ВЕРНОСТЬ - FIDELITY № 55 - 2006
June/Июнь 5
The Editorial Board is glad to inform our Readers that this issue of “FIDELITY” has articles in English, and Russian Languages.
С удовлетворением сообщаем, что в этом номере журнала “ВЕРНОСТЬ” помещены статьи на английском и русском языках.
CONTENTS - ОГЛАВЛЕНИЕ
1. "LET US WITH ONE MIND CONFESS…” – IS IT REALLY SO?" Dr. E.A. Baranova
2. "БЛЮДЕЧКО ГОТОВО, НО ОНО РАСПЛЕСКАЕТСЯ". Николай Казанцев
3. "THE END OF HISTORY”: A CRITIQUE OF LIBERAL DEMOCRACY" . Dr. Vladimir Moss
4. "РЕШЕНИЯ ВСЕЗАРУБЕЖНОГО СОБОРА НЕДЕЙСТВИТЕЛЬНЫ". Валентин В. Щегловский
5. Нам пишут. Letters to the Editor.
* * *
As the so-called “All-Diaspora Sobor” drew near (comprising only the Lavra-ite part of the Church Abroad), excitement on the part of “unia” change agents was clearly evident. Once the Sobor began, these “unia” proponents gleefully expressed their desire for union, excitedly running about like a young girl invited to her first ball. They had no doubts of their impending victory over the “white-guard and schismatic” church, fugitives and traitors of the homeland.
Within a short time, the neo-communist press was filled with articles, which suggested the desirability of a “unia” between the “two parts of the Russian church” and of the resulting political consequences. Concerning the kind of consequences that will be in store for all of the Autocephalous Orthodox Churches and for the faithful in the homeland, the proponents of the “unia” had nothing to say and, as it appears, this was of no concern to them. It would have been erroneous to expect the MP to stand in defense of Holy Orthodoxy. The rights of the faithful and assaults against the Orthodox churches are of no concern to the Patriarchy. For example, recently the administration of the city of Khabarovsk, Siberia, replaced the cross above the church of the Blessed Innocent of Irkutsk, which was positioned on a half-moon. Arrows were added to the two half-moon edges making the cross appear as an anchor, while the MP showed no intent to protest. Nor will the MP protest if there will be any need to defend the Russian churches abroad. The MP and the neo-communists are merely interested in the opportunity to send their agents and agitators to the parishes annexed to the Patriarchy. They are not, in the end, interested in the mission of Orthodoxy and the fulfillment of spiritual needs of the faithful.
The editorial board of “Fidelity” is grateful to Dr. Elena Andreyevna Baranova for her kind consent to write an analysis of the neo-communist assault on the free part of the Russian Church.
* * *
LET US WITH ONE MIND CONFESS…” – IS IT REALLY SO?
Dr. E.A. Baranova
In the period preceding the Fourth All-Emigration Council, on March 24, 2006, there appeared on the official ROCOR site the following declaration in the English and Russian languages – “An information site has been opened devoted to the process of reconciliation of the Russian Church Abroad and the Moscow Patriarchate” with the much-promising title, ‘Let us with one mind confess’. We are given to understand that this initiative was blessed by the clerical leadership of ROCOR. From its external appearance the site looks like an identical twin of the internet-journal of the Meeting of the Lord monastery – pravoslavie.ru, which is published under the direction of Archimandrite Tikhon Shevkunov, one of the main initiators of the union of the MP with ROCOR. In their introduction to the site, the editors inform us that the aim of this enterprise is “coverage of the dialogue” between the MP and ROCOR and to be a forum for the publication of various points of view “belonging not only to supporters of the process of reconciliation, but also those who in one way or another are critical of it” and which represent ‘various opinions’ on this question.
However, on examining the site, it became clear that instead of “a variety of opinions” precisely the opposite is the case, that is, a uniformity in the articles and opinions supported by official interviews with Patriarch Alexis and various representatives of the MP, active defenders, like Metropolitan Sergius, of the participation of the MP in the ecumenical movement, as well, of course, as supporters of the union with ROCOR. Instead of the promised “coverage of the dialogue”, the site published articles berating all those who have doubts about or disagree with the union as retrogrades who live only in the past, prodigal sons of Russia, servants of western intelligence services, etc. Naturally, Patriarch Alexis and the supporters of union, together with the present leadership of ROCOR, are presented as far-sighted, wise, progressive, liberal actors, who are moving in step with the times and are forward-looking patriots of the RF (Russian Federation).
The appearance of this “information site” disturbed the Russian flock of ROCOR, and protests flew to the Synod concerning the primitive-propagandist content of the site and the complete absence of epistles, articles and interviews of church-servers, public activists and laymen having their own opinion and worthy of being heard. Although the ROCOR Synod officially advertised this site as a place for discussions and exchanges of opinions, the editors from the Meeting monastery, being its true owners, decided otherwise and presented space only to those who stood for the “union”.
After a long silence the editors of the site replied to the protests in the following way: “… We have been reproached because on the site devoted to the mutual relations with the Russian Church Abroad, the opposite opinions have not been presented… We understand the dissatisfaction of our readers, but, frankly speaking, we did not at first want to publish such materials for at least two reasons. The first… is that many of these articles suffer from their, to put it mildly, weak argumentation in demonstrating their theses, and also at times from evident unscrupulousness in their exposition of the facts of history, which makes discussion with such authors of little interest. The second reason consists in the fact that there exist several well-known sites whose professional speciality is negative information about the ROC.”
Thus the editors praised themselves and again abused those who think differently.
However, insofar as the Sobor had not yet taken place, one of the editors of the site “Let us with one mind confess” decided nevertheless not to go too far and not to show their true face completely. As a result, a selection of several interviews and epistles was published: for example, of Bishops Gabriel, Daniel, Agathangel, Eutyches, Protopriest Valery Lukyanov, Protodeacon Ivanov-Trinadtsaty. However, against these few publications of our respected church servers, the editors of “Let us with one mind confess” immediately let fly a noisy volley of criticism from various kinds of “historians”, “professors” and even a deputy of the State Duma. Probably using their old Soviet experience, the editors decided to “beat up” their opponents from abroad by the quantity of utterances from the supporters of the union and published three or four angrily reproachful articles for every oppositional one.
