Georgy Nikolaevich Mitrofanov. Curriculum Vitae

Content

• 1 influences
• 2 education
• 3 hierarchy
• 4 teaching activity
• 5 secular and ecclesiastical positions
• 6 press
• 7 views and activities 7.1 preaching unbelief and doubt
• 7.2 Ecumenism
• 7.3 Apology for euthanasia
• 7.4 pro-abortion modernism
• 7.5 immoralism
• 7.6 derogatory attitude towards Saints

Can any victims of repression be called martyrs?

Who are they after this? How are they different from all those who were subject to repression based primarily on socio-political grounds? So, are they victims of political repression? How, then, should we evaluate their death and suffering?

The term “new martyrs” in this case can clarify little. Can the death of a victim of political repression, which in many respects was already predetermined, be called a martyrdom, and the person could not even save his life by renouncing Christ? The unfortunate priest, like the unfortunate former landowners, merchants, professors, officials, and generals, was doomed simply by order to receive a death sentence or a long-term prison sentence. And nothing could change his fate, except perhaps some active cooperation with the investigation, but here we are plunging into a completely different sphere, and there is simply no need to talk about holiness.

This doomed priest turns out to be more of a sufferer than a hero.

In general, having been studying the history of the persecution of the Church in Russia in the twentieth century for thirty years now, I cannot stand the word “hero.”

This is a purely pagan idea of ​​​​man. And the more often I remember the evidence of Christ’s death on the cross, the more I begin to understand how inapplicable this title of hero is to Christ, which is often applied to many saints, including martyrs, thereby emphasizing some kind of superhuman status. But people are not called upon to be heroes, although each person, of course, has his own measure of patience.

There was a discussion in the canonization commission for years, especially when we studied the repressions of 1937, whether it was possible to extract any testimony from a person through physical torture. Some said that there are very few people who can overcome all torture, but their opponents did not agree, emphasizing that any person can be brought to such a state that he will give any testimony, as long as his executioners have enough time and skill, and the sufferer, unfortunately, has a strong body. I am inclined to agree with the second point of view: man is not superman. Yes, a “miracle” may happen - he will die, but this is the only miracle that helps a person in such a situation.

education

1982 - Leningrad State University, Faculty of History.

1985-1986 – studied at the Leningrad Theological Seminary (LDS).

In 1990, he graduated from the Leningrad Theological Academy with a candidate of theology degree for a course essay “The Religious Philosophy of Prince E. N. Trubetskoy and its Importance for Orthodox Theology.”

In 2004, he defended his master’s thesis on the topic “The spiritual and historical phenomenon of communism as a subject of critical research in Russian religious and philosophical thought of the first half of the 20th century.”

Candidate of Philosophical Sciences (2008). Dissertation: “The work of E. N. Trubetskoy as an experience of philosophical substantiation of a religious worldview.”

Doctor of Theology (decision of the Church Council of the Russian Orthodox Church of September 4, 2013). Dissertation: “The spiritual and historical phenomenon of communism as a subject of critical research in Russian religious and philosophical thought of the first half of the 20th century.”

Why, given such a scale of repression, are there so few new martyrs?

What follows from this? The persecution of the Church in Russia in the 20th century was very different from the persecution of previous centuries. The overwhelming majority of victims of communist repression from among the representatives of the clergy and active laity, who now make up the Council of New Martyrs and Confessors, are people who, as a rule, were not faced with a choice, specifically formulated by their executioners, including their formal investigators and judges, between renouncing Christ and the salvation of your life.

During the main four periods of intensified persecution: 1918-20, 1922-23, 1929-32 and 1937-42, repressions varied in form: at one time they were more bloody, as for example in 1937-42, at other times less bloody, but extensive, such as in 1929-32. During the civil war, as a rule, there were arrests or simply detentions of people primarily from social groups declared hostile to class; they often ended in spontaneous reprisals or executions even without any formal judicial procedure - the person did not even have time to understand what was happening.

For example, the first murdered new martyr, Archpriest John Kochurov, whose life I wrote, was killed in Tsarskoye Selo near Petrograd on October 31, 1917, completely spontaneously, almost by accident. Red Guards and revolutionary soldiers seized several priests in their apartments because they had served a prayer service the day before for an end to internecine warfare, took them to the local council building, moderately mocked them, expressed public censure, and released them. But the crowd did not bring Father John to the local council; on the way they began to beat him and bayonet him, and then they shot him and left him dead in the street.

But since the 30s, the practice of multi-day or even multi-week investigations using physical force, which was not so widespread even in the 1920s, began to dominate. Those arrested were forced to testify as counter-revolutionaries (later this term will replace the definition of “enemy of the people”) against themselves and other people. And the question of saving one’s life by renouncing faith, as a rule, did not arise even then. Yes, faith could still be mocked, but the point was different - a person either had to be destroyed on the basis of his social status as a “church”, or he was given, although not always real, a chance to save his life or at least stop his torture, testifying against himself or people completely uninvolved in any counter-revolutionary activities.

This means that some other approach was initially necessary. This means that it was no longer possible to consider every person who died during the repressions as a martyr. Studying the archives, we discovered that often those who died during the repressions not only gave confessions, because of which other people later suffered, but were also secret to employees of the Cheka, the NKVD, and there were very many of them, and the confessions given by more than 90% of those under investigation.

And here a moral conflict arises: is it a sin for a person to want to end his torment by recognizing himself as some kind of Japanese, Polish, English spy, a member of a non-existent monarcho-fascist group, an exposer of the collective farm system or the Stalinist Constitution? And we came to the conclusion that in cases where, in the presence of an impeccable life from the church point of view, despite the fact that, having admitted his non-existent guilt, in order to just stop his torment, a person did not slander anyone, the issue of canonization could be taken up for consideration. But if, admitting his non-existent guilt, a person named the names of other people who could have suffered, this became an obstacle to canonization. That is why 1,500 new martyrs, against the background of not only many thousands, but even millions of victims of political repression, seem like a very small number. And this is quite natural.

secular and ecclesiastical positions

In 1982-1985 he was a junior researcher in the manuscript department of the State Public Library (now the Russian National Library).

In 1985-1986 he worked as an assistant to the head of the library of the Leningrad Theological Academy and Seminary.

Since 1993 he has been a member of the Synodal Commission for the Canonization of Saints.

In 2003, he was a participant in the All-Diaspora Pastoral Conference of the ROCOR in Nyack (USA) on the issue of reunification with the Moscow Patriarchate.

In 2004, he was elected to the Diocesan Council of the St. Petersburg Diocese. Author and presenter of the diocesan radio of the St. Petersburg Metropolis “Grad Petrov”, one of the regular authors of the official magazine of the St. Petersburg Metropolis “Living Water”.

Since June 2009, he has been a member of the editorial board and the editorial board for writing a textbook and teaching materials for the training course “Fundamentals of Orthodox Culture.” Since July of the same year, he has been a member of the Inter-Council Presence of the Russian Orthodox Church.

On August 6, 2009, he was expelled from the membership of the Commission for the Canonization of Saints of the St. Petersburg Diocese.

Why do these young people go to seminary?

– How do they imagine it?

– And here we must make a certain historical excursion. Just to understand what is happening and how this is possible. First of all, we must keep in mind that during the first six hundred-plus centuries of Christianity, the clergy did not study with us at all. It was hereditary, and the children learned from their fathers the purely external performance of worship, without understanding it, not knowing it, not being able to preach and educate their parishioners. They were the performers of worship and services. Completely, at the same time, thoughtlessly.

Finally, after the painful 18th century, when we finally created a system of theological education, in the 19th century the clergy appeared who realized that a priest must be educated and have special knowledge. I want to emphasize that we were talking about the children of the hereditary clergy. A certain way of life for the priestly family developed, different from the lifestyle of the men. They were the strongest, both in moral and everyday relations. The priest, after all, at some level was no longer identical to his ignorant flock peasant. Education gave a new impetus to the phenomenon, and our clergy began to develop further.

