http://www.portal-credo.ru/site/?act=english&id=163
Konstantin Preobrazhensky. Fr Viktor Potapov Feels Mr. Putin was Offended. The parish meeting at the St John the Forerunner Cathedral in Washington was attended by a representative of the Russian Embassy
- Moscow’s Fake Episcopate
The Russkaya Liniya media agency, known to be affiliated to Moscow Patriarchate, called my appearance in a Voice of America talk program on August 17 a "gross provocation". The words emanated such a familiar smell of the seventies, when I, a young intelligence officer, was working for the TASS News Agency and was editing phrases of precisely the same kind. The media agency blamed me for flinging mud on the bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church of Moscow. Whereas all I said was that during the Soviet era all bishops had been appointed to their posts by the communist state, and should be deposed according to the church canon law.
Who then is the Church Abroad going to unite with? Right, with the chekists. This was in essence my point.
-Attempts to torpedo the efforts at unification of the Russian Church are made over and over again! – sounds the stern warning of the Russkaya Liniya, as if the question were settled firmly. But this is not so, the protestations are gaining force worldwide. The things might work out contrary to Moscow’s plans.
Unofficially however, the ROCOR is already considered as part of the MP in Moscow; what remains to do is sign a few papers to blind the Russian émigré. "Shoot him and then register through the Tribunal" went Marshal Zhukov’s regular phrase. This time he who was to be shot down was still quivering, showing signs of life. Outrageous disorder! ROCOR’s property has been shared among serious guys who hardly ever joke. If someone’s respective spoon misses someone’s respective mouth, someone in Moscow may get his brains blown out. For this reason even a remote mention of such a possibility causes a nervous reaction.
Another participant of the discussion panel at the VOA Radio Station was the Rector of the St John the Forerunner Cathedral in Washington archpriest Fr Viktor Potapov. And while he was openly for the unification, Moscow suspected him of disloyalty and demanded he resolutely dissociated himself from my person, like they did under Stalin. Fr Viktor hastened to carry out the orders and published an article titled The Sin of Prooflessness.
-"I must object to Mr. Konstantin’s proofless statement that all the bishops of the MP in Russia are KGB agents, he wrote. – Before all, it must be said that as many as one hundred new bishops have been ordained since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. This was the post-Soviet time, when the KGB was no longer in power to decide who was and was not to become a bishop."
However, there are agents among the new bishops as well. For instance, Bp. Feofan (Ashurkov) whose ties with theIntelligence are well known. Over a long time he was the right hand of Metropolitan Kirill (Gundyaev), the Chairman of the Foreign Relations Department of MP and also a KGB agent codenamed "Mikhailov". There are more secret KGB agents among the new bishops who had been hooked in while young.
-"Besides,- continues Fr Viktor,- even during the dark Soviet era, Vassily Furov, Deputy Chairman of the Council for Religious Affairs, wrote in his secret Report to the Central Committee of the Communist Party (smuggled to the West in the 1970s) that there were three groups of bishops: There are bishops who truly cooperate. There are bishops who go halfway. And there are bishops who refuse to cooperate and are enemies of the Soviet Power. Thus even then there were many bishops who denied cooperation, or perhaps pretended they were ready to compromise.
However, Furov’s definition of the third group was rather different from Fr Viktor’s presentation! The exact quotation is as follows: "The third group are those bishops who now and then show signs of attempting to circumvent the laws on the cults, some of them being religiously conservative and some being capable of adulterating the actual situation in their dioceses and the attitudes of the authorities; some also have been reported to have made attempts at bribing and libeling the Committee’s officers and the responsible persons among local power organs".
Truly they must have been persons with a bad character, the libelers, or probably seekers of the truth. But in no way could they be classified as anti-Soviet. Further on, Furov makes a special statement: "The long-term observation and profound study of the views and attitudes dominant among the ruling bishops give a convincing proof that the episcopate is loyal to the Soviet Regime". There is no mention of any "enemies of the Soviet Power" in sight! How about that, Fr. Viktor?
Fr. Viktor’s article is instrumental in creating an image of the church so dear to the western public: the Church while indeed dependent on the State, could nonetheless decide by itself who was to become bishop. Could it be any other way? The KGB did approach bishops for the purpose of recruiting them, some agreed, others refused – well, all men are sinners!
The problem is that in the USSR the practice was reversed: one was first to become a KGB agent and then only a bishop. Not the other way round! Consider that the bishops were to meet foreigners and even go abroad at times. Could this be tolerated unless they were the agents of KGB?!