And so it will be appropriate to gain a closer acquaintance with the materials that have appeared in this join (ROCOR and MP) site and learn who these reproachful authors from the MP are.
One of the articles published on the “Let us with one mind confess” site entitled “When will the real day come?” belongs to the pen of N.A. Narochnitskaya, a deputy of the State Duma (the “Rodina” fraction), a historian and specialist in international relations, law and world economics. This article appeared for the first time on the site of the “Rodina” fraction on April 28 of this year and was immediately taken up by a series of newspapers in Russia, and was then published on the site “Let us with one mind confess”. A significantly shortened and ‘purified’ translation of the article also appeared in the English-speaking press and on the internet. However, all the sharp accusations and odious attacks against the Russian emigration were prudently removed from the translation variant. This decision was probably elicited by the fact that in the west there exist laws against slander and the blackening of people’s reputations, and Mrs. Narochnitskaya decided not to rise a public scandal.
Deputy Narochnitskaya writes as a politician – in a twisted, not always very literate way, and loves to use verbal acrobatics such as: “the okhlos, the mob, remaining in hedonistic lukewarmness and illusions of people power”, or “the destiny of the self-confident demos and its supposed kratia”. She knows the history of the Church, and especially ROCOR, only by hearsay, but unashamedly takes it upon herself to judge that which she does not know. If we throw out the verbal shell in the form of “okhlos” and “demos”, then the essence of this article, published on a site approved by the clerical leadership of ROCOR, comes down to the following:
1. The reunion with the MP is an historical opportunity, and the [Russians] abroad, those prodigal sons of the Homeland, have finally turned out to be “worthy of this kindness” from the MP, and, consequently, must unite immediately, while there is time.
2. Sergianism is a positive phenomenon and there is nothing sinful or shameful in it. After all, “the service of, and obedience to, the pagan Roman empire not only for fear, but also for conscience, was [part of] the ethics of the first Christians” and “it is vain to look for people among the first Christians who would have hurled an anathema on that state which crucified them and threw them into cages for the lions.” And in general sergianism is nothing by comparison with the crimes of ROCOR, to which one could “present an account of its sins and falls, disturbances and catastrophic political blindness! But we are ready not to reproach you for cooperating with Hitler and his pagan doctrine of the innate inequality of people and nations…”
3. The opponents of union are the enemy West and its special services, which “have exerted unseen pressure on the Russian Orthodox Abroad”. The servers and flock of ROCOR fear the anti-Orthodox world and are under the control of “the political state of affairs”.
If we translate into Russian the last point, Deputy Narochnitskaya is accusing ROCOR of fawning upon the western intelligence services and being a lackey of the western governments, that is, it is also sergianist, only in a western way.
Besides this article, Deputy Narochnitskaya has also recently given a series of interviews in which she has time and again authoritatively explained the aims of union. Thus on May 13, 2006, in an interview to the Novosti agency, she declared that “the participation of the ROC in the work of the World Council of Churches (WCC) is not an obstacle to the union of the two parts of the one Russian Church”, because “the question of the work of the WCC is a question of the Church’s external politics, but in no way a question of her teaching of the faith”. The deputy simply shrugged off the question on sergianism and the Church’s cooperation with the God-fighting government with the phrase: “This is a biased attitude. How is it possible to live in a state without having any relations with it?”
Who is this Mrs. Narochnitskaya? What is the “Rodina” fraction? Why has a politician and specialist in international affairs and economics taken such an active part in the process of ecclesiastical union?
According to the official data on the biography of Deputy Narochnitskaya, she is a typical representative of the highest level of the Soviet nomenklatura. She was born in Moscow, studied there and graduated from the Moscow State Institute for International Relations (MSIIR). In the Soviet Union MSIIR was considered a super-elite academic institution, under the administration of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (in contrast to all the other higher education institutions in the system of education). Entrance into the MSIIR was possible for the children of party leaders of the USSR and the union republics, of senior diplomats, of worthy chekists and the leaders of foreign communist parties. This Institute was considered the forge of cadres for the higher party leadership of the USSR and the best academic institution in the country for future diplomats and specialists in regional studies of the KGB. Among those who graduated from MSIIR were the sons of Mikoyan, Ordzhonikidze, the present president of Azerbaijan Aliev, the former minister of foreign affairs Kozyrev, the former first secretary of the communist party, and then president, of Kirgizia Akaev, the oligarch Potanin, the present minister of foreign affairs Lavrov and other representatives of the authorities like them.
It is an interesting fact that on graduating from MSIIR in 1982, the young alumnus Narochnitskaya immediately received an appointment abroad, in the West, and not in some Bezi-Zambezi, nor even in civilized Scandinavia, but immediately in the lair of world capitalism, the USA, in the city of New York, as the representative of the USSR in the United Nations Secretariat. We must suppose that Mrs. Narochnitskaya was already in excellent favour with the party and was considered a completely reliable, well-grounded cadre. As is well known, honoured Soviet diplomats were checked for decades before being sent to the USA, and especially to such a responsible post.
Having worked for seven years in the UN, in 1989 Mrs. Narochnitskaya returned to the USSR to continue her activity in the sphere of international relations. Soon there began to appear from under her pen publications on questions of geopolitics and economics. After perestroika, Mrs. Narochnitskaya moved into the political sphere and at the present time is a deputy in the State Duma from the “Rodina” party.
And what is “Rodina”? It is a fraction that split off from the old communist party and acquired a certain populist colouring. The role of Orthodoxy, according to “Rodina”’s interpretation, can be reduced to complete support for the state and the strengthening of the international position of Russia, that is, Orthodoxy and the Church are needed in order to strengthen the neo-communist ideology. Among political commentators, Narochnitskaya is considered to be an ideologist of the “Rodina” fraction, and also an apologist of the restoration of the glory and might of the Soviet Union. Like Putin, Narochnitskaya proudly points out that to this day she has kept her [communist] party card.