At the beginning of the 19th century, for example, the provincial mass of the nobility was inferior to the clergy in education. That is why even those priestly children who did not become priests, as a rule, joined the ranks of the Russian intelligentsia. And an understanding developed that a priest must prepare for his ministry. Not only having received a church upbringing from infancy in the family, but also having gone through theological school: a four-year theological school, a six-year seminary. And only after this a person can be a priest.

As a result, when at the beginning of the 20th century, when the class isolation of the theological school was largely overcome, an interesting, nascent process of influx into the clergy and Russian intelligentsia began - people who were already educated secularly, but who somehow realized for themselves the need for such study. As a rule, such people entered theological academies.

All this was destroyed in the 20s. This layer simply physically ceased to exist. And then the clergy that appeared in the post-war period were no longer hereditary, but of worker-peasant origin, because all other classes were destroyed as much as possible.

The first generation Soviet intelligentsia did not resemble either Russian nobles or Russian priests; their children were rather simple-minded. Our clergy did not even radically democratize, but became plebeian: people came from an environment in which external ritual piety had been preserved for centuries, but there was no understanding that the Church is a special culture, and the service of priests presupposes familiarization with this culture and tradition.

– That is, we have again returned to the “men” from which we came?

- Yes. But at the same time, we tried to restore the theological school. This is understandable, because those few representatives of the clergy who survived by the mid-40s, who themselves went through it, understood that it was impossible without it. But the level of the revived theological schools was immeasurably lower than those theological schools that once existed.

And, nevertheless, despite the difficult conditions of permanent persecution of the Church in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, the level of the clergy was still higher than in the 90s. Why? Because the authorities viewed theological schools as a kind of filter through which they passed future priests. After all, the attempt to take control of a future priest began when the applicant submitted documents to the seminary. Representatives of the authorities have already contacted them.

My first preventive conversation with the state security major took place when I had just passed the exam and did not yet know whether I had been accepted. And the authorities really didn’t like it when some active bishops appointed priests from people who had not gone through theological school. And in the theological school, surveillance began, and there were many people who performed information functions among teachers and students. The authorities were happy with this.

But something else happened: everyone went through a theological school, in which there were people who, perhaps, were not very educated themselves. For me, examples of high theological culture were Archbishop Mikhail Mudyugin, a candidate of technical sciences who had a higher secular education, but then graduated from a theological academy, and Archpriest Liveriy Voronov. These were people from hereditary, intelligent, church-going families, whose personalities conveyed to me the type of thinking, cultured clergyman. Now there are no such people among us. There are those who are educated by Soviet standards, but this style has already been lost forever.

But the worst thing happened in the 90s, when people began to be ordained to the priesthood without any education.

Two-thirds of our clergy at that time were uneducated. What did they have behind them? It would be good if some technical institute. What if it was a tractor driver or a turner? Who was this priest? And these people performed divine services thoughtlessly, preached from the wind of their heads, communicated with parishioners in their usual style, and talked about everyday things.

Another problem of the 1990s is emerging that is contributing to priest burnout. For many priests, even burning ones, filled with high impulses, the main task for many years was not the task of creating a parish community, not communicating with their spiritually motivated flock, but the task of building a church in a country that was experiencing a colossal crisis. The construction of the temple implied participation in sometimes dubious events, communication with dubious sponsors and government officials. This could not but morally cripple people, and undeveloped ones at that.

Now, when the next intake is taking place, I think: “Why are these young people going to the seminary?” They do not understand at all what priestly ministry is, and we very often do not have time to prepare them in our theological schools: a four-year seminary and a two-year academy.

Photo: Vk/Simbirsk Metropolitanate

views and activities

In 2021, he signed the “Letter of priests and laity to Christians of Belarus.”

preaching unbelief and doubt

The Apostle Thomas reminds us of the obvious truth that a Christian is obliged to doubt: to doubt himself, to doubt his experience of God, to doubt his faith in God, and there is absolutely no sin in this. For faith is not gullibility. Remembering the popular definition of the Apostle Thomas as Infidel Thomas, we can recall our history, when it was our people, who awarded the holy Apostle Thomas with the definition of “infidel,” who showed their unbelief in the most terrible way quite recently.

The credulity with which our people followed those who called on them to destroy their own Church, their own country, is precisely evidence that they lacked the ability at some point to doubt those who offered them this easy right to dishonor . Thus, recent history has shown us how important the experience of the Holy Apostle Thomas is, especially since if we read the Gospel more carefully, we will discover the following: the Apostle Thomas does not require anything special for himself. After all, Jesus Christ Himself, repeatedly appearing before His disciples, proves to them that He has risen, showing them His nail wounds. The Apostle Thomas differs from his fellow apostles only in that, not having seen this proof, he expects it, expects it, and receives it from Christ.

This is a very important topic in the spiritual life of Christians. When we, either out of indifference or out of fear, find ourselves not doubting, not asking questions of God, we are lying. God is waiting for questions from us. He does not need pious puppets, He is waiting for any of our questions and is ready to answer all our questions. The more tempting, perhaps, but, in essence, more honest our question to God is, the more tangible God’s answer to our question will be. God is not afraid of our doubts. He is ready to listen to our doubts and dispel all our doubts.

And the Holy Apostle Thomas, in the days when Easter joy lulls our thoughts, our feelings, sometimes reminds us of the work that lies ahead of us for all the subsequent years of our lives. He calls us to follow Christ responsibly and meaningfully, to live in Christ, to meditate on Christ, and not to love and believe in Him madly[2].

— Sermon on the 2nd week of Easter by the Apostle Thomas

ecumenism

Participated in ecumenical contacts, for example in the Ecumenical Forum organized by the Evangelicals of Westphalia on June 14-20, 1993.

apology for euthanasia

In 2007, he came out with an apology for euthanasia, saying, in particular:

Let’s say a person becomes convinced that he is terminally ill and in a few months a painful death awaits him, which will deprive him of the opportunity to die in peace and burden his loved ones with material and moral costs for the senseless extension of his life. And a person wants to say goodbye to this world, to loved ones in full consciousness and not to experience severe physical torment that turns him into a suffering piece of meat. And when he himself makes the decision to die, having resolved all his legal and moral obligations, indicating his last will, having received parting words from a priest, can we compare this conscious choice to suicide in the classical sense of the word?[3]

pro-abortion modernism

On April 26, 2007, at the “Round Table “Family in the Modern Church,” referring to the “Fundamentals of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church” and “criticizing” Roman Catholics, he spoke out in defense of abortion:

That is why the position of the Roman Catholic Church regarding, for example, abortion and contraception, is much closer to our zealots of childbearing than our “Fundamentals of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church.” I have more than once heard reproaches that the “Fundamentals of the Social Concept” are “not Orthodox enough.” So, is Roman Catholic theology more Orthodox? I will illustrate this with some examples. For Roman Catholics, who for the most part consider childbearing to be the meaning of the family, abortion is completely impossible under any circumstances. The “Fundamentals of Social Concept,” in the event that the mother’s life is in danger during the birth of a child, allows—not recommends, but admits—the possibility for the mother to choose between an abortion and the risk of childbirth, fraught with her own death. The position of Catholics, going back to their idea of ​​​​the meaning of marriage, seems very consistent in its way. If the meaning of marriage is childbearing, then everything must be sacrificed to this, and the mother must be prepared to die giving birth to a child. But beyond the scope of this reasoning, another question remains: why, in fact, should the mother’s life be sacrificed for the life of an unborn child? Moreover, if this mother already has other children and there is also a husband, who will not always be happy about the death of his wife... Our Orthodox “Fundamentals of a Social Concept” act more wisely. They balance the right to life of the mother and the right to life of the child, and provide the mother with the right to choose in an extreme, life-threatening situation for the mother[4].

amoralism

At the same round table he made a number of immoral statements. In particular, talking about his dialogue with Catholic clergy, he stated:

I felt behind all these conversations a psychoanalytically detectable moment that people, deep down in their souls who had not known marriage, wanted to maximally poison their lay people’s life in marriage of this kind by simply humiliating discussions and reasoning[4].

It should be noted that this part of the speech was later published in edited form:

Behind all these conversations I felt only a desire to poison the spouses’ life in marriage as much as possible with this kind of humiliating discussions and reasoning[5].

