State Security agents has absolutely no support among the laity, no monasteries, no churches, no parishes, nothing. Their only supporters are former communists and their “spiritual” descendants.
Only the Macedonian group has any trace of legitimacy whatsoever, as they were an actual group within the Church who self-declared autocephaly under communist tutelage in the 1960s. There were attempts at healing the schism in the early 2000s with the signing of the Niš agreement, which would have given the Macedonians canonical status and autonomy just short of autocephaly. The agreement was signed, but eventually wasn’t implemented due to political pressure.
As far as the current topic goes, the problems didn’t start yesterday. The Patriarchate of Constantinople has been causing problems for decades, if not centuries, with its short-sighted, arrogant and self-interested behaviour, seemingly more motivated by material than spiritual concerns. Their ranks are full of ecumenists, which is a cancer eating away at the Church. Not to mention their attempts to act as an Orthodox papacy, for which their is absolutely no basis. For a long time they were in league with the Ottoman Porte, and now with the foreign policy arm of the USG – and God only knows who else. Perhaps it’s good that things finally seem to have come to a head – the overreach on the Ukrainian question has opened a lot of eyes.
For entertainment value, the reaction the government’s fake priest provokes when the authorities in Montenegro decide to parade him around to distract from corruption etc:
Eastern Europeans have always been much better at accommodating different cultural elements, from the Bulgarian Empire in the 9th century to the Russian Federation in the 21st.
While Western Europeans autistically juggle from one extreme to another, from slavery and apartheid to the niggerfaggotry of today.
Singapore is majority Chinese and carefully manages to stay that way. Switzerland, while indeed successful and multicultural, is monoracial and very decentralized even while being a small country.
“Multiculturalism” by itself doesn’t mean anything – it doesn’t say what degree of compatibility, similarity, hostility and shared interests are there between the cultures in a particular example.
Yet it was the East Europeans, who expelled the Germans, not the French or Italians. The Czechs, Poles or Hungarians do not have to accommodate anyone, apart from gypsies maybe. Ukrainian nationalism is also not very accommodating in the 21st century. The Balkans have seen bloody wars not so long ago.
Tell me, who is more accommodating?
Singapore and Switzerland have actually managed to flesh out a system which accommodates all racial, ethnic, and religious groups without going into extremes of East European provincial nationalism or leftist multiculturalism that leave groups of people alienated, and which lead to conflict.
It is the function of superior intelligence provided by the genetics of industrious Chinese and fresh mountain air.
This is basically what I said, didn’t I? We can’t expect there to be many Orthodox in Slovenia but that is perhaps the only place where there isn’t a schism.
Also, it was rather irrelevant to me what the nature of these schisms is. Whether it is few impostors, or a fully blown national Church. Filaret in Ukraine was also a communist secret service and allegedly even had a wife and children while being a monk. But with the support of Ukrainian government and Constantinople, he is a respected religious leader. I guess the Yugo impostors simply don’t have the proper friends.
The parallels with Ukraine are striking… But Montenegrin people can clearly smell the heresy. Fresh mountain does wonders to people’s thinking.
Switzerland is at least 5% Muslim these days. Singapore lucked out by having a one billion strong, culturally compatible high IQ reservoir within the distance of a short flight. It is one of the world’s unhappiest countries and is also going increasingly leftist.
all of the hippy counter-culture stuff was promoted by the CIA to prepare people for the triumph of the POZ and a set-up for the neo-liberal power-grab.
I used to listen to McKenna videos on YT a lot. His important theory (stoned ape hypothesis) is mostly false whereas the other stuff, while true, is pretty basic-b**** (in the Commie/19th C. Social democrat vein critique of bourgeois mores.)
(some of your takes on Russia (prison of the nations etc) are also Valeriya Novodvorskaya/Julia Joffe-tier basic-b**”))
I’m very suspicious of the Eastern stuff. It’s not something to be toyed with. I think part of the reason India is what it is is the belief in cyclical time and that nothing ultimately
matters.
The heir to Christianity is progressivism. Progressivism is the most important Christian religious innovation. The hate progs have of southern bible-thumpers is a thing between two strains of Christianity, old and new.
You and one AaronB. should start a club.
I spent happy childhood years in Singapore. Indeed my sister was born there. I hadn’t been taking much notice of it in recent years. It was Lee Kuan Yew’s personal fiefdom for many years and then passed on to his son. The Economist and others repeatedly proclaimed it the World’s Greatest Economic Success Story. Nothing much to see here, move on.
So I was taken aback by your statement: It is one of the world’s unhappiest countries and is also going increasingly leftist.
I’d be grateful if you can give me a source for your statement
PS, the Swiss Football team is a lot more than 5% Muslim.
I am right in assuming that this Constantinople pope was paid off by either Ukraine/CIA/Soros/Mossad?
I wondered why AaronB couldn’t find an adequate supply of moonbeams; some people are cornering the market.
Thanks for the suggested reading material, Anon 2. Some of those do look interesting, and I HAVE been wondering about techniques for changing my consciousness in order to be a more effective person, of late (not a Christian though, nor likely to become one, at least not while I still live in Canada and feel no cultural pressure to do so… also, I must say it has been rather educational to watch how in times of geopolitical stress, the more modern layers of all sorts of people, including tech and science-lovers such as Anataliy Karlin, get peeled away and the real decisions and alliances get made based on the traditions of the most ancient religions… if it’s true here, is it any surprise that it would also be true of the secular Jews?… or the secular Muslims, for that matter…)
By any chance, if you have come across them, do you have any thoughts on John Michael Greer’s writings (he of the former Archdruid Report)? I enjoyed his secular writings, but am not really sure what to think of the other stuff. Unlike a lot of secularists though, I’m always willing to hear and try to understand the other side(s), especially from people who seem smart and happy with their lives.
All four of them working in tandem. It was a conspiracy promoted by Rothschildian Jews (the Illuminati) at their last pow wow in Bilderberg.
Zurich and Geneva are no different from Munich or Frankfurt. But soon Prague will look like this too, nobody is safe from the POZZ. But my point was that Switzerland has an internal arrangement that allows for the existence of different languages and religions.
This is lightyears away from the savagery of Ukraine.
Granted, I would not like to live in Singapore…
Are you trying to be amazingly stupid, or were you just born this way? These people do pay bribes, this is an absolutely fact.
Ignore is for cowards. You should be ashamed of yourself. Use the scroll wheel on your mouse.
Ron Unz should remove this cowardly feature from his website.
For the record I think Mr. Hack is okay, but I have the same problem with him as I have with other diaspora Ukies. Why don’t they seem to care about where they live now?
Well I suppose that is a good point.
I’ve made a point of reigning in my ego in these comment threads, as if I run wild then the comment threads start to revolve around me and my narcissism.
This isn’t productive and isn’t what we’re here for.
None the less thank you.
I was going to viciously attack you, but perhaps I should thank you.
It’s interesting hearing about the mindset of cowardly, easily intimidated commenters.
I suppose people like you are responsible for the internet being ruined in recent years.
What’s the problem? I’ve tried to answer your conundrum in a logical way that should have appealed to your intelligent and logical way of thinking? Don’t you realize that Jews, Rothschilds, Masons, Bilderbergers control the world and direct its every motion? Why, I think that Ron Unz would even concur. After he gets through analyzing world Jewry, he should do a series on the other culprits who run the world…
Say, where’s AP, this Ukrainian church stuff is right up his alley? (He just took a ‘vacation’ last month)?
You are right that Central Europe – or more precisely Eastern Central Europe that includes Austria and parts of Germany – has been blesses with a rare combination of good (great!) geography, enough resources, high quality demographics, good location and weather, fantastic infrastructure and a relatively normal history. Western countries have suffered from a combination of imperial overreach and the inevitable blowback. Westerners have also lost the due diligence habits that make civilizations last. They often seem lazy and unserious.
To the east the lawlessness of the open spaces, harsh weather, and the frequent exposures to the nihilistic Asiatic exotica, have delayed the development of a viable, stable and pleasant way of life. They might get there eventually and I wish them all the best. Russia has a lot of fundamentals going for it, but it is also possible that the mistakes of the past – and the pathological hatreds Russia has engendered among the Western and other imperial crazies – will strike again. It is big and tempting.
The endless attempts to slice the borders of Russia, to shrink it as Brzezinski openly dreamt about, are a foolish thing that might bury us all. A compulsion of obsessive map readers. Russia is at its most destabilising when it is weak. That’s when the temptations become too much and some nutcase – or a ‘council’ of idiots – push and push. Unfortunately for the imperial builders in the West they missed their window of opportunity and they don’t seem capable of admitting it. We get ‘religious schisms‘ just to make sure that no stone remains unturned. It will amount to nothing. They will have to wait for the next dip, there always seems to be one in the ennui filled steppes.
Central Europe (V4+) is about to take over as the most desirable place on the planet. That’s why we are seeing the Western attacks on it about some very basic and sound ideas like having borders, homogeneous populations, freedom of speech and peace with neighbours, from the rapidly disintegrating Western world. West cannot stand to live with the mistakes they have made, they want to create a multi-racial, neo-liberal, war mongering cataclysm in order to hide the painful truth of they have done. The demographic suicide of the West is probably irreversible. Macron and Merkel can prance around and preach their silly slogans, but they cannot change the numbers of the ground.
They can still convince some elderly Greek in Istanbul to pour more oil on the fire. What that shows is desperation; if all West has left are these self-defeating intrigues, they don’t have much.
You mean there are more important reasons that we’re here for? Like the anschluss of Canada by the US? The price of a good pair of alligator shoes? How much blow is really consumed in upper class neighborhoods in Wisconsin and upper Michigan?… Kundalini?
What are we really here for, Thorfinnsson tell us? (I kinda like it the way it is).
BTW, I’m not a diaspora Ukie. AP, is, and from what I can tell, he’s living pretty good. He’s the Ukrainian poster boy for diaspora Ukies: clean living, hi-IQ learner, frugal and nose to the grindstone – this type always does well in the US and rises to the top. What’s the problem?
Does he really wear alligator shoes? Are you that desperate for attention from homos?
I never understood why the Anschluss became such a smear. Of all of Hitler’s annexations Austria was surely the most justifiable.
If he’s a homo, he certainly has me fooled. His female conquests in the bedroom are legendary (at least according to him). 🙂
Yeah, and all that money going to Israel, and jews being overwhelmingly the biggest donors to both US parties, those are just conspiracy theories. As for AIPAC, that does not really exist, nor are those laws jailing people for saying bad things about jews. The US blocking everyone UN resolution against Israel, again nothing to do with jews. Hollywood is dominated by the Zoarastrians, and Wall Street by the Amish. Oh and don’t forget Putin owns Trump, clearly made evident by all his pro Russian actions, meanwhile his actions regarding Israel, well that is just normal international relations right there.
You are an idiot of the highest order.
That “apart from gypsies” is a big “apart”, though. If the Roma population is steadily growing, and the population of actual Slovaks and Hungarians is declining (as it is), then it is inevitable that the Roma will constitute an ever larger part of those countries’ populations and take some political and cultural power for themselves at the expense of the Slovaks and Hungarians.
The Roma need to be expelled en masse.
Is part of the reason simply that non-religious people tend to have far lower fertility rates than religious people (at least in recent decades)? That is, even with some young people choosing to leave their childhood religious tradition, there will tend to be more religious people alive due to the systematically different lifestyles, values/priorities, and thus fertility rates.
So Trump must be a Mason, then? He did after all start out as a real estate developer (you see, I’m starting to pick up on your way of seeing things). Looks like the alt-right got duped by old Trump, big time! And the Ukrainians just recently got taken in by the Ecumenical Patriarch, who must be a ‘Rosicrucian’ as he seems kind of mystical and certainly has a high IQ.
You are under the mistaken impression that I ever supported Trump, you are generally wrong about almost everything.
Admittedly, this is from 2012, maybe things have improved since.
https://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Production/Cms/POLL/7mll0a-6dkw5ve8ii31xlg.gif
Leftism:
https://twitter.com/akarlin88/status/1049931250423779329
Reminds me of a Russian joke.
An old man comes to a doctor and says:
– Doctor, I am only 65, but can’t have sex any more. My neighbor is 80, and he tells stories about having sex with young women. Can you help me?
– I don’t see your problem: you can tell stories, too.
He, who pays the musicians, calls the tune. Idiocy of the musicians does not come into it.
Switzerland is a very unique country and I suspect has highly atypical budget allocations. I don’t think it’s easily replicated elsewhere.
at last some GOOD NEWS for Ukraine!!! ( by good news, I mean laughably bad news)
This months gas tariff for “Ukrainians” increases by 24%!! In the middle of next year it is supposed to increase another 18%.All this as part of the conditions for getting it’s next parasitic IMF payments. So a 42% gas price increase ( with lower subsidies also) in Europe’s poorest country. Well done!
I trust the Banderatard failures in Canada and America will be paying for this- or at least contribute as much as $1 to the multi-billion worth of price increase for Ukrainian consumers?
Switzerland has never had any substantial number of Muslims living there. Nor would they have allowed it, in more sensible times.
In the long run, Switzerland’s system will not “work” when Muslims gain the numbers to be more aggressive demanding political power (including government jobs, contracts, and handouts), and to be more aggressive and intimidating on the streets, as in Paris, London, Stockholm, Etc.