In 2005 Deputy Narochnitskaya published a book timed to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. Its aim was to present the Yalta agreement and the role of Stalin in a positive light, to justify the occupation of Eastern Europe and to rehabilitate the politics of the Soviet Union in the post-war period. That is, Deputy Narochnitskaya was speaking as a defender of the neo-stalinist and neo-communist interpretation of history. As an example of her world-view, let us cite some of her pronouncements:
· Stalin was a great leader, the defender of the oppressed, the continuer of the work of the Russian tsars.
· There was no occupation of Eastern Europe, all the actions of the Soviet government were lawful and corresponded to the norms of international law.
· “All insults directed even at the symbols of the USSR must be cut off”, that is, it is wrong to remove or act irreverently towards the hammer and sickle, to red stars, the mausoleum of Lenin and the names of streets in honour of regicides, chekists and other revolutionaries.
· The Soviet Union fought against the Fascists for the preservation of all the peoples of the world.
· “Paradoxical as it may seem, that part of the Russian emigration which calls itself white and seethes with disdain for Soviet power is also struggling to devalue the Great Victory and justify Vlasovschina. The soldiers of that army [General Vlasov’s anti-Soviet Army of Russian Liberation] were banal deserters, … while General Vlasov is subject to the judgement of history. In the memory of generations he will forever remain the traitor who helped the enemy to torture and kill the Mother-Homeland.” (The newspaper Trud, May 19, 2005).
In an interview she gave to the news agency RIA on May 13 of this year, Narochnitskaya, as a deputy of the State Duma, categorically declared that “the participation of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) in the work of the World Council of Churches (WCC) is no hindrance to union”, since “the question of the work of the WCC is a question of the external politics of the Church, but in no way a question of the teaching of the faith”. In reply to the question of the significance of the sergianism of the MP and its cooperation with the godless authorities on the spiritual level, Narochnitskaya expressed a social point of view, saying: “How is it possible to live in a state without having any relations with it?” A few days later, on May 16, one more interview of Narochnitskaya was published, this time together with Archimandrite Tikhon Shevkunov, in which they both commented on the results of the Fourth All-Emigration Council of ROCOR for Radio “Lighthouse”. The similarity of these pronouncements leaves no room to doubt that they are people who belong to one circle and have the same world-view.
Like a red thread running through [their pronouncements] are their declarations that “the union of ROCOR and the MP is important for the state”, while “the merging of ROCOR with the MP will strengthen the international position of Russia” and will help “the consolidation of the national community around the state”. That is, the main aims of the union are the political ambitions of the government. Archimandrite Shevkunov said about the divisions of the 20th century that “the hierarchs of ROCOR separated from the MP for political reasons”, creating a schism. The respected archimandrite puts on the same level the tragedy of the killing of the tsar and of the civil war: “There was a civil war, there were whites and reds, there was a row” – that’s all. In general, one can make many claims against ROCOR – they in their time ran away, they abandoned their flock and their Church. ROCOR is like the prodigal son, who ran away, squandered all his goods, became poor and now is returning home, into the bosom of the MP.
As they say, there’s no need for commentary. Oh, and practically nothing was said about the spiritual aspects of the question.
Of course, not all the articles on the site “Let us with one mind confess” merit such an analysis. However, the speeches of Deputy Narochnitskaya quite accurately reflect the content of the majority of the articles on the site and formulate the basic categories of accusations hurled by the MP at ROCOR. Besides, Narochnitskaya is a kind of mouthpiece of the ruling circles, and by using her powerful nomenklatura connections she is able to give a wide currency to the views of the neo-stalinists with their nostalgia for the Stalinist epoch and their use of the Church and Orthodoxy for political ends. But we in the West, as a rule, not knowing the true essence of many supporters of union, often continue naively to believe the beautiful words about the Mother-Church and that believers in Russian are thirsting for union with ROCOR.
I will stop briefly on one more author who has written numerous articles on ROCOR – Protopriest George Mitrophanov, a theological academy professor, an ecclesiastical historian and an active participant in the union process, yet another defender of Metropolitan Sergius, who has been many times to the USA.
Four articles of Protopriest Mitrophanov have been published on the site “Let us with one mind confess”. In them he slanders those who think differently from him in a completely Soviet manner, accusing them of “propaganda”, “tendentiousness”, “incompetence” and of “schism”. In Protopriest Mitrophanov lies and historical truth are cleverly mixed in a vinaigrette in which St. John of Shanghai and Metropolitans Anthony, Anastasy and Philaret are presented as supporters of union with the MP, while Metropolitan Anthony is especially singled out as a fan of Metropolitan Sergius Stragorodsky. However, Protopriest Mitrophanov cunningly declines from giving references and cites no proofs of his declarations. We can see one example of the evident mendacity of his writings in the article entitled “The experiment of the existence of the Russian Church outside Russia has come to an end”, in which Professor Mitrophanov labels those who think differently from him as follows: “… the opponents of union at the Sobor (are) not abroaders in the full sense, that is, descendants of the first and second waves of the Russian emigration, who were born in the Church Abroad and constituted the overwhelming majority of her clergy and laity. The main opponents will be those who went over to ROCOR from the Moscow Patriarchate… some of them… preferred to depart into the schismatic group ROCOR (V), which is led by Metropolitan Vitaly, the former president of the Synod of the Church Abroad, and now banned by it from serving”. Lies, lies, and again lies. Protopriest Mitrophanov has been often enough in the ROCOR Synod and cannot not know that nobody has banned Metropolitan Vitaly from serving. Moreover, among the opponents of union there are enough right-thinking abroaders from the first and second waves of emigration, as is witnessed by many articles and communications in the press in the West.