On January 2, 2008, in his speech at the “educational conference “The Sacrament of Marriage - the Sacrament of Unity”” he also made a number of immoral and untrue statements. In particular, according to the magazine “Living Water”: “for centuries, noted Father George, the idea of ​​marriage as a Sacrament was alien to the Russian people. Thus, until the 15th century, the Sacrament of Marriage, the wedding, as a rule, was not performed at all in the families of Russian peasants and was considered a “requirement” for the noble and rich. Only during the Synodal period, according to the speaker, did the phenomenon of the Orthodox family begin to take shape in Russia.”

[6].

derogatory attitude towards Saints

When asked about the legendary

(as in the text - Ed.) Saints Peter and Fevronia as an example of an ideal married couple in Russian hagiography, Father George answered with a note of doubt: “We do not know for certain whether these people existed at all”[6].

The priest acts as a ritual and household servant

– Nowadays there is a lot of talk about burnout among charity workers and volunteers, teachers, doctors, and parents. There is less talk about priest burnout. Does such a phenomenon even exist? How widespread is it?

– To be honest, for me burnout is something that is an inevitable part of any person’s life. A person changes, not always for the better, and gets tired of life, profession, and communication with people. It is no coincidence that life is finite. Therefore, the term is very vague and can be applied to any person, regardless of his profession and in relation to the circumstances of his life.

In the context of priestly ministry we can talk about many problems. For me, as a church historian, it would be more appropriate to give a historical excursion that explains a lot. I'll do it later. But still, being also a priest, I would first outline what should constitute the main meaning, the content of the activity of a priest, how this content manifests itself in our modern church life and what costs it may be accompanied by.

It would seem that what lies on the surface? A priest has certain responsibilities. And the first is worship. In order to perform divine services, a person must have an internal need to participate more actively in it, psychologically, morally, intellectually.

And, taking into account the complex structure of our worship, the deep theological meaning of many of our liturgical texts, a person must have the appropriate knowledge to understand what he is doing, what he is saying, what he is doing.

But now I can’t help but wonder: for most modern priests, what becomes the most important thing in worship over time? Moreover, preferred and even desired? It is by no means performing the annual cycle of worship in the church, or even performing the liturgy, but performing the necessities. There are a lot of tasks that they have to perform, which do not require special intellectual, psychological, or moral efforts. And they provide the most tangible and quick income necessary for the priest, because he is not an incorporeal being.

And most importantly, the service is a form of worship that does not require a deep, spiritual connection between the priest and the people who come to perform it. Having performed a prayer service, a memorial service, a baptism, a wedding and the much-loved sacred rite associated with the consecration of an apartment, an office, a car, and in rural areas also a threshing floor, a storehouse, and what not is consecrated, the priest quite quickly completes communication with the person for whom he is performing the task. . Or it may continue with a meal, which usually does not involve serious pastoral conversation. The priest receives a reward and then may not see this person for the rest of his life.

Archpriest Georgy Mitrofanov. Photo: Vladimir Khodakov

And everyone is happy. Everyone has the feeling that the priest has fulfilled his duty. Our contemporaries with little church, near-church, and near-church feel that they have joined church life. And most importantly, there is a feeling that now there is at least some guarantee that the car will not crash, the well will not become moldy, and the apartment will not catch fire. And all this does not at all imply constant communication between this priest and these people, and these people with the priest in the context of general parish life and the celebration of the liturgy.

The priest acts as a ritual and household servant, completely devoid of any spirituality, fulfills the needs of people he barely knows or completely unfamiliar with.

Yes, he receives money for this, and on the basis of this money he can indicate his status in the diocese, pay diocesan dues and demonstrate that there is some kind of life in the parish. But most of the people who come to him are not even parishioners, but visitors.

And this cannot but devastate, or a person begins to condescend to the level of any servant: a hairdresser, a salesman. We have a lot of priests who, after serving for some time, begin to perceive themselves in this way.

– How long might this take, several years?

– Depends on the characteristics of a person’s personality, on the level of his culture. I'll get to this next. You and I have seen that in one of the main functions of a priest there are serious reasons to suddenly feel like a devastated, lonely person, to whom people treat exclusively as a consumer, and to whom he himself begins to treat in the same consumer way, expecting nothing from them except material reward for the time spent, the burden of pronouncing ritual words that are incomprehensible to them, performing ritual actions that are completely incomprehensible to them, which can sometimes be accompanied by a moderately sincere conversation if the performance of the ritual is followed by a meal.

– Doesn’t give anything away and doesn’t fill itself?

– In their relationship there is an imitation of church life. But, in fact, before us, yes, of course, religious life, but of a lower order, this is magic. To paraphrase the famous book of Archpriest Alexander Men, magism without monotheism. Christ in this case is not necessary, he may not exist.

pathological speech

Topics

Apostle Thomas

True faith requires doubts and questions. The Lord created man this way. Apostle Thomas, that’s who should be our example. And God, without embarrassment, answered all questions, even those that seemed blasphemous: “How dare you want to plunge your hands into the wounds of nails?” Please, touch is the most reliable way of knowing. Do you want to be convinced of this, not idlely, but from the fullness of your heart? Do you dare to be so ungodly, unlike the other apostles? Get what you ask for. The main thing is sincerity in the desire to find the truth. True faith grows precisely from this[7].

stamps

Paradigm

October 17 brought Russian society out of the traditional cultural paradigm

[8]

Positioning

Metropolitan Tikhon (Patriarch Tikhon at the Local Council of 1917 - Ed.) did not show himself to be particularly active in discussions of this kind. And the position of chairman deprived him of the opportunity to actively position himself

[9].

life creativity

Mother Mary is truly an unusual saint. She smoked and led a bohemian lifestyle before her tonsure, and even after her tonsure she did not look like a quiet nun, busy only with prayer and fasting. Her monasticism was not a death to the world, but something quite the opposite—that shocking invasion into the world that clearly testified to the vitality of Christianity. She was able to accomplish a lot in her life, for which she is truly worthy of church veneration. Her life creativity surpasses poetic creativity, and there is novelty in this too[10].

aphorisms

• If there is no God, then everything is permitted[11].

pathological vocabulary

Alive, Non-standard, Novelty, Paradigm, Positive, Meaning, Creativity, Creativity of life

What makes priests bad psychotherapists

– And finally, one more function, no less tempting, but significant in the life of a priest. This is shepherding, one of the forms of which is clergy. One of the colossal problems of our church life is that our entire pastorate bears the stamp of clergy. All our priests have the right to confess, and all Christians are obliged to confess before communion.

But the majority of our priests do not know how to confess, and the majority of our parishioners do not know how to confess. This led to a colossal profanation of the sacrament of repentance in the form of confession. During confession, people repent least of all. And most of all they are concerned about two things: getting a clear, simple answer to their various questions and hearing a word of reassurance, sympathy, and talking about their problems.

– Get support?

- Yes. “Tell me how should I live?”, “Tell me what should I do?” And what can a priest, not even a young one, but an old one, know about the lives of people who are in many ways different from him? They have their own families, their own professions, their own social environment. And a strange combination of such pseudo-monastic directives “do this, do that” and a very unqualified psychotherapeutic conversation arises.

And you can spend hours, days, months and years in this. And many priests succumb to this, because sometimes they have no other forms of communication with people other than standing with them at the lectern, turning confession into a psychotherapeutic session, bad and unprofessional. Because the topic of confession is a person’s repentance in specific matters, the topic of pastoral conversation is the posing of specific questions, not to bless to undergo surgery, but how to act in a situation from a Christian point of view, from the point of view of the Church.

Moreover, it is not the opinion of the priest that is required, but the opinion of the Church. This all fades into the background. And this enormously breaks priests, turning them into bad psychotherapists. A person has no religious questions at all, but the priest does not feel the right to say: “This is not for me,” if, especially, we are talking about a conversation in confession.

But the priest is alive, and this empty chatter at the lectern is emasculating his soul.

He feels lonely again. This is one of the very important problems.

– Is your family supportive?

- Yes. But I imagine very well that for many priests the family is by no means such a quiet backwater. But rather, it is a reason for temptation when, for example, in the name of the family he forgets his pastoral duty. When a family, often even less developed than he is in a spiritual, religious sense, defines him as simply a breadwinner, it gets to him.