Where did I state that you were a supporter of Trump? You’re reading into my comments things that aren’t there, i.e. hallucinating.
The ideas of mutual respect can be implemented anywhere. Ukraine would have benefitted from realising its nature is muliticultural and implemented policies that reflect this. Some have tried to do that in the past but the aggressive nationalist position won over common sense.
Looks like you found yourself your intellectual equal to talk to.
Ukrainian population are vegetables…
Also, poor people generally don’t riot. It is usually people, who are doing well and want more that put up a rebellion.
Think for instance of the time under Yanukovych, Hryvnia cost 8 bucks, now it costs 28 bucks. And nobody does anything…
Sorry, I can’t say as much about you.
It’s the other way around: US $ was 8 hryvna under Yanuk, now it’s 28 and the hryvna keeps falling.
Ukrainian people are not necessarily vegetables: 5-8 million (no exact stats, as current “leaders” studiously avoid conducting census, breaking Ukrainian constitution even in this) have already left that god-forsaken territory and work in Russia, Poland, and elsewhere.
Yes, they don’t riot against the criminal regime they have today, but they are not unique in that: say, KSA population is also ruled by murderers and thieves, and also does not riot. This reflects not only the quality of the people, but also the pressure local Gestapo puts on them, which is huge in both places.
My sides.
I’ve got to agree. The idea of being intimidated by reiner tor or utu is ridiculous. As George Orwell might have said, Anon2 is part of the Pansy Right. I don’t mean an adherent of Captain Roehm by that, though the Fuhrer took appropriate action in his case.
PS are you Icelandic-American or Swedish-American? I always forget.
I don’t know, utu intimidates me.
I imagine him as this grim scowling German disciplinarian who never laughs, gloomy and morose, walking around with a ruler ready to rap me over the knuckles if I “step out of line” or show any signs of mirth, wearing a black suit and tie and perhaps a monocle, with a bristling mustache and a pith helmet…wait I’m starting to mix him up with Kaiser Wilhelm 🙂
Either way, Black Utu stands for the repressed unhappy side of Western European culture that led to the explosive release of unbearable tension known as WW1.
For all that, I don’t really dislike Black Utu. The Great Scowl also has its place.
utu is what you deserve
Did we not establish that utu was a Slav? Maybe a Czech, or a mixed Czech/Pole, or something. Maybe some strange ethnicity like Kashubian. He looks very knowledgeable about Eastern Central Europe (this includes some parts of the Balkan, notably Yugoslavia), less so about Russia, doesn’t seem very emotional about any of the countries, and he often doesn’t use articles. Do Baltic languages use articles? He’s definitely not very hostile to Russia, but doesn’t love it much either. He didn’t appear to be from the Balkan. So Western Slav is the best guess.
But my guess would be some kind of not 100% straightforward ethnicity (I could be wrong; there are people not very emotional about their own ethnicity, but usually those people don’t hate Jews with a passion either), like some kind of minority descent, he didn’t show any emotional attachment to any of those countries. Still could be just a straight Czech. His comments comparing Czechs and Poles were very perceptive, either he’s a great observer, or he intimately knows these two countries.
Anyway, may your loving heart follow utu wherever he goes, and may he inspire you for many years with his comments made to you.
I sometimes suspect that utu is an emanation of the dark underside of my unconscious, or he has been conjured up by my black sins out of dark smoke.
Either way, he is indeed necessary to balance me out. I could not exist without him. I owe him a debt of gratitude.
I used to think he was Polish, but lately I’m leaning towards German. Its just a gut feeling.
He fits a certain gloomy humorless uptight German Protestant type very well – German Catholics tend to be crypto-Protestants, and utu is Catholic.
He lacks the “looseness” and the higher emotionality of the Slav, it seems to me.
Indeed I have great compassion for him.
Czech fits that profile – not Polish, almost German, but still a Slav.
You may be right.
A Jewish friend of mine married a Czech woman who converted. She is extremely humorless and uptight and a strict disciplinarian, and makes vague allusions to being of the Germanic section of Czech.
Perhaps there is a Germanic subset of Czechs.
Germans do seem humourless to me too, but in an overly sincere and literal rather than disciplinarian way. Despite our partial common ancestry, they feel much more alien to me temprementally than French people.
No, his comments about Germany are those of a foreign observer (though more perceptive in some ways than those of many other commenters here).
I guess he’ll never tell us about his national origins, will remain a mystery (iirc Hyperborean once even suggested he might be a Mideasterner, given his aversion to Israel). But wherever he comes from, he performs a valuable service in his brutal comments to you.
Southern Germany isn’t that bad. Northern Germans are insufferable though.
Well French elan and esprit crossed over into English blood with the Normans, and the English aristocracy has always retained an element of that gaiete d’esprit that the French sometimes carry over into outright frivolity.
But the Germans are deep – at their best they are profound, at their worst they are merely serious
When I left Heathrow a few years ago on a trip, the customs officer exchanged witty banter with me, exchanged smiles with me, and in a pleasant and lightheart tone wished I would return soon.
I arrived in Germany to a frosty reception, and laughed to myself at the accuracy of cultural stereotypes. The contrary could not have been greater.
I don’t want to bash Germans too much – I actually get along with them quite well in general and admire many things about them.
Lol, he does perform a valuable service to me 🙂 I appreciate Black Utu very much indeed.
Funny, I am reminded that at the very first I also suspected he was Med!
I tell you, he is an emanation of dark smoke from another realm.
Middle Easterners use articles, though. He must be a Slav.
Utu uses articles as well (e.g. “the WW2″). But I agree that utu is probably from somewhere in Eastern Europe.
Slavic languages don’t have articles?
His country was occupied by the Germans, and his people hated them, but his parents told him some different stories about German suffering, and so he is more understanding of them. This could describe Czechia or Poland, but more likely Czechia. One of his parents might be German, or at least not exactly from the nominal ethnicity, because it makes such understanding more likely.
He’s not very anti-Russian, which also makes Czech more likely than Polish.
AK, neither you nor I are experts on canon law; it appears you simply consulted some Russian Orthodox websites and got their take. Rather than do the same with Greek or Ukrainian sources after reading them (I have been much busier with work lately) I will address some other points in your article.
Correct. And AFAIK there is an unbroken line of Metropolitans of this particular Church to this day. It is the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.
The Church that Moscow took over in 1686 was a new one, created in 1625 in order to rival the established one that had gone into Union with Rome.
You forgot to add that this was done by Moscow bribing the Turks to force the Patriarch. It was a more sordid situation than what you accuse the CIA of doing now – the Turks being infidels who were in the process of slaughtering and enslaving Christians.
This is correct and it is a real problem. Unfortunately, the Russian Church is little better. Given the choice of either following a nationalistic Russian Church or a nationalistic Ukrainian Church, most Ukrainians choose their own Church.
If the Russian Church had been serious about really being an “All Rus” Church it would have moved to Kiev once Kiev was no longer in Polish hands and been called the Rus Church. Instead it is a tool of the Moscow state.
This Church, a tool of the Russian state, falsely claims to be a universal Rus Church.
Who cares about them? The real reason for this is that Ukraine is the second largest Orthodox country in the world and that a majority of its people are in schism because their official Church is still under Moscow, a circumstance that is a relic of either the 12th century, the 18th century, or the Soviet period. There are more Ukrainians in schism then there are Serbs. The only way to bring them back is to Orthodoxy is to have them outside the Russian State Church. The local Orthodox Church under Moscow wasn’t able to solve the problem.
I feel kind of dumb for not having known that. It makes sense, iirc Russian at least is one of the more conservative Indoeuropean languages, retaining many features that have been lost in Germanic or Romance languages, so no need for articles.
The context is that Ukrainian consumers have the lowest gas rate in Europe. Moldovan households pay more for gas than do Ukrainian ones. Even with a 24% price increase Ukraine will still have the cheapest gas in Europe for its consumers:
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Natural_gas_price_statistics
Sometimes he makes mistakes and forgets about them. Just look at the Russian commenters. They occasionally overuse them, but often not use them when they should.
I bet you an algorithm could accurately guess your mother tongue based on the grammatical mistakes made in the text. Articles are important clues, because they are used somewhat differently in languages which use them. Hungarians often don’t even notice that they are making lots of mistakes in that area because we have both definite and indefinite articles and we use them roughly the same way as in English. But there are differences and those are difficult.
Arabic only has one article, the famous al- in al-Qaeda, which is a definite article, but it’s used in all kinds of strange ways, like attributes or maybe numbers. I think the mistakes an Arabic speaker would make in English would be different.
His response when I pointed out that Czechs are sensitive about being Central, rather than, Eastern European, was one of surprise so I don’t think he’s Czech.
I agree, I’ve always thought of utu as someone from the former Eastern bloc, because that’s the area of the world he seems to know most about. His aversion to Israel is rather extreme, but most of us here don’t really like Israel, and we’re not Mideasterners either.
Then maybe Slovene? They don’t have articles either. I don’t think he’s a Croat (he wrote Croats were worse than Serbs, because Ustasha), and Serb seems unlikely, too.
Or he just didn’t think Czechs are touchy about the thing. For example Hungarians are often touchy about it, but not all Hungarians. Some might lack the national self-awareness to understand that we as a nation seem to be touchy about it from the outside.
Utu I know you are enjoying this very much we are all talking about you…
But put us poor suffering mortals out of our misery and for Gods sake tell us where you are from!
We are only human…
I promise you Black Utu we won’t judge you and will welcome you with open arms. You will continue to be my “archenemy” – as a Jew I must be – and I will continue to regard you as my necessary complement that has been created out of dark smoke 🙂
Deal? But no, you know mystery is power don’t you, and will continue to wrap yourself in mystique..
You are too clever for us utu…
You bastard 🙂
I haven’t followed this blog as long as most of you and I’ve only recently got to know the characteristics of most commenters so take FWIW but I’d guess maybe Slovakian.
Hypocrite troll:
A not so distant comment from you stated speculation on your part. My speculations are well premised unlike some others.As is true with other media outlets, RT has some good and not so good input. Jim Jatras is an observant Orthodox Christian, who exhibits a far greater intellect than yourself.
Interesting comments. Thanks.
Me neither.
https://www.greece10best.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/St.-Nicholas-Church.jpg
https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/roadsfromemmaus/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2011/09/stnicholaschurch1.gif
Sorry, your comment is not to laugh at but rather entirely correct.
What happened in Ukraine in the thirties and fourties (and in the Donezk Bassin and in parts of Russia, I know) goes a long way towards explaining a lot of phenomena Russian nationalists hate.
Nonsense:
The Ukrainian Orthodox non-MP affiliated churches are prone to using Ukrainian in their services, unlike the ROC-MP and ROCOR, which use Church Slavonic as opposed to Russian and/or Ukrainian.
The aftermath of the Mongol subjugation saw the area of northern Rus become the strongest and most independent of Rus lands. This process was showing signs just before the Mongol Horde. Regional power shifts in nations have been evident throughout history. Likewise with changes in the location of the capital.
The ROC-MP continues to acknowledge Georgian Orthodox Christian Church jurisdiction in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Likewise, the UOC-MP still maintains Orthodox Christian property in Crimea.
Sure. Just like in the USSR, Crimea being part of Ukraine didn’t matter, it was all Moscow-controlled anyways.
More BS from you. The UOC-MP is very much autonomous from the ROC-MP. Likewise with the ROCOR.
Once again noting the Georgian Orthodox Church having no qualms with the ROC-MP, regarding church matters in South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
hahaha! So from your usual modus operandi….a sick lowlife spamtroll as yourself spent the entire 12 hours since I posted that comment, desperately trying to find any nonsense to refute it. Disgusting lowlife waste of oxygen
errr….WTF? Take out taxes and it’s the same or even cheaper in many European countries you dumb POS! ( and where is Belarus or Georgia you misleading prick?)
Beyond bizarre to give a (misleading ) statistic of countries paying 3 times more then Ukraine, when these same countries earn per person from 10-15-30 times more than the average Ukrainian. An actual Ukrainian…not some gormless mentally challenged tramp Badneratard from thousand of km’s away …would be relaxed if the UK customer was paying maybe 7 times more for gas- not only 2.5 times!
The price increase will go past 40% in May next year also you idiot…in the poorest and worst run country in Europe, with millions already struggling on the existing tariff, and a 100% lack of belief that the increased tariff will in anyway update the desperately collapsing gas infrastructure in Ukraine
Numerous guys out I know in Ukraine are not just irritated as people around the world normally are by price increases…but actually are high-pressure devastated by this increase. A random sack of f****s on the internet who doesn’t know anybody in Ukraine or go there, nor donate 1$ of your earnings there, quoting fake garbage on the internet…doesn’t camouflage the obvious
On top of that, the subsidy is getting much less, as the government tries frantically to reduce their deficit at the same time
ridiculous….most of the countries paying the most are merely high premium because they have such a low demand for it you thick,sick in the head imbecile, or the high premium owes to distance. They find it considerably easier to pay their gas fees , than Ukrainians do theirs
..there is no “context” you disgusting tramp…it’s a farce
Maybe they can lower the interest rate of bank loans/mortgages to 1% instead of 17% as it is now? Maybe they can increase their monthly state pension earnings by 2000% just so they can be in line with European standards? Maybe they can bla bla bla
That is the type of moronic questioning one would do when following the retardness of your attention-whoring, time-wasting comments
Which will make gas prices for Ukrainian consumers more or less tied with those in Moldova as the cheapest in Europe.
