Church Cynically Sidesteps Soviet's Brutal Past | News | The Moscow Times

Andrei Malgin, Moscow Times, on Patriarch Kirill's award to the leader of the Russian Communist Party, 8 July 2014

Not much in modern Russia surprises me anymore, but last week I got a real shock: Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill warmly congratulated Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov on the occasion of his 70th birthday and presented him with the church's highest order.

"As one of the most prominent politicians of modern Russia, you strive to look after the welfare of the people and protect traditional moral values," the patriarch wrote. "I hope that in the future your fruitful activity will help promote socially significant initiatives and the moral transformation of society."

I would like to remind our friend the Patriarch that a communist dictatorship killed tens of thousands of Russian Orthodox priests and sent hundreds of thousands to labor camps. That does not even include the countless Soviet laypeople who were imprisoned or killed for their faith.

Zyuganov has portraits of Vladimir Lenin and Josef Stalin hanging above his desk, portraits of men who personally signed orders to destroy churches and execute believers. But perhaps the modern-day leader of the same party once led by Lenin and Stalin has had a change of heart and said something about the "blunders" or "wrongdoings" of his predecessors.

Nothing of the sort. Zyuganov remains the same diehard Marxist he always was.

The only explanation is that Patriarch Kirill so venerates Soviet-era leaders and history that he willfully closes his eyes to the darkest pages of his country's past, even when those tragedies concern the Orthodox Church.


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Church Cynically Sidesteps Soviet's Brutal Past | News | The Moscow Times