And, at the same time, any person in the family is also experiencing a certain kind of crisis. Such a concept as loneliness together is common to many priests. This aggravates his loneliness, to which he is doomed simply as a priest.

There is a flock that does not become a family. And there is a family, which in the general crisis of the family is often not a help, but a temptation.

See, I tried to explain the reasons for what is called burnout. As you can see, there are a lot of them. But perhaps the most important reason for burnout is that, and I say this as a priest who has been in the priesthood for almost 30 years, as a teacher at a theological school who has been teaching there for the same number of years, that most of the people who come to us are not at all imagine what the ministry of a priest is and what church life is.

major works

• Mitrofanov, Georgy o.
  Russian Orthodox Church in Russia and in exile in the 1920s. On the question of the relationship between the Moscow Patriarchate and the Russian church emigration in the period 1920-1927. (1995)
• Mitrofanov, Georgy o.
  History of the Russian Orthodox Church. 1900—1927 (2002)
• Mitrofanov, Georgy o.
  Anton Vladimirovich Kartashev. Russian theologian and church historian, statesman and public figure. // Sowing - 2002. - No. 10-11.
• Mitrofanov, Georgy o.
  Russia of the 20th century - the East of Xerxes or the East of Christ. The spiritual and historical phenomenon of communism as a subject of critical research in Russian religious and philosophical thought of the first half of the 20th century (2004)
• Mitrofanov, Georgy o.
  Russian religious philosophers on the spiritual and religious consequences of communism in Russia // Annual Theological Conference of the Orthodox St. Tikhon’s Theological Institute. Materials (2005)
• Mitrofanov, Georgy o.
  Death by choice. Water is alive. St. Petersburg Church Bulletin. Official publication of the St. Petersburg Diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church. - 2007. - No. 6.
• Mitrofanov, Georgy o.
  Sermons (2009)
• Mitrofanov, Georgy o.
  The tragedy of Russia. "Forbidden" topics in the history of the twentieth century (2009)
• Mitrofanov, Georgy o.
  Sermons 2010-17. M.: Society of Church History Lovers, 2017.
• Mitrofanov, Georgy o.
  Prince Evgeny Nikolaevich Trubetskoy - philosopher, theologian, Christian / Recommended for publication by the Publishing Council of the Russian Orthodox Church IS R19-816-0606. - SPb.: SPbDA, 2021. - 136 p. — ISBN 978-5-906627-59-9.

They don't burn out because they never burned out.

– That is, the seed of burnout lies long before the priest begins to communicate with the flock?

– You see, burnout can be a tragedy, or it can go completely unnoticed by a burnt-out priest, and simply become a natural process. It did not burn out, and, in fact, did not catch fire. He didn’t burn, he came to work as a ritual and household servant, initially programmed for this.

And, even after going through theological school, he is limited to a minimum of knowledge, which allows him to create the feeling that he can be a servant more attractive than another priest: to say something, to portray something. That is why one of the terrible problems of priests is involuntary acting.

When you realize that you are the way you are, you bear little resemblance to a priest and begin to imitate someone, especially authoritative, elder priests. A creepy role-playing game of priest begins, which cannot help but devastate.

There is no experience of church life, no theological education, much less theological culture.

And most importantly, he does not understand that in order to remain a priest, you need to live a spiritual life. He himself had not yet formed this spiritual life. He continues his ministry without this life.

– Then it turns out that burnout is the lot of a few, only those who are burning inside?

- Yes! Therefore, priests who burn out evoke in me much more not only sympathy, but respect than those who go on like this without burning out, because nothing has ever burned in their souls. Another thing is that this process, of course, will change historically. But now we see a very sad picture: priest burnout is a process that is very difficult for many of us to avoid.

Am I burned out or not? Hard to say. But I understand perfectly well that I am no longer the same as I was before. In some ways I have become better, in some ways worse, it’s probably difficult to talk about it. But, you see, a significant part of our priests have not even reached the point of burnout, and this is the worst thing. These people are unfit for professionalism. In every profession there are unsuitable people.

A person who cannot stand the sight of a dead person and faints at the sight of blood cannot be a doctor. From the very first year such people are expelled, or they leave on their own, and this is completely natural. Yes, the canon prohibits ordaining people whose bodies, for example, reject wine. But this is what concerns the external, physiological manifestations of a person. But there may also be spiritual contraindications.

– What spiritual contraindications could there be? If you imagine such a spiritual doctor issuing a certificate to applicants?

– Psychiatric diagnosis, for example. There is a good test system that helps identify people prone to negative addictions.

– Could alcohol be an attempt to escape burnout?

– As for drunkenness, this phenomenon accompanied the history of our clergy, as well as our entire people. It intensified in the 19th century when educated priests appeared in village parishes. They were alienated from the peasant environment and were strangers among the nobility. People with spiritual needs and a higher level of culture had complete isolation, which became a very serious problem.

And only at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, in the cities, especially when the educated clergy gradually entered the category of the intelligentsia, the priest began to communicate with scientists, public figures, officers, doctors, and his children were intellectuals. But in the villages, isolation remained, and the village priests drank much more because of this, of course. This anesthesia, typical for a Russian person, worked especially well in the clergy, especially since alcohol was always at hand.

– Can a priest be depressed? Real medical depression?

- Why not? He never ceases to be human, that’s one of his problems.

sources

• O. Mitrofanov, Georgy Nikolaevich // Antimodernism.ru.
• Vershillo R. A.
  The moral teaching of the Church has suffered a severe blow (2006) // Eschatological Review. - 2008. - January 19. – Date of access: 19.1.2017.

Footnotes

1. In memory of Father Vasily Ermakov // Grad Petrov. – 2021. – February 3. – Date of access: 7.2.2017.
2. Mitrofanov, Georgy o.
   Sermon on the 2nd week of Easter by the Apostle Thomas // ABC of Faith. – Date of access: 18.2.2017.
3. Death of one's own accord // Living Water. - 2007. - No. 6.
4. ↑ 4.04.1 Round table “Family in the modern Church.” Speech by Archpriest Georgy Mitrofanov // Patriarchal Center for the Spiritual Development of Children and Youth. - 2007. - April 26.
5. Archpriest Georgy Mitrofanov. Hagiographic image and historical reality of family life in the Russian Orthodox Church / Round table “Family in the modern church” // Alpha and Omega. - 2007. - No. 49.
6. ↑ 6.06.1 Archpriest Georgy Mitrofanov: “Domostroy” does not show us the way of life of a Christian family” // Living Water. - 2008. - January 9.
7. Dmitrieva, Nastya.
   Archpriest Georgy Mitrofanov: We approach the relics with the fear of a shamanist // Orthodoxy and the World. – 2021. – July 3. – Date of access: 6.7.2017.
8. Mitrofanov, Georgy o.
   Representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church took part in the all-Russian round table “Lessons of October” // Patriarchy.ru. – 2007. – November 10. – Access date: 10/27/2017.
9. Patriarch Tikhon and the Church in the twentieth century. Lecture by Archpriest Georgy Mitrofanov // Orthodoxy and the World. – 2015. – April 7. – Date of access: 06/5/2018.
10. Invading the world instead of dying. Non-standard holiness of the twentieth century // Transfiguration Brotherhood. – 2021. – July 26. – Date of access: 28.6.2018.
11. Mitrofanov, Georgy o.
    Lectures at the Komi State Pedagogical Institute.
12. The image of the Church in the diaries of Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann // Church Bulletin. - 2006. - No. 6 (331).

