Wild FSB Training School Graduates Cause Embarrassment

[Barbara]

When a graduation

... " celebration calls for renting 30 blacked-out Mercedes G-Class SUVs, commissioning a professional videographer to film everyone cruising the street, and posing with drinks in hand for a group picture. Nothing wrong with that––except if you just graduated from the FSB, the successor to Russia’s KGB, and your face is now plastered across the internet.

"More than 2.1 million people have watched the video on YouTube, which one student uploaded...

--“For four years they were taught conspiracy, corporate ethics, and that one must not reveal secrets,” retired FSB Major-General Alexander Mikhailov told a Russian newspaper, the Komsomolskaya Pravda. “So pompous and arrogant. If that’s how they start their careers, they won’t do any good.”

"In the video, the students drive through the streets in formation... hanging out the windows while a techno beat plays. The Mercedes SUVs they drove were rented, but they cost more than $100,000 each...
In two parts of the video, their faces become visible....

"The FSB said the students would have their assignments changed, and that some trainers at the academy had been demoted."

http://www.theatlantic.com/news/archive ... es/491468/

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This was the Class of 2014. It's unclear why the trainers were penalized for their students' caper in poor taste. Perhaps the teachers did not impress upon their charges well enough the need for keeping a low profile when in the public eye ? That seems unlikely that this admonition could have been overlooked by the Soviet KGB's successor.

Sounds like the miscreant FSB graduates need to be lined up with good True Orthodox Priests to get them back in touch with reality !
Any clergy ready to volunteer to head over to Yasenevo to tackle that formidable task ?

[Cyprian]

Sincere Orthodox Christians would want nothing to do with any intelligence agency or security service, no matter the country. Neither should Orthodox Christians join the Armed Forces, since they are all corrupt everywhere around the world. If one is already serving in the Armed Forces, one should seek to leave as soon as possible.

[Barbara]

I was kidding.

Yes, that's interesting about the urging to leave armed forces. I can't imagine how anyone could stay in the US military as it is so obviously used as a scourge for the entire world.

I recall a conversation that 2 pilgrims from Kiev to Diveyevo held while trekking to Sarov. One said something along Cyprian's line of thought, while his friend held that it is useful and fine to serve one's country this way. The debate got heated and threatened to cause major conflict.

When they arrived at a Sarov's Elder's cell, the holy monastic, without asking a word to either of them, spoke up confirming the first pilgrim's point of view. The 2 Kievans glanced at each other in amazement. Battle won by the side which urged avoiding or resigning from the Russian military.

This was before the Bolsheviks had taken control of Diveyevo, which occurred the following year after this pilgrimage.
So this admonition from the Sarov Elder occurred in the early Communist period, before the Red Army had overrun foreign lands and occupied vast swaths of the former Russian Empire which had broken free during the tumult of the Revolution.