Till death do us unite

A couple of years ago, Putin laid claim to subsequent canonisation by adding a new touch to the outdated concept of heaven and hell.

The would-be St Vladimir explained that the Russians needn’t fear a world war and subsequent nuclear holocaust. “We’ll go straight to heaven,” he promised, “whereas they’ll just croak.”

Thus the two final destinations became separated not along the lines of virtue and sin, and not even according to God’s will, but strictly by ethnicity. All Russians go one way, those of a less fortunate nativity, the other.

This novel take on Christianity was begging for further development, and it duly arrived. Pectoral crosses worn by Russians are now engraved with Putin’s initials, and  priests are consecrating these new symbols of faith with alacrity.

Orthodox Christianity, as interpreted by the Moscow Patriarchate, has thus morphed into a particular cult focused on death and the ruler seen as a living God.

The Russian Orthodox Church expanded on this innovation, or rather return to the faiths of ancient Egypt, Babylon and Rome, by issuing the Creed of the 25^th Council of the Universal Russian Church.

This document refers to the Special Military Operation (invasion of the Ukraine) as the “Holy War” and defines the spiritual mission of the Russian World, whose borders go far beyond the borders of the Russian Federation. (A note to Eastern Europe: you are within this newly signposted territory.) Heroes of the invasion are defined as martyrs, and Putin’s immediate entourage as his apostles. Hence the logical next step of putting Putin’s initials on crosses.

Now, I’ve heard of the sacralisation of power, but this strikes me as a trifle excessive. Then again, over the past 52 years I’ve been regretfully out of touch with the superlative spirit of Russia. According to Medinsky, Putin’s former Culture Minister, it has a physiological origin: the Russians, according to him, are blessed with an extra spiritual gene.

A country where the culture minister is well-versed not only in his immediate field but also in microbiology is invincible. What does our own Lisa Nandy, Medinsky’s counterpart, know about genetics? About the same as she knows about culture, I’d suggest, which is the square root of sod-all.

The new religion demands its own theology, and the Orthodox hierarchs are happy to oblige. For example, the Murmansk Metropolitan Mitrofan offered a new doctrinal vision of death: “If you find a favourable occasion to die, take this step without hesitation because you never know if you’ll get another such chance.”

I dare say the chance to die is a dead cert, as it were, what with death being an unavoidable part of the human condition. Since His Eminence must be aware of this, he had to have something else in mind. The key word there is “favourable”: dying of old age in one’s bed clearly doesn’t pass muster. Only the living God will create propitious opportunities for dying, such as those offered by aggressive war.

Archpriest Igor Fomin, the dean of St Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, clarified the matter in line with scriptural sources: “Liberals will tell you now that even the ruler has no right to dispose of people’s lives. We have been brainwashed in this vein for a long time. But the Holy Scripture says exactly the opposite.”

Fr Igor’s flock must be much better versed in matters scriptural than I am, which is why he felt no need to provide specific references. This leaves me in the dark for I can’t recall offhand any biblical verses saying that the Caesar can dispose of his subjects’ lives as he sees fit.

I do remember quite a few verses saying “exactly the opposite”, to use Fr Igor’s phrase. Specifically, they say that only God has dominion of people’s lives, and his realm is separate from the Caesar’s. Then again, that objection becomes null and void when God and Caesar come together in one man, in this case St Vladimir to be.

While other priests are busily blessing the rockets to be fired at Ukrainian civilians, the Savtyvkar Archbishop Pitirim expressed this theological innovation poetically, by bringing the two Testaments of the Christian canon together: “He leads us like Moses, Putin, He guards Christ’s spirit in His heart.”

Now, Moses took 40 years to lead his people to the Promised Land. Putin has been doing a Moses for merely 25, so we have at least 15 more years of roaming through the desert and hoping for manna to come down from heaven. On second thoughts, Christ’s spirit in Putin’s heart may enable him to shave off a year or two.

All this should bring into focus the view that has gained wide currency in Western Right-wing (as discrete from conservative) circles, whereby Russia is undergoing a religious revival, making her, according to a particularly toxic columnist, “the most Christian country in Europe”.

Russian thinkers of the 19^th century, from Chaadayev (d. 1856) to the seven authors of the seminal Vekhi (Landmarks) collection of essays (1909), didn’t see Russia as a religious country even then, long before the advent of Bolshevism.

Unlike today’s Western commentators, they knew the difference between religion and superstition, with Russian peasants shunning their local churches but happily leaping over fires on high holidays. That’s why, when offered the chance to abandon the old cults for the new, they jumped at it.

Lenin and his gang, including the notorious League of the Militant Godless, ordered the extermination of religion, but they weren’t the ones who bulldozed churches and machinegunned their parishioners. It was the pious folk of yesteryear who did that.

And they did so with the kind of enthusiastic industry that usually escapes the Russians when they try to do something productive. On Lenin’s watch (d. 1924) some 40,000 priests, monks and nuns were murdered, which was only the beginning. History books say they were shot, but most weren’t so lucky (I’ll spare you the gruesome details).

Another 80,000 priests were executed in 1937 alone. Altogether by 1941 some 350,000 believers, 140,000 of them priests, were killed either quickly or slowly, by starving them to death in concentration camps.

During the war, Stalin realised that the masses were somewhat reluctant to die for him. In the hope they’d be more amenable to dying for Mother Russia, he decided to take the Church off the mothballs and put it to work.

But, to be allowed to live, the Church had to be tamed. When applied to Soviet realities, that term effectively meant turning it into a department of the KGB. All the hierarchs of the Church were appointed by the government’s Council for Religious Affairs, headed in my day by a KGB general.

The Russian representative to the World Council of Churches, Metropolitan Nicodemus, held the slightly lower rank of colonel, but then the WCC was a Soviet front anyway. To be fair, not all Orthodox hierarchs were full-time KGB officers. Some were merely part-time employees, either informers or agents.

The current Patriarch Kirill, né Gundyaev, was known in the KGB annals as ‘Agent Mikhailov’, whose assignments were meticulously documented in operational reports. The last sentence invariably stated that the assignment “had been successfully fulfilled” – by the mercy of God no doubt.

What the Bolsheviks did to Russian Christianity was monstrous. But what the current lot are doing is even worse. Rather than proudly declaring themselves to be the Satanic atheists they actually are, they choose instead to prostitute Christianity by turning it into a death cult and leader-worship.

They’ll burn in hell for that, but I’d rather not wait that long. I’m sure Putin and his accomplices will be happy to burn at the stake as a shortcut on their road to heaven. And I’d be happy to add some kindling to the pyre.