Furov’s Secret Report had been smuggled to the West by Fr Gleb Yakunin who even served a long prison term for this. He also took part in that VOA broadcast and said this:
"Every monk who intended to become a bishop was first to sign cooperation with the KGB and pick a codename for himself."
Would Fr. Viktor not agree with this statement?
The "Ad Hoc Holy Synod" of Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) had also been stuffed on the Lubyanka Square (the KGB location). In 1927, the NKVD (KGB’s predecessor) offered the New Martyr Archbishop Serafim of Uglich to become the head of the Synod, but he refused and instead put forward a list of his own, and was imprisoned because of that. Whereas Metr. Sergius went on to receive this chekists’ gift. He unlawfully seized the power in Church, helped by the NKVD, defying the still living patriarchal locum tenens Metr. Peter who was in custody. Can there be any doubts of the chekist origins of the MP?
The subject of recruitment activities of the secret services is still disturbing the Russian clergy. Recently, the MP’s deacon Andrey Kuraev noted that back then in the 70’s he might have considered cooperation with the KGB a norm, since this would have been instrumental in strengthening the unity of the USSR!
But looking back, this was not the central concern at the time. Rather it is typical of the present day, when Russia faces a real threat of disintegration. By implication, Andrey Kuraev calls on the Russian clergy to cooperate with KGB today.
Soviet Patriotism in the Church Abroad.
The advocates of the Unia with Moscow find themselves in an awkward position. In order to demonstrate that they are not merging with a soviet-type corporation when they seek to join the MP, they have to voice backsight praises of the same Soviet Union they did their best to revile during the Soviet time. They seek to prove that there had been a church independent at least in some respects - precisely the point they used to deny offhand. Putin leads Russia back to its Soviet past, and our "unificators" join ranks.
At the parish meeting of 22nd August Fr Viktor was also very sympathetic about the Country of the Soviets. There was more order then, he reminded, no pornography. And while his tone had been different during the soviet times, he spoke sheer truth. This is also the basic of Putin’s propaganda, with the logical conclusion that the collapse of the Soviet Union had been a historical mistake and gave rise to all the afflictions we are experiencing now. The USSR just has to be restored!
Inconsistently enough, the entire strategy of the emigrant unifiers is based on the sigh of relief from the fact that "the SU has collapsed and drastic changes have taken place in Russia". Yes, sure. Except that the changes have been backward. Putin’s Russia is very similar to Brezhnev’s, only the prison terms have become longer.
The pro-soviet policies of Mr. Putin cannot but take the wind out of our unificators’ sails. They are forced either to negate the sovietization of Russia or attribute it to casual slips or fibs of the big bosses.
The Patriarch is "getting redder" along with Mr. Putin. Not only does he say nothing against the restoration of communism, he even provides an ideological support for him. When he had met the youth in the city of Kaluga this August, Alexis II very outspokenly praised the "Moral Code of the Builder of Communism" which in his terms is in full accord with the Christian norms. Many a lance was broken during the nineties to disprove this.
The MP batyushkas who will be visiting the West in great numbers after the unification becomes accomplished fact, will be spending lots of time telling the good-natured émigré youth how nice it was to live under the soviet regime. Anyone needing more information may contact comrade so-and-so at the Russian embassy. The next step will be recruitment on the "ideological basis": communist ideology and espionage are brothers-in-law.
The parish meeting began with Fr Viktor criticizing the adversaries of the Unia in general and what he called the "Nasha Strana tabloid" in particular. Especially because Nasha Strana published my article Laurus and the KGB. The article actually made senseless this meeting which was planned to be devoted to a discussion of the decisions of the Conciliatory Commission made up of members from both the MP and the ROCOR. In the article I disclosed the fact that a Podvorie of the Jordanville monastery has been in operation in Moscow suburbs. The building was completed in the year 2000 when the Eucharistic union with Moscow was yet nowhere in sight. It means, the matter had been settled back then in a secretive manner, "in a narrow circle of limited persons" – as illiterate provincial KGB officers used to put it. Hence all the negotiations which had been started in 2003 have been nothing but throwing dust in the eyes of the Russian émigré community.
Why spend time discussing such an egregious lie? Why keep pretending those were real negotiations rather than playing a one-goal game?Were not players of the same Ridiger’s team seated at both sides of the table? Were they not intent on combining what cannot be combined: a criticism of Sergius with laudations; denunciation of ecumenism with MP’s membership in the World Council of Churches? Were the vague papers signed there really addressed to the believers both in Russia and abroad? But our pious old babushkas cannot be expected to understand a word of their contents. Indeed, the documents were not meant for them; their sole purpose being to lull the vigilance of Russian emigrants. Priest-monk Tikhon Kozushin, the Rector of the Kazan Mother of God Church in the town of Alexin, called them "the export version of sergianism".