"The tragedy of Russia." Review of the book by Archpriest Georgy Mitrofanov

There is a well-known popular wisdom: when the devil stretches out both hands and says: choose, you should not choose from either one.
You cannot cast out the devil with the help of the devil, you cannot fight one myth with the help of another. Unfortunately, this age-old wisdom is not shared by everyone... The book of the professor, master of theology Archpriest Georgy Mitrofanov with such a promising and broad title “The Tragedy of Russia” (The Tragedy of Russia “Forbidden” Topics of the 20th Century. St. Petersburg: Moby Dick, 2009) upon careful reading is surprising and disappointment. Firstly, it should be noted that its clearly weak apparatus: many materials (and not only sermons) do not contain references at all, in others the author endlessly refers to the same article (for example, “The Personality and Works of Alexander Solzhenitsyn in the Works of Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann " – p. 200 ff). It is clear that the collection was conceived primarily as a journalistic one, but given the unconventionality of many of the author’s views and the need for a broad evidence base for them, the lack of a serious scientific apparatus is surprising. Secondly, the book contains gross factual errors, for example, the following phrase causes some shock: “Patriarch Tikhon never disputed the correctness of such statements, although in his message of September 25, 1925 ... he tried to dissociate the Russian Orthodox Church from participation in the military political confrontation” (P.126). Meanwhile, it is known that His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon passed away to a better world on March 25/April 7, 1925.

However, for an inexperienced reader these remarks may seem like nitpicking. Much more serious is that the author of this book, apparently, does not have a serious legal culture: it is surprising that he calls the execution of General A.A. Vlasov and his associates lawless (page 151). In all countries of the world and in all legislations, the voluntary service of a military serviceman to the enemy with arms in hand was and is considered treason and is punishable to the fullest extent of the law. Not only the legislation of the USSR, but also the laws of democratic European countries in 1946 provided for the death penalty for such crimes. The author's position seems justified only from the point of view of justice of the Third Reich.

The situation with the execution of P.N. is somewhat more complicated. Krasnova, A.G., Shkuro and others, who were not Soviet citizens and whose execution was prot. Georgy Mitrofanov also calls it lawless (p. 141). However, it should be recalled that in accordance with the conclusions of the Main Military Prosecutor's Office on the refusal to rehabilitate them, the rulings of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation dated December 25, 1997, German citizens Krasnov P.N., Shkuro A.G., Sultan-Girey Klych, Krasnov S.N. and Domanov T.I. were recognized as justifiably convicted and not subject to rehabilitation. There is no particular reason to doubt the objectivity of this verdict, rendered in democratic times, given the fact of their collaboration with the Nazis, the affiliation of some Cossack units with the SS (for example, the 15th SS Cossack Cavalry Corps) and complicity in punitive actions against civilians in Yugoslavia and the USSR.

At times, legitimate doubts arise about the author’s competence: he categorically states: “We are trying to make our country a little bit reminiscent of that historical Russia, which in 1917 people like General Vlasov and his associates did not dare to defend and in the name of which they went to their deaths during the Second World War." It seems that the author does not know how Vlasov and his associates actually treated that historical Russia, which, according to the author, we had lost: “They rebelled against the obsolete tsarist system, which did not want, and could not, destroy the causes that gave rise to social injustice, remnants of serfdom, economic and cultural backwardness. But the parties and leaders who did not dare to undertake bold and consistent reforms after the overthrow of tsarism by the peoples of Russia in February 1917, with their dual policies, conciliation and unwillingness to take responsibility for the future, did not justify themselves to the people. The people spontaneously followed those who promised to give them immediate peace, land, freedom and bread, who put forward the most radical slogans” (Manifesto for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia. Prague 1944)[1]. This formulation is not much different from the “Short Course of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks.”

And here is the attitude of Vlasov and his circle to the unity and indivisibility of Russia: “The equality of all peoples of Russia and their real right to national development, self-determination and state independence” (First paragraph of the Prague Manifesto). How does this differ from Lenin’s “right of nations to self-determination up to and including secession”? Father Georgy creates the image of Vlasov as a champion of Orthodoxy (pp. 153-154), but in the Prague Manifesto about religion (not Orthodoxy!) only one word is said among the list of other democratic freedoms: “Destruction of the regime of terror and violence. Elimination of forced relocations and mass exiles. Introduction of real freedom of religion, conscience, speech, assembly, and press. Guarantee of inviolability of person, property and home. Equality of all before the law, independence and transparency of the court.” As we see, not a word about the Orthodox Church.

The author extols Vlasov’s honesty and consistency (p. 156), but how does the following statements in his addresses fit with this: “This war brought unprecedented suffering to our Fatherland. Millions of Russian people have already paid with their lives for Stalin’s criminal desire to dominate the world, for the super-profits of Anglo-American capitalists. Hundreds of Russian cities and thousands of villages were destroyed, blown up and burned on Stalin's orders. Stalin's allies - English and American capitalists - betrayed the Russian people. In an effort to use Bolshevism to take possession of the natural resources of our Motherland, these plutocrats not only save their own skins at the cost of the lives of millions of Russian people, but also entered into secret enslaving agreements with Stalin” (Smolensk Declaration). Or another statement: “At the same time, Germany is waging war not against the Russian people and their Motherland, but only against Bolshevism. Germany does not encroach on the living space of the Russian people and their national and political freedom. Adolf Hitler's National Socialist Germany sets as its task the organization of a New Europe without Bolsheviks and capitalists, in which every nation will be provided with an honorable place"[2]. The words about living space (in German Lebensraum) are especially important: this means that Vlasov was familiar not only with Haushoffer’s geopolitical doctrines, but also with Hitler’s Mein Kampf and, therefore, with his plans for Russia - the exploitation of its resources and the destruction of the Russian people . Consequently, Andrei Andreevich Vlasov knew what he was doing and deliberately deceiving the Russian people, and not only regarding some mythical Russian government, which did not really exist, but also the future of the Russian people, the creation of an independent Russian state and an “honorable peace with Germany”, which the Germans were talking about until the end of the war they did not want to hear it, and even just before the collapse, when they went to create the Russian Liberation Army (though only in three divisions), they did not give him any clear promises in this regard. For comparison, let us cite the behavior of another captured general - Mikhail Lukin, who, as Solzhenitsyn writes in the Gulag Archipelago, agreed to fight with the Germans against Bolshevism, but demanded from them guarantees of the independence of Russia and the independence of the future Russian army, and without receiving them, he did not take a step from the camp and not only survived the war, but became an example of an unbending hero.

The author writes about the conscious and repentant choice of those who went to fight with the Germans against Bolshevism, although he stipulates that not everyone did this (p. 147). But let’s look at how some of those for whom General Vlasov took legal and moral responsibility “repented.” One of the first large formations of Russian volunteers was RONA - the Russian Liberation People's Army, created in the winter of 1941–42. The basis of RONA was a “civil militia” of 400-500 fighters, created by the head of local government of the city of Lokot (Oryol region) K.P. Voskoboynikov (physics teacher at Brasov Forestry Technical School). In February 1942 he was killed by Soviet partisans. After the death of Voskoboynikov, the detachment was headed by Bronislav Vladislavovich Kaminsky, who had been participating in the detachment from its first days. By mid-1943, the militia under the command of Kaminsky, called the “Kaminsky Brigade” by the Germans, consisted of 5 regiments with a total number of 10 thousand soldiers (14 rifle battalions, an armored division with KV-1 and 24 T-34, and a motorized fighter company). In July 1944, it was officially included in the SS troops as the “assault brigade - RONA”. At the same time, Kaminsky received the rank of SS Brigadefuhrer (however, he was not a member of the NSDAP). Soon the brigade was renamed the 29th Grenadier Division of the SS troops (1st Russian). In August 1944, units of the division took part in the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising. It is known what happened during this suppression: residents of houses were burned out with flamethrowers, the wounded were shot by the Germans, children were tied to tanks as human shields. Even against this background, Kaminsky’s brigade was distinguished by its cruelty. As a result, on August 19, 1944, Kaminsky and his headquarters were shot by the Germans without trial or investigation. The reason was a report that division soldiers had raped and killed two German girls. (The Germans later announced that Kaminsky was killed by Polish partisans)[3].

