WHY ANTI-CHRISTIAN WESTERNERS HATE RUSSIA BY FR. ANDREY TKACHEV A RUSSIAN ORTHODOX PRIEST The demonization of Russia by Archpriest Andre Tkachev

WHY ANTI-CHRISTIAN WESTERNERS HATE RUSSIA

BY FR. ANDREY TKACHEV A RUSSIAN ORTHODOX PRIEST

The demonization of Russia by Archpriest Andre Tkachev

        Hello, dear beloved in the Lord!  God has sent us as witnesses to participate in His affairs in the world.  We do not know fully what will happen in the future, so let us see what lies before us.  So far God has sent us into a situation where we feel that we are in the same shoes that the Jews were in during the Old Testament times.  It was a time when nobody knew about the true God but the Jews.  At that time, the Jews were the most hated people in the world.  They were surrounded by peoples who had different religious beliefs.  Later on with the advent of Christianity the first Christians were surrounded by people with various pagan beliefs.  The early Christians were falsely blamed by these people with eating babies, having sexual orgies at night and many other horrible things.  It was something awful.  Christians were considered as the enemies of mankind in the eyes of both the enlightened and ignorant pagans. 

        In Old Testament times the Jews were accused of these same things by the peoples amongst whom they lived.  The Jews were different from all the other people.  The Jews had strange eating rules, strange marriage laws, strange practices that no one else had.  They had sacred rules that separated them from all the other people.  They lived a spiritual life that no one else was allowed to enter.  The Jews had strange ideas about what God is and they rejected worshipping all other false gods in the world.  All of these things aroused a sense of terrible hatred towards the Jews. 

        The Jews were a people that did not have much wealth but they had God. These people knew the living God during the times of the Old Testament.  The Jews stood out amongst all the tribes and civilizations of that time because of their faith in the true God.

        Let us look at the people of Egypt at that time.  The Egyptians had a unique civilization concerned with the world after death.  Egyptians were concerned more about life after death than their earthly world.  This was a civilization of the mystics.  It was a civilization able to perform cephalotrypsy (collapsing the head of a fetus).  It was a civilization of engineers who were able to create structures that we can’t replicate today even with all of our technologies.  It was a civilization of poets, seers and human sacrifices.  But the main point is that it was a civilization more concerned about life after death than about the world they lived in.   It was a civilization that could say to Pythagoras and his disciples that you are intellectual babies in comparison to us. They also believed the Greeks were intellectual babies in comparison to the Egyptians.  This is so because for several thousand years the Egyptians literally were concerned about eternal life.  They accumulated a huge store of knowledge about this subject.  This is truly astonishing!

        Egypt was the place where the Jews had lived for a long time.  Later when they were freed from Egypt as simple farmers, they were now ready to receive the Law of God from God Himself.  Did the Jews have any great talents? They had nothing of the kind.  They were simple farmers who over the centuries grew in numbers while living in Egypt. 

        Let us now look at Rome.  In Rome we have the establishment of jurisprudence and law, construction of roads, of aqueducts and sports.  All we have today in our civilization has its roots in Rome.  The core of our civilization is found in Rome.  In Rome we have the senate, parliament, and deputy advocates. All imperialistic and colonial policies were developed in the Roman experience. 

        Everything in the field of aesthetics has come to us from the Greeks.  Greeks were humorists but they also knew what real horror is.  The Greeks knew many things.  For us today, Greece means the Olympic Games, wonderful statues such as Apollo and also Homer, the theatre with all the comedies and dramas, masks, music and sports.  All art is from the Greeks.  The concept of the state, the army and civilization came from Rome.  Mystics and mysteries came from Egypt.  The powerful organization to conquer the world came from the great and fearsome Babylonians.  Babylon also was a great civilization.  “Has not my hands made all these things?” said Nebuchadnezzar while looking at his beautiful capital city.

        Amongst these great civilizations lived the Jews.  They had no art, no great state, no big powerful army united under the rule of one king, no pyramids and the mysticism of Egypt.  But what the Jews had was God and nothing else.  The other civilizations had everything worldly but the Jews had the true God.  And they had prophets that spoke to them about God.  They had this great mission to keep their faith in God so that the Messiah would come into the world through them.  It was their task and they fulfilled it.   They fulfilled their mission.  And today we enjoy our faith because of the Jews.  God came to us through the womb of a Jewish girl who was born into the world and lived amongst us.  The Jews fulfilled their mission and served all humanity in spite of the many sins they fell into in fulfilling their sacred task.  Because they believed in the true God they were terribly hated by all the peoples of the world.  They were constantly suspect and blamed for doing all kinds of bad things.  It seems to me that something similar is happening today.

