Paul
Goble
Staunton, March 28 – Archpriest Dimitry
Smirnov, who plays a role in the Moscow Patriarchate analogous to the one
Vladimir Zhirinovsky plays in the larger state by expressing in extreme form
what many think but do not say, suggests that Russia along with Ukraine and
Belarus is dying out and that the Russian state has only 30 years left to live.
In a comment on Turkish proposals to
transform Constantinople’s Hagia Sophia cathedral into a mosque, Smirnog, who
heads the Patriarchate’s family commission, says that Russians need to
recognize that soon there will be a minaret over the Kremlin in place of the
bell tower of Ivan the Great (rusk.ru/newsdata.php?idar=84067).
“Ukraine, Belarus
and Russia are all dying,” the archpriest says. “The Russian state has only about
30 years left to exist” barring a miracle leading to changed preferences for
family size among the Slavs. And it can completely
disappear, he says, just as Byzantium, a center of the world, did earlier.
Only God
can produce a miracle and save Russia, Dimitry says, just as happened centuries
ago when Tamerlane approached Moscow and planned to burn it. But the Virgin Mary appeared to him in a
dream and the Mongol leader reconsidered and then withdrew. She appeared, he
continues, because all Russians prayed for this.
“But who
is praying now? They drink beer and go fishing.” Unless that changes, Russia and the Slavic
world will die out in the not distant future.
Such
predictions are certainly overblown, but they reflect the apocalypticism which
infects not only the upper reaches of the Russian Orthodox Church but also many
throughout the Russian leadership and the Russian people – and it is this vision
of future horrors that helps to explain why Russians are not alienated by Putin’s
talk of war and mass destruction.
If Russia
is on the way off the historical stage anyway, those who think as Dimitry does
feel, why would it be wrong to take others with it?
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