The Russian Orthodox Church has been joined to the hip of the Putin regime increasingly during the 21st century: Moscow Patriarch Kirill is an ex-KGB member, as are others who fill high positions in the ROC. The state and the Church seem to be equal partners in the application of the 'Russian World' (Russkiy Mir) strategy, which Putin ha…
The Russian Orthodox Church has been joined to the hip of the Putin regime increasingly during the 21st century: Moscow Patriarch Kirill is an ex-KGB member, as are others who fill high positions in the ROC. The state and the Church seem to be equal partners in the application of the 'Russian World' (Russkiy Mir) strategy, which Putin has directly applied to Ukraine to justify an aggressive revanchism.
Related to the 'Russian World' are Moscow as the 'Third Rome' and the and the even more expansionist 'Eurasian' strategy, which aspires to a Russian empire from "Dublin to Vladivostok"; this last is perhaps most succinctly summarized in these words of Nicolai Patrushev, Chairman of Russia's Security Council: "Who controls eastern Europe, rules the Heartland. Who controls the Heartland, he commands the ‘World Island'. Who rules the ‘World Island,’ he rules the world.”
We in the US, as well as our allies abroad, have rightly criticized, and continue to criticize, US involvement in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya. As it should be. My concern is that we are so accustomed to doing so that our first response to the war in Ukraine is, "But the US... ", including an added 'certain sympathy' for Putin: some reading, however, in the now dominant far right ideologies in and around the Kremlin will reveal much deeper roots to the invasion of Ukraine than 'NATO encroachment', and also much greater ambitions. Any of these key phrases I have mentioned above will bring up abundant further research.
This Russian 'traditionalism' (which it is anything but) serves, as Charles Upton has pointed out (Dugin against Dugin: A Traditionalist Critique of the Fourth Political Theory) as a 'right wing' counterpart to the 'end goal' of the 'left' (as the postmodern West), i.e. the destruction of the human form as Imago Dei on the plane of history -or pure chaos. The far right side of things works not on the horizontal plane but the on the vertical plane of hierarchy, but of a false, inverted hierarchy, in which the state/earthly ruler assume the role and authority of God (the state as Absolute). Upton likens these forces to the battle of Gog and Magog, in which both sides work to 'immanentize the eschaton'. He also issues an accompanying warning (in 2018) to the effect that: "Putin's Russia, however, cannot really function as the 'Third Rome' in any integral way. Adn i fth eRussian state elects to move -possiblty wit the help of Aleksandr Dugin -in teh direction fo becoming a renewd 'Holy Empire' .... then teh warning of Rene Guenon shall immediately apply", that warning in reference to "the idea of an organization that would be like the counterpart, but at the same time also the counterfeit, of a tradtional conception such as that of 'Holy Empire', and some such organization must become ... in the language of the Hindu traition, an inverted Chakravarti; universal king." And we can quote Dugin here as saying: "The end of the world will come, but not by itself.... The meaning of Russia is that through the Russian people will be realized the last thought of God, the thought of the end of the world." (in 'Political Theology: Aleksandr Dugin and the Fourth Political Theory", by Moseby, John C, 34-35
Indeed, the only place to be in these times is, the only place we can be, as Paul has rightly reminded us at the 'center of all things', in the full realization of the human being.
I had not intended to write such a long post. In the process I omitted the reference to Guenon: the quote is from his prophetic, Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times", while the whole quote is from Dugin against Dugin, p 16
Fascinating stuff. I've been reading a bit about this myself. You're right that the Russian state has 'appropriated' the leadership (if not the laity) of the church in recent years. I was watching this film recently which put it into historical context.
I don't think we in the West understand Russia (I don't) but my experience with people from eastern Europe has shown me that this part of the world is immensely complex and doesn't fit into our schemata. Putin and Kirill seem to be attempting to restore Russia as a great power and restore its dignity after its collapse, and the West's pillaging of its resources. And yes, the 'Third Rome' prediction, which is centuries old I believe, is definitely an influence, especially on the likes of Dugin. One reason for wanting Ukraine is that it was the birthplace of Orthodoxy in Russia. So there is a lot in the mix. I have a sense that both Russia and the Western powers see Ukraine as an existential battle.