Narochnitskaya and Protopriest Mitrophanov are presented to the readers of the site as “historians”. However, the onesidedness of their evaluations, their lack of objectivity and false affirmations, which go right against well-known facts, put their professional competence as scientist-historians in doubt. What can such “professors” and “historians” teach their students? We recommend abroaders who continue naively to believe that the MP will value their experience of keeping Orthodoxy unharmed and of faithfulness to the Church, to direct their attention to the publications of the not unknown Protopriest Alexander Shargunov, yet another passionate defender of Metropolitan Sergius and the ecumenism of the MP. Let us present the word to Protopriest Shargunov from the article “Union in Oneness…”, in which he writes: “In spite of ROCOR’s vaunted uncompromising Orthodoxy, it is doubtful that she can teach the Moscow Patriarchate resistance to corruption and Satanism… The members of ROCOR have experience of coexisting with these phenomena (Satanism, sodomy, vice, Masonry, Zionism, the cult of money, individualism) in their own state… In the USA, for example, Protestant organizations fight against corruption and sodomy. But there is no trace of any similar activity in ROCOR that is in any way noticeable. It would be strange to reject cooperation with Protestants as a kind of ecumenism.” Further on, Protopriest Shargunov writes that the sins of the West, and correspondingly of ROCOR, “are not on the same level as sergianism: we want to be Orthodox and at the same time recognize the Soviet Union as our homeland, the joys and successes of which are our joys and successes, and its failures are failures”. For Protopriest Shargunov this is not only a desirable, but also necessary condition of the Church. In spite of “the sin of coexistence”, the union of ROCOR is nevertheless desirable, since she will help the MP in her struggle with world evil – but what world evil exactly [he is talking about] is not quite clear.
When he accuses ROCOR of coexisting with Satanism, Zionism, Masonry, sodomy, vice, corruption of minors, etc., Protopriest Shargunov is probably suffering from memory-loss or does not want to see that for many years now Russia has stood in one of the first places in the world for the quantity of suicides, and is the world leader in the production of child pornography, the exploitation of children in this area and in the trade in living human beings. Incidentally, these revolting phenomena were already present long before the fall of the Soviet Union, and it is simply frivolous to complain about the corrupting influence of the West.
This is how the Russian authorities support the union of ROCOR and the MP! Do we have “oneness of mind”?
(to be continued)
Cambridge, Massachusetts, May, 2006.
* * *
БЛЮДЕЧКО ГОТОВО, НО ОНО РАСПЛЕСКАЕТСЯ
НИКОЛАЙ КАЗАНЦЕВ, Член Правления Общества Митрполита Антония
На вопрос, кто победил на Всезарубежном Соборе, ответ весьма ясен и давно предвиден: те кто его оргнизовали и манипулировали.
Им правда не удалась «программа максимум», задуманный дерзкий прорыв: провозгласить унию с МП уже там, в Сан Франциско. Однако после обоих Соборов – Всезарубежного и Архиерейского - сняты все формальные препятствия для ее достижения: подавляющее большинство делегатов проголосовало за «уврачевание ран» и объявило, что подчинится воли архиереев, прекрасно сознавая, что среди них почти нет противников унии. Собор же предоставил Синоду, - то-есть еще более узкому кругу соглашателей, - выбрать момент принятия «Акта о каноническом общении».
На самом Всезарубежном Соборе, сей «Акт» явно бы не прошел: ведь даже Резолюцию пришлось менять трижды, из-за давления части делегатов. Теперь же он будет принят в бюрократическом порядке, келейно, без того неудобства, которое собой представляло присутствие просочившихся на Собор несколько десятков делегатов несогласных с немедленной унией.
Чем же объяснить, что люди убежденно выступавшие против немедленной сдачи позиций, затем проголосовали за капитулянтскую, - хотя и завуалированную обтекаемыми формулировками, - «Резолюцию»?
Во-первых, здесь не обошлось без нечестных приемов. Вместо тайного голосования, делегатов заставляли подымать руки, на виду у всех, по советскому образцу. Что - принимая во внимание тот страх, которым в большой степени обуяно наше духовенство, - несомненно могло повлиять на результат. Кроме того, подсчитать на глаз поднятые или неподнятые руки, когда в помещении находится почти полторы сотни людей, задача не из простых. Следовательно, весьма возможно, что против всех параграфов «Резолюции» высказалось все-таки более тех шести человек, о которых официально сообщалось.
Но самая главная причина в другом. Видя, что «Акт» им не протолкнуть, весьма искусным маневром организаторы расслабили «оппозиционеров», внушив им, что они мол победили. Для этого они использовали так называемую «группу Магеровского», известную тем, что она играет одновременно двойную роль: и оппозиционеров и лоялистов. На сайте Магеровского одна за другой стали появляться победные реляции, которые из-за царившего информационного голода мгновенно воспроизводились всеми церковными или около-церковными сайтами, в частности – влиятельным «Порталем Кредо-Ру».
Ложному чувству некой достигнутой победы среди оппозиционеров способствовал и доклад против экуменизма, прочитанный идеологом группы Магеровского, служащим Ньюиоркского Синода о. Виктором Добровым.
В своей статье «Ни волки не сыты, ни овцы не целы» Кирилл Крастелев пишет: «Был ли доклад о. Виктора Доброва случайностью, или запланированным ходом? Все доклады заранее представлялись на одобрение в Синод. По одним данным, этот доклад был задуман в качестве повода для внесения в Резолюцию параграфа об экуменизме, позволяющего Синоду тянуть время. По другим, о. Виктор представил в Синод один доклад, но прочел другой».
Увы, эта последняя возможность исключается всеми опрошенными мною делегатами. Как только любой оппозиционер, - будь то протопресвитер Валерий Лукьянов, будь то начальник Российского Имперского Союза-Ордена Г. А. Федоров, - начинал говорить, его грубо обрывали (как было и на пастырском совещании в Наяке). Совершенно немыслимо, чтобы о. Виктор Добров мог прочитать свой пространный доклад без апробирования организаторов. Вообще-то, его посадили возле микрофона и предоставили возможность выступать столько раз, сколько ему заблагорассудится, - привилегия, которой на Соборе пользовались лишь союзники соглашателей.
