Tag Archives: Russian Orthodox Church

KGB FSB ROC M-O-N-E-Y

18 Wednesday Jan 2023

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Russia

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After the fall of the Soviet Union, the church received official privileges including the right to import duty-free alcohol and tobacco. In 1995, the Nikolo-Ugreshky Monastery, which is directly subordinated to the patriarchate, earned $350 million from the sale of alcohol. The patriarchate’s department of foreign church relations, which Kirill ran, earned $75 million from the sale of tobacco. But the patriarchate reported an annual budget in 1995-1996 of only $2 million. Kirill’s personal wealth was estimated by the Moscow News in 2006 to be $4 billion.

During this period, the church has been silent about genuine moral issues, such as Russia’s pervasive corruption and the indiscriminate killing of noncombatants in Chechnya. As Kirill begins his reign as patriarch, there is little reason to expect this to change.

Satter, David. “Putin Runs The Russian State–And the Russian Church Too.” Forbes, February 20, 2009.

In the Feudal-Medieval Mode, there is no potion as toxic as that which couples belief and piety in the common spirit with financial, martial, and political power in an aristocracy of thugs: only in still medieval Russia has Kleptocracy an Emperor and a most loyal (and enriched) Patriarch, both formerly KGB and therefore today criminal FSB.

As has become too much my habit, reference follows, and while I read all that I cite–and have read or perused all that I have cited, and this for age or martinis–little stays with me but principles. For Putin-Kirill as an Infernal Dyad, the two appear to share the deepest relationship in corruption, crime, fascism, malign narcissistic covering, persecution of minorities, especially the LGBTQ set, profit from “sin taxes” on alcohol and tobacco, and God (whose existence each seems to be disproving), only knows what else fills their pockets out of the shadows in which the two actors more authentically reside.

Related Online

AFP. “‘God Put You in Power’: Russian Orthodox Leader Tells Putin on 70th Birthday.” The Moscow Times, October 7, 2022.

Chawrylo, Katarzyna. “The scandal over the Patriarch Kirill.” Center for Eastern Studies, April 4, 2012.

Cohen, Nick. “An evil collusion between a tyrant and a man of God.” The Guardian, August 18, 2012.

Coyer, Paul. “(Un)Holy Alliance: Vladimir Putin, The Russian Orthodox Church And Russian Exceptionalism.” Forbes, May 21, 2015.

Donovan, Jeffrey. “Metropolitan Kirill Elected New Patriarch of Russian Orthodox Church.” RFE/RL, January 27, 2009.

Giovanni, Janine di. “The Real Reason the Russian Orthodox Church’s Leader Supports Putin’s War: Homophobia is at the heart of Patriarch Kirill’s endorsement.” Foreign Policy, April 26, 2022.

Gedeon, Joseph and Nahal Toosi. “The pro-Putin preacher the U.S. won’t touch.” Politico, June 22, 2022.

Gordon, Michael R. “Russian Priests Accuse a Bishop, Plunging the Church Into Turmoil.” The New York Times, July 18, 1999.

Horowitz, Jason. “The Russian Orthodox Leader at the Core of Putin’s Ambitions.” The New York Times, May 22, 2022.

As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine unfolded, Patriarch Kirill I, the leader of the Moscow-based Russian Orthodox Church, had an awkward Zoom meeting with Pope Francis.

The two religious leaders had previously worked together to bridge a 1,000-year-old schism between the Christian churches of the East and West. But the meeting, in March, found them on opposing sides of a chasm. Kirill spent 20 minutes reading prepared remarks, echoing the arguments of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia that the war in Ukraine was necessary to purge Nazis and oppose NATO expansion.

Lord Dreadnought. “Russian Orthodox Church’s KGB patriarch got rich dabbling in tobacco, oil, and alcohol following ‘perestroika’.” Fitzpatrick Informer, December 30, 2020.

Luchenko, Ksenia. “Can the Ukrainian Orthodox Church Survive the War With Russia?” Carnegie Politika, January 17, 2023.

Satter, David. “Putin Runs The Russian State–And the Russian Church Too.” Forbes, February 20, 2009.

Satter, David. “Russia’s State Church.” Foreign Policy Research Institute, June 27, 2012.

Wikipedia. “Patriarch Kirill of Moscow”.

Wikipedia. “Russian Orthodox Church”.

Posted to YouTube April 16, 2022.

“…the Faculty of Special Propaganda . . . .”

In which Putin has “turned priests into Kremlin agents”–>

Posted to YouTube April 12, 2022.

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Russia’s P&R Cocktail – New Nationalism May Meet Falling Reserves with Religion

09 Friday Sep 2016

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Eurasia, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Religion, Russia, Ukraine

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CHITA, September 9. /TASS/. The Russian Reserve Fund will be exhausted over the course of the next year, the budget deficit financing will start from the Russian National Wealth Fund, Deputy Finance Minister Alexei Lavrov told journalists on Friday.