For whatever reason IMF wanted Ukrainian consumers not be subsidized as much as they have been.
Was this a reply to something in my post?
I wasn’t talking about changes in society, but in individuals. People may seem to be modern, “technophilic citizens of the world” and so on, may seem to be far, far removed from arcane religious debates… but when times get tough, they retreat back into the same age-old alliances, using whatever internal mental gymnastics are necessary.
My tentative hypothesis: the more stressful things become, the less difference there will be between where the Saker and Karlin stand, one way or another.
It’s cheap because Ukrainians are broke.
At least it seems possible to correct a wrong click after a few hours.
That should perhaps be changed to a shorter period of time, if technically possible.
Bologne! You’re nothing more than a duplicitous nincompoop who makes unsubstantiated speculatons. I’ve verified this with somebody who has far greater intellect than yourself! Grrr!!! 🙂
You provide another example of your imbecilic sorry ass self.
Sticking to the topic of this thread, this Georgian-American offers some interesting insight:
http://orthochristian.com/110919.html
From a former christian country, where Muslims now are the largest religious group, all this is incomprehensible.
Good article. I think AK has just demonstrated he has another voice in him. Did he just grow up or what? Is it the new apartment? Joining the propertarian class often does it to you. Anyway, he does not believe a word he wrote because he does not care about the church this way or another but he cares about the political aspect and how important it is for Russia or how important it is for Russia to make an issue out of it. I think it might be a sign he is moving up in the world. Good for him.
I like the way it is. Thanks guys, for your attention.
ALL this makes my head hurt!
Can’t we just be Christians without all the religious poohbobs!
Thinbk Peace — Art
I don’t think so. Slovakia was a German satellite (though there was an uprising late in the war), it wasn’t properly occupied until the fall of 1944, and he’d be more emotionally involved with topics pertaining to Hungary. Like Hungarian borders.
Though maybe a Slovak who grew up in Czechia?
I’m not sure, but I’d guess Slovaks are also touchy about being Central (and not Eastern) Europeans.
I would have appreciated a short explanation of what this is about, if anything.
The post seems very long and starts with a 12th-century quotation which, though no doubt pertinent and interesting to people who know about this, is way above my head. What follows seems technical with a lot of obscure words.
But the title was appealing… Perhaps an introductory paragraph for people who only have the vaguest notion of the politics within the Orthodox Church(es?) would have been sufficient to let us follow rather than be utterly baffled.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Eastern_Orthodox_Church#Autocephalic_national_churches
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecumenical_Patriarch_of_Constantinople
Just a suggestion… I can probably survive without understanding this.
Fuck Ukraina , the asshole of Europe , the living proof that some whites are inferior races .
Why is the Russian government making such a fuss about a quarrel between preists? It suggests that Putin really does want to annex Ukraine but that his plans are coming unstuck and he’s now grasping at straws.
Because it can become a conflict between laity, and this a cause for concern.
You have that backwards. Appeal to authority is the basis for Talmudic argument. Authority is defined as respected scholars from the past – the more ancient, the better.
New arguments are created when new situations need old wisdom applied to them.
In other words, it is exactly as Brabantian describes it. You should really check something before simply claiming Jews do it as you don’t like it and you don’t like Jews.
Also, do you think those guys in black overcoats talking about Torah all day are progressives?
Or maybe he just left Czechia a long time ago. Then he wouldn’t have encountered this Eastern vs. Central Europe controversy. I think it got big in Hungary around 1989 or so.
It’s always such.
You would have known had you grown up watching Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons, where you would have heard Natasha say to Boris (Russian spies with Russian accents)
‘Consult’…’lot of help’…’another voice’
After rereading this thread several times now, I’m really beginning to think that this piece had more than just consultative help in its construction. To achieve this ‘other voice’ it probably had the inspiration of another author (for the most part). Any thoughts about this? You’ve been in ‘communion’ with AK longer than I have, and would be a good judge of his personal writing style. Does it fit, or should we perhaps be directing our comments to somebody else, somebody who might be more willing to reply? 🙂
Reply to what exactly? I wrote it myself, though obviously I did read quite a few other articles before doing so. Some of them are hyperlinked.
Well for one, you provided a hyperlink that supposedly would support your allegation that SJW’s were the greatest supporters of Ukrainian autocephaly, and after having looked at its table of contents, I could not see one single article where such an endorsement was made?
And your endorsement of the strange and, totally unsubstantiated conjecture that the EP was somehow paid off by the CIA to endorse Ukrainian autocephaly, by funds collected by the Greek-American diaspora to restore St. Nicholas Church and later diverted to his coffers? How low does one have to sink to come up with this kind of skanky spy thriller stuff?? (comment #35)
And then there’s AP’s comment (#102) that certainly deserves your attention and a reply…
According to Global Wealth Report (https://www.credit-suisse.com/corporate/en/articles/news-and-expertise/global-wealth-report-2018-us-and-china-in-the-lead-201810.html), by the personal wealth of the population Ukraine is in the 123rd place (out of 140 countries ranked).
By this measure Ukraine is behind Nepal, Cameroon, Kenia, Bangladesh, and Lesotho, just ahead of Zambia. But there are 135 people in Ukraine with personal wealth greater than $50 million.
A huge line for free food at the charity kitchen in Kiev can be seen here: http://rusvesna.su/news/1539952343 (those who read Russian can find details in the accompanying news item).
I guess all of this is a great achievement of Maidan. Ukies, please comment.
No, you can’t take Russian side because you are subservient German lapdogs and backstabbers.
Fight me over FYROM!
@AK
You are not entirely correct.
That actually happened in case of Macedonia, and all the other funny ex-Yugoslav provinces. Ecumenical Patriarch transfered ecclesiastic authority over present-day FYROM to Serb Orthodox Church in 1922, and recognized it in its entirety.
That is also the reason Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew explicitly refused any talk about “Macedonian” Orthodox Church, even under the name of Ohrid Archdiocese.
I guess you have read through my exchange with AP in the open thread. The focus of the article should have been on the problematic/nonexistent legitimacy of those two Ukrainian churches and individuals leading them in the eyes of Orthodoxy.
True to his ecumenism approach to Roman Catholic Church, he should have first approached the “Uniats”, the unbroken line of “Greek” “Catholic” Metropolitans.
I have never seen ‘Prophet Paul’ or equivalent wording used in any Christian writing. Likewise, he is not recognised as a prophet by Islam.
If the ‘Prophet Mohammed’ appears in Christian scripture, it can only be as a false prophet or an (or the) Antichrist.
So, you are either a Muslim or a religious Jew posing as such.
The whole line about ‘Abrahamaic religions’ is a lie.
Religious Jews like to fool people by referring to their scripture as ‘Bible’.
The O.T. used by Christians was collected by Greeks and Hellenized Jews, I would guess .
The equivalent parts of the Torah are only a tiny fraction of it, specifically, the first few, with significant alterations in those from the earlier collection by scholars in the Hellenic world.
So, Jewish use of ‘Bible’ is in itself a lie, clearly intended to fool Christians.
As for mad Mo, for some reason, among the pantheon celebrated in seventh century Mecca, he had a particular affection for al Lah, the Lah, one of over 300 idols of gods there.
One of the many cultural crimes of the Saudi government in recent years (many including the destruction of historic sites of Islam) was the destruction of all of the remaining idols there.
Not a Moslem, intensely dislike Islam for good reasons of experience, but millions of Moslem tourists to Mecca in recent memory viewed the statues of the pre-Muslim pantheon that made it a centre of pilgrimage long before the the life of Mo. The total vandalism by the Saudis was very recent.
Cynically promising to maintain the profitable tourism was a (the?) key to Mo’s eventual takeover of Mecca. Sure has worked well, in an evil way.
As for the other O.P. claiming that Buddhism has ‘thousands of gods’, that is a gross mis-perception.
One may get that impression from folk Buddhism in many places, including Japan, but they are not intended to be perceived as gods, but symbols.
Some sects take it further, sure, could name a few, but not to be too tl:dr, not now. Even Aum Shinrikkyo did not do it.
One cannot fully grasp the significance of Autocephaly, Autonomy, Patriarchate status without being VERY WELL versed in Orthodox traditions, canon law and historical examples.
It was a very contested and important issue in Medieval period, with both Bulgarians and Serbs rising to it, then falling down after being crushed by Byzantines and/or Ottomans.
The Ottomans were very much sponsors of Greek Orthodoxy, imposing Greek clergy to local Orthodox populations of Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem, the primary reason why Orthodoxy is practically extinct there today.
The Ottomans also abolished Bulgarian and Serb national churches and subjugated them to Greeks in Constantinople.
The path and procedure of elevating a national church and an episcope to the above mentioned ranks is strictly and precisely defined. Ecumenical Patriarch trampled over it.
That is why other Autocephalus Churches will be opposed to it – hence, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church granted Autocephaly will not be in communion with the rest of them.
I expect further fallout once the confiscation of canonical Church property and buildings takes place in Ukraine.
Thank you Anatoly.
I knew of the issues, but your explanation seems sound, and includes much history and other points that I had not known before.
You can always call in the cavalry from the desert; MbS will gladly provide a team of “doctors” on standby in Istanbul to rid off anything undesirable.
WTF , did you even read the post that completely rebutted this BS you idiot?
(+Serbia, Romania and Belarus and a few others)
To save you from another 100 hours this weekend of attention-seeking cretinism, and to help alleviate you PMT symptons
here’s something that perfectly sums up this whole farce:
https://life.ru/t/%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B8/1161846/opros_vyiavil_otnoshieniie_zhitieliei_ukrainy_k_russkomu_iazyku
Even though it is definitive , it still isn’t accurate enough…the figure is more like 80-85%
Embarassing
This is unfortunately true. This is also the prime motivation of the Head of the so-called Ukrainian Church of Kiev Patriarchy Filaret. That guy tried to become the Russian Patriarch but was defeated in the elections. Then he established that schismatic Ukrainian Church and was excommunicated by the Russian Orthodox Church, to which he belonged. He is also known for his support for the killings in Donbass, which isn’t exactly christian of him.
The problem, for him, is that the Ukrainian Church of Moscow Patriarchy has in its possession a number of churches and monasteries that Filaret covets. Specifically, he and his followers have the eyes on Kiev-Pecherskaya Lavra, or Church on caves. Lavra is a title given to monasteries for particular cultural achievements and religious significance. It dates from 11th century AD from the pre-Mongol times. It contains graves of the Russian princes, of Nestor (who created one of the earliest . historical chronicles), and of Petr Stolypin, the Russian Prime Minister in 1906-11.
This is our common legacy, which doesn’t in any way belong to those neo-Nazis scumbags. I am an atheist and I don’t particularly care for specifically religious matters. But I do care about the cultural side of things, those nationalistic monkeys know nothing about. I hate to see Andreevskaya Church built by Rastrelli, the same architect that built the Winter Palace in St.Petersburg, given to that abomination of Filaret. I’d hate to see that happen to Lavra, as would the whole of Russia.
In short, this is a lot more than a religious dispute – this is an attempt at destruction of our cultural roots. In essence, this is a continuation of what the German Nazis tried to do 70 years ago by other means.
My thoughts exactly.
Expelled to where? There is not a Israel for gypsies (yet).
You assume that he is not the supernatural entity of implacable furor indicated by his nom de plume; else you must consider the “country of origin” of the flimsy flesh shell of such an entity to be of minimal importance in comparison to the presence of fury to be aroused by presence of clumsy imps and other gnats possessed by dubious reasoning.
Good comment. I agree with most of this.
I am not well-versed in the facts of that particular “bribery” (I have heard it described as such, but I haven’t actually been able to find the precise details that make it such). Nonetheless, as I showed, Constantinople had almost uninterruptedly insisted on the unity of the church in All Rus – all local church organizations having been tactical maneuvers to avoid Polish-Lithuanian enmity – and they were ok with that from 1686 to the 1920s (at the least raising no formal complaints).
Russia Orthodox Church has banned priests from preaching who blessed NAF volunteers. Incidentally, something which has ensured enmity from non-religious Russian nationalists.
As I recall Vsevolod Chaplin was dismissed from a number of commissions for his hyperactive support for Novorossiya (as opposed to his various idiotic and obscurantist statements, such as how FGM is part of North Caucasian culture).
I don’t believe the UOC-KP has had any compunctions about blessing members of private Ukrainian battalions going to the Donbass. That would actually be one of its lesser sins. Fresco from one of this cult’s churches in Ternopil:
https://cerkva.te.ua/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/DSC_5147.jpg
St. George is literally killing the two-headed eagle that is the symbol not just of Russia, but of the Byzantine Empire. You know, the one whose husk Constantinople services, LOL.
Obviously ROC needs to be subservient to the interests of the Russian state to some degree (give unto Caesar Caesar’s and all that), but they are not Russia nationalist activists like Filaret & Co. are Ukrainian nationalist activists.
Is there a strict requirement that the All Rus church be based in Kiev?