Необходимо помнить также, что сей синодальный клирик стоит у истоков раскола в Обществе Митрополита Антония, нанесшего огромный удар движению сопротивления унии: это именно он составил пресловутое «Послание верных чад», в котором призывалось к самороспуску Зарубежной Церкви, взятое затем на вооружение группой Магеровского.
Разумеется, тот факт, что принятие евхаристического общения с МП отложено на короткий срок (вероятнее всего – на три-четыре месяца – это отнюдь не та 5-летняя отсрочка, на которую надеялись иные делегаты Собора) никакой победой оппозиции и отдаленно не является. Хотя понятно чувство облегчения верующих: можно будет еще некоторое количество раз пойти на литургию, до того как за ней начнут поминать сексота КГБ «Дроздова».
Как ни странно, триумфализм группы Магеровского ввел в заблуждение даже столь высокоумного обозревателя как игумен Григорий Лурье (РПАЦ), написавшего на «Портале-Кредо. Ру», совершеннейшую чушь: «Оппозиция смогла нанести уже на Соборе ответный удар «объединителям» - а именно, создать собственную структуру».
Ничего подобного, конечно, и в помине не произошло. Однако следует признать один факт, который в будущем, уже после оформления унии, сможет сыграть важную роль в становлении «маленькой, но кристалльно чистой», Зарубежной Цекркви. В Сан Франциско, своя своих познаша. Каждый противник немедленного соединения услышал и оценил всех других не принимающих оного и мог составить себе идею: на кого есть шансы положиться.
Например, на таких как буэноссайресский митрофорный протоиерей Владимир Шленев, присутствовавший там на правах делегата Третьего Собора, бесстрашно обличивший теперешнюю власть РФ как безбожную.
Или на таких как рочестерский настоятель, протоиерей Григорий Науменко, успевший бросить такой упрек: «Вы говорите, что нам надо присоединяться к МП из любви к ним. А почему вы не проявляете никакой любви к несогласным с вашим решением, презрительно называете их «южными баптистами», недалекими людьми, всячески третируете их, избегаете даже с ними здороваться?». Многие прихожане о. Григория – стойкие последователи Св. Новомученика Митрополита Иосифа Петроградского. Они намерены уйти из РПЦЗ(Л), как только уния будет формально принята.
Все эти выступления, хоть и скомканные нахальными цензурными окриками: «Четыре минуты; следующий!», были тщательно скрыты от паствы и прессы протоиереем Виктором Потаповым, ответственным за немедленное опубликование протоколов.
Как был скрыт от паствы и прессы протест монахов Св. Троицкого монастыря в Джорданвилля, иные из которых уже заявили о своем намерении покинуть обитель.
Обманом и подвохом были пропитаны и документы последовавшего Архиерейского Собора. Нас, противников унии, повергло в уныние увидеть подписи всех архиереев под посланием, в котором говорится о необходимости установления евхаристического общения. Однако теперь выясняется, что тяжело больной Владыка Даниил покинул Сан Франциско до окончания Собора и даже не видел этого текста, - не то что его подписал! Нечто похожее видимо произошло и с епископом Агафангелом Одесским, - на Всезарубежном Соборе не раз выступавшим против унии, - который 23 мая заявил: «Мне не совсем понятно, откуда исходит утверждение, что «Акт о каноническом общении" был в принципиальном плане принят и одобрен". Также не соответствует действительности сообщение, что "окончательное утверждение текста Акта, как и детали проведения его торжественного подписания, поручается Архиерейскому Синоду". Вопрос об "окончательном утверждении Акта Архиерейским Синодом" действительно поднимался (без упоминания "деталей проведения его торжественного подписания" — это словосочетание я впервые прочел на Интернете), но из-за наличия разных мнений был отложен без окончательного решения Собора. Голосование по этому вопросу также не проводилось. Поэтому текст сообщения о завершении Архиерейского Собора РПЦЗ от 19 мая 2006 года, размещенный на официальном сайте нашего Синода, вызывает, по меньшей мере, недоумение».
Загадочным остается поведение епископа Гавриила (Чемодакова). Как известно, он порою высказывается против унии с МП, но продолжает верно служить своему начальству, оную унию проводящему. На этот раз, в узком кругу близких людей в частном доме в Сан Франциско он категорически заявил, что не будет поминать Алексия Второго: «Пойду работать в Tower Records (крупный магазин по продаже музыкальных дисков) и буду совершать богослужения на стороне».
Подводя итоги можно сказать: объединение верхушки РПЦЗ(Л) с МП теперь ближе, чем никогда. Но митрополит Лавр и его сообщники не смогут преподнести Путину на блюдечке всю Зарубежную Церковь. Блюдечко по дороге неминуемо расплескается.
Наша Страна № 2796
* * *
“THE END OF HISTORY”: A CRITIQUE OF LIBERAL DEMOCRACY
Dr. Vladimir Moss *)
Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation,
and every city or house divided against itself will not stand.
Matthew 12.25.
Introduction
By 1789, and especially after the first phase of the French revolution reduced the power of the French king to that of a constitutional monarch, liberalism was the most popular political theory among the educated classes of Europe. Liberalism in politics seemed the natural counterpart of reason and enlightenment in philosophy, morals and theology as a whole.
The popularity of liberalism has remained strong to the present day. In spite of the shocks of the French revolution and other national revolutions in the nineteenth century, and the still greater shocks of the Russian revolution and the other communist revolutions in the twentieth, liberalism today appears stronger than ever. But how sound are its foundations in actual fact?
Hieromonk Seraphim (Rose), explained both the positive teaching of Orthodoxy on political authority and why, for the Orthodox, liberalism rests on shaky foundations: “In the Christian order, politics… was founded upon absolute truth… The principal providential form of government took in union with Christian Truth was the Orthodox Christian Empire, wherein sovereignty was vested in a Monarch, and authority proceeded from him downwards through a hierarchical social structure… On the other hand… a politics that rejects Christian Truth must acknowledge ‘the people’ as sovereign and understand authority as proceeding from below upwards, in a formally ‘egalitarian’ society. It is clear that one is the perfect inversion of the other; for they are opposed in their conceptions both of the source and of the end of government. Orthodox Christian Monarchy is government divinely established, and directed, ultimately, to the other world, government with the teaching of Christian Truth and the salvation of souls as its profoundest purpose; Nihilist rule - whose most fitting name… is Anarchy – is government established by men, and directed solely to this world, government which has no higher aim that earthly happiness.