“The Reserve Fund, as I remember, will be used up over the next year,” Lavrov said. He added that once the fund is exhausted, the budget deficit financing will start from the National Wealth Fund.

http://tass.com/economy/898846 – 9/9/2016

Russia spent 18.4 percent of its reserve fund in a single month to plug deficits in the federal budget, Finance Ministry figures released Tuesday have revealed.

The country’s reserve fund fell from $38.18 billion to $32.2 billion during the course of August 2016, shrinking to just over a third of pre-crisis levels.

https://themoscowtimes.com/news/russia-spends-18-of-its-reserve-fund-in-august-55223 – 9/6/2016

Long before Russia’s annexation of Crimea and unproclaimed war in the Donbass, Ukraine had become a religious battleground. Despite the warning of Yurii Chernomorets, Cyril Hovorun, and other observers, none of the leading Ukrainian and Western politicians foresaw the threat posed by an increasingly aggressive form of Orthodox Christianity being promoted by Moscow. As events in Ukraine have now shown, Orthodox fundamentalism is no less aggressive than Islamic fundamentalism, and the “Russian Spring” is no less bloody than its Arab counterpart.

https://www.firstthings.com/article/2015/05/orthodox-terrorism – May 2015

If anyone thought Europe’s wars over religion were finished in 1648, the current standoff with Russia illustrates that that is not the case.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/paulcoyer/2015/05/21/unholy-alliance-vladimir-putin-and-the-russian-orthodox-church/#5cda28ee6881 – 5/21/2015

All of the above: the writing on the wall.

Putin and the oligarchs, slow to develop Russia’s internal economy, “T-34 Tank Tomatoes” notwithstanding, have now to face a precipitous drawdown on the state’s more convenient national reserves, and helping the state’s leaders meet that challenge: (FSB-enforced) faith in the exceptional magic of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Gaze upon that infernal cocktail that is equal parts politics and religion and find the terrible beauty of its love match in mixture: the greater the destruction and hardship wrought by one, all the greater the glory and proof of Divine favor provided by the other.

Says BackChannels.

Complementing Reference

http://www.eastwestreport.org/articles/ew05108.htm – Winter 1997 – “Orthodoxy, Oil, Tabacco, and Wine: Do They Mix?” East West Report.

http://www.geopolitika.lt/?artc=4593 – “The Rise of Russian Nationalism” – 4/4/2011.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/25/putin-s-number-one-gunman-in-ukraine-warns-him-of-possible-defeat.html – 7/25/2014 (on the invasion of the Donbass but linked here by the purpose of the demonstration of power and annexation of Crimea).

http://www.forbes.com/sites/paulcoyer/2015/05/21/unholy-alliance-vladimir-putin-and-the-russian-orthodox-church/#5cda28ee6881 – 5/21/2015.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2015/09/russia-ultra-nationalist-crackdown-150916131749975.html – “Behind Russia’s ultra-nationalist crackdown: Despite targeting neo-Nazis and other hate groups, the Kremlin is rolling out its own version of the ‘Russian world’.” – 9/23/2015.

http://rbth.com/opinion/2016/02/10/why-has-the-world-waited-so-long-for-a-catholic-orthodox-reconciliation_566661 – 2/10/2016 – “Why has the world waited so long for a Catholic-Orthodox reconciliation?”

http://www.christiantoday.com/article/how.the.russian.orthodox.church.is.backing.vladimir.putins.new.world.order/81108.htm – 3/3/2016.

http://religious-nationalism.blogspot.com/2016/03/putin-wars-and-russian-orthodox-church.html – 3/13/2016.

http://christiantimes.com/article/thousands-fast-and-pray-after-vladimir-putin-signs-new-russian-law-restricting-religious-freedom/58896.htm – 7/14/2016.

KGB/FSB | ROC

A secret Soviet-era document uncovered in Estonia suggests that Patriarch Alexy II, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church and spiritual leader of tens of millions of Christians, was a fully fledged KGB agent.

Accusations that Alexy, elected Patriarch in 1990, co-operated closely with the KGB under the code name ‘Drozdov’ (Thrush), have circulated since a parliamentary commission was allowed a brief peek at secret police files in Moscow in 1991.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/feb/12/1 – 2/12/1999

Liberation theology, of which not much has been heard for two decades, is back in the news. But what is not being mentioned is its origins. It was not invented by Latin American Catholics. It was developed by the KGB. The man who is now the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, secretly worked for the KGB under the code name “Mikhailov” and spent four decades promoting liberation theology, which we at the top of the Eastern European intelligence community nicknamed Christianized Marxism.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/417383/secret-roots-liberation-theology – 4/23/2015.

EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION: The two texts that follow—they are actually two parts of a single essay—are of crucial importance for an understanding of the Russian Orthodox Church under the Communist Yoke. They were written by a true confessor of Orthodoxy, who died in prison in the Soviet Union in 1971 for having written these and similar texts. They are presented here as a direct response to the plea of the author himself (p. 484 of Russia’s Catacomb Saints): “This betrayal… must be made known to all believers in Russia and abroad, because such an activity of the Patriarchate… represents a great danger for all believers.” The texts are primary documents exposing with direct and irrefutable proof the conscious betrayal of Russian Orthodoxy by its own hierarchs.

http://orthodoxinfo.com/ecumenism/cat_tal.aspx – “The Moscow Patriarchate and Sergianism: An Essay by Boris Talantov.”  Orthodox Christian Information Center, circa 1968.  Related in Wikipedia: “Russian Greek Catholic Church“; “1943 Bishop’s Council of the Russian Orthodox Church“; “Patriarch Sergius of Moscow“.

Only after the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 did Joseph Stalin finally start to scale back the anti-religious campaign, needing the moral support of the Church during the war. In the early hours of September 5, 1943, Stalin met with the three chief hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church and promised some concessions to religion in exchange for their loyalty and assistance. Among the concessions were the permission to open the Moscow Theological Seminary and Academy, the release of imprisoned clerics, the return of some church property, including the famous Troitse-Sergiyeva Lavra. In return, the Soviet government put the Church under the control of its secret services.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriarch_Sergius_of_Moscow

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FTAC – Malignant Leaders – Anti-Semites – Fascists

08 Monday Dec 2014

Posted by in Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Politics

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Each malign leadership personality — Assad, Erdogan, Khamenei, Orban, Mobarak, Morsi, Putin, Yanukovych, etc. — makes himself also an independent actor in his own right as well as one bickering or cooperating with fellow dictators in the context of pursuing or sustaining “political absolutism”, i.e., themselves as the sole power of their feudal estates. In place of a decent politics, which cannot be had with any playing out this kind of script in personality (all are emperors), come only a limited practical politics — carrots, sticks, and horse swaps.

Internally, “patronage” fits in infantilization and dependency inducing behavior that is itself a part of a defeating spectrum of controls – blackmail, intimidation, incarceration, and murder on one hand, and kind approvals of the powerful, financial patronage, sweet and seductive lying — which in the dark mirrors of the evil includes the promotion of anti-Semitic libel and promise of violence against the Jews — on the other. All such leaders regardless of “nominal affiliation”: thieves. They mask what they really do — and what they are really all about (power over others without limit) — beneath their various banners, but they are also much the same person.

To be fair, Putin, who has been pro-Semitic in public, and whose state has some relations with Israel, should not be considered anti-Semitic despite the inherent anti-Semitic legacies of the old Soviet communism and the Russian Orthodox Church or portions of the same (untangling Russian history after what the Soviets did to it, lol, at least according to Pacepa and Rychlak, will take some time — in the meantime, I feel like I’ve just glimpsed a conciliatory Russian Orthodox Church by way of first encounter with a few voices associated with it).

As I type (and gather from the web as I do), this article may have some clues as to how modern new modern Russians may be as Putin continues on a revanchist neo-feudal path:

Benevitch, Gregory.  “The Jewish Question in the Russian Orthodox Church.”

Some wake up knowing we are all “in it” together.

🙂

Related:

According to Oleg Usenkov, press secretary of the Sophia association of Russian Orthodox Christians in the Holy Land, there are about 70,000-100,000 Russian Orthodox Israelis, and perhaps “the real figures are even higher.”1The number is significant, as the “Greek Orthodox Patriarchy of Jerusalem was informed by the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption that approximately 10 percent of the total Aliya from the former Soviet Union are of the Christian Orthodox faith.”2 This makes the Orthodox Church by far the largest among the past several decades of Israeli immigrants.3 It is also the largest among Palestinian Christians, of whom there are about 400,000 worldwide, and through whom it traces itself to the first Christian community.4

Smith, Hal.  “Is the Orthodox Church ‘Supersessionist'”? Orthodoxy Today, October 17, 2013.

Even while positioning Russia as anti-western, Putin nonetheless and recently laid out toward the end of his most recent Federation speech a familiar western cant:

Transcribed:

Dear colleagues, health care, education, social support, social security must become issues of true public good, true public value. They need to serve our entire society.

We cannot imitate education.

We cannot imitate health care or social security.

We cannot imitate caring for people.

We need to learn to respect ourselves.

We need to look at this important notion such as reputation and that reputation of a specific hospital, school, institution, or social office is a building stone in the overall reputation of our country . . . .”

If that ain’t modern and “western” — how about civilized? — what is?

The World Wide Web is the largest lens and mirror ever devised for having a look at other cultures and nations and for seeing how one’s own culture and nation looks in return.

The combines of old communist and fascist puppet masters should not fare well online, but as regards gravitational effects on “information space” and “intellectual resources” worldwide, some are trying like mad to get the world and have the world back as they would wish it to be.

As a guy with a library — and a “19th Century Modern” attitude — I’ve much enjoyed looking over the palaces of the obscenely enriched by politics, but one might look forward to an other than revolutionary reversion to rule of law and redistribution of wealth as capital driven back down to the floors of economies where cash is needed and a new engineering may come into view on a global stage.

The age of creating and sustaining breathtaking deceits?

Let it end.

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