Paul
Goble
Staunton, December 15 – “The
five-pointed red star, one of the symbols of communism, the Russian army and
the Kremlin, is celebrating its 100th anniversary today, Dmitry
Lyskov of Vzglyad reports, noting
that it is still surrounded by controversy as many Russians consider it to this
day to be “an emblem of Satanists and Masons.”
Given the ongoing controversy about allegations
that the killing of the Imperial Family was a ritual murder, a subject Lyskov
has also explored (vz.ru/society/2017/12/6/898080.html),
his comments about the history and meaning of the red star are particularly intriguing
now (vz.ru/society/2017/12/15/899446.html).
The idea that the red star is a
satanic symbol has circulated in post-Soviet Russia for a long time. In 2014,
for example, LDPR leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky asked the defense ministry to
look into its continued use because, he said, the five-pointed red star for “certain
Orthodox” Russians “is associated with satanic symbols.”
Several Russian Orthodox writers have
gone further. One argued that “nothing reflects so clearly the anti-Christian
and satanic essence of bolshevism as its symbols,” including the red star (rusk.ru/st.php?idar=112449). And another
argued the red star is “at one and the same time masonic and satanic” as well
as Jewish given that “the most important task of masonry is the destruction of
Christianity” (belrussia.ru/page-id-2308.html).
But Lyskov says that this is more
than a little much given the history of the appearance of the red star in
1917. Had it contained all the meanings these
authors say, one would have expected the leaders of the anti-Bolshevik movement
to use it as a mobilizing tool against Red forces. The fact is that they didn’t.
Indeed, many White officers wore on
their uniforms stars of the same shape because those had been introduced into
the tsarist military in 1827 by Nicholas I who was copying French uniforms of
the time of Napoleon. They thus had no reason to view the red star as
anti-Christian, satanic or masonic.
Moreover, as many Russians knew, the
five-pointed star had a long history as a Christian symbol, tracing its origins
to the pre-Christian Pythagoreans but enshrined in Christian symbolism and even
informing the works of perhaps the greatest Russian icon painter Andrey Rublov.
Efforts to transform the star into
an anti-Christian symbol appear to have their origins in the work of Louis
Constant, a nineteenth century French promoter of the occult, but as Lyskov
points out, “it isn’t completely clear how such an odious figure could serve as
an authority for a believer.”
It is true, the Vzglyad writer says,
that there were some in the White Russian emigration in the 1920s and 1930s who
did talk about “the occult roots of Bolshevism” and who linked that to what they
saw as a Jewish conspiracy against Russia and Christianity. But such people remained extremely marginal
even when they were supported by the Nazis.
Soviet citizens knew little of this
or of the actual history of the red star. But when the sluice gates of
information were opened during perestroika, Russians were exposed to all kinds
of information, some reliable but some not; and they often had great difficulty
in distinguishing the one from the other.
“In our atheistic society, had had
ideas both about religion and the pre-revolutionary past that had been distorted
by communist ideology, even the most improbable notions fell on fertile ground,
up to and including satanic treatments of a two centuries-old army symbol which
they began to call ‘the Bolshevik star.’”
And on the basis of a common anti-communism,
these ideas penetrated and combined in a “paradoxical” way with those of Russian
Orthodoxy, completely confusing the situation. And some Orthodox radicals even
began insisting that overcoming communism requires the elimination of all red
stars (belrussia.ru/page-id-2308.html).
The actual history of the appearance
of the red star is still clouded in much mystery and dispute, Lyskov says; but
it appears that it originated with Red military commanders who viewed the star
as a sign of the army and acceptable as long as it was red, the color of the revolution,
and featuring a hammer and sickle.
No one at the outset of the Soviet
period had any intention of interjecting “any mystical, occult or
anti-Christian meanings in the new symbol of the new army; and the Bolsheviks
did not come up with anything fundamentally new in this area that represented a
complete break with the history and culture of the country.”
“But in order to understand this,”
the journalist concludes, “one must know one’s history.” And for Russians,
there are now as there have been in the past real problems in that regard.
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