For all that, Fr Viktor kept telling us that the delegates of the Church Abroad did put forward certain requirements, voiced certain reservations, as if they were competing in the same weight bracket. Can you imagine a lieutenant demanding something from the general? What requirements can a mouse put before a cat preparing to eat her up? Can you visualize a Bp. Mark defending the interests of his Church, when he has not done anything lately other than betraying those interests?
Fr Viktor, however, takes recourse to the weighty argument that due to the pressure from us the MP had glorified the New Martyrs in the year 2000!
"How could the Church Abroad exert any kind of pressure on the MP at the time when there had been no talks between them yet? ArchbishopMark was the only one who had volunteered behind-the-scene contacts with the MP, told me archpriest Mikhail Ardov, the Rector of the Czar-Martyr and All the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia Church at the Golovino Cemetery in Moscow.
-The Patriarchy proceeded with this glorification under the pressure from the Russian flock who began revering the New Martyrs and spreading their icons spontaneously. Yet even in this the MP managed to mix up the sheep and the goats, as they also glorified the Sergianists who were in some way responsible for the deaths of the New Martyrs – he added.
-"This example rather characterizes the MP bishops’ readiness to change their views on the orders from their lay bosses, - jeered Fr Tikhon, - It had not been long before that the same bishops voted almost unanimously against such glorification, especially of the Royal family. Some of the bishops were making notoriously pro-Soviet statements, and suddenly turned all the way round! Did Archbp Mark alone manage to persuade as many as a hundred bishops to change their minds regarding such an important issue?
Putin in Cassock
Also in my article Laurus and the KGB I told about the methods that will be used by the KGB to take over the St John the Forerunner Cathedral in Washington right after the Church merger. Located not far from the White House, it will become a symbol of the Russian Victory over America and Putin’s personal church-house.
Fr. Viktor did his best to ridicule this idea as absurd. But has the MP never taken churches away from the ROCOR previously? It has, and did it in a very crude manner. Ridicule it or not, my idea is not as fantastic as it may seem.
-Why then your colleagues at the Embassy do not line up to join our parish? – addressed Fr Viktor a certain woman who sat quietly in the row next to mine, with a contented smile, calling her by her first name and patronymic. The embassy official answered not, only wrote the question down in her notebook.
Dear me! We, who oppose union, are accused of being excessively politicized, while Fr. Viktor invites a Russian Embassy official to the parish meeting. Too early, isn’t it? There has been no merging of the Churches yet!
As Fr Mikhail Ardov wittily remarked, the Russian diplomacy wished to know whether Fr Viktor would conduct the conference in the right key or not, or it should be time to pick up a substitute for him in Moscow. More would like to go than needed.
-Please be cautious when writing about this woman! She may be one of our parishioners. Nobody is barred from entering the church, you know! – was I warned by my community friends.
This is so, of course. But wherever a Russian diplomat should set his foot, be it a bath-house or what, he may be expected to never cease doing his business – collecting information. It is his/her job to be the eye and ear of the Government. Today the Government of Russia is located on the Lubyanka Square.
May a Russian diplomat be a member of a ROCOR community? No problem. But this will give rise to certain questions with his bosses. ROCOR is still a foreign and anti-soviet body. There are a few ROCOR congregations in Russia, but they are treated as very nearly illegal, experience persecution and are forced to close on the slightest evidence. Equal rights with MP parishes cannot even be dreamed of!
Unsanctioned visits to ROCOR churches by a Russian diplomat may arouse suspicion of disloyalty or even a challenge to the Power. This cannot but be destructive for a diplomat’s career. I am more than sure that the woman-diplomat’s visits to our church have been coordinated with the Foreign Intelligence Service of Russia – the directing agency for the disintegration and demoralization of the Church Abroad.
-How do you say that Putin does not believe in God? None other but God can know this! – Fr. Viktor stormed me, his voice faltering from sincere resentment.
Indeed, I said this over the Voice of America. I even unveiled one of Putin’s best-kept secrets that his career started off not as that of an intelligence man, but in the "Line Five" of the Leningrad Regional KGB office, part of whose business was to oppose religion. You will not find this fact disclosed in any of his official bios. Putin hides it most carefully from foreign church leaders.