Thank you for your reply -and for your consistently fine essays on important topics. I will watch the film you sent me the link to (but later :) I think you are correct in that we do not understand Russia in the West, and in that I include myself. I have done quite a bit of reading since the war began, as in Putin's address to the nation on 2/22 or 2/24 I thought I heard the voice of Aleksandr Dugin more than once, who I was only vaguely aware of. So I began some research and reading, discovering along the way the various ideologies and ideologues that are influencing Russian media, opinion, and eve the security council and Kremlin. Dugin is only one among many, but his philosophy/theology/geopolitics is perhaps the most often heard: he has been called 'Putin's brain'. So while I hardly can call myself 'knowledgable', I have learned enough to hold a very different view of Russia than I previously had. De Noce might have been right to see an effective resistance to the decay of liberalism as coming in the future from Russian, but in the last 15 years or so Russian politics has become increasingly infected with imperialist, ultranationalist -even fascist -ideology, to the point where where it seems to be now dominant. I am going to include a few links below to some short videos. Much can be found besides this in the way of articles and papers (see the Academia website) on these topics, including the Russian World, the Izborsky Club, and neo-Eurasia.
I shall sign off before I get going any longer! Thank you again for your insights into our times at the deeper, and most fundamental, levels. The first link is a longer video (about 1 hr)
This is all worth thinking about. What is also worth noting though is that 'ultra-nationalism' is also present in Ukraine, especially in its army and national guard. The hard right beliefs of the Azov batallion have been widely reported (if not in the mainstream anymore), but it's wider than that. As a member of the Romanian Orthodox church I've heard from a number of Romanian friends about how Romanian minorities are treated in Ukraine by these elements; I have read elsewhere about the same happening to Hungarians and of course Russians. It is not a lie that Russians have been persecuted in eastern Ukraine for eight years. None of which justifies invasion - but the politics are complex. And there's no doubt this is now a proxy war, with the West using Ukraine for its own ends too. Horrible all round.
It would be hoped that, if Ukraine were to draw closer to the West, all such behavior would be clamped down on within the country. It seemed to me that such an effort was already in place, but with much more to be done. There is only so much I know about Ukraine: I have heard that the far right obtained 2% of the vote in the 2019 (?) election. There has always been the fascist Azov battalion, yet also, now and during the last some years, a Russian fascist equivalent (the Russian Imperial Legion/Movement, declared a terrorist organization by the US in 2020) has been fighting there. The complexities of this war seem to have no end, yet familiarization with the far right leanings of Russia today are more worrisome in my view because they are closer to power, if not synonymous with it, dispose of a large nuclear arsenal, and seem to be shaping current Russian foreign policy.
I wouldn't be so hopeful about 'the West.' If the EU and NATO get hold of Ukraine, as they would like to, they will milk it for cheap labour and/or use it as a political football against Russia, which is clearly the plan. The US would not be spending such breathtaking amounts of money supporting the country if they didn't want something back. They have hardly just discovered an ethical objection to invading other nations for strategic benefit ..
As I understand it, far right support amonst the Ukrainian population may well be low, but the culture of law enforcement, and indeed some part of government, is a different matter. But as I said, this is a part of the world that does not fit well into Western categories. What we call 'far right' over here seems like widespread nationalism over there. And I think history looks very different in Eastern Europe. But I'm not inclined to believe the narrative I am being fed either by my own media or the Russians.
I believe you are completely correct when you say that things look very different from Eastern Europe, and that we in the West come into this knowing very little about it and understanding even less. Therefore, we need to do our best to become better informed, a difficult task in light of the extraordinary complexity of history in that part of the world. Until the last couple of months, I was as distrustful of you of our media, and leaned with sympathy towards Putin. What I have learned about Russia in the interim however -which is still precious little - has showed me a very different Putin and Russia than I had previously held. This is, I believe, the first time I think our mainstream media, overall, is 'right'; and that what fault should be assigned to it owes more to the lack of in-depth information than to the prevailing belief that Putin needs to be stopped in Ukraine: the Baltic states, Poland, Finland and Sweden evidently agree. There are some papers available on Academia -such as the one on "The Izborsky Club, the New Conservative Avant-Garde" or "Larger, Higher,
Farther North" that can provide some insight into Russia today. We who are trying to hold a 'traditionalist ground' today need to look around us in all directions, both within and outside of the West, in order to assess the situation in which we find ourselves and the various dangers posed.
I certainly agree about the unjust invasion of Ukraine. No Christian should be supporting aggressive war. I've never been someone who has projected anything onto Russia. My general view is that no temporal kingdom can avoid corruption. It's possible to oppose what Russia is doing and not to trust anything our own authorities say, which is where I find myself.
On the other hand, they saw the toppling of the government of their border country in 2014, and several moves against them, towards the destruction of their final buffer zone, plus the targetting of their ethnic population in the south. Even Zelensky was voted on promises to stop the internal tensions, and normalize and keep good relations with them, but was mysteriously turned around 180o degrees once elected, and went on to cross the one line set in the sand for decades.
