… The Perestroika (the Russian word for transformation — the translator’s note) was headed by Mikhail Gorbatchev — a hero of the planetary scale, who spared the nations of Earth for some time from the threat of the total destruction in the hell of a nuclear war, — the threat that was coming out of Russia as the main breeding ground of the international terrorism.
But he was… not able to transform himself to the right degree. Since he did not know anything either about God, or the purpose of human life, or the Will of God regarding us…
He made several tragic mistakes: mass bloodsheds in Baku, Tbilisi, Vilnius, his trust in the “fellow party members”…
And he was succeeded by Yeltsin…
* * *
Igor Talkov was singing at that time:
“Show me the country,
Where tyrants are praised,
Where the nation celebrates
The victory in the war with itself…
Show me the country,
Where everyone is deceived,
Where “backwards” means “forward”
And vice versa!…
Show me the country,
Where temples are nailed up,
Where priests hide KGB epaulets
Under their frock.
Show me the country,
Where boors prosper,
And the rulers rob the country
Defying the law!
Do not spin the globe, for you are not going to find it:
One can’t find such a state on the planet Earth,
Except for that fatal one, in which all of you
do not live…
Do not live — because it can’t be called life…”
And also, inspiring the new president:
“Our exhausted country
Defeated by Communism,
Awakened from sleep,
Believes in you, like in God.
Justify the faith:
The moment has come!
Justify this faith,
Mister President!”
And the president gave the deciding battle. The Gorbatchev-Yeltsin’s Perestroika won the political victory.
But… what came out of it — this does not have to be explained to the contemporary people of Russia. For the next generations I will tell the following: non-payment of salaries and pensions for months, galloping inflation, the stable “first place” in terms of suicide rate (during the tyranny of the Communist Party the USSR held the second place, after Hungary, which was subjugated by it), sharp decline in the birth rate and dramatic increase of the infantile mortality rate, embitterment of the entire society against the reformers, outrage of crime, that spread over the whole country and resulted among other reasons from the mass unemployment, impoverishment and “brutalization” of customs during aggressive military campaigns against Afghanistan and Chechnya, as well as the increased activity of fascist organizations…
The Russian Orthodox Church was almost completely destroyed by the Bolsheviks. It ceased to be the dominating force in the country during the “Soviet” rule. From among the priests who survived the “red terror”, those who were members of the church for their selfish interests, escaped, since now they started to be persecuted themselves.
And in this new situation the Church began to play a role that was positive to a certain extent: it became a refuge for those people who sought for salvation from the darkness of atheism. And it attracted a great number of pure souls, for whom it could provide a refuge in the beginning stages of their spiritual quest. (This happened also with the author of this book [4]).
And the Perestroika, that followed, gave all people the opportunity to read the New Testament and other religious books.
But the theological concept of the Church did not change! It is still unable to explain neither what God is, nor how Jesus Christ relates to God-the Father, nor what the term “the Holy Spirit” denotes, nor what the purpose of human life consists in. It does not teach people to love either living beings, including people, or God. It still encourages drunkenness and preaches intolerance and hostility towards non-Orthodox believers…
In Orthodox seminaries and “academies” students are not taught Love, methods of opening up and development of the spiritual heart. Those students look “suppressed” and embittered…
But if they do not study cordial Love, it means that they do not study Christianity!
Instead, they diligently scrutinize sectarianism: they are taught that Orthodoxy is the Truth, which God gave people since the times of Adam and Eve, that all other religious movements are either “from the devil”, or are “ugly offshoots” of the Main Stem of the Truth (i.e. Orthodoxy), that true keepers of the faith (i.e. the Orthodox believers), who carried the “holy sacraments” through the millennia, are surrounded by hostile “heretics” and “sectarians” from all sides…
Not having understood all this, president Yeltsin, searching for allies against the “red”, started to re-establish the Church de-facto in the status… of the state religion, again. He started to call the patriarch of this organization “the spiritual leader of Russia”, allowed it to commence “religious education” in the Ministry of Internal Affairs. And now the law-enforcement officials are convinced that Orthodoxy is the only true religion, while those who do not drink hard and refuse to kill are “sectarians” and enemies of Russia…
FSB (Russian Federal Security Service — the translator’s note) was given the order not to persecute the Orthodox Church, but to protect it…
In the army the Orthodox priests blessed officers and soldiers for murders of “basurmans” (the contemptuous nickname of Muslims, popular in Russian Orthodoxy) during the Chechen war. And after that they would “forgive their sins”…
Now there are Orthodox armies in the form of the Cossacks.
Priests teach schoolchildren the nonsense about the “immaculate conception” and the “original sin”… And the schoolchildren immediately divide into fools, able to believe in this, — and the intelligent ones, who reject these tales, along with religion and its God altogether. And then they try narcotics…
The Orthodox hierarchs, using tax benefits given to social organizations, purchase huge amounts of alcohol and tobacco products with the purpose of re-selling all that to Russian people — “let them die, as long as it is profitable for us”!
“The aggressive” church officials are launching another attack: the “anti-heretic” society has been founded, in temples and monasteries squads of “faithful” fighters are re-created in order to maintain the “purity of the Orthodox faith”…
Some more time — and “torture chambers” will appear in Orthodox monasteries again and bodies of sectarians will be “frying” over the fire. (The author of this books has been threatened with execution over the phone twice for his previous publications [7]; we will see what will happen after this book is published…).