The myth of Putin’s religiousness is needed badly by the Unia’s proponents. Thereby he is presented as a good example of an Orthodox emperor, a new Constantine, extending his royal wing to accept the near-perishing Church Abroad. For this kind of mercy you should return a fit of thankful tear shedding. If he is not a believer, why should he interfere in ecclesiastical affairs? His concerns are apparently of this world. Can you expect any other kind from a chief of the "Petersburg chekists mafia"? They have not been taught to do anything save property expropriation and espionage.
How did Brezhnev reward the KGB Chief Mr. Semichastny who brought him to power after he had helped down Mr. Khrushchev? He fired him the very next day. How did Putin favor the Russian business moguls who had made him the president? He set the FSB (KGB) on them. Would he do differently with those who will have helped him pocket the Church Abroad?
But Fr Viktor insisted that the unification was to be worked out under any circumstances, and even threatened curtly lest we be late for the train and miss our opportunities. I think I know the name of the train – Putin’s third presidency term. The West would hardly be very eager to support it.
Fr. Viktor reminded that at every liturgy we pray for the "unity of all". Therefore we ought to unite with the MP. These days it is free, regenerated; thousands of new churches and many seminaries are in service. He put special emphasis on the St. Tikhon Theological Institute, a splendid educational facility. One setback is that all MP church buildings continue to belong to the state! Independence is therefore out of question.
-Our prayer does not mean we’ve got to unite with whomever. The true meaning is that heretics ought to join the Orthodox Church by repentance. The heretical Moscow Patriarchy ought to join the Church Abroad by repenting, since the latter has preserved the true Orthodoxy – explained Fr. Mikhail Ardov.
-Opening old and building new churches alone is not equivalent to revival. It is only that the MP has been allowed to expand its functionality, - he continued. All the new seminaries are basically sergianist. The Church has not been set free, but set loose. Its real Boss is the "oligarch-bishop" Metropolitan Kirill, whose fortune is estimated at several billion dollars. The MP hierarchy is corrupt all through: the position of a rector of Moscow church costs up to 50,000 USD; Metropoitan. Isidor of Ekaterinodar and Kuban is told to have paid as much as 750,000 for his white (metropolitan’s) klobuk.
-The MP is helpless without state support. There are not many people in Russia who may be called true Orthodox Christians, less than 2 percent of the population, - noted Fr. Gleb Yakunin whom I interviewed. – Empty churches are what plague the Patriarchy; yet it never stops acquiring new ones. It has an oversized prehensile reflex, and it will go to every pain to grab church buildings away from the Church Abroad. The ROCOR believers will eventually come to senses when they will be facing a very real threat of their church’s utter demolition, and hopefully this does not happen too late, - he went on.
Amongst the parishioners of the St. John the Forerunner Cathedral skepticism dominated too.
-We, the children of the White Guardians, do not trust Putin who is driving the country back to Soviet times. Neither do we trust the MP. I am against the unification, - said one female parishioner.
-What if the Hierarchical Council does decide in favor of the union? – retorted Fr Viktor quickly.
-I will not accept it, - was the woman’s firm response.
Disappointed, Fr Viktor pointed out that the old émigré community is vanishing rapidly, while the new one is biased towards the MP.
This was a grossly false statement, since if any one is against the impending communion with MP it is the new emigrants, who know it too well.
One new emigrant expressed herself clearly.
-I am a daughter of a priest and I ask you not to believe the MP! We cannot unite because the Church Abroad is the only church, which remains pure. Nowhere else have I been able to find the genuine Russian Orthodoxy!..
She also compared the MP to a casket of good honey on the bottom of which lies the dead rat of sergianism.
Fr. Viktor went on to assure her that the MP has denounced sergianism in the Conciliatory Commission’s Communiqué and that one may even consider it as some kind of repentance.
You call it repentance! - Fr Gleb was indignant as he heard my story. –Judas too might have said it this way: I repent of what I have done, please receive me back!
Fr Mikhail Ardov explained to me: - You cannot repent of some vague document or some interview you had given. They will have to enter the Dormition Cathedral in the Kremlin and do the repentance in public, like the Patriarchs Job and Hermogen did repent before the full house of believers for the sins of the Russian people during the Time of Trouble. Even the Sergius who was later to lead the Church as metropolitan and patriarch recanted publicly of his earlier joining the renovationist movement, and he did that not in an interview to some tabloid like the Komsomolskaya Pravda.