The US would have, and has, gone to war for 1/100th the reasons, all around the globe (Monroe doctrine), never mind tolerating that from a directly bordering nation.
Even so, the war would have ended in a compromise agreement in 2021 at Turkey, and was set to do so if Boris the menace wasn't send to push them against it, and if the leadership wasn't bribed with hundreds of war aid billions to keep at it.
> It would be hoped that, if Ukraine were to draw closer to the West, all such behavior would be clamped down on within the country.
It's rather the opposite: those elements were chosen, sponsored, and promoted by the West, precisely to clamp down on the Russian part of the population and to push for the non-reconcilliatory brand of nationalism, in a divide and conquer ploy to use the country in a proxy war (as it ended up happening). There was zero concern for the welfare of the Ukrainian people as a whole in all this (except of the crocodile tears variety).
In the event of war, and especially of a war that claimed hundreds of thousands on both sides, of course Russia would also turn to more millitaristic and into right wing culture, both as a Kremlin wish to mobilize people to the war effort, but also naturally from the sense of being forced to have that war (even though they invaded, one popular feeling would probably be of being forced to through the existential threat of enemy expansion in their direct borders and the loss of any buffer zone.
They'd also naturally turn more to right wing ideas when leftish fads are used as hammers geopolitically against them, in a similar way that they're used agaist the "deplorables".
I believe that Dostoevsky is key here. There is great truth in his critique of Western liberalism, which can be appropriated without necessarily falling into his error of Russo-centrism. What Dostoevsky implies is that the fundamental idea of liberalism -- freedom -- is indeed good, perhaps "the" good, but that outside of Christ this freedom inevitably becomes corrupt and as a result, tyrannical. Del Noce opines that in the West a similar conclusion was arrived at by Rosmini, whom I have yet to read.
One difference is that for Russia all that is the equivalent of old wives tales and daydreaming of niche nationalists (Dugin is as relevant to what they do strategically as some Dark Enlightment guy would be for what Trump does, i.e. not at all). The western powers on the other hand have been expanding (nato) all the way to their borders, and of course, have invaded, bombed, controlled, and still do, countless countries all around the world, making their bases and threats anything but idle. It's not even the pot calling the kettle black, it's the pot calling a banana black.
The Russian Orthodox Church has been joined to the hip of the Putin regime increasingly during the 21st century: Moscow Patriarch Kirill is an ex-KGB member, as are others who fill high positions in the ROC. The state and the Church seem to be equal partners in the application of the 'Russian World' (Russkiy Mir) strategy, which Putin has directly applied to Ukraine to justify an aggressive revanchism.
Related to the 'Russian World' are Moscow as the 'Third Rome' and the and the even more expansionist 'Eurasian' strategy, which aspires to a Russian empire from "Dublin to Vladivostok"; this last is perhaps most succinctly summarized in these words of Nicolai Patrushev, Chairman of Russia's Security Council: "Who controls eastern Europe, rules the Heartland. Who controls the Heartland, he commands the ‘World Island'. Who rules the ‘World Island,’ he rules the world.”
We in the US, as well as our allies abroad, have rightly criticized, and continue to criticize, US involvement in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya. As it should be. My concern is that we are so accustomed to doing so that our first response to the war in Ukraine is, "But the US... ", including an added 'certain sympathy' for Putin: some reading, however, in the now dominant far right ideologies in and around the Kremlin will reveal much deeper roots to the invasion of Ukraine than 'NATO encroachment', and also much greater ambitions. Any of these key phrases I have mentioned above will bring up abundant further research.
This Russian 'traditionalism' (which it is anything but) serves, as Charles Upton has pointed out (Dugin against Dugin: A Traditionalist Critique of the Fourth Political Theory) as a 'right wing' counterpart to the 'end goal' of the 'left' (as the postmodern West), i.e. the destruction of the human form as Imago Dei on the plane of history -or pure chaos. The far right side of things works not on the horizontal plane but the on the vertical plane of hierarchy, but of a false, inverted hierarchy, in which the state/earthly ruler assume the role and authority of God (the state as Absolute). Upton likens these forces to the battle of Gog and Magog, in which both sides work to 'immanentize the eschaton'. He also issues an accompanying warning (in 2018) to the effect that: "Putin's Russia, however, cannot really function as the 'Third Rome' in any integral way. Adn i fth eRussian state elects to move -possiblty wit the help of Aleksandr Dugin -in teh direction fo becoming a renewd 'Holy Empire' .... then teh warning of Rene Guenon shall immediately apply", that warning in reference to "the idea of an organization that would be like the counterpart, but at the same time also the counterfeit, of a tradtional conception such as that of 'Holy Empire', and some such organization must become ... in the language of the Hindu traition, an inverted Chakravarti; universal king." And we can quote Dugin here as saying: "The end of the world will come, but not by itself.... The meaning of Russia is that through the Russian people will be realized the last thought of God, the thought of the end of the world." (in 'Political Theology: Aleksandr Dugin and the Fourth Political Theory", by Moseby, John C, 34-35
Indeed, the only place to be in these times is, the only place we can be, as Paul has rightly reminded us at the 'center of all things', in the full realization of the human being.