Because these people are going to have inordinate influence over any (self-proclaimed) autocephalous Ukrainian church.
But utu can also be a beneficent fate, no? Only fate on the Internet so seldom is.
Damn. Ukraine really is important for the Russian psyche.
I’ve read about this (Kievan Rus, state formation, Orthodox Christianity, culture, blah blah) but only after witnessing butthurt in the comments above I’ve realized this: being forced to share history you think is your own is more painful that losing land.
One might equally ask, ‘is there a requirement that an all Rus church be based in Moscow’? Especially since the political entity know as Kyivan Rus ceased to exist in the 13-th century. and three new nationalities have sprung up in its place since then? You can’t turn back the clock of history to the 13th century, no matter how hard you try Anatoly. Time marches on…
Nicetas, Archbishop of Nicomedia, clearly distinguishes between ‘slaves’ and ‘sons’. But in Orthodox faith it is very common to use the words ‘slave of God’, раб Божий. This self-designation Orthodoxy shares with islam. The quote from Nicetas: “We should be the slaves, not the sons, of such a Church, and the Roman See would not be the pious mother of sons but a hard and imperious mistress of slaves.” however points at the self-designation of being sons instead of slaves.
History has very little to do it. Especially considering that Kievan princes descended form Novgorod princely family (who killed aborigine prince when they moved to Kiev) and that all Kievan princes called themselves Russians (the term Ukraine appeared much later; it means “outskirts” both in Polish and Russian).
The real reason is that maybe a quarter of Russians have relatives in Ukraine. Quite a few were born there at the time of the USSR: people moved everywhere, those republics were not that important. A lot of Russians were puzzled when those relatives suddenly went silent (or mad) and saddened when Ukraine (which they considered related) committed suicide in 2014. Now the feelings changed a lot, most Russians are happy that Ukrainians proclaimed that they are not brothers: any normal person would be ashamed to have brothers like that.
Regarding this question:
A follow-up to your reply:
It’s the Kiev regime and some Western governments which have made such a fuss. The Russian government has raised legitimate concern for the fate of those in the UOC, who don’t want to be absorbed by the likes of Filaret and Poroshenko.
Everything you have stated is 100% correct. You must be Serb. Hello from Skopje.
Except yoga is older than Judaism you imbecile
Who did we backstab and when?
As for German lapdogs, current prime minister is indeed Merkel’s poodle but he has no influence over the Church, which is the only Bulgarian institution worthy of the name.
I checked your comment history, searched for “Macedonia” and found this gem – “Slavs of Macedonia had nothing to do with Bulgarians.”. You literally don’t know anything about anything, you are another AP and while I can do a long post and dispel all of your bullshit, it will be a waste of time so I should probably filter you instead.
For the rest, if anyone’s interested why we can’ take Russia’s side because of Macedonia, it’s because they want to be independent from Serbia which claims Macedonia as its canonical territory – and unlike the Russian claim over Ukraine, the Serbian claim over Macedonia is complete bullshit. Russia will of course support Serbia over Bulgaria as it has no reason to do otherwise, but we also have no reason to take Russia’s side when it will hurt our own interests with nothing in return.
The Macedonian Church is also a true institution serving its people, as it is aware of its real history and in the end of 2017 proposed to the Bulgarian church to proclaim it as its Mother Church.
The Bulgarian president Radev was met very warmly in the Bigor monastery recently, and the monks there even sang “Come the dawn of freedom” (Изгрей зора на свободата) which was the old IMRO hymn from the times where the freedom fighters in Macedonia knew that they are Bulgarians and are fighting for their fellow Bulgarians.
It’s the closest thing they could have done to reveal their power level without outright saying “hey guys, you know the Serb and the Yugo communist propaganda is bullshit and we are Bulgarians and always have been”. They also strongly supported the Macedonian-Bulgarian Friendship Treaty and the overall tendency in recent years of healing the divide and slowly doing away with the old fake communist history.
A thousand years or more of invasions has less to do with a country’s success vs religion got it
Hmm Indians seem to use them less as well as Nordic I think
The last time the topic – Czechs/Central Europeans – came up someone mentioned a Czech movie from the 60s or early 70s that joked about it, so it seems to have been around for a long time.
As could be expected, deafening silence from Ukies. However, some members of current Rada (Ukraine parliament) noticed. MP Kaplin, elected via Porky’s block (here is his profile: https://pep.org.ua/en/person/4922), said at the Rada session that in terms of personal wealth of citizens Ukraine is now behind the countries whose names sound like swearwords. He is wrong only in one thing: nowadays “Ukraine” sounds like a swearword more than the names of the countries it trails.
Yes, it is important. It’s painful to watch how people who seem quite normal before are methodically destroying not only their own future but everything built with such effort by the entire huge country. Madness is never a pretty sight.
I don’t mind sharing – it’ve always been the Russians insisting that the history is common. It’s the Ukrainians who insist on them uniquely owning the Kiev Rus, which is total BS. Our history is forever our own and it will remain our history no matter what.
What I do mind, and very much so, is that history and culture being desecrated by a gang of lowlives. You’d probably also minded if someone came and demonstratively peed in your main cathedral. We are no different.
Being a ‘slave of God’ means you are nobody else’s slave. Not even a despot’s, no matter how strong and cruel he might be.
It’s a statement of radical freedom. Being a ‘son of God’ sounds nice but doesn’t set you free.
‘Slave of God’ does indeed have a liberating effect and if adopted would immediately help lift the gloom and depression of the West, but the West would never adopt such a slogan. Too much against the grain.
Plus, Westerners simply don’t believe in God. Its just non-viable for now.
The same attitude of blissful surrender to the world that is the objective of all religion can be obtained through formulas that come from Buddhism and Taoism, and that are more in harmony with Western style thinking and modern science, which has moved beyond the dead Newtonian mechanical model (although the average Westerners still thinks Newtonianly) and towards a world of relationship and process, and a surprising aliveness.
Of course, a very deep gulf would have to be bridged before these traditions could be adapted to the West as they are still profoundly alien, just as Quantum theory has not been assimilated in the popular imagination and even highly intelligent people think in an outdated Newtonian fashion.
The experiment may fail, but Buddhism has a history of being assimilated by other cultures and its lack of doctrines and theories make it uniquely suited to leaping cultural boundaries.
We shall see.
“As quasi-monarch of the European core, who could command European kings to crawl to him on their knees in penance, the Pope could afford to forget the “pares” part of “primus inter pares.””
It’s hard to “forget” something that one has never affirmed, because the so-called “pares” made up the “inter pares” stuff in order to effectively deny the primacy to the “primus.”
Your superficiality is astounding. New Age kookery. AaronB should hire you as his sidekick. Next to you he would be profound.
I realize that the Russia v Ukraine issue is complicated.
But the fact that the Bolshevik Russians committed genocide against the Ukrainians TWICE leading to the extermination of 5 to 10 MILLION Ukrainians, I can’t blame Ukranians for not wanting anything to do with Russia at all.
EVER !
https://holodomorinfo.com/
That would have been logical, if it weren’t a lie. The whole “holodomor” mythology is untrue. Bolsheviks (most of whom weren’t even Russians) murdered a lot of people, but they were true internationalists in their crimes, so Ukrainians (or anybody else) weren’t specifically targeted and did not suffer disproportionately.
Not to mention that Ukro-Nazis that the US and its sidekicks brought to power in 2014 do not represent Ukrainians, they constitute less than 10% of Ukraine population. But Ukrainian Gestapo (SBU) works just as efficiently and ruthlessly as Bolshevik Cheka, making sure that the other 90% don’t give a pip.
Wrong as usual. While no evidence suggests that Ukrainians were specifically targetted, they were certainly disproportionately affected. Ukrainians were about 30% of the USSR’s population but 50% of Famine victims.
Not to mention that those numbers are lies, by this logic residents of the Volga region were even more specifically targeted. LOL.
{Ukrainians were about 30% of the USSR’s population but 50% of Famine victims.}
Since you accept there is no evidence* suggesting Ukrainians were specifically targeted, is it not possible that the fact their losses were disproportionate due to the geographic fact of Ukraine and lands nearby being the breadbasket of Soviet Union (e.g. wheat growing regions), and the boneheaded /criminal policies of incompetent Bolshevik leadership disproportionately affected Ukrainians simply because the bulk of Ukrainian population lived in the affected areas?
I mean this was a leadership, up to and including Stalin, who embraced a nut like Trofim Lysenko, with well known disastrous results.
You contradict yourself:
The issue at hand is complicated, as you put it.
You inaccurately oversimplify things in the second paragraph. It wasn’t just Bolshevik Russians, who were involved in killing many people – not just Ukrainians – Russians included.
Soviet faults notwithstanding, there was no calculated attempt on their part to eliminate Ukrainians.
As regards ranking pupils at school, Chinese make up slightly under 75% of Singapore’s citizens, the rest being largely Malays or Indians. Stopping ranking obviously makes establishing how Malays and Indians do much more poorly than ethnic Chinese much more difficult. Also, it prevents it being used as a tool for affirmative action. So smart Oriental thinking here.
As regards Unhappiness, you’re definitely onto something here. In 1960 – near my era – Singapore had a population of 1.7m and large open areas. In 2017, it had a population of 5.6m, in an area of less than 800 square miles. Things are much more crowded and Singapore is a lot less agreeable place to live.
To make matters worse, only 3.5m out of the 5.6m are in fact citizens ( 62.5%). In my time there, non-citizens were a small minority. Now Singapore resembles Bahrain, Qatar or Kuwait, with a large non-citizen service population. Is being a Filipina maid any better in Singapore than Bahrain ? Certainly, your employer is unlikely to beat you or rape you, as often seems to happen in the Gulf States. However, do you feel happy ? Probably not.
Svidos won’t like this excerpt:
https://www.rferl.org/a/long-russia-s-patriarch-kirill-blames-istanbul-orthodox-church-for-schism-/29553467.html
Putting aside the Anglo-Zionist babble, this isn’t bad:
https://thesaker.is/the-empire-splits-the-orthodox-world-possible-consequences/
We all stand naked before the Lord,
Without crown,without shoes.
From the day they cut the cord,
Till the day we pay our dues.
We get only what is poured,
No more and no less.
Earn dignity with your labour,
Give alms to the poor.
With tyrants curry no favour,
Let the righteous endure.
Have no grudges to harbour,
With wisdom you can be sure.
So hurry not on the road to hell,
The gatekeepers await.
For they can foretell,
The story of your fate.
The final ring of the bell
As the hour grows late.
mcohen
“but Ukrainian speakers have a right to their own religious devotional framework, as far as most people are concerned”
Then why don’t they start their own church?
No one is stopping them.
Red herring alert!
Or maybe that should be “hammer looking for nail” alert!
Yes, mainly rude and rather crude, although I think utu fancies himself as clever.
Orthodoxy is the art of navel-gazing for Greeks. Based on reaction like this article, it seems that Russians also have an orthoboner, but nothing compares with the Greeks.
As a Romanian, I can tell you that Greeks have been a Jew-sized curse on our lands, and I am looking forward to the erasure of their half-baked cult from our lands. An American neoprotestant cult would be more thought-provoking, more charitable, and less anti-Romanian. Their imbecility has been forced on us by the Turkish masters. It’s no surprise that a British high schooler can talk about transsubstantiation more coherently than Romanian bishop. And consequently, it’s no surprise that Romanians are as uneducated as the Greeks.
I hope this is the first of many schisms, which put the Greeks into their place. These Christianized Turks, parasiting the lands and the alphabet of an ancient culture, have fewer connection with greatness than New Zealand. And yet, these imbeciles open the Olympic Games, collect fees at the Athos Sausagefest, and get to screw all their creditors every 20 years.
Once the Brits would run out of money for a fleet, and the interest / ability to control the waters near Turkey, these fuckers will be gone to fuck themselves. Fuck the Patriarch of Istanbul, the Pope of Halki Diki, the ninja of Athos, and all their burka-wearing ‘holy women’.
No, lies is when you claim no US auto company manufactures cars in the USA.
About 6 million Soviet people died of famine, about 3 million of those died in Ukraine.
This is certainly a likely possibility. However, it also coincided with cultural repression and end of Ukrainianization so a weak circumstantial case can be made that Ukrainians were specifically targeted.
This is just a banal reflection of the devaluation of the currency. Russia looks worse on this list than it actually is for similar reasons. Russia is lower than Peru and Mexico. It is worse now than it was in 2007. Hmm…Russians are really poorer than Peruvians or Mexicans and have really become poorer than they were in 2007, or did the ruble simply devalue in dollars? Normal people who are not Anon in TN know the answer to this question.
LOL, according to that report that you believe, Belarus has lower wealth per adult than does Ukraine.
Thank you for again advertising what a fool you are 🙂
So let’s review conclusions based on Anon from TN’s source:
Belarus has less wealth per adult than Ukraine.
Russians are less wealthy in 2018 than they were in 2007.
Russians are less wealthy than Mexicans and Peruvians.
You, Anon from TN, are the gift that keeps on giving 🙂
Fascinating how long it takes for someone to come up with this unpleasantness, given the subject.
Perhaps those who are not in denial have simply given up?
Fascinating as well, how this is
a) a lie
b) was not done intentionally to harm Ukrainians
c) others were harmed as well.
the crime was comitted
d) by others anyway.