It is also worth mentioning the “repentant” path and other “liberation education”. In Belarus, in the city of Suwalki, the Fighting Union of Russian Nationalists (BSRN), also called the “Gil-Rodionov Squad,” was created. It was headed, under the pseudonym “Rodionov,” by former Soviet lieutenant colonel, chief of staff of the 229th Infantry Division V.V. Gil. In 1942, from volunteers, members of the BSRN, the 1st Russian national SS detachment “Druzhina” was formed, numbering about 500 people, and in December 1942, in the Lublin area, the 2nd Russian national SS detachment was formed under the command of a former NKVD major E. Blazhevich. In March, both detachments were consolidated into the 1st Russian National SS Regiment, and then into the 1st Russian National SS Brigade under the command of Gil-Rodionov, with a total strength of about 3 thousand people. The brigade took part in many anti-partisan operations in the Begoml-Lepel area, although without much success. On August 16, 1943, the brigade, having destroyed the German communications headquarters, went over to the side of the partisans[4]. The path is quite characteristic and yet with repentance at the end, though - to the Soviet partisans.

The participation of many Russian formations either in the SS or in special reconnaissance and sabotage units, most often used in the fight against partisans, or rather in punitive actions (among them - the R division under the command of Smyslovsky, the Boyarsky brigade, etc.) puts an end to any attempt to rehabilitate their members and leaders, including A.A. Vlasov, who, we emphasize, took full legal and moral responsibility for their actions. Let us cite just a few passages from the Prague Manifesto: “Through our struggle, we have taken upon ourselves responsibility for the fate of the peoples of Russia. With us are millions of the best sons of our homeland, who have taken up arms and have already shown their courage and willingness to give their lives in the name of liberating their homeland from Bolshevism. With us are millions of people who have left Bolshevism and are devoting their labor to the common cause of struggle. With us are tens of millions of brothers and sisters, languishing under the yoke of Stalin's tyranny and waiting for the hour of liberation. Officers and soldiers of the liberation forces! The blood shed in the joint struggle cemented the military friendship of warriors of different nationalities

.
We have a common Goal. Our efforts must also be common. Only the unity of all armed anti-Bolshevik forces of the peoples of Russia will lead to victory
. Do not let go of the weapons you have received, fight for unification, selflessly fight the enemy of the peoples - Bolshevism and its accomplices. Remember, the tormented peoples of Russia are waiting for you, free them!”

The following passage of the “Prague Manifesto” is especially interesting: “The Liberation Movement of the Peoples of Russia is a continuation of many years of struggle against Bolshevism, for freedom, peace and justice. The successful completion of this struggle is now ensured by: b) the presence of growing and organizing armed forces - the Russian Liberation Army, Ukrainian Vyzvolny Viysk,

Cossack troops and national units." Thus, Vlasov took responsibility for the activities of Ukrainian nationalists and for their atrocities both in Ukraine and in Belarus, including the burning of hundreds of villages along with their inhabitants, including Khatyn.

And here we should turn to church topics.

In the book by Rev. Georgy Mitrofanov shows a clear tendency to present the Germans, mainly, of course, the German military, as benefactors and liberators of the Russian Orthodox Church. But in his book, he significantly forgets to point out that, like the entire Russian people, the Russian Orthodox Church suffered heavily during the Great Patriotic War. According to the far from complete and inaccurate estimates of the commission investigating Nazi atrocities, the Germans destroyed or destroyed 1,670 churches and 69 chapels. If, on the one hand, this number included a large number of churches destroyed by the communists before the war, and with others the situation is unclear, such as with the Assumption Cathedral of the Kiev Pechersk Lavra[5], then on the other hand, it did not take into account all the modest village churches burned along with the people by punitive forces in Belarus and Ukraine. Often, German Sonderkommandos gathered all the people in Belarusian villages into church, filtered out the young and strong and drove them to work in Germany, and locked the rest in the church and burned them. Such a tragedy occurred, for example, on February 15, 1943 in the village of Khvorostovo (Storobinsky district, Minsk region), when during the Sretensky service, the Germans drove all the residents into the temple, supposedly for prayer. Anticipating evil, the rector of the church, Fr. John Loiko called on all parishioners to pray fervently and partake of the Holy Mysteries of Christ. While singing “I Believe,” they began to forcibly take young women and girls out of the church to be sent to Germany. Father John asked the officer not to interrupt the service. In response, the fascist knocked him down. And then the doors of the temple were clogged and several sleighs with straw drove up to it... Later, the police testified at the trial that from the burning church a nationwide singing was heard: “Receive the Body of Christ, taste the immortal source”[6]. And this is just one of many hundreds of similar cases.

The number of clergy killed during the war cannot be counted, especially since it is difficult to separate those killed during the war from those repressed, and by and large, until the last fifteen years, no one was engaged in such research. Only occasionally in the literature about the Great Patriotic War did information about the dead clergy flash, most often in one or two lines, for example: “Priest Alexander Novik with his wife and children was shot... Priest Nazarevsky and his daughter were burned... 72-year-old Archpriest Pavel Sosnovsky was killed from 11- a year old boy... After painful torture, the 47-year-old priest Fr. Pavel Shcherba”[7]. The clergy took an active part in the partisan movement, especially in Belarus, and many of them paid for it with their lives. In the Polesie diocese alone, more than half of the priests (55%) were shot for assisting the partisans[8].

The Khrushchev-Brezhnev government and its propagandists often turned out to be hypocritically ungrateful towards those who fought for the Motherland and laid down their lives for it, if they were clergy. One of the evidence of this is the monument to those burned in the village of Khvorostovo (Polesie), where among the victims named by name there is not only one name - the priest Fr. Ioanna Loiko. Testimonies about warrior priests and partisan priests were purposefully removed from military documentary literature. For example, in I. Shubitidze’s book “The Polesie Were” (Minsk, 1969) the names of clergy were mentioned, but in the 1974 edition they were not. In extensive works on the history of the Great Patriotic War, the Church’s contribution to the victory was purposefully hushed up, and sometimes clearly slanderous books were written such as “The Union of the Sword and the Cross. M., 1969.”Only after 1988 did publications begin to appear that truthfully and objectively covered the role of the Russian Orthodox Church in the war[9]. And this figure of silence in the book about Father Georgy Mitrofanov, dedicated to the tragedy of Russia, coincides too much with the activities of Soviet propagandists.

And against the backdrop of these events, one can understand the action of the priest Fr. Alexander Romanushko, participant in the partisan movement in Belarus. In 1943, when the funeral service was held for the murdered policeman, in front of all the people and armed comrades of the murdered man, Fr. Alexander said: “Brothers and sisters, I understand the great grief of the father and mother of the murdered man, but not our prayers and “Rest with the saints” with his life he deserved in the grave. He is a traitor to the Motherland and a murderer of innocent children and old people. Instead of “Eternal memory” we will say: “Anathema.” And then, approaching the policemen, he called on them to atone for their guilt and turn their weapons against the Germans. These words impressed people so much that many went straight from the cemetery to become partisans.”[10] And sixty-six years later, another priest not only performs funeral services for the organizers of collaborationist units, but also makes them heroes of historical Russia.