I had not intended to write such a long post. In the process I omitted the reference to Guenon: the quote is from his prophetic, Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times", while the whole quote is from Dugin against Dugin, p 16
Fascinating stuff. I've been reading a bit about this myself. You're right that the Russian state has 'appropriated' the leadership (if not the laity) of the church in recent years. I was watching this film recently which put it into historical context.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b32qav9QrYU
I don't think we in the West understand Russia (I don't) but my experience with people from eastern Europe has shown me that this part of the world is immensely complex and doesn't fit into our schemata. Putin and Kirill seem to be attempting to restore Russia as a great power and restore its dignity after its collapse, and the West's pillaging of its resources. And yes, the 'Third Rome' prediction, which is centuries old I believe, is definitely an influence, especially on the likes of Dugin. One reason for wanting Ukraine is that it was the birthplace of Orthodoxy in Russia. So there is a lot in the mix. I have a sense that both Russia and the Western powers see Ukraine as an existential battle.
Thank you for your reply -and for your consistently fine essays on important topics. I will watch the film you sent me the link to (but later :) I think you are correct in that we do not understand Russia in the West, and in that I include myself. I have done quite a bit of reading since the war began, as in Putin's address to the nation on 2/22 or 2/24 I thought I heard the voice of Aleksandr Dugin more than once, who I was only vaguely aware of. So I began some research and reading, discovering along the way the various ideologies and ideologues that are influencing Russian media, opinion, and eve the security council and Kremlin. Dugin is only one among many, but his philosophy/theology/geopolitics is perhaps the most often heard: he has been called 'Putin's brain'. So while I hardly can call myself 'knowledgable', I have learned enough to hold a very different view of Russia than I previously had. De Noce might have been right to see an effective resistance to the decay of liberalism as coming in the future from Russian, but in the last 15 years or so Russian politics has become increasingly infected with imperialist, ultranationalist -even fascist -ideology, to the point where where it seems to be now dominant. I am going to include a few links below to some short videos. Much can be found besides this in the way of articles and papers (see the Academia website) on these topics, including the Russian World, the Izborsky Club, and neo-Eurasia.
I shall sign off before I get going any longer! Thank you again for your insights into our times at the deeper, and most fundamental, levels. The first link is a longer video (about 1 hr)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gh09OfNCT5E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cr6oqHPrKo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnGcbxxOMwE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9MSV9Bp35Y
This is all worth thinking about. What is also worth noting though is that 'ultra-nationalism' is also present in Ukraine, especially in its army and national guard. The hard right beliefs of the Azov batallion have been widely reported (if not in the mainstream anymore), but it's wider than that. As a member of the Romanian Orthodox church I've heard from a number of Romanian friends about how Romanian minorities are treated in Ukraine by these elements; I have read elsewhere about the same happening to Hungarians and of course Russians. It is not a lie that Russians have been persecuted in eastern Ukraine for eight years. None of which justifies invasion - but the politics are complex. And there's no doubt this is now a proxy war, with the West using Ukraine for its own ends too. Horrible all round.
It would be hoped that, if Ukraine were to draw closer to the West, all such behavior would be clamped down on within the country. It seemed to me that such an effort was already in place, but with much more to be done. There is only so much I know about Ukraine: I have heard that the far right obtained 2% of the vote in the 2019 (?) election. There has always been the fascist Azov battalion, yet also, now and during the last some years, a Russian fascist equivalent (the Russian Imperial Legion/Movement, declared a terrorist organization by the US in 2020) has been fighting there. The complexities of this war seem to have no end, yet familiarization with the far right leanings of Russia today are more worrisome in my view because they are closer to power, if not synonymous with it, dispose of a large nuclear arsenal, and seem to be shaping current Russian foreign policy.
