Orthodox Archpriest Says Russia Must Attract White People from West and Make Russians Out of Them to Prevent Islamization of Country

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 21 – Speaking on the Russian nationalist television channel Tsargrad, ROC MP Archpriest Andrey Tkachev says that Moscow must not only call home all ethnic Russians from abroad but attract white people from Europe and North America who can be assimilated and help maintain Russian dominance of Russia.

            Ethnic Russians now in Russia must be more closely tied to the land and have at least three children, the senior churchman says. But that won’t be enough to prevent the dying out of ethnic Russians and their country being overwhelmed by Muslims and others (ahilla.ru/belye-lyudi-i-morkovka-retsept-ot-protoiereya-andreya-tkacheva-po-spaseniyu-russkogo-etnosa/).

            To achieve that goal and to protect the national security of the country, Father Andrey says, Moscow must call home all ethnic Russians from Ukraine, Belarus and anywhere else they live. It must Russify the non-Russians inside Russia; and it must attract white people from Europe and North America and then transform them into ethnic Russians.

            Whites from the West should be selected on the basis of their “conservative views,” include scholars and members of the middle class who are horrified by the propaganda for LGBT “and other satanic things,” the archpriest says. They will be the most willing to come and the easiest to transform into Russians.

            Given the attention that those Westerners who have sought to come to Russia have attracted, it is perhaps not surprising that someone, in this case an Orthodox priest, would take the next step and urge that the government make attracting such people a priority and argue that only with them can the Islamization of Russia be blocked.

            Fortunately, it is unlikely that many even around the conservative regime of Vladimir Putin would be willing to take up the cudgels for such a policy, especially because they must be aware that few people of any kind in the West would have much interest in becoming Russians. Trying to achieve that would almost certainly embarrass the Kremlin.