Against the backdrop of everything said above, the following statement by Rev. is ahistorical, immoral and somewhat blasphemous. George: “And is the death of many millions of Soviet soldiers on the battlefield so different from the death on the gallows in Butyrka prison of the leaders of the Vlasov movement? And yet it is different. Because, unlike many millions of Soviet soldiers who died in the illusion that the salvation of Russia was about to come, they went to their deaths with the understanding of what Georgy Ivanov and Viktor Astafiev subsequently wrote about: damned and killed.” Yes, indeed, their death is different from the death of the Vlasovites. Soviet soldiers for the most part fought not with civilians, but with a real, insidious and cruel enemy, they were often betrayed by their superiors, but the vast majority of them did not betray anyone, and they died for the freedom of their Fatherland, and if not for their faith (although many of them are for her, this is a separate topic), then for loyalty to the oath, which Vlasov and his followers violated. And Soviet soldiers died not for an illusion, but for the real life of the Russian people, as well as other peoples of historical Russia. Hitler’s misanthropic plans are known - to leave only thirty million in the European part of Russia, and the rest either to be resettled beyond the Urals or exterminated. For those who remained, a minimum of life's goods and a minimum of education were assumed (ideally, four classes for everyone). And here is what kind of religious life was planned for them: Here is what Hitler said at a meeting on April 11, 1942: “It is necessary to prohibit the establishment of unified churches for any significant Russian territories. It would be in our interests to have a situation in which each village would have its own sect, where its own special ideas about God would develop. Even if in this case shamanic cults arise in individual villages, like the Negro or American-Indian ones, then we could only welcome, because this would only increase the number of factors crushing Russian space into small units”[11]. Against this background, it becomes clear what the permission to open churches in the occupied territory and create a military clergy in the Vlasov units, which was so dear to Father George, actually was - a temporary tactical concession before the general occultization of the population of the conquered eastern space. Archpriest Georgy Mitrofanov equates Hitler and Stalin, but how justified is this? Yes, Stalin was an atheist and tried to build an atheistic empire, although ultimately to no avail, but he was not an occultist, moreover, in the wave of terror of 1937-1938, among the old security officers, those who “dabbled” with the occult also died. On the contrary, the system built by Hitler was occult and anti-Christ in its essence. The point here is not only in the appeal to German pagan images and in occult programs like the Ahnenerbe, on which huge amounts of money and effort were spent in the Third Reich. What was much more terrible was that Hitler’s propagandists sought to mix pagan occultism with Christianity: the image of the Unknown Soldier was blasphemously combined with the face of Christ, Hitler himself appeared to his adherents in the guise of the Messiah[12], the so-called. the spear of Longinus, which pierced the heart of Christ, became a magical talisman in the hands of Hitler, and on the belt buckles of the soldiers who went to kill, rob and atrocize the civilian population were written the words from the messianic prophecy of Isaiah: “God is with us” (Is. 8:8). The cross on German planes that bombed schools and hospitals was one of the most disgusting sacrileges over the Life-Giving Tree in history, but also a sign of pseudo-Christian, and at the last depths, anti-Christian Western European civilization[13]. The fact that one of the ultimate goals of the Nazis was to proclaim Hitler the Messiah and to recognize him as such by the conquered peoples of the whole earth is shown by the following blasphemous prayer in the likeness of the “Our Father”, which was actively distributed in leaflets: “Adolf Hitler, you are our leader, your name brings fear to the enemies May your third empire come. And may your will be fulfilled on earth.”[14] The words of Metropolitan Sergius (for Father Georgy Mitrofanov - nothing more than a political loser, see p. 102) in his message dated November 11, 1941 are fair and perspicacious: “It is clear to the whole world that fascist monsters are satanic enemies of faith and Christianity. The fascists, with their beliefs and actions, are, of course, not at all on the path to follow Christ and Christian culture.” Later, in the Easter message of 1942 to the metropolis, Sergius would write: “Darkness will not defeat the light... Moreover, the fascists, who had the audacity to recognize the pagan swastika as their banner instead of the cross of Christ, will not win... Let us not forget the words: “By this you will conquer.” It is not the swastika, but the cross that is called upon to lead Christian culture, our “Christian life.” . In fascist Germany they claim that Christianity has failed and is not suitable for future world progress. This means that Germany, destined to rule the world of the future, must forget Christ and follow its own, new path. For these insane words, may the righteous Judge strike Hitler and all his accomplices.”[15] In fact, the historical choice that Metropolitan Sergius made was in some way consistent with the choice of St. the noble prince Alexander Nevsky - between the West and the East, between external oppression and internal corruption. And in his address of June 22, by the way, absolutely independent of state influence, the Locum Tenens made the only saving decision for Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church in those conditions. Later in his sermons Fr. John Krestyankin will speak about the lack of understanding of the suffering personality of Metropolitan Sergius and about his insight. Unfortunately, this misunderstanding continues today.

It seems clear why the Soviet (by and large Russian) soldiers died - for the salvation of the Russian people from physical destruction and from occult slavery, and ultimately (even if many unconsciously) - for the salvation of Orthodoxy. And Father Georgy Mitrofanov completely in vain ignores the phenomenon of the revival of the Orthodox faith on the other side of the front, and it was he who, ultimately, was decisive for the outcome of the war and the future of Russia. It is difficult to describe - it cannot be expressed by the number of clergy who participated in the war in one way or another, or the number of planes and tanks built with church money, or even the number of people who attended church services. But perhaps its best expression is a poem found in the overcoat of a simple Russian Soviet soldier Andrei Zatsepa, killed in 1942:

Listen, God, I have never spoken to you in my life, but today I want to greet you... You know, from childhood I was told that you do not exist. And I, a fool, believed. I had never contemplated your creations. And today I looked From the crater that was knocked out by a grenade To the starry sky that was above me. I suddenly realized, admiring the universe. How cruel deception can be... Isn’t it strange that In the midst of a terrifying hell, light suddenly opened up to me and I recognized You. We are scheduled to attack at midnight, But I’m not afraid. You look at us...But it seems that I’m crying, my God. You see, something happened to me that today I have received my sight. Farewell, my God. I’m going and I’m unlikely to return. It’s strange, but now I’m not afraid of death.[16]

Unfortunately, with his sermons and speeches, Father Georgy Mitrofanov not only insults the memory of fallen soldiers and living veterans, but also goes against the established church tradition: as you know, by decision of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church, May 9 was declared a day of remembrance for soldiers, as well as all those killed in the Great Patriotic War. The holiday of May 9, which the respected archpriest refers to in his speeches and statements as “victory,” acquired an ecclesiastical dimension and essentially entered modern church tradition. For many of our not-so-religious fellow citizens, the memory of the war and the joint church-state celebration of Victory Day is another way to become churchgoers. And in this context, Father George’s speeches cannot be called anything other than anti-missionary.

Unfortunately, this book is characterized by unsubstantiated and unsubstantiated, often offensive statements, such as: “Our society consists of people who, in their overwhelming majority, lived in lies, served evil and now stubbornly pretend that their whole lives were spent in serving the truth.” . They “served Russia” - whether it was called the Soviet Union, whether it was called the Russian Federation - but in fact these people, who were not able to erase their past wrong life as honestly and consistently as General Vlasov and his associates, did not serve Russia and they do not serve Russia, but serve only themselves” (p. 156). Well, should we include in this list the liquidators of the Chernobyl accident, veterans of the Afghan and Chechen wars, military personnel who went through garrison wanderings, hot spots, poverty and contempt of the nineties, and engineers of military factories who did not receive salaries for months in the early nineties, but not those who left defense factories, unmercenary teachers who gave their time and soul to their students? Let the reader judge for himself, but, having surveyed my surroundings, I found almost no people who corresponded to the verdict of Fr. George. I don't know, maybe I'm lucky. Why tar everyone and assume that the honest performance of one’s duty was and is service to some “evil empire”? What was left for honest workers and defenders of the USSR (and now Russia) - to flee legally or illegally to the “Empire of Good” through Vienna or Israel? Or, moreover, turn weapons against their fellow citizens, having before their eyes the bright appearance of General Vlasov? What does Fr. call for? George, to civil war?

Another statement: “Now people are simply trying to live in the territory in which they were destined to be born, in the desire to move to other lands as soon as possible, where it will be easier and more comfortable for them” (p. 158). In fact, statistical surveys, in particular those conducted by NIIKSI, show a different picture: Fr. George was eighteen years late with this insulting verdict.

Let us note that such generalized accusations do not bring honor to Fr. George, neither as a scientist, nor as a shepherd, nor as a missionary. A well-known missionary rule: you must find something good in the one you want to convert, cling to some island of goodness in his heart. But, as Elder Silouan says, if you start with the fact that “your faith is fornication,” and your listeners know that this is not so, then you risk losing them forever to Orthodoxy. The very aggressive tone of the book makes a painful impression: this is not a presbytery text. The word “presbyter” itself means “elder,” and an elder is characterized by wisdom, tact, depth and peace - the ability to generalize, connect and reconcile. This, unfortunately, is not in this book.

But there is something else - Judas’s apology for sin, completely in the spirit of the Silver Age, which the author seems to be fighting against. In his opinion, it was the twenty-five-year service of Vlasov and his comrades to the Soviet system that was betrayal, and the betrayal of this system was repentance (pp. 147-148). As far as we know, nowhere in Holy Scripture or in Church Tradition do we find the teaching that double betrayal can be counted as repentance. And again, nowhere in church tradition is it said that one can betray one’s earthly fatherland to the enemy, even out of the highest religious interests; on the contrary, both Scripture and Tradition teach the opposite.