Will Alexis II pluck the heart to do this? Will it not nullify the entire soviet period, whereas Putin has been encouraging people to take pride in it? Will the MP not slam the door on the World Council of Church as a token of its recanting of ecumenist involvement? Just the contrary! Its scope of work is ever widening in the Council. In Europe, the Putin’s image is waning and needs urgent re-polishing with the leaf-gold of the church cupolas. No freedom of speech, no free elections in Russia? But there is freedom for the MP in compensation! Fr. Viktor with his story about the St Tikhon Theological Institute would come very handy at this point.
The parishioners who spoke were almost unanimous in their criticism of the MP, but Fr Viktor invariably sided with it.
As the MP was busy amputating our Convent in Hebron, the Palestinian police dragged our elderly nuns down the stairs in a very rude manner, didn’t they? But Moscow can now send there a lot of fresh nuns and, in the long run, the Convent continues to belong to the Russian people, does it not? As the MP was busy robbing the ROCOR of its church building in Bari, Italy, its young rector died from the sufferings he had to endure… But he had been sick before that, too!
Attendants at the Meeting also reminded Fr Viktor of the fact just days ago Alexis II congratulated Vietnam with the 30th anniversary of their victory over the USA, using the characteristically communist term "brotherly" in his address to the people. Fr Viktor, however, proceeded to belittle the patriarch’s role in this, telling the patriarch did not write it himself but just signed a text composed by others. He is signing hundreds of such scrap every day and you can hardly imagine him reading all of them!In KGB they call it "shuttle switch".
Fr Viktor must have forgotten that a mere few years ago the same patriarch demanded from US authorities that he be sacked from the Voice of America radio station because of the anti-soviet tenor of his programs. Of course, the present Fr Viktor is a thorough "remix" of his former self, but the patriarch has not changed his views at all, and will not hesitate to bring to notice Fr Viktor’s anti-soviet past the very next day after the union – in order to take over the Cathedral.
When Fr Viktor was at a loss finding arguments in defense of the MP, he went on to point to certain blunders of his own Church.
Good, but our Metropolitan Anastasias sent a letter of thanks to Hitler, didn’t he? – he announced with a noble indignation in his voice – and this was not the first time he used this argument. Well, Stalin sent such letters in plenty. And it was not only a matter of letters. The German army was being regenerated right in the USSR during the thirties. Hitler & Stalin signed a treaty of military alliance against the democratic West.
Recently Mr. Putin completely reanimated Stalin’s interpretation of World War II –to the extent he was ready to ruin relations with the neighbors because of it. The MP is fully in support of this doctrine, and goes to every pain to drive it home to the slow-witted foreigners. When Fr Viktor rebukes his Church, rather than the Soviet Union, for the support of Hitler, he indirectly whitewashes the image of Stalin’s Empire, where his father refused to return after German captivity.
For the dessert, Fr Viktor drew up a sugary picture of how nice the ROCOR will feel under the heel of the MP. In his imagery, when seeking to appropriate ROCOR, the MP has nothing in mind except granting them freedom. But they initially have been free!
And who will be the guarantor of such an idyll? Where may one complain if Moscow violates it? Alas, there is no such corporation on earth where you can complain about Putin.
Do you yourself trust the MP? - inquired some of the parishioners. Fr Viktor admitted he did not have much trust, but the union must take place, he reiterated. Why then the meeting had to be convened at all? Oh, many are the mysteries behind this union! And where is mystery, there are the secret services in sight.
Proponents of union spoke about the flourishing of church life in Russia. What’s wrong if this heyday finds its way to America as well? - they wondered.
-The wrong is that the MP maintains too close ties with the state, and it presents a real threat to the national security of the US and personal security of each of us. Putin in cassock will come to America under the church cover. – I strove to explain.
A retired professor of history from the Georgetown University claimed that the union of the Churches was historically inevitable. This argument was pure materialism. None but God knows what is and what is not inevitable. Was it long ago that they spoke about the historical unavoidability of the union between the brotherly peoples of Russia and Byelorussia – has it come true? Looks like the Byelorussian dictator Lukashenko feared the prospects of the "broad autonomy" Putin promised him.
The opponents of the union more frequently took the floor, however. They were not a bunch of extremists, rather the more respected and old-time members of the parish. Fr Viktor seemed to be disappointed: he has not been able to come up with the Soviet-style "we support and approve" result.
Fr Viktor has brought into the path of the true faith a lot of emigrants from the former Soviet Union and Russia. He and matushka Maria have been very helpful to the sick and poor. Yet Fr Viktor has found himself facing the same challenge Russian priests had back in 1927 – whether or not join with Metropolitan Sergius?