I wouldn't be so hopeful about 'the West.' If the EU and NATO get hold of Ukraine, as they would like to, they will milk it for cheap labour and/or use it as a political football against Russia, which is clearly the plan. The US would not be spending such breathtaking amounts of money supporting the country if they didn't want something back. They have hardly just discovered an ethical objection to invading other nations for strategic benefit ..
As I understand it, far right support amonst the Ukrainian population may well be low, but the culture of law enforcement, and indeed some part of government, is a different matter. But as I said, this is a part of the world that does not fit well into Western categories. What we call 'far right' over here seems like widespread nationalism over there. And I think history looks very different in Eastern Europe. But I'm not inclined to believe the narrative I am being fed either by my own media or the Russians.
I believe you are completely correct when you say that things look very different from Eastern Europe, and that we in the West come into this knowing very little about it and understanding even less. Therefore, we need to do our best to become better informed, a difficult task in light of the extraordinary complexity of history in that part of the world. Until the last couple of months, I was as distrustful of you of our media, and leaned with sympathy towards Putin. What I have learned about Russia in the interim however -which is still precious little - has showed me a very different Putin and Russia than I had previously held. This is, I believe, the first time I think our mainstream media, overall, is 'right'; and that what fault should be assigned to it owes more to the lack of in-depth information than to the prevailing belief that Putin needs to be stopped in Ukraine: the Baltic states, Poland, Finland and Sweden evidently agree. There are some papers available on Academia -such as the one on "The Izborsky Club, the New Conservative Avant-Garde" or "Larger, Higher,
Farther North" that can provide some insight into Russia today. We who are trying to hold a 'traditionalist ground' today need to look around us in all directions, both within and outside of the West, in order to assess the situation in which we find ourselves and the various dangers posed.
I certainly agree about the unjust invasion of Ukraine. No Christian should be supporting aggressive war. I've never been someone who has projected anything onto Russia. My general view is that no temporal kingdom can avoid corruption. It's possible to oppose what Russia is doing and not to trust anything our own authorities say, which is where I find myself.
On the other hand, they saw the toppling of the government of their border country in 2014, and several moves against them, towards the destruction of their final buffer zone, plus the targetting of their ethnic population in the south. Even Zelensky was voted on promises to stop the internal tensions, and normalize and keep good relations with them, but was mysteriously turned around 180o degrees once elected, and went on to cross the one line set in the sand for decades.
The US would have, and has, gone to war for 1/100th the reasons, all around the globe (Monroe doctrine), never mind tolerating that from a directly bordering nation.
Even so, the war would have ended in a compromise agreement in 2021 at Turkey, and was set to do so if Boris the menace wasn't send to push them against it, and if the leadership wasn't bribed with hundreds of war aid billions to keep at it.
> It would be hoped that, if Ukraine were to draw closer to the West, all such behavior would be clamped down on within the country.
It's rather the opposite: those elements were chosen, sponsored, and promoted by the West, precisely to clamp down on the Russian part of the population and to push for the non-reconcilliatory brand of nationalism, in a divide and conquer ploy to use the country in a proxy war (as it ended up happening). There was zero concern for the welfare of the Ukrainian people as a whole in all this (except of the crocodile tears variety).
In the event of war, and especially of a war that claimed hundreds of thousands on both sides, of course Russia would also turn to more millitaristic and into right wing culture, both as a Kremlin wish to mobilize people to the war effort, but also naturally from the sense of being forced to have that war (even though they invaded, one popular feeling would probably be of being forced to through the existential threat of enemy expansion in their direct borders and the loss of any buffer zone.
They'd also naturally turn more to right wing ideas when leftish fads are used as hammers geopolitically against them, in a similar way that they're used agaist the "deplorables".
I believe that Dostoevsky is key here. There is great truth in his critique of Western liberalism, which can be appropriated without necessarily falling into his error of Russo-centrism. What Dostoevsky implies is that the fundamental idea of liberalism -- freedom -- is indeed good, perhaps "the" good, but that outside of Christ this freedom inevitably becomes corrupt and as a result, tyrannical. Del Noce opines that in the West a similar conclusion was arrived at by Rosmini, whom I have yet to read.
One difference is that for Russia all that is the equivalent of old wives tales and daydreaming of niche nationalists (Dugin is as relevant to what they do strategically as some Dark Enlightment guy would be for what Trump does, i.e. not at all). The western powers on the other hand have been expanding (nato) all the way to their borders, and of course, have invaded, bombed, controlled, and still do, countless countries all around the world, making their bases and threats anything but idle. It's not even the pot calling the kettle black, it's the pot calling a banana black.