“The Liberal view of government, as one might suspect, is an attempt at compromise between these two irreconcilable ideas. In the 19th century this compromise took the form of ‘constitutional monarchies’, an attempt – again – to wed an old form to a new content; today the chief representatives of the Liberal idea are the ‘republics’ and ‘democracies’ of Western Europe and America, most of which preserve a rather precarious balance between the forces of authority and Revolution, while, while professing to believe in both.
“It is of course impossible to believe in both with equal sincerity and fervor, and in fact no one has ever done so. Constitutional monarchs like Louis Philippe thought to do so by professing to rule ‘by the Grace of God and the will of the people’ – a formula whose two terms annul each other, a fact as evident to the Anarchist [Bakunin] as to the Monarchist.
“Now a government is secure insofar as it has God for its foundation and His Will for its guide; but this, surely, is not a description of Liberal government. It is, in the Liberal view, the people who rule, and not God; God Himself is a ‘constitutional monarch’ Whose authority has been totally delegated to the people, and Whose function is entirely ceremonial. The Liberal believes in God with the same rhetorical fervor with which he believes in Heaven. The government erected upon such a faith is very little different, in principle, from a government erected upon total disbelief; and whatever its present residue of stability, it is clearly pointed in the direction of Anarchy.
“A government must rule by the Grace of God or by the will of the people, it must believe in authority or in the Revolution; on these issues compromise is possible only in semblance, and only for a time. The Revolution, like the disbelief which has always accompanied it, cannot be stopped halfway; it is a force that, once awakened, will not rest until it ends in a totalitarian Kingdom of this world. The history of the last two centuries has proved nothing if not this. To appease the Revolution and offer it concessions, as Liberals have always done, thereby showing that they have no truth with which to oppose it, is perhaps to postpone, but not to prevent, the attainment of its end. And to oppose the radical Revolution with a Revolution of one’s own, whether it be ‘conservative’, ‘non-violent’, or ‘spiritual’, is not merely to reveal ignorance of the full scope and nature of the Revolution of our time, but to concede as well the first principle of the Revolution: that the old truth is no longer true, and a new truth must take its place.”[1]
The Social Contract
Just as the basis of authority was transferred by liberalism from the grace of God to the will of the people, so the whole basis of political argument was transferred from the order ordained by God to the order created by men in order to satisfy the demands of their fallen human nature – that is, from theology to psychology. This transition is most clearly seen after the collapse of Cromwell’s dictatorship in 1660 and the establishment of a constitutional monarchy in England. Before that, both Anglican monarchists and Independent radicals had based their arguments on the Bible, on the state of man in Paradise and the Fall. Thus the monarchist Filmer held that kings held their patriarchal power by rightful inheritance from the first patriarch, Adam; while the Independents asserted that communism had been the original prelapsarian state and would be so again in the coming millenium. However, after the struggle between monarchists and radicals had been resolved in a compromise leaving the aristocratic landowner-capitalists in effective power, the English political philosophers, abandoning arguments based on Holy Scripture, based their arguments on a purely mythical social contract for which they did not even begin to claim authority in the Bible, and, more importantly, on the purely utilitarian principle of the rational maximisation of personal interest, or desire.
The theory of the social contract essentially comes down to the idea that the state began through the citizens getting together and making a contract with their future rulers, giving power to the rulers in exchange for certain elementary rights for their subjects. This contract is the foundation of political legitimacy. On the foundation of this shaky, and purely mythical social contract the English political philosophers sought to build the ideal polity and the structure of rights and laws which would hold it together. They differed on the nature of that polity: for Thomas Hobbes desire is maximised in an absolutist State; for John Locke – in a constitutional monarchy. But for both thinkers the main purpose of the State was security of life and property together with a minimum of freedom in which to enjoy that life and property.
“In all its forms,” writes Roger Scruton, “the social contract enshrines a fundamental liberal principle, namely, that, deep down, our obligations are self-created and self-imposed. I cannot be bound by the law, or legitimately constrained by the sovereign, if I never chose to be under the obligation to obey. Legitimacy is conferred by the citizen, and not by the sovereign, still less by the sovereign’s usurping ancestors. If we cannot discover a contract to be bound by the law, then the law is not binding.”[2]
Consequently, a basic objection to social contract theory put forward by Hegel is that this original premise, that “our obligations are self-created and self-imposed”, is false. We do not choose the family we were born in, or the state to which we belong. And yet both our family and our state impose undeniable obligations on us.
Of course, we can rebel against such obligations; the son can choose to say that he owes nothing to his father. And yet he would not even exist without his father; and without his father’s nurture and education he would not even be capable of making choices. Thus we are “hereditary bondsmen”, to use Byron’s phrase, and the attempt to rebel against these bonds only accentuates their existence.
In this sense we live in a cycle of freedom and necessity: the free choices of our ancestors limit our own freedom, while our choices limit those of our children. The idea of a social contract entered into a single generation is therefore not only a historical myth (as many social contract theorists concede); it is also a dangerous myth. It is a myth that distorts the very nature of society, which cannot be conceived as existing except over several generations.