In chapter 13 of the Epistle to the Romans, St. The Apostle Paul teaches: “Let every soul be subject to the higher authorities, for there is no authority except from God; the existing authorities have been established by God. Therefore, he who resists authority resists God's institution. But those who resist will bring upon themselves condemnation” (Rom. 13:1-2). Let us note that the Apostle teaches to obey Emperor Nero, who was no better than Comrade Stalin, in a number of respects, perhaps worse. In the light of the apostolic words, the declaration of Metropolitan Sergius of 1927 also becomes largely understandable.

And here is what St. Gregory of Neocaesarea prescribes regarding Christians who helped the barbarian Goths (by the way, the ancestors of the Germans), among whom there could well have been Christians: “If those who were numbered with the barbarians, and with them, during their captivity, participated in the attack, forgetting, that they were Pontians and Christians, and hardened to the point that they killed their fellow tribesmen either with a tree or by strangulation, and also showed the ignorant barbarians paths or houses - such should be blocked from entering even the rank of listeners, until anything is desired about them, the saints having come together Fathers, and before them the Holy Spirit.” (8th rule of Gregory of Neocaesarea)

According to the exact meaning of this rule, the church commemoration of General Vlasov becomes very doubtful. And on the contrary, the position of the Metropolitan and then Patriarch Sergius, who, on the basis of this rule, excommunicated from the Church laymen and clergy who collaborated with the Nazi occupiers, was completely ecclesiastical.

Thus, the position of Fr. George cannot be called a church-wide church. At best, it reflects the position of some circles of the Church Abroad, in which pro-Vlasov sentiments were strong. But even there, support for the Vlasov and collaborationist movements was by no means church-wide. Why Father George, using his rank and authority, is trying to impose this marginal and dubious position here in Russia, one can only guess.

His position is not statist either. For a cleric to come forward with such a book when a regulation on a commission to combat the falsification of Russian history is being adopted means to quarrel between the Church and the state and create a split in church-state relations. There is another aspect: as is known, the President of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko, seeking to break away from the Moscow Patriarchate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, is rehabilitating the Ukrainian Bandera collaborators with whom Vlasov sought to collaborate (see above) and puts them on the same level as war veterans. As we saw above, Father Georgy Mitrofanov carries out a similar operation for the Vlasovites. It would not be a stretch to say that from a typological and systemic point of view, such an approach objectively strengthens anti-Russian and, therefore, anti-church positions in Ukraine, as long as the activities of the collaborators receive approval from a very authoritative clergyman of the Russian Orthodox Church. If Vlasov can be rehabilitated, why not Bandera? Accordingly, the Latvian, Estonian, and Lithuanian SS units, with which General Vlasov called for unity, are justified. Sapienti sat.

And in conclusion, in order to understand who the Russian Orthodox Church, in the person of its Primate, in our time really considers to be the heroes of the Second World War and the creators of historical Russia, its honor and conscience, one cannot help but cite the message of His Holiness Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus' Kirill General Lieutenant V.V. Varennikov regarding the death of his father - Valentin Ivanovich Varennikov :

Dear Vladimir Valentinovich!

Please accept my deepest condolences for the bereavement that has befallen us all.

With his feat of arms and talent as a military leader, with his many years of work for the benefit of the Fatherland, Valentin Ivanovich Varennikov truly earned nationwide love and respect.

The name of General Varennikov is forever inscribed in the history of the Russian Army. A participant in the Great Patriotic War, standard bearer of the 1945 Victory Parade, an outstanding military organizer and patriot, he personified the conscience and honor of the officer corps of our country. For many years he worked as a deputy of the State Duma, caring for a worthy structure for the present and future of Russia.

The all-merciful Lord called him to Himself on the bright days of Easter, on the eve of the great Victory Day, on the day of remembrance of the Holy Great Martyr George the Victorious, the heavenly patron of the Russian army.

A man whose name is rightfully considered one of the symbols of valor, sincerity, and endless devotion to duty and the Fatherland has passed away from earthly life. Let the eternal memory of him remain in the hearts of all who cherish Russia.

May the Lord give His newly departed servant rest in the villages of the righteous.

Sincerely

+KIRILL, PATRIARCH OF MOSCOW AND ALL Rus'[17]

[1] Text taken from the site https://www.mochola.org/russiaabroad/vlas_manifesto.htm

[2] Text taken from the site https://libelli.ru/works/moch1.htm

[3] Volunteer movement. Historical reference. Information taken from the site https://country-osi.narod.ru/roa.html

[4] Ibid.

[5] According to one version, it was blown up by partisans, according to another - by the Germans.

[6] Raina Pavel. For faith and fatherland. Leningrad, 1990. P. 37.

[7] Crimes of the Nazi occupiers in Belarus in 1944. Minsk, 1965. P. 314-348.

[8] Vasilyeva O.Yu. Russian Orthodox Church in 1927-1943. // Questions of History, 1994. P. 43.

[9] Konstantin (Goryanov), Archbishop of Tikhvin. Patriotic activity of the Russian Orthodox Church during the Great Patriotic War. // Christian Reading. 2005, No. 24. P. 65.

[10] Yakunin V.N. Great is the God of the Russian Land // Military Historical Journal. 1995 No. 1.

P. 37. Pavel Raina. For faith and fatherland. L., 1990. P. 65

[11] Dashichev V.I. The bankruptcy of the strategy of German fascism. Historical essays. Documents and materials. T. 1. Preparation and deployment of fascist aggression in Europe 1933-41. M., 1973. P. 241.

[12] Weiss I. Adolf Hitler. M, 1993. T. 2. P 243.

[13] Konstantin (Goryanov), Archbishop of Tikhvin

. Decree. op. P. 54

[14] Sergius (Larin). Orthodoxy and Hitlerism. Odessa, 1946-47. (Manuscript). P. 23.

[15] Russian Orthodox Church and the Great Patriotic War. Collection of documents. M., 1943. P. 9.

[16] Forgive me, stars of the Lord. Fryazino, 1999. P. 256.

[17] Text taken from the site patriarchia.ru

A Christian should not be a consumer

Should we expect miracles from the new martyrs? We have already mentioned that we are very popular with those saints to whom you can turn with a request that cannot be satisfied in the health care system, social security, law enforcement agencies or the judicial system. We need them to help us in life, perhaps imperfect, but familiar, to settle even better and live more peacefully. But this is not just not a Christian approach, it is a primitive pagan approach associated with traditional magic, when a person does not seriously think about his spiritual and moral development, he is completely immersed in the problems of survival in this world and attracts supernatural forces to help him survive more easily or on a specific issue. “And I will thank you for this too, light a candle, make a donation.”

What can one ask from the new martyrs, victims of this anti-Christian persecution? After all, they tried to deprive them and the entire country not only of faith in Christ, but of any moral values. So that there are no honest, spiritually independent, thinking people in the country. But isn’t this an anti-Christian thing? For morality, creativity, intelligence, freedom - all these are God's gifts to people. And it is precisely these fundamental gifts that help people, even sometimes those who do not know Christ, to live with dignity, in a Christian manner, that they have been trying to deprive us of for decades. And we ourselves were often glad to be deprived.

And from this point of view, I pose another question: why do representatives of the clergy dominate among our new martyrs? There was no one among the victims of political repression. Why do priests dominate over mothers? Although there are statistics that priests confessed more often than nuns, this topic is not discussed at all. And most importantly, why not glorify as martyrs those Orthodox laymen who behaved with dignity before the investigation, during it and after it, in general in life? And then it turns out that a wide range of people are candidates for canonization? What then are the criteria for this canonization?

An officer who did not serve the Bolsheviks and was shot for it - is he not worthy of commemoration, respect and glorification? A scientist who refused to testify against his colleagues and was then shot - isn’t he worthy? And a peasant woman, arrested and then beaten to death because she brought food to the children of dispossessed people at night, is not worthy of veneration? As you can see here, we don’t seem to see a religious theme, but we see only the theme of human dignity, his moral choice. And although I raise pressing questions, perhaps seeming to indicate a free liberal approach to this topic, in the commission I always acted on the principle “it is better to under-