Paul
Goble
Staunton, August 31 – For the last
four months, the saga of Shiigumen Sergey, the dissident Orthodox
fundamentalist priest in the Urals who has denounced coronavirus restrictions
and called for the ouster of Patriarch Kirill and Russian President Vladimir
Putin, has been a staple of Russian television.
But now that saga is approaching “its
inevitable end,” Aleksey Shaburov says, one in which the army of supporters Sergey
routinely claims have turned out to be non-existent and with him left to flee
even deeper into the hinterlands with a clutch of backers (politsovet.ru/67653-konec-vam-istoriya-shiigumena-sergiya-blizitsya-k-zaversheniyu.html).
The clearest signal of this comes
from Father Sergey himself, the editor of Yekaterinburg’s Politsovet
portal says. In his latest press
release, the former shiigumen addresses “the Orthodox warriors, the officers
and soldiers of the army and fleet” whom he had asked to come to support him
and asks plaintively “where the heck are you?”
Sergey has failed similarly to
attract large numbers of lay people or the clergy to his side even though his
fundamentalist positions undoubtedly are shared by many in both groups. Only once
did he assemble as many as 1500 people, and his recent efforts involving picketing
the bishopric headquarters attracted only about 50.
A few media figures perhaps equally
interested in attracting attention spoke in his behalf as did some professional
athletes. But those aren’t enough to make a movement, and even Sergey knows it
now. His “rising” is now condemned to
defeat. He couldn’t even provoke the kind of crackdown that might have left him
a martyr.
The only thing left to him is to eventually
leave the women’s monastery where he has been operating and retire to some
retreat far from civilization. Some people may make pilgrimages to him, but he
will end his days as his predecessors have, as a former media celebrity with
little or no impact on the ROC MP or Russia more generally.
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