Perhaps it is the highest of time for Russians to come to terms with the unpleasant, or one should rather say murderous, side of recent Russian history.
To the victim of mass murderous policies, it matters not one iot whether he, his family and his relatives are intentionally targeted for being murdered or whether he just has the bad luck to live in a region the population of which is starved to death and not allowed to leave.
Atheism is literally brain damage.
Transpersonal Theory is not necessarily “Eastern stuff,” as you can find out by reading
Ken Wilber or Michael Washburn or better yet the Christian classics such as the writings
of St. John of the Cross or St. Teresa of Avila. A great summary of Christian mysticism,
almost completely unknown to even educated Protestants as they had largely rejected mysticism,
is Prof. Garrigou-Lagrange’s magnum opus entitled The Three Ages of the Interior Life (1939).
Garrigou-Lagrange was a Dominican monk who played a crucial role in the preparations
for the Second Vatican Council. It appears that Wilber was completely unaware of the
writings of Garrigou-Lagrange when he started developing his own version of
Transpersonal Theory in the late 1970s.
I will grant you that some western psychologists such as Carl Jung were suspicious of
meditation. Jung famously believed that meditation is unsuited for the Western psyche
since essentially we’re too restless. A Course in Miracles notably does not rely on meditation
but rather on contemplation (of specific truths) and on affirmations. Achieving a blank
mind and being egoless are not among its goals. One may pass through a transitional egoless
stage which the Course describes as dangerous due to the absence of ego defenses. The
ego (i.e., ordinary waking consciousness) is to be quickly replaced by a Higher Self which
the Course calls Christ Self.
For what it’s worth, I’ve heard tell that the uprising was more a calculated move (made with an eye towards currying favour with the soon-to-be-victorious Allies) than an expression of widespread hostility towards the Germans.
If your goal is simply to become more effective, I would recommend
a beginner’s meditation such as Transcendental Meditation (TM).
The technique became famous when the Beatles (along with Mia
Farrow and her sister Prudence about whom John Lennon wrote
the song “Dear Prudence”) visited the Maharishi in India in
February 1968. You repeat a mantra subvocally twice a day for
15-20 minutes. I credit TM with helping me to keep my sanity as I
was working on my Ph.D. These days among the rich and famous
it seems that only the film director David Lynch still remains
enthusiastic about the technique, and he’s been practicing TM
since the ‘60s
Warning: You’ll do a lot of laughing while you do TM but isn’t
that the point?
I’m no longer young. All my battles are behind me. Perhaps you’ll
understand it when you get to be my age, perhaps you won’t.
Life is basically a process of gradually running out of energy.
I’d rather spend what remains of my energy on something
productive like writung my next book.
Soviet troops were already nearby, so no genius was needed to find out who would win. The Czechs had a lot of reasons to hate the Germans, but the Slovaks not so much.
For the practitioners of the TM it is recommended to wear a motorcycle helmet in case of spontaneous levitation and hitting the ceiling.
How do you propose Russians come to terms with Jews and Ukrainian shabbosgoyim murdering Ukrainian and Russian peasants?
Considering that the spiritual and genetic heirs of those murderers are still ruling Ukraine today, I guess you’re of the “Putin bomb Ukraine” camp?
For what? That German soldiers were sent to spend their furloughs to Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia because it was the safest place for Germans to be in the whole Europe? Because of no bombings it was safer than Germany. In places like France or Denmark it was imaginable some German soldier could be shot. But not in Bohemia unless some agent was sent form England who usually could not finish his task because he was promptly denounced to police. Czechs took mass public loyalty oath to Hitler and Germany and they adhered to it. There used to be a video on YT from this event at Wenceslas Square. Then there was video The Savage Peace showing interesting footage of Germans being mistreated after the war but it was also taken down. The hate and the lust for revenge apart from being purely politically calculated to promulgate the ethnic cleansing stemmed from their loyalty to Hitler. There was no signs of any hate during the war. Just telling jokes.
Perhaps Slovaks could resent Germans for having to pay the cost of Jewish transports while for Czechs Germans transported their Jews gratis. Or for their own stupidity for sending troops to Poland first and then to Russia w/o being pressured by Hitler?
Czechs ended up getting the best deal from all occupied countries. They did not have to provide conscripts except for the Czechs who stayed in Sudetenland and were forced to become German citizens and Silesians, mostly Poles in Teschen Silesia. It’s ironic that Poland by annexing the Teschen Silesia and liberating their Silesian Poles from the Czech rule in 1938 sealed their fate as the future Wehrmacht cannon fodder.
I said ‘elements of those ancient religions’ such as the concept
of the Kundalini energy may still be valid. Remember that the
Kundalini energy is simply inner energy. We all have it. Therefore
it’s a universal concept. Washburn refers to it as the Dynamic
Ground – children have access to it but at 8 or 9 the access
is gradually lost, and we experience this as being expelled from the
Garden of Eden. Then at puberty we forget about it when the joys of the
flesh become available, until sex becomes routine, and we again feel
that something is missing, something wonderful was supposed to
happen, and it didn’t. At this point many people reach for
alcohol, drugs, antidepressants, promiscuity, and what not,
forgetting that they must become born again and be
like children for the second time, that is to undergo the
derepression of the primal energy (Kundalini, inner energy,
Dynamic Ground, … whatever you want to call it). This is often
called Regression (back to the Child) in the Service of
Transcendence. Leave the dour bourgeois morality behind, and
spend the rest of your life dancing and laughing. Sex (although this
is not antisex) will seem like nothing compared to the sensory delights
available once your Inner Energy is coursing through your body
A Romanian Bishop would never talk about ‘transsubstantiation’, an exclusivly ‘western’ scholarly concept. Surely “British high scholars’ can talk more coherently about their own creation.
You are not Romanian.
One might equally ask, ‘is there a requirement that an all Rus church be based in Moscow’? Especially since the political entity known as Kyivan Rus ceased to exist in the 13-th century. and three new nationalities have sprung up in its place since then? You can’t turn back the clock of history to the 13th century, no matter how hard you try Anatoly. Time marches on…
Reinhard Heydrich thought that about 50% Czechs would have to be “deported”, and that 50% might be Germanized…but in any case Czech language, culture, nationhood had to be destroyed. I don’t think there can be much doubt that a German victory would have been very bad for Czechs.
German policy in the protectorate may have been not quite as brutal as in Poland, but it was certainly terroristic enough, much harsher than in France or other Western/Northern European countries.
Only a weak circumstantial case? What would it take, in your opinion, to raise the verdict to a ‘strong’ circumstancial case?
More circumstantial evidence provided by Khrushchev:
Too many to deport (Ukrainians), why not just starve them to death where they live?
IIRC (correct me if I’m wrong) but Khrushchev was referring to post-war deportations as was done to the Tatars.
As I said, a weak circumstantial case. There is not a singly document singling out ethnic Ukrainians as Ukrainians for starvation. OTOH, Ukrainians were starved disproportionately and the starvation did coincide with cultural repression so this theory is certainly not a crazy one.
Ironically, Putin’s man in Ukraine, Medvedchuk, is literally the son of a Nazi collaborator. Noit smeone like Bandera who wanted an alliance with the Germans for his own purposes (roughly analogous to Churchill working with Stalin or pre-invasion Soviets working with Nazis) but a guy who simply served the Germans.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Medvedchuk
“Medvedchuk’s father, Volodymyr Medvedchuk, avoided being drafted into the Red Army during the Great Patriotic War due to his suffering from Pott disease. During Nazi Germany’s occupation of Ukraine, he worked for the German administration in a labor camp from April 1942 to November 1943. The section provided enforced deportation of the local able-bodied Ukrainian youth to work in Nazi Germany. After the retreat of German forces Volodymyr Medvedchuk was arrested by SMERSH on 7 August 1954 and sentenced to eight years of imprisonment and four of exile in Siberia “for participation in Ukrainian nationalistic activities.” Viktor was born in Pochyot, Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russian SFSR. ”
Currently Medvedchuk is chairman of the pro-Russia political organization Ukrainian Choice and an opponent of Ukraine joining the European Union.[3] Russian president Vladimir Putin is the godfather of Medvedchuk’s daughter Darina (born in 2004).[4]
May be so, but this does not change how Czechs actually behaved during the war.
You realize that there must be ‘good’ reasons that access to Russian archives are still (Ukrainian ones too, at least under Yanukovych) cutoff from the prying eye of researchers? I realize that the Khrushchev quote related to post-war deportations, but I included it to show the level of Stalin’s mindset. You know, a similar assessment could be leveled against Hitler too. As far as I know, there are no historical documents that directly tie Hitler to the destruction of millions of Jews as a result of the ‘final solution’ (no signed orders by Hitler to create the concentration camp system). Yet nobody would make such a silly claim… that he wasn’t the direct author of such an evil plan.
The aforementioned cultural repression taking what specific forms? Keeping in mind that the Soviets repressed all cultural expressions whether Ukrainian or otherwise (including historical overview) to conform with Soviet Communism.
The former Russian Empire Ukrainians were by and large opposed to the Nazis and the OUN/UPA. That aspect contrasted sharply from the smaller in number Crimean Tatars, who had a greater per capita of collaboration with the Nazis.
Hitler had no Jewish units in name, while having blatantly discriminating policies against the Jews, which included mass murder. Soviet brutality aside, NOTHING like that came close regarding the Ukrainians in the USSR.
In other words, Medvedchuk’s father did nothing wrong. Like he had a reasonable choice to act differently. Medvedchuk’s stance towards Russia contrasts from the svidos who flippantly link the evils of Communism as part of the historically faulty narrative of Russia screwing Ukrainians for generations.
Sure, but there are many other documents showing the Nazi government singling out Jews because they were Jews. This is not the case with Ukrainians. While the Ukrainian countryside was among the hardest hit areas in the USSR and policies in the Ukrianian SSR were harsher than those in other republics (which is why Ukrainians accounted for a greater share of famine victims than did Russians), ethnic Russians, or Bulgarians, living in that countryside were as likely to die as were their Ukrainian neighbors. Conversely, while the largely ethnic Russian and Jewish cities weren’t affected by the starvation, ethnic Ukrianians who happened to live there were as safe as were their Russian and Jewish neighbors.
Are you kidding me? Holodomor aside, are you trying to cover up the waives of repressions against Ukrainian intellectuals, artists, writers, historians, playwrights, filmakers, musicians, you fool, during the 1930’s and 1940’s? Go away and hide under the same rock as your spiritual progenitor, Walter Duranty. Look, if you think that I’m going to be your Saturday play pal here, Mickey, you’re crazy. I’m not going to waste a perfectly beautiful Saturday engaged in mental debasement with a nutcase like you – go find somebody else to play with.
So in your world “worked for the German administration in a labor camp from April 1942 to November 1943. The section provided enforced deportation of the local able-bodied Ukrainian youth to work in Nazi Germany. ” is nothing wrong. Good to know.
BTW, what is your opinion of Vlasov?
You seem to be ignoring that closed access to Russian archives strongly prohibits an in depth assessment of the true nature of the Holodomor. Hopefully, documents that could shed more light on the insidious nature of this tragedy will not be shredded. BTW, I do remember a few years back, during the Yanukovych years, that researchers were actually barred from entering libraries and archives in Ukraine. Russian sovoks or Ukrainian ones – they’re all the same.
There was a window in the 90s when the archives were opened and no smoking gun was found. No smoking gun was found in Ukrainian archives either. To be clear, the circumstantial case while weak is far from outlandish. But there is no direct evidence stating that Ukrainians were singled out because they were Ukrainians.
Agreed, though not only Sovoks engage in this. Incidentally, the current government has been blocking or hiding information abut UPA crimes. I recall a Western scholar complaining that some of Sheptytsky’s anti-OUN statements have been hidden and even destroyed.
Description of post-Soviet Ukrainian nationalists (and not only them) destroying archived materials:
https://www.academia.edu/12538305/_Ethnicity_Memory_and_Violence_Reflections_on_Special_Problems_in_Soviet_and_East_European_Archives_in_Archives_Documentation_and_the_Institutions_of_Social_Memory_Ann_Arbor_2006_
Is this also the reason for the huge line for free food at the charity kitchen in Kiev seen here: http://rusvesna.su/news/1539952343 ?
BTW, I take it hryvna devaluation has nothing to do with Maidan, right? Used to be 8 hryvna for 1 US $ under Yanuk’s “criminal gang”, now it’s 28 hryvna for 1$ under Porky. An admirable achievement, wouldn’t you say? Especially considering that foreign debt more then doubled after Maidan.
Then there was video The Savage Peace showing interesting footage of Germans being mistreated after the war but it was also taken down.
For those who are interested the documentary is still available on Vimeo: The Savage Peace
I’m not doubting that this kind of literature would be locatable in Kyiv or other Ukrainian libraries or archives, but I would think that the vast majority of this type of fare could be located in Lviv, especially at any such resource associated with St. George’s Cathedral. I agree, though, it’s a shame that this type of subterfuge is evident on both sides of the propaganda war.
So in your world there are no lines for free food in America or in other countries that are wealthier than Russia, never mind Ukraine?
