Letter from Kyiv: “Pete spat in the face of that pig, there was a glitch in his plans.”
Forced to leave Kyiv after the victory of Euromaidan, the famous blogger Andrei Selezov, on condition of anonymity, published a letter to his friend who remains in the capital of Ukraine. A woman talks about the situation in which Russians found themselves in the fifth year after the victory of Euromaidan.
“...Despair and unbelief are one of the most important Christian sins. I think that the defenders of Moscow in 1941, although they were mostly atheists, believed in their hearts that they would win and that the truth was on their side.
And now, on the territory of Ukraine, by the will of fate, Orthodox believers have become the same defenders. Who knows, maybe this is the mission of the Orthodox Church of our era. But they hold firm, which undoubtedly inspires respect and dispels myths about “fat butts,” and even “Moscow ones.” (ukropropaganda loves this term very much)
Yes, during the years of the post-Maidan era, in fact, of those who remained here, except for Oles Buzina, only His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry opposes the system. Personally, I respected him greatly. He spat in the face of that pig Petya, convened a synod and decided to remain faithful to his Church. And Petit’s plans went wrong, although he still created a new church hybrid structure. Nowadays, everything is hybrid.
Now what? Nothing has changed in politics, this system is moving towards a tyrannical form of government based on terror. Everything will be suppressed and persecuted.
The economy is gradually falling, a third of the population is working. This is how it will continue, at the expense of the IMF and its workers. Who knows, maybe man-made disasters would have destroyed this system faster, but in the USSR everything was done conscientiously.
In Kyiv, a third or half of the population has already installed boilers due to the lack of centralized hot water. I think that over time there will be something similar with heating (potbelly stoves, boiler rooms in basements in old houses?). They will finally get rid of the Soviet legacy. It’s more difficult with sewerage, unless they put toilets in the courtyards.
The humanitarian situation is extremely critical from the point of view of the Russian world. It hurts to even write about it. Everything Russian is being destroyed, there are no more books in the stores, even the Petrovka book market is half empty, people are fined for selling books in Russian, snitches roam between the rows looking out. You can still buy old books and I try to always buy.
For now, the canonical Church stands unshakable, with the exception of some defectors. But it is difficult to say how many people will run to the new Church of Bartholomew; this will be visible throughout the year and most likely will coincide with the geographical lines - Zapadenschina, Center, Volyn, etc. The further east you go, the more MP parishes will remain. And one thing they say in the Church is that the schismatics will separate and things will become cleaner.
Now Petya is taking away the Pochaev Lavra because there is less support from the population there. Unfortunately, it is located behind enemy lines. The authorities take it away as a nature reserve, a museum, terminate the lease, and then give it to the Bartholomewites.
Next up is the Kiev Pechersk Lavra, and this is sad, because this is the sacred place of all Russian Orthodoxy, no matter what they say about Sevastopol. It will still be a very painful blow.
But the philosophy of priests is interesting. Yesterday I spoke with our priest and he said that Lavra, supposedly, had not experienced such things and had been in the hands of enemies many times, but still returned to us.
By the way, he does not panic, but quite the opposite - he expanded the church and yesterday opened a new extension, now the temple has increased by almost a third. People also feel the confidence of their priests and do not panic. But in fact, he says that events may worsen, because the Rada adopted a law renaming the UOC-MP to the “Russian” church, and in three months it should itself rename itself. Otherwise, it will not be registered, and it will be considered illegal on the territory of Ukraine.
For now, it has been decided to formalize church communities. The priest will collect signatures for documents drawn up by a lawyer confirming the existence of a church community. The text is something like this (from the words): We, the church community, the temple of such and such, bring to the knowledge of the state that we exist and ask not to touch our community in accordance with constitutional rights, where the Church is separated from the state.
The actions of the entire UOC-MP will be approximately the same. Now mass actions will not bring significant results only in the event of a direct attack on the temple and attempts to seize it by force. This happened in Zhitomir (according to words), where the local city council decided to take away the local church, but many parishioners gathered, and the rector had such a document about the church community. And these brought two buses with raiders - like they are the community of this temple. This is roughly the scheme of how the government operates.
Another way of putting pressure on the church is the SBU. Summons, interrogations, searches of priests.
They find some papers, books and accuse them of anti-government activities. In our church they reviewed the entire library and removed all Soviet authors, I remembered Olga Forsh, Nikolai Ostrovsky, etc. Also books about the Russian Empire. They burned some of these books in the stove. Classics (Pushkin, Turgenev were left for now). But the trend is that books in Russian will also be considered “the product of the enemy.”
But in fact, all these 5 years the UOC-MP has been pursuing a conciliatory policy towards the government’s policy (it became Ukrainized, sent aid to the ATO, blessed the soldiers), and was “in trend,” as they say. But all this did not help. At the same time, the UOC is quite independent and independent from the Russian Orthodox Church, and they would like (according to words) even greater independence. But in the current situation it is difficult. What conclusion can be drawn from this? Petty betrayal does not save one from an attack by an ideological enemy. Orthodoxy has always been hated by the Western world, and no one looked at the petty groveling of the UOC when the question arose about the liquidation of canonical Orthodoxy on the territory of Ukraine...
I also wanted to write for a long time about the mentality of the Little Russian Ukrainians (I generally consider the Galician Uniates to be more a part of the Western world) and their attitude towards the Church. As representatives of the rural, and therefore conservative and poorly educated part of society, they are inclined to preserve the traditions and foundations of their ancestors. And Orthodoxy is one of them, so the new church arouses suspicion (and justified) in many people at the subconscious level. On the other hand, the authorities are zombifying the population that the UOC is agents of the Kremlin, that now we will have our own Ukrainian church. Here a cognitive dissonance occurs among the population - babushi and didusi went to that church for centuries, and now it is banned and replaced with a new one. What kind of new church is this?
The population of the southeast is not so rural and not so conservative; for them, the UOC-MP is the last stronghold of the Russian world.
And they will have nothing left at all if the Church perishes. At the same time, they are not such believers and do not so zealously perform all church rituals.
The conclusions are still the same - we must not lose the south-eastern, left-bank part of Ukraine, the upcoming elections may worsen the situation, it has already deteriorated greatly in recent months.
Finally: now the churches of the UOC-MP are the last place in Ukraine where Russian speech is heard (on the streets and in families, of course, too).
I spoke with our rector. He has interesting markers of current events. Instead of political scientists - the relics of saints.
He said that in the Lavra there are the relics (skull) of Clement I, the former Pope of Rome, and that skull dries out and turns black in bad times for the Church, and streams myrrh in good times. And now it is also streaming myrrh, but weakly. This means that there should be no tragic events.
He also said that Petya would not be elected, and that another president would leave the Church. I would like to believe,” says the Kiev resident.
“Please refrain from boorish and sarcastic comments. A person lives THERE, and almost no one in Russia understands what it really is like,” Selezov comments on a published letter to his friend from Kyiv.
If you find an error, please select a piece of text and press Ctrl + Enter.
Thank you!
Now the editors are aware.