        This “unwashed Russia” as Lermontov wrote, is cleaner than many other places in the world.  This reality somehow arouses a sense of horror and hatred toward Russia.  This is the reason for the campaign against Russian sports, against Russian art, and the West’s constant displeasure with Russia’s actions.  This is the reason for the military action and hysteria around all the Russian borders.  The current military threat and hysteria about Russia and Russians is a matter of God’s providence.   All this activity of the West gets under the skin of the Russians and this is the price our people pay for having this treasure of faith that others do not have.  We have this treasure that others do not have and because of this the rest of the world is against us.

        It may relate to the treasure of family relations for example.  I mean a family consists of a father, a mother and many children. This is the classical family as God created it.   Maybe in time, when the defiled world will come to a point of total collapse, Russia will show the world what a Christian family is all about as revealed to us in the Bible.  Russia has God.  “Proud look of foreign stranger doesn’t sense and doesn’t notice the secret glow being emitted out of your humble beauty.”  These are the words of Fedor Tutchev.  In his poem dedicated to Russia he continues: “Dejected with bearing the Cross all around my motherland the King of heaven walked with blessings in the guise of enslaved man.”  These are words of great faith and truth.  The nature of our land is not as splendid as it is in tropical countries which many people visit in order to warm their bodies. 

        We don’t harvest three times a year as in Israel or Egypt.  Our lands are not so rich and the climate is not as good as these other countries.  But there is something in our vast land that is found in the forests, in the meadows, in the rivers and in our people living in this land.  The people in this land are not so talented but from time to time they give the world Saints like Seraphim of Sarov, Saint Sergei of Radonezh, St. Matrona of Moscow etc.  This poor land sometimes gives birth to such spiritual jewels such as these. In fact Russia is a country of Saints with saintly people.  The etymological meaning of the word saint is not miracle man or shining one.   Saint means something else.  Kadesh means detached, not like all the other people.  There is sanctified clothing intended to be worn only once a year.  There are holy places where people pray and don’t do anything else but pray.  And there are also holy days.  Kadesh means something special and Russia is something special.

        This is why monks are so loved in Russia.  Monks have built Russia and promoted it.   These people have built a special country.  But living here in Russia we don’t really feel it.  It is like what Nikola of Serbia once said that fish live in water and they don’t feel the water.  Water is everywhere so fish do not feel it.  It is only when a fish is taken out of the water that it feels how water is really needed.  And if a fisherman releases it back into the water then the fish will realize just how important water is.   We can say the same thing about birds which do not know how important air is.  The same thing applies to human beings. A person does not know what holiness is until he loses it.   Nikola of Serbia once said about God, “how much I love you.”

        People don’t know God because there is so much of God all around us.  A man is surrounded by God like a fish in water so he doesn’t feel God.  But when God leaves our presence a person then begins to gasp and understands that he really needs God.  We can say the same thing about our homeland.  In some sense God and our homeland are allied with one another because our homeland has a direct relationship to God.   Rainer Maria Riike once said: “Other nations have mountains, rivers, and oceans for borders, while Russia has God for its borders.”  Russia has its borders with God and not without sins and temptations.  Russia repeats the history of Old Testament Israel.

        What were the sins of the Jews?  They were constantly tempted about the success of other countries.  They were tempted by technologies.   They wanted to build the same houses that others had.  They wanted to have kings like the others had.  And they wanted to have chariots like the Egyptians had.  They wanted to have all the things that the Babylonians, Assyrians, Romans and Greeks had.  They were constantly tempted about all these things and they forgot about God and thus provoked God’s wrath.   All the mistakes of the Russians are the same.  They were tempted and idolized Western technology.  They were tempted by the fact that the West was more advanced and appeared better than them.   This was the reason for some of the historical failings of Russia.  But when Russia returned to its natural strengths it brings back into the world wonderful things.  This is our calling in the world.  It is keeping our Orthodox faith and being the new Israel of the New Testament.

        Israel means seeing God.  Russia is called to know God and proclaim God.   It is called to spread the knowledge of God and the New Testament throughout the world until the end of time.  Russia has borders with all the religions of the world.  It has borders with Japan, China, Mongolia, Shintoism, Confucianism and Lamaism.  And moving toward the West we have borders with Buddhism and Islam.  Russians know Islam very well since we have a lot of Muslims in our country.   We also have various Christian denominations.   Near Kaliningrad we have borders with the Roman-Germanic world.  The entire world has borders with Russia.  Because of this, Russia must know God, must keep the Orthodox faith and share the knowledge of God with all the people of the world.   This spiritual calling of Russia arouses a sense of suspicion in our enemies.  They misunderstand us and unconsciously get angry with us. 