Line for free food in Manhattan:
https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/people-wait-in-line-for-free-food-giveaway-by-turkish-ali-news-photo/825380020
But tell us more about your source that shows that people in Belarus have less weath than those in Ukraine and that Rusisans are less wealthy now than in 2007, lol.
That was your latest example of brilliance.
Sure, and ruble devalaution had nothng to do with seizure of Crimea.
So, I should be taking an Orthodox priest’s word that transsubstantiation does not exist, on the grounds that it was invented in Rome, rather than Athens? ‘Oh, it’s a Western concept, we don’t do it this way here.’
Do you bathe? Do you shit in a dedicated hole? There are Western, Roman habits. Either you shit in the backyard, or you are a papist.
Re ‘ you are not Romanian’, yeah, sorry for being slightly brighter than it was planned by the Southern millet-basha, or the Eastern politruks. Apparently, we have access to dictionaries these days. We get to “know all the words”*, including transsubstatiation. It may be a debatable concept. (FFS, this is one of a thousand crappy ideas in Christianity. With or without it, you are still full of bullshit. Really, he levitated to the sky? And the Jewesswhore afterwards, same procedure, except she was sleeping?) But at least I can debate it, whereas you and the Greek agents infesting Romania are stuck in your Orientalisms.
Does that explain why the dollar value of the Russian ruble fell ~2-fold (remember: “Russia isolated”; “economy in tatters”), whereas Ukrainian hryvna fell more than 3-fold (remember: “the whole world is with us”).
Not to mention that since 2014 Russian external debt kept falling, whereas the Ukrainian kept climbing. Looks like it’s safer to be “isolated” than supported by “the whole world”. How come?
Did you know that various factors come into play?
But decline in ruble (which peaked at ~ 3 fold before partially recoverng) was indeed associated with Russia’s actions, just as hryvnia devaluation was associated with Ukraine’s actions. Of course, Russia’s governent unlike Yanukovch’s had amassed massive foreign currency reserves etc.
A Ukrainian prays to God:
– God, why did you make the world so unfair? Russians have oil, natural gas, coal, gold, diamonds, while we have nothing.
– But you had all of these.
– When?
– When you were a Russian.
I would like to note that Epigon, who knows more about this topic than either of us, has stated that EP indeed treated the takeover of Ukraine’s Church by Moscow in the 17th century as temporary in its official documents.
The Russian Orthodox Church seems to mirror the Russian State whom it serves, in not being openly at war with Ukraine but nevertheless working against it when doing so serves the interests of the Russian state. So its priests openly blessing NAF fighters as they go to kill Ukrainians have been sanctioned, OTOH Girkin was being helped by the Russian Orthodox Church and NAF fighters have been quietly given refuge in Moscow’s churches (a Brazilian volunteer was found hiding in one on Kiev).
And the Russian patriarch is of course on excellent terms with Putin whom he serves and whom he awards. So as long as the Ukrainian Orthodox are under Moscow they are forced to pray to a Patriarch who serves and celebrates Putin. They would rather not be in such a situation. Moving them under Constantinople fixes this problem and returns them to Orthodoxy.
Speaking of Chaplin and Girkin:
https://risu.org.ua/en/index/all_news/community/religion_and_policy/73021/
Igor Girkin (Strelkov), former Donetsk People’s Republic leader and former Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation officer recently spoke about the participation of monks of the Holy Dormition Svyatohirsk Lavra in the Donbas conflict, according to Obozrevatel.
Discussing with Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin of the Russian Orthodox Church the issue of granting the Tomos of autocephaly to Ukraine, he admitted that his personal guard consisted only of monks of this monastery. The relevant video has been posted on YouTube.
“My personal guard consisted of spiritual sons, monks, hieromonks of the Sviatohorsk Lavra … To the last man. It was not very large, but they were there … We had one of the units in the Slovyansk brigade commanded by the novice of Svyatogorsk Lavra. And the novice held a rather serious position in the Lavra … a provisor,” said Girkin.
He also added that the priests of the Sviatohirsk Lavra blessed his gang formation in 2014 at the beginning of hostilities in Donbas.
According to him, he then hoped that the entire hierarchy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) would overtly support them, but this did not happen.
Currently, Girkin has no doubt that a significant part of the UOC-MP will “run” to the autocephalous Ukrainian Church, and he even knows such bishops who are ready to do so.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Veneration of Andrey Bogolubsky who sacked Kiev, slaughtered many of its inhabitants and generally treated Kiev as the crusaders treated Constantinople is another ridiculous thing that Ukrainian Orthodox are forced to put up with if they belong to Moscow’s Church.
Obviously this refers to the Russian and not the Byzantine eagle. Albanians also use two-headed eagle, would some Christians showing this eagle being trampled be opposed to Byzantium?
Their Church is riddled with KGB and FSB men at the highest levels (not that Filaret was different, of course). KGB/FSB are not hardcore Russian nationalists. But they, as does the ROC, serve the Russian state.
Well, if it wants to present itself as and truly be the All Rus Church and bearer of the Rus legacy that united all Eastern Slavs, that was forced to move to Vladimir and Moscow by the Polish annexation of Rus heartland, it would make sense to return to Kiev after Kiev was “liberated.” But it didn’t happen, this all Rus stuff was cheap propaganda, it remained Russia’s Church (despite having gotten a bunch of Ukrainians as leaders in the 18th century).
Western weirdos? Doubtful.
Religions are ALL forms of population control and subjugation.
ALL religious beliefs are a type of mental illness.
Do you realize that all these stories about Nazis’ grand plans as to the future do not have much back up in material sources. For some reasons all copies of various versions of the Generalplan Ost were not found after the war. Too bad that Czechs did not save their copy because according to you they must have been very familiar with it and this knowledge made them very angry.
In my older comments once I looked up Dr. Wetzel and his story.
http://www.unz.com/article/german-soldiers-of-world-war-ii/#comment-2378329
http://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-56/?highlight=Wetzel#comment-2534698
It’s not based on the Generalplan Ost, but on decisions taken by Hitler and Heydrich (during his time as Reich protector) in 1940-42.
From Robert Gerwarth’s Hitler’s hangman. The life of Heydrich, p.245/46:
There’s a lot more in the penultimate chapter of that book about German occupation policies and the intentions of at least the more extreme Nazis like Heydrich. You can download it on that Library Genesis piracy site and see for yourself.
Wow, what a fresh and exciting opinion. (Not.)
Are you still in high school? Finish your homework before attempting to troll, son.
I know nothing about Czechs, but, going by your comments, wouldn’t the memory of their servility itself have given them a reason to hate the Germans?
You’re being an ethnocentric clod. The Russians en masse were eating filet mignon during the Soviet period? There weren’t other intellectuals (Russians, Georgians, Jews) getting purged.
If the weather is nice where you are, then by all means go play in the sand box.
I seem to recall you essentially coming to the defense of those saying they didn’t have much choice under Nazi rule and (of that grouping) some behaved in a non-criminal way.
BTW, it wasn’t just able-bodied Ukrainian youth who met the fate you describe.
Vlasov and his forces don’t have anywhere near the same negative baggage as the Ustasha and OUN/UPA, among some other groups that had some form of a military relationship with Nazi Germany.
He and his forces hoped that a certain mood in Germany might prevail. Related:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilfried_Strik-Strikfeldt
Some choices between Stalin and the likes of Rosenberg and Himmler.
And the minutes from these discussions were published in papers for the sole purpose of generating hate among Czechs so you could claim its existence and justify it.
The book I mentioned also contains many details about German occupation policy in 1939-42, like the closing down of Prague university (and replacement by a German university), repression of Czech cultural life, the executions of thousands of Czechs, Czechs being sent to Mauthausen concentration camp etc. It may not have been as harsh as German policies in Poland, but definitely much worse than anything the Nazis did in Western or Northern Europe. As I already wrote, you can read it for yourself.
Compared ot Filaret’s church, the UOC-MP has been more neutral about the war in Donbass. The aforementioned priests bless soldiers in their (priests) area who seek such. Not on par with the comments UOC-MP (Filaret included) have made on the civil war. it can be said that Filaret and his church pray for those who kill rebel supporters.
The aforementioned Brazilian sough refuge and was understandably given such, seeing the conditions people like him have faced when taken by the Kiev regime side.
Constantinople has made the problem worse by giving the Kiev regime and Filaret a premise (misguided that it is notwithstanding) to seize UOC-MP property. The Porky-Filaret tandem is one that many UOC aren’t supportive of.
You earlier noted UOC-MP support/sympathy for the rebels. Nothing is stopping Onufry and others from the UOC-MP to break with the ROC-MP – along the lines of Filaret. The UOC-MP faces much pressure from the Kiev regime and some nationalist elements.
What kind of veneration? That attack was part of a civil war, with looting having been an unfortunate aspect. Sherman wasn’t more civil towards Atlanta. neither was the Mongol conquest of Kiev and other parts of Rus.
Their Church is riddled with KGB and FSB men at the highest levels (not that Filaret was different, of course). KGB/FSB are not hardcore Russian nationalists. But they, as does the ROC, serve the Russian state.
Along the lines of saying that the Vatican has been riddled with Nazi sympathizers. No denying that the ROC-MP was very much compromised during the Soviet period. It’s a very different and improved era.
In comparison, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church seems more riddled with Bandera supporters.
The directly above excerpted is cheap propaganda. Capitals of nations, sports teams, corporate businesses and other entities have been known to change their locale or main locale for a variety of reasons. Besides, occurrences like WW II and the present Kiev regime situation indicate that Russia is a more secure place.
BTW, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church shifted its main office from Lviv to Kiev.
Medvedchuk’s father wasn’t a POW (he wasn’t in the army) so his service to the Germans was voluntary. He was simply a collaborator.
I didn’t ask you to compare them to others – I asked – what is your opinion of Vlasov and his men?
Southerners aren’t asked to belong to a Church that considers Sherman to be a Saint. But Bogolubsky is a Saint of the Russian Church. The things he looted form Kiev remain in Russia.
Aleksei was a KGB informer. One of my friends in Russia served in the KGB and FSB where he supervised the Church (monasteries, clergy, etc.). I won’t repeat the stories I have heard…There are many decent priests but as an organization the Russian Church was totally compromised.
Among followers and, say, village priests – sure. But it was not a Banderist organization in the way that the Russian Orthodox Church was a KGB organization.
Yes, its Metropolitans are a semi-direct line from the 15th century Orthodox Church based in Kiev, which entered into Union with Rome in the 16th century. Until the 19th century their title was Metropolitans of Kyiv, Galicia and all Ruthenia. After Poland was partitioned, the Galician eparchy of this Church was elevated to become its own Metropolia and continued on after Russia banned the Greek Catholic Church based in Kiev, in 1838. Now this Church has returned to Kiev.
Look at the horrors and indignities Czechs had to suffer:
(1) Nazi law forced people to drive on the right.
(2) A lot of women opted to get pregnant so they would not have to toil in factories during the war.
(3) The tram stops were announced in both Czech and German.
(4) By the end of 1944, private cars were banned.
https://www.private-prague-guide.com/article/life-during-the-nazi-occupation/
Bogolyubsky had the legit title to the Kiev throne as acknowledged even by Subtelny. Some folks in Kiev weren’t so innocent in the dispute with him. At the time, there was no Russia-Ukraine division. The UOC-MP and ROC-MP remain affiliated.
It’s factually not so clear as you claim regarding Aleksey’s relationship with the Soviet government. In any event, he hasn’t been around for a good deal of time already. I’ve my sources in the ROC-MP and ROCOR who view the directly above excerpted as unsubstantiated propagandistic tripe.
Plenty of not so complimentary stories about Filaret, that have come from some of his relatives in Russia.
Bullshit right here:
ROC-MP was compromised in Soviet times for understandable reasons. In the West, pro-Bandera sentiment in the UGCC has been quite evident. The venom among that element is nothing to brag about. Bandera and his forces carried on like they would’ve done considerably more damage if they had the resources and personnel numbers as Stalin.
The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church isn’t part of the UOC. Their existence was coerced via Polish subjugation that included the suppression of the UOC. The UGCC is most dominate in Galicia and Volhyn.
The Nazis viewed people like him under their occupation as prisoners subject to the offer of work for us, or rot under inhospitable conditions, if not killed outright.
I believe that if anything, Russia has reason to honor him more than the kind of accolades accorded by some in Ukraine to Bandera.
In hindsight, Vlasov’s attempt to reach some accord with the Nazis looks foolish. At the time, who knew for sure that the Soviets would eventually win. Meantime, there was ample reason to be anti-Stalin, from a pro-Russian perspective.
My general approach to history tends to go counter to the simplistic good versus evil imagery. Often, the circumstances are nuanced.
Wonder how the powers that be in the UOC-KP and UGCC view this matter, relative to the UOC-MP?
https://insomniacresurrected.com/2018/10/21/almost-50-of-ukrainians-think-banning-of-russian-tv-channels-was-a-mistake/
From the Heydrich book I mentioned, p. 227:
There’s more in that book about harsh repressive measures and plans for the destruction of Czech nationhood. I really don’t get why you feel a need to claim this was a benign, harmless occupation (and no, I’m not a self-hating cuck or whatever, quite the opposite).
Maybe, maybe not. But it is a fact that his troops sacked Kiev and slaughtered a bunch of its people, and he is a saint in the Church of Moscow. Imagine if the guy who commanded the crusaders who sacked Constantinople were made a saint by a Church and Greeks were expected to belong to it.
It is an absurd situation.
If so, your sources are naive or dishonest, and you are gullible. Russian Church links with KGB were so well known it was hardly even a secret. Kirill was stationed abroad and tasked with interacting with foreign Churches under Brezhnev, hilarious if you believe he wasn’t working with and for the KGB, given such an assignment.
Sure. And while KGB informants and agents dominated the higher echelons of the ROC, Banderists were kept out of the highest echelons of the UGCC. For example, Sheptytsky used his own personal funds to buy a newspaper, just to prevent the OUN from getting its hands on it.
As a very high ranking member of the ROC he was of course as deeply involved with the KGB as any of his Russian rivals. Who would believe otherwise?
Who said it was?
It was the “Metropolia of Kiev, Halych and all Ruthenia”, the Orthodox Church that included all of the Orthodox within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, whose leaders accepted Union with Rome in 1596.
You just do no understand how things work because you do not wan to. It is comfortable to remain in the black and white world where everybody is either villain or victim and the victims who are not heroes are only so because the villain was so awful that he terrorized them into submission. But this is a cliche that was created for you to believe in it. In the real world people do not want to be victims and heroes. The main point is German occupation of Bohemia did not create the need for heroes because considering all circumstances life was good.
Our argument was about the hate. Did Czechs had reason to hate Germans? Did they hate Germans? Most Czechs rather hated the troublemakers like the ones who were executed once Heydrich too over. His actions turned out to be effective as the London-based Czech resistance was rolled up. And after this stick Heydrich gave Czechs a carrot:
Czechs knew about the official plan for there future (assuming that the unofficial really existed):
and most did not mind it. Besides it was just a theory and the war was not over.
Now, pay attention pls and read carefully form the same interview with Czech historian as the previous quote:
To the question:
Professor Jan Rychlík answers:
Meaning there was no resistance. Plenty of heroes after the war who stop chicken from Germans. Czechs did not resist.
Listen, you fool, I knew people who lived in Bohemia and in Prague through the war and I know the stories. I am tryin to convey to you that reality was different to what you and reiner_Thor subscribe to.
Romanian or not, you are a dobitoc.
Bogolyubsky was the legit heir to the Kiev throne, noting who his father and grandfather were. He wasn’t foreign to Kiev. Bogolyubsky positively contributed to Rus’ expansion, while seeking to maintain that entity.
The aforementioned looting was something that in large part was probably not under his complete control or approval. Things happen in conflict. His treatment of Kiev was certainly not worse than the Mongol or Nazi actions and compares more favorably to Sherman’s sacking of Atlanta.
Your comments about the ROC-MP are unsubstantiated BS. By “Kirill”, you mean Aleksey. Your point about him is asinine. He was born outside the RSFSR. Hence, his being stationed abroad as you put it.
A cherry picked missive on your part regarding the UGCC. Plenty of pro-Bandera support within its confines. Reminded of the Croat Catholic Church’s relationship with the Ustasha.
The UGCC was created under Polish coercion, which included the persecution of Orthodox Christians. It has been most popular in Galicia and Volhynia.
Sure, as have many other people. I would like to see some actual documents in support of that.
There are certainly plenty of documents in which EP recognizes Moscow’s authority over the Ukrainian church, including recent ones, e.g. this letter of support over the excommunication of Filaret in 1992:
Correct, Strelkov mentioned that. As you may have noticed, he is really dead-set on regathering the Russian lands ASAP, and triggered Ukrainian nationalist hotheads are a good ally in that regard.
You have to understand where Strelkov is coming from. He believes Russia under Putin is on the road to collapse and a new Time of Troubles, so he has adopted a “that which is falling should be pushed” approach. Fomenting hatred towards UOC-MP within Ukraine, especially if it was to help incite nationalists to seize the Kiev Pechersk Lavra and other ROC property, would either trigger a revival of Project Novorossiya, or help further discredit the Putin regime. Either outcome is good by him.
Not what he was beautified for. Vladimir I was also not a very nice man.
No, but it would come off as a cultish. Ergo for the Ukrainian flags, rifles, etc. on that fresco.
It would have made sense, but I assume there were strategic considerations (Kiev is more vulnerable than Moscow), and there might also have been a QWERTY effect; after all, it had already been based in Moscow for many centuries (whereas the Avignon papacy lasted just 67 years).
Possible future compromise is to combine the Russian and Ukrainian churches into a Russian Orthodox Church – Kiev Patriarchate.
They are not weirdos in the West, they are highly handshakeworthy, and you will have to progressively meet their demands if you want to join Western civilization.
No, imo it’s you who sees the issue as too black and white. It’s true that the Nazis tried to ensure the docility of Czech workers by comparatively decent working conditions, that there was some (fake) autonomy, and that Czech resistance was limited (not surprising imo given the terrible fate of those who did resist). But as shown in the quotes I cited above there was also the threat of massive terror and strong secret police supervision to keep Czechs in line. And people tend to hate foreign occupiers who have destroyed the independence of their country, it’s not surprising that many Czechs hated the Germans (that doesn’t mean one ought to condone everything Czechs did in vengeance after May 8 1945, there were some really appalling incidents).
I don’t subscribe to a “only villains or victims” view of WW2, quite the opposite, and I resent the eternally grovelling, masochistic way modern Germany deals with the Nazi past. But I really don’t get what you’re trying to achieve when you’re trying to present the German occupation of the protectorate as moderate when there is evidence for truly terroristic measures.
Who is highly handshakeworthy? https://orthodoxyindialogue.com/contributors/
“Giacomo Sanfillipo”?
Christian figures, especially entirely unimportant ones, in the West are unpersons to the Left no matter how much they try to cringe, which is unfortunately often quite a lot.
LOL, that must be why the locals liberated themselves and threw out his forces after 2 years.
Not as bad as the Nazis or Mongols is a great measuring stick. Poles in Moscow weren’t as bad as Mongols or Nazis – Russians shouldn’t complain.
Sherman’s army didn’t slaughter and rape its way through Atlanta.
No I meant Kirill. You don’t even know basics about his background? Shame on you.
We aren’t talking about them but about the UGCC.
Moscow cannot do much, it is still too weak. The enemy seeks a war now. Surely they will take the churches by force, hoping for war now. Now is the time for wisdom.
I haven’t seen the original document but this has been taken for granted when the Polish Church was separated from Moscow also. When even those who are knowledgeable about such things and who oppose the Ukrainian Church, such as Epigon, take this for granted it is probably correct.
Sure, but no indication this was permanent, rather than a temporary stewardship.
Sure, but Vladimir I who is venerated by Kiev didn’t teat Kiev like the Crusaders treated Constantinople or like Bogolubsky treated Kiev. As a nationalist hero Bogolubsky makes sense for the Russian Church – he sacked Kiev, looted it (his forces killed churchmen when they raided and stole icons), and brought back the loot for the glory of the nascent Russian state, making it stronger at the expense of Kiev. But how bizarre to demand that Ukrainians belong to such a Church. As a saint of the Russian Church Bogolubsky makes sense. From the POV of a truly All-Rus Church he is some kind of brother-killer.
What you write about Stelkov is very interesting, and makes sense.
@to combine the Russian and Ukrainian churches into a Russian Orthodox Church – Kiev Patriarchate.
It could not be a solution. The elevation of the Metropolia of Kiev and All Rus, which was moved to Vladimir in 1299 and then to Moscow, to the rank of Patriarchate was made with the consensus of all local Orthodox Churches. It was an ‘ecumenical’ decision, absolutely canonical. Moscow Patrarchy filled the place of Rome, fallen into heresy, in the Byzantine system of the Pentarchy. The Moscow Patriarch is the only legitimate Metropolitan of Kiev and All Rus (as the Grand Princes of Moscow were the only legitimate heirs of the Grand Princes of Kiev and All Rus – Saint Vladimir, Vladimir Monomakh, members of the Byzantine Imperial family. Andrey Bogoliubsky represents a crucial moment in the transmission of the Byzantine-Orthodox heritage to Russia, somehow overlooked).
The creations of the stauropegias like the ‘Metropolia of Kiev, Halych and All Rus’ was obtained at a moment of impotence of the Constantinopolitan Church. The ‘decree’ of 1686 was a confirmation of the normal canonical status of the Church of All Rus, in the conditions of the relentless Papist-Uniate campaigns. The pseudo-autocephaly ‘granted’ by the Orthodox would be ‘Pope’ is the Trojan horse of Papism. The new ‘independent’ church will find out very soon that they are brothers with the Uniates, in the ‘independent’ Ukraine. And ‘Europeans’ also.
The locals didn’t have a clear popular mandate.
Not as bad as Sherman in Atlanta as well. FYI, the Nazis never got to Moscow. The UOC-MP didn’t ask for Bart’s intervention. The UGCC isn’t a UOC. The UOC-KP was formed in 1992. The UAOC is comparatively small in number to the other UOCs. If anything, the likes of yourself have less of a reason to complain.
Sherman’s army pretty burned all of Atlanta – something that didn’t happen with Bogolyubsky’s forces in Kiev. BTW pillaging and and other types of mistreatment of southern property and individuals by Union forces existed.
Yor so-called basics are unsubstantiated babble, put out by folks with a certain negative agenda to advocate. Shame on you.
“We” (me) can walk and chew gum at the same time, in the form of making a valid comparison. Bandera had a clear link to the UGCC. After WW II, the Captive Nations Committee crowd was dominated by Ukrainians with former Habsburg Empire roots. Their propaganda was sympathetic to the Pavelic led Croat Ustasha.
On the level of saying that it’s bizarre for Ukrainian nationalists to be with the UGCC that was coerced by expansionist Poland as a means of limiting the Rus Orthodox Christian background, for the benefit of Polish imperial desires. The ancestors of the UGCC came from an Orthodox Christian background, prior to the Polish occupation. Thereafter, Polish discriminatory policies against Orthodox Christians helped nurture the Polish preferred UGCC.
In short, religions the world over see a good deal of seeming contradictions.
Filaret’s rhetoric against pro-Russian sentiment isn’t a good basis for his 1992 formed church to play a role against the former Ukrainian SSR Orthodox Christian faithful, who don’t accept his late in life divisively faulty svido spin. As for a so-called brother killer, one can use that applied logic of yours when describing the pro-Bandera UGCC types out there.
Once again, Bogolyubsky had direct roots to Kiev, to go along with being a the legit heir to the Kiev throne. He was involved in what amounts to as a civil conflict, at a time when there was no Ukraine-Rus division. The people opposing him went against the accepted norm of his lead Kiev status.
It’s your world which is black and white. You think – quite idiotically – that if people don’t mass sacrifice their lives in resistance and less than 1% of the population is executed by the government or occupying power, then there’s no coercion and people must be happy with it. This is idiotic.
Some Czechs might have hoped for receiving German privileges, it’s possible that in the event of a German victory the majority of them would’ve done that. Even without winning the war, many Poles subscribed to the Germanization lists and sent their sons to fight in the Wehrmacht. So does it mean that the Poles loved the Germans?
It’s you who can’t understand that coercion means that you change your behavior due to the threat of violence. You might make peace with it (it’s unhealthy to obsess about something you cannot change), but it does not mean that’s what you want.
The four hundred Czechs who Heydrich executed in a few months was triple the number that the good Kaiser Franz Joseph had executed in Hungary after having crushed the fight for independence in 1849. At the time it was considered the non plus ultra of tyranny and oppression, so much so that the Russian Tsar Nicholas I (who had helped Franz Joseph crush the Hungarians) was totally outraged by it (he thought that sentencing hundreds of rebel leaders to death was okay to teach them a lesson, but that they should then be pardoned).
It’s pretty unfortunate that Tsar Nicholas I didn’t meet utu, because then he could have explained to the good Tsar that executing 140 people was nothing compared to Pol Pot and therefore it wasn’t the result of brutal bloodlust on the part of Franz Joseph, but simply a sign of Habsburg benevolence.
So you don’t know basic things about the background of Patriarch Kirill. From wiki:
On 12 September 1971, Kirill was elevated to the rank of archimandrite and was posted as a representative of the Russian Orthodox Church to the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Geneva. On 26 December 1974, he was appointed rector of the Leningrad Academy and Seminary. Since December 1975, he has been a member of the WCC Central Committee and Executive Committee.[5]
In 1971 he was appointed representative of the Moscow Patriarchate at the World Council of Churches
::::
We already know that you are a fool, but if you think that he would be given such positions without being thoroughly compromised by the KGB you are even more of a fool than usual.
This is what the Hypatian Codex states about Andrey Bogoliubsky’s sack of Kiev in 1169:
“Kyiv was taken on March 8 on the second week of Lent, and the whole city, including Podil, Gora and the monasteries, St. Sophia and the Church of the Tithes, was plundered for two days. And nobody spared anybody. Churches were burning, Christians were being either killed or bound up, wives were carried into captivity and separated from their husbands, babies wept looking at their mothers. The soldiers from Smolensk, Suzdal and Chernihiv seized a lot of wealth, stripped churches of icons, robes and bells, and took all the books, while the Cumans [Asiatic nomads; Bogoliubsky himself was the son of an Asiatic princess] set fire to the Mother of God Cave Monastery, but, thanks to the prayers of the Holy Virgin, God protected it from this woe. And there was inconsolable grief, moans, and never-ending tears in Kyiv.”
::::::
It’s all good from the perspective of Russian state-building, but why would Ukrainians celebrate this guy as their saint?
Possibly, but I have seen strong assertions from Russian pundits (some of whom are rather well versed in the subject) that the 1686 decision did not make any provisions for its reversals.
If that is accurate, then by the same logic, EP could decide to cancel ROC’s autocephaly tomorrow.
Anyhow, my point is that it would be really great if someone could provide the actual documents (preferably translated).
So far as internecine conflicts went, that was still pretty low-key by pre-19th century standards. (One century ago, William the Conqueror had killed about a quarter of northern England’s population suppressing a rebellion. The suppression of the Vendee during the French Revolution killed a third of its population.) And of course complicating the picture is the participation of Chernigov soldiers in the sacking of Kiev, as mentioned in your source.
Also it is pretty strange to deny Rus’ proto-nationalism, while asserting elements of Russian vs. Ukrainian proto-nationalism in the 12th century! 🙂
PS. Okay, I did some digging. The answer is probably here: https://www.runivers.ru/lib/book3030/
In particular, this tome covering the years 1620-1694 [pdf].
Relevant pages are 324-372 and surely contain the needed answers.
If Tsar Nicholas II met utu there would be no Pol Pot because there would be no Bolsheviks and no Hitler and we wouldn’t have this discussion. And actually you do not undesired what this discussion is about.
AFAIK there was no timeline given, Moscow was simply granted administrative privileges over the territory, with no “ownership,” which was retained by Constantinople. EP states that since it never officially relinquished ownership, it can take back administrative privileges at any time, and that it has chosen to do so now because Moscow has failed heal the schism in Ukraine on its own.
I haven’t seen an estimate of what % of Kiev’s population were murdered but the number was probably high given the scale of the destruction to the city (see my other post).
To be clear, Bogolubsky as a proto-Russian nationalist is as he can be interpreted in modern times. I doubt he himself was thinking in nationalistic terms.
Beats your pathetic trolling dope self. That Wiki description is by no means proof of some KGB individual.
As I already acknowledged, the ROC-MP faced restrictions and was compromised. Under the circumstances, there’s nothing negative in terms of how Kirill carried on. Did he get people unfairly jailed?
Because he had legit title to the Kiev throne, which was wrongly challenged by some people who essentially declared war on him. Meantime, he sought to maintain and expand Rus. There was no Ukraine back then. The faction opposing him wasn’t so noble. His grandfather and father had very strong and influential ties to Kiev.
So what if his mother was an Asiatic process. The way that’s mentioned in your cut and pasted source (which appears like it might’ve some editorialized spin compared to its original content) comes across as narrow minded svido bigotry.
By anti-Russian svidos, who very much downplay his direct ties to Kiev, that include his having the legit title to the Kiev throne.
Will dig into it when I have time.
Meanwhile the Greeks say this:
https://risu.org.ua/en/index/expert_thought/interview/72711/
It pertains to the map implying that southern Ukraine shouldn’t belong to the Kievan Church:
https://www.unz.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/kiev-metropolitanate-1686.jpg
(I’m adding the more tag because it’s a lot of text)
This is a very important point, which for some reason everyone forgets when talking about the act of 1686. After all, after the transfer of a part of the see of Kiev in the Russian territories to the temporary administration of the Moscow Patriarchs, in other territories of Ukraine, which were not part of the Moscow state, the Orthodox parishes and monasteries continued to remain under the omophorion of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. That is, the act of 1686 concerned the Ukrainian territories of the Hetmanate, which were temporarily part of the Russian state, but had no canonical influence on other Ukrainian territories, in particular, Transcarpathia, Bukovina, Podolia, Galicia, Volynia, Khan’s Ukraine in the south and Crimea. All these territories continued to remain under the canonical omophorion of the Ecumenical Patriarchate.
It is important to emphasize that Orthodox Ukrainians in Bukovina, Transcarpathia and Galicia for a long time remained under the auspices of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. These lands became part of the Moscow Patriarchate only in the middle of the twentieth century during the Soviet occupation of Western Ukraine, and their subjection by force to Moscow was never recognized by the Ecumenical Throne.
In Crimea there existed ancient metropolis of Gothia and Kapha until the end of the 17th century, under the Ecumenical Patriarchate. They were composed of Orthodox Greeks, Bulgarians, Ukrainians and other nationalities of Crimea and the Black Sea. They were liquidated by the Russian government in 1788 after the annexation of the Crimean Khanate. However, the Ecumenical Patriarchate has never recognized the legality of their subordination to the Russian Synod and the elimination of these historic Metropolises in Crimea.
The lands of “Khan Ukraine” and Orthodox parishes and monasteries within its borders were part of the Metropolis of Braila of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Its centre was originally Braila on the left bank of the Danube. From 1751 to 1789, the residence of Metropolitan of Braila became the city of Izmail (now in Odessa Oblast, Ukraine). The Metropolis of the Ecumenical Patriarchate belonged to the land of Dobrudja, Budjaka, Bender, and after the signing of the Buchach Peace Treaty of 1672 – the Diocese of Khotyn and all the Orthodox territories and parishes of Right-Bank and Left-Bank Ukraine under the protectorate of the Ottoman Empire, in particular, Khan Ukraine, Olekshy Sich and the Orthodox communities located on the mainland of the Crimean Khanate.
From 1751 to 1773 Metropolitan Daniel of Braila had his see in Izmail and in ecclesiastical documents he signed as “Daniel, by the mercy of God, Metropolitan of Parivlavia, Tomarovsky, Khotyn, the entire coast of the Danube, Dnieper and Dniester, and of all Khan Ukraine.” The title was also preserved by the successors of Daniel: Metropolitans Joachim (1773-1780) and Cyril (1780-1792). This is already 100 years after the 1686 act.
As we see, all these facts testify that the act of 1686 concerned only the Left-bank part of Ukraine, which was then under the authority of Moscow and did not actually apply to other Ukrainian territories.
There is a possibility that you as a Hungarian do not understand Czechs. Their cultural ethos is different. It is possible that because of their ethos they have access to a deeper or at least different wisdom that you just like your Polish brothers are cut off from. Subconsciously Czechs understand some things can’t be achieved against the big waves that operate in the history. So instead of fighting them they surf them. It is even possible they understand the mechanism of big wave that you do not have clue about which help them to pick the better waves. Anyway, we know it worked fine for them.
It is possible that Heydrich miscalculated and literally did the overkill. But what do you expect from a ‘Nazi’, right? Still he was one of the smarter ones. Instead of 400 or so executed 40 could have been enough to eliminate the London based resistance which was necessary. And Czechs in their majority understood it to the point of approval. Their London based government and a handful of volunteers fighting in RAF and Tobruk was a very small bet against the house just in case. Czechs were playing the waiting game and in the meantime doing the best out of the circumstances for themselves. Their calculations turned out to be correct. While those who can’t wait and enter the game thinking that they are the lead actors who can influence the outcome of the game (vide Poles or Hungarians) often end up playing the roles of clowns and losers.
Hungarians in 1849 could not know that they were sealing the fate of Hungary in Trianon. Czechs perhaps were slightly envious of Hungarians’ increased status in Austrian Empire that’s why they were often derisive of Hungarians but also they knew their approach was better which was the domination of industry and administration in the Empire. Czechs seemingly did nothing for their independence after WWI yet they ended up with more territory they wanted unlike Hungary that was stripped down to the bare bones. They surfed the right wave while Hungarians were fooled in to believing they could change the currents in the ocean.
Note: I think I will leave the term Nazi for the cartoon characters you see inHollywood and in the history books you in particular have read too many while the real ‘Nazis’ I will write as ‘Nazis’ in the quotation marks.
seeing as AnonFromTN is a serious intellectual,nearly always right ,and in your nutjob behaviour is probably the closest thing to a friend a lowlife tramp as you has…that is a braindead comment.
Myth incorporated into lie, incorporated into myth again
“Ukraine” was the most disproportionately highly industrialised part of the Soviet Union you dumb prick. From the 1940’s to the 1990, this was not in any dispute. As such , cause and effect you prick.
Apart from the Golodomor being one American yellow press fake ( in which 90% of all the areas effected have pro-Russion or certainly more russophile allegiances, and the most virulent complainers about the Golodomor are a bunch of fantasist fucktards from areas that had nothing to do with Ukraine at the time)
The fake famine of course happened in the midst of the USA recognizing the USSR as a legal state , and having it’s own severe problems from the effects of the Great Depression
Somewhere in Bengal?
Gvosdev article follow-up
Re: https://nationalinterest.org/feature/heres-whats-really-going-orthodox-church-ukraine-and-russia-33922
Excerpt –
A point that concerns some of what’s said and not said in the above linked article. For example, it’s not noted that Filaret Denisenko’s drive for a completely separate Ukrainian Orthodox Church from the Moscow Patriarchate, came only after he didn’t get a promotion within the Moscow Patriarchate. Up to that point, he was a firm believer in the Moscow Patriarchate having ties with the Orthodox Church in Ukraine, and Orthodox Churches from some other parts of the former USSR.
Excerpt –
Bogolyubsky’s grandfather was a grand prince of Kiev. On two different occasions, his father had that very same title, during a period when Kiev went thru numerous grand princes. In short, Bogolyubsky had a claim to the Kiev throne. The aforementioned sack of Kiev by Bogolyubsky’s forces wasn’t so much of a foreign attack – but more along the lines of Sherman’s razing of Atlanta. Bogolyubsky had the desire to simultaneously build and expand Rus, thereby explaining his presence in Suzdal, while feeling akin to Kiev.
The initial Polish occupation of much of modern day Ukrainian territory, played a role in whatever differing characteristics developed, with Orthodox Christian identity within what had comprised Rus. Upon Russia’s victory over Poland and the former’s gathering of Rus territory (which Poland occupied), there was no wide scale opposition by the ancestors of modern day Ukrainians, with being under the same Orthodox Church as Russia.
For the Ukrainian nationalist advocacy being pursued by Poroshenko, the presence of a Ukrainian Orthodox Church that’s loosely affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, is a rejection of the agenda to separate Ukraine from Russia as much as possible.
Regarding that view is this piece concerning attitudes in Ukraine about Russia:
https://insomniacresurrected.com/2018/10/21/ukrainian-opinion-of-russia-improves-and-it-is-bad-apparently/
Excerpt –
A recent RFE/RL article says that most of Ukraine’s Orthodox Christian faithful follow the Orthodox Church with loose ties to the Moscow Patriarchate.
https://www.rferl.org/a/long-russia-s-patriarch-kirill-blames-istanbul-orthodox-church-for-schism-/29553467.html
Whatever the case is, a noticeable number in that area follow that church. Can imagine the outcry in some circles if an effort was made to eliminate the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church on the basis of having an imperial legacy with Poland that involved the suppression of the Orthodox Church.
Splendidly excellent reply to the idiotic Tom Rogan Washington Examiner article:
http://theduran.com/how-other-jurisdictions-view-constantinoples-actions-in-ukraine/
A more detailed explanation of the Ecumenical Patirarch’s decision to grant autocephaly to the Ukrainian church is presented here:
https://risu.org.ua/en/index/expert_thought/interview/72711/
Not only that, he is also an imbecile.
Comments on the UOC situation included:
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/10/23/naming-top-anti-russian-advocates.html
With the UOC-KP and the UAOC already walking in lockstep together in the acceptance of autocephaly, it’s only a matter of time before more and more parts of the UOC-MP also join forces with their brothers into one united autocephalous UOC. Already 10 bishops of the UOC-MP signed the historic document requesting the EP’s help in establishing such a church in Ukraine. More bishops and certainly more priests from that branch of Ukrainian Orthodoxy with join now and in the future in the creation of this local Ukrainian church. Butthurting non-Christians like Mike Averko need to keep their distance from things that don’t concern them.
Your sorry ass self has no idea of my religious affiliation, which I view as being none of your business.
You only make it an issue with me on account of your not liking what I’ve to say. On the other hand, you’d readily accept a non-Christian person’s view on the subject if it conformed with yours.
I know that the established UOC is under a lot of pressure. It has so far held well thru this. The recent poll I posted on this thread concerning Ukrainian attitudes towards Russia (as well as an RFE/RL piece), indicate that your preference is by no means unanimous.
Another devout Orthodox Christian blessing us with his views…still waiting for Brother Nathaniel to bless us with his views on the Ukrainian church issue – I suspect they’re much the same as yours, Mickey – but his should carry more weight that yours do! 🙂
Us as in yourself. FYI, Brother Nathaniel speaks for himself, as opposed to speaking on behalf of any of the OCs.
The nefarious jean-stealer cult claims another victim.
I never implied that Brother Nathaniel spoke for anybody else but himself. It’s strange though, for all of his myopic hero worship of Putler (similar to your own) he hasn’t come out raving in opposition to the ‘Nazi’ junta in Kyiv for supporting the separation of the Ukrainian church away from Moscow into one of its own? I’m guessing that his branch of Orthodoxy isn’t ‘canonical’ either? Or perhaps its Greek affiliated? You have to admit that his silence about the goings on in Ukraine is strange…