But if society exists over several generations, all generations should be taken into account in drawing up the contract. Why should only one generation’s interests be respected in drawing it up? For, as Scruton continues, interpreting the thought of Edmund Burke, “the social contract prejudices the interests of those who are not alive to take part in it: the dead and the unborn. Yet they too have a claim, maybe an indefinite claim, on the resources and institutions over which the living so selfishly contend. To imagine society as a contract among its living members, is to offer no rights to those who go before and after. But when we neglect those absent souls, we neglect everything that endows law with its authority, and which guarantees our own survival. We should therefore see the social order as a partnership, in which the dead and the unborn are included with the living.”[3]
“Every people,” writes L.A. Tikhomirov, “is, first of all, a certain historical whole, a long row of consecutive generations, living over hundreds or thousands of years in a common life handed down by inheritance. In this form a people, a nation, is a certain socially organic phenomenon with more or less clearly expressed laws of inner development… But political intriguers and the democratic tendency does not look at a people in this form, as a historical, socially organic phenomenon, but simply in the form of a sum of the individual inhabitants of the country. This is the second point of view, which looks on a nation as a simple association of people united into a state because they wanted that, living according to laws which they like, and arbitrarily changing the laws of their life together when it occurs to them.”[4]
Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow criticised social contract theory as follows: “It is obligatory, say the wise men of this world, to submit to social authorities on the basis of a social contract, by which people were united into society, by a general agreement founding government and submission to it for the general good. If they think that it is impossible to found society otherwise than on a social contract, - then why is it that the societies of the bees and ants are not founded on it? And is it not right that those who break open honeycombs and destroy ant-hills should be entrusted with finding in them… a charter of bees and ants? And until such a thing is done, nothing prevents us from thinking that bees and ants create their societies, not by contract, but by nature, by an idea of community implanted in their nature, which the Creator of the world willed to be realised even at the lowest level of His creatures. What if an example of the creation of a human society by nature were found? What, then, is the use of the fantasy of a social contract? No one can argue against the fact that the original form of society is the society of the family. Thus does not the child obey the mother, and the mother have power over the child, not because they have contracted between themselves that she should feed him at the breast, and that he should shout as little as possible when he is swaddled? What if the mother should suggest too harsh conditions to the child? Will not the inventors of the social contract tell him to go to another mother and make a contract with her about his upbringing? The application of the social contract in this case is as fitting as it is fitting in other cases for every person, from the child to the old man, from the first to the last. Every human contract can have force only when it is entered into with consciousness and good will. Are there many people in society who have heard of the social contract? And of those few who have heard of it, are there many who have a clear conception of it? Ask, I will not say the simple citizen, but the wise man of contracts: when and how did he enter into the social contract? When he was an adult? But who defined this time? And was he outside society before he became an adult? By means of birth? This is excellent. I like this thought, and I congratulate every Russian that he was able – I don’t know whether it was from his parents or from Russia herself, - to agree that he be born in powerful Russia… The only thing that we must worry about is that neither he who was born nor his parents thought about this contract in their time, and so does not referring to it mean fabricating it? And consequently is not better, as well as simpler, both in submission and in other relationships towards society, to study the rights and obligations of a real birth instead of an invented contract – that pipe-dream of social life, which, being recounted at the wrong time, has produced and continues to produce material woes for human society. ‘Transgressors have told me fables, but they are not like Thy law, O Lord’ (Psalm 118.85).”[5]
The eighteenth-century Enlightenment developed and deepened the trends towards utilitarianism and “psychologism”.
Thus J.S. McClelland writes: “The springs of human behaviour (the phrase is Bentham’s) were the passions, or, as in the primmer language of utilitarianism, the desires to seek pleasure and avoid pain. The passions were implanted by nature. They were what gave human life its vital motion, and the operation of the passions could ultimately be explained in physical, that is, physiological, terms. The faculty of reason which nature had implanted in the minds of men had as its function the direction of the human passions towards the accomplishment of desirable ends, though there was in fact no agreement in the Enlightenment about what the relationship between reason and the passions exactly was. Some thought, like Rousseau, that all natural desires were naturally virtuous, and that only living in a corrupt society implanted '’unnatural’, that is wicked, desires. Others, like Hume, thought that reason was the slave of the passions, by which he meant that the ends of human conduct were provided by the desires, and all that reason could do was to show given desires how to accomplish their ends. The consensus of Enlightenment opinion seems to have been that reason could in some sense control and direct the passions towards ends which were ethically desirable. The passions were by their nature blind, even part of brute nature, and they were certainly shared by the other animals. Natural reason must therefore have been given to man to counterpose itself to the passions, either because the passions themselves could not know how to satisfy themselves without guidance, or because the passions themselves became fixed on ends which were undesirable on a rational view of the matter.
“In the field of moral philosophy, Enlightenment’s goal was a rational system of ethics which would at the very least modify, and perhaps completely replace, the existing systems of ethics derived from religion, custom, and accident. Some forms of human conduct, and some of the ends of human conduct it was hoped, could be rationally demonstrated to be preferable to others. Reason must have been implanted by nature to point these differences out. There must be a way of showing that true human happiness was attainable only through the attainment of virtuous human ends. The culminating point of moral philosophy would be reached when reason could demonstrate that the truest form of human happiness consisted of the encouragement and spectacle of the happiness of others. It is notorious in the history of ethics that the Enlightenment project failed to show that it was in fact possible to derive from reason a set of ethical principles capable of sustaining the loyalty of all rational men, and there is a notable irony in the fact that it was Hume, at the very heart of the Enlightenment, who showed why the enlightened project in ethics was bound to fail…”[6]
In the field of political philosophy, it became axiomatic that the maximisation of desire, or, more simply, “the pursuit of happiness”, as the American Declaration of Independence put it, could be achieved only through government of the people, by the people and for the people – in other words, in a democratic republic, or, failing that, in an enlightened despotism or constitutional monarchy which placed the happiness of the people as a whole as its aim and justification.
This was a distinctly unromantic view of human nature, and the arrival of a more romantic view of human nature towards the end of the eighteenth century, in the writings of such men as Rousseau and Hegel, made possible the emergence of a more revolutionary model of democracy to rival that of Anglo-Saxon liberalism. This model led, not to liberal democracy, but to fascist totalitarianism.
Fukuyama’s Thesis
Let us now examine one attempt to compare the Anglo-Saxon and Hegelian models of democracy.