         A priest told me the following story.  One day a drunk man was walking across a bridge and as he was passing by a priest’s house he suddenly stopped, looked at the house and said: “How much I hate you,” then walked away.  What happened to him next?  Something got into his soul.  Something demonic arose in his soul as he was passing by the priest’s house, as he was passing a Church, a monk or a priest.  The man himself doesn’t know why it happened.  He says” “I like everybody but your beard makes me upset.  I just hate you and I do not know why.”  But there are people who know why they hate Russia.  Those are those who own the world’s mass media, those who possess the sources where all the media gets its information from.  They are the ones who possess the world’s money, securities, oil wells, who unleash wars, which overthrow legitimate governments all around the world and put their own puppets in charge.  They are the ones who set up colonial administrations.  If you want to rule the world you need to take 5% of the people of each country, educate them as future colonial administrators and then send them back to their countries.  All our people studying in London are our future colonial administrators.  They are being prepared abroad to rule us in the future.  95% of the local people are being prepared to become slaves and the 5% are to become colonial administrators.  They are the top managers and journalists.  No one else is needed.  All the others will be brainwashed anyway.

        For example, Russia has many enemies who know why they hate Russia and it also has enemies who don’t know why they hate us.  And there are Russians themselves who don’t understand why the others hate them so.  What bad things have we done to the others?  They say to us: “You haven’t done anything wrong but just shut up.  I’m tired of your words.  Your blame is that I am hungry” the wolf said to the lamb and then ate it.  We just have to deal with these irrational attitudes.  It is impossible to prove to someone else that you are a good person.  He may find thousands of reasons for your being to blame and finally will say that he is tired of your words and just wants to eat you. We don’t need to prove to anybody that we are better or not better than someone else.  Hatred towards Russians is not a surprise.  Russians are inimitable and they have their mission.  You should better try to understand what their mission is.

        If you could browse through some French or English newspapers of the 18^th and 19^th centuries you would be shocked because they look exactly like today’s newspapers.  On the pages of these newspapers you would see Russian bears, drunken Russian men playing balalaikas and Russian Tsars who constantly threaten Europe.  They portray Europe looking like a beautiful and elegant dancing girl while the Russians look like bears and always seek to conquer.  And all this antagonism is taking place while we have always been defending Europe.  Russia defended Europe against Napoleon.  Russia freed the Balkans from the Turks.  Russia even helped the West in India when Tsar Paul I ruled.  No matter how much Russia helped Europe they will always hate us.  Learn history, pray, go to Church, love your neighbor, know yourself and then you will stop wondering about the hatred against Russia. 

        A sinner always blames the innocent person for a problem. Just read again the fable “The Wolf and the Lamb” by Ivan Krylov.  In the fables by Krylov there are many things that are encrypted there such as international affairs, family and personal relationships.  This is another example of our people’s deep wisdom. St. Ambrose of Optina kept under his pillow Krilov’s book.  All in all the war has been declared against Russia.  Although the war has not been formerly declared it was unleashed by those clearly who understand why they should hate us.  All the others don’t really understand why they should hate us.  It happens because they live under the influence of TV news which is edited and supplied from one source.  There are many newspapers but all of them get all their news from one source and this source knows why Russia must always be hated.  Maybe Russia is the last bastion of hope in the world and if it can be broken then the game is over and the end of days will come after that.   Love your homeland and Jesus Christ who lives in our homeland.

A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR OF THIS ARTICLE THAT WAS TRANSLITERATED FROM A VIDEO OUT OF RUSSIA

Fr. Andre, who speaks in Russian, has his words translated by a Russian into English.  The translation is not very good but I tried my best to get the meaning of what Fr. Andre was trying to say to the world.  It is very evident that this priest, like all Russian Orthodox people, look upon Mother Russia as a sacred place ordained by God to proclaim Holy Orthodoxy and the message of salvation brought to the world by Jesus Christ. Fr. Andre equates Orthodox Russia with the Jewish people of Old Testament times and the contemporary world which continues to have a passionate hatred for the Jewish people.  Holy Russia has inherited this hatred because of its Holy Orthodox Faith.  Orthodoxy for Russia is considered the pearl of great price and it stands against the Western world that has lost its Christian way.  This is my take on Fr. Andre’s dissertation. I have just finished reading a magnificent book on Holy Russia.  The title is “Land of the Firebird: The Beauty of Old Russia.”  It truly proclaims the Christian soul of Mother Russia.

Transliterated and edited by:

+Fr. Costas J. Simones, March 20, 2017, Waterford, CT, USA