The End of History and the Last Man by the Harvard-trained political scientist Francis Fukuyama represents probably the best-known and best-articulated defence of the modernist world-view that has appeared in recent years. In view of this, any anti-modernist world-view, and in particular any truly coherent defence of our Orthodox Christian faith, must take into account what Fukuyama says and refute it, or, at any rate, show that his correct observations and analyses must lead to different conclusions from the ones he draws. What makes Fukuyama's thesis particularly interesting to Orthodox Christians is that it is possible for us to agree with 99% of his detailed argumentation, and derive considerable profit from it with regard to our understanding of how the modern world really works and where it is heading, while differing fundamentally from him in our final conclusions.
Fukuyama's original article entitled "The End of History?" argued, as he summarized it in his book, "that liberal democracy represented 'the end point of mankind's ideological evolution' and 'the final form of human government,' and as such constituted 'the end of history'. That is, while earlier forms of government were characterized by grave defects and irrationalities that led to their eventual collapse, liberal democracy was arguably free from such fundamental internal contradictions. This was not to say that today's stable democracies, like the United States, France, or Switzerland, were not without injustice or serious social problems. But these problems were ones of incomplete implementation of the twin principles of liberty and equality on which modern democracy is founded, rather than flaws in the principles themselves. While some present-day countries might fail to achieve stable liberal democracy, and others might lapse back into other, more primitive forms of rule like theocracy or military dictatorship, the ideal of liberal democracy could not be improved on."[7]
Fukuyama's original article appeared in the summer of 1989, and it received rapid and dramatic support from the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe almost immediately after. Thus by 1991 the only major country outside the Islamic Middle East and Africa not to have become democratic was Communist China - and cracks were appearing there as well. Not that Fukuyama predicted this outcome: as he honestly admits, only a few years before neither he nor the great majority of western political scientists had anticipated the fall of communism any time soon. Probably the only prominent writers to predict both the fall of communism and the nationalist conflicts and democratic regimes that followed it were Orthodox Christian ones such as Gennady Shimanov and Alexander Solzhenitsyn, neither of whom was noted as being a champion of democracy. This is in itself should make us pause before trusting too much in Fukuyama's judgements about the future of the world and the end of history.
Nevertheless, it must be admitted that at the present time History appears to be going his way. It is another question whether this direction is the best possible way, or whether it is possible to consider other possible outcomes to the historical process.
1. Reason, Desire and Thymos
Why, according to Fukuyama, is History moving towards world-wide democracy? At the risk of over-simplifying what is a lengthy and sophisticated argument, we may summarise his answer under two headings: the logic of scientific advance, and the logic of human need, in particular the need for recognition. Let us look briefly at each of these.
First, the survival of any modern State militarily and economically requires that science and technology be given free rein, which in turn requires the free dissemination of ideas and products both within and between States that only political and economic liberalism guarantees. "The scientific-technical elite required to run modern industrial economies would eventually demand greater political liberalization, because scientific inquiry can only proceed in an atmosphere of freedom and the open exchange of ideas. We saw earlier how the emergence of a large technocratic elite in the USSR and China created a certain bias in favor of markets and economic liberalization, since these were more in accord with the criteria of economic rationality. Here the argument is extended into the political realm: that scientific advance depends not only on freedom for scientific inquiry, but on a society and political system that are as a whole open to free debate and participation."[8] Nor can the advance of science be halted or reversed for an indefinite period. Even the destruction of civilization through a nuclear or ecological catastrophe, and the demand for a far more careful evaluation of the effects of science and technology such a catastrophe would elicit, would not alter this. For it is inconceivable that the principles of scientific method should be forgotten as long as humanity survives on the planet, and any State that eschewed the application of that method would be at an enormous disadvantage in the struggle for survival.
Fukuyama admits that the logic of scientific advance and technological development does not by itself explain why most people in advanced, industrialized countries prefer democracy. "For if a country's goal is economic growth above all other considerations, the truly winning combination would appear to be neither liberal democracy nor socialism of either a Leninist or democratic variety, but the combination of liberal economics and authoritarian politics that some observers have labeled the 'bureaucratic authoritarian state,' or what we might term a 'market-oriented authoritarianism.'"[9] And as an example of such a "winning combination" he mentions "the Russia of Witte and Stolypin" - in other words, of Tsar Nicholas II...
Since the logic of scientific advance is not sufficient in itself to explain why most people and States choose democracy, Fukuyama has resort to a second, more powerful argument based on a Platonic model of human nature. According to this model, there are three basic components of human nature: reason, desire and the force denoted by the almost untranslateable Greek word thymos. Reason is the handmaid of desire and thymos; it is that element which distinguishes us from the animals and enables the irrational forces of desire and thymos to be satisfied in the real world. Desire includes the basic needs for food, sleep, shelter and sex. Thymos is usually translated as "anger" or "courage"; but Fukuyama defines it as that desire which "desires the desire of other men, that is, to be wanted by others or to be recognized".[10]
Now most liberal theorists in the Anglo-Saxon tradition, such as Hobbes, Locke and the founders of the American Constitution, have focused on desire as the fundamental force in human nature because on its satisfaction depends the survival of the human race itself. They have seen thymos, or the need for recognition, as an ambiguous force which should rather be suppressed than expressed; for it is thymos that leads to tyrannies, wars and all those conflicts which endanger "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". The American Constitution with its system of checks and balances was designed above all to prevent the emergence of tyranny, which is the clearest expression of what we may call "megalothymia". Indeed, for many the prime merit of democracy consists in its prevention of tyranny.
A similar point of view was expressed by the Anglican writer, C.S. Lewis: "I am a democrat because I believe in the Fall of Man. I think most people are democrats for the opposite reason. A great deal of democratic enthusiasm descends from the ideas of people like Rousseau, who believed in democracy because they thought mankind so wise and good that everyone deserved a share in government. The danger of defending democracy on those grounds is that they are not true. And whenever their weakness is exposed, the people who prefer tyranny make capital out of the exposure. I find that they're not true without looking further than myself. I don't deserve a share in governing a henroost, much less a nation. Nor do most people - all the people who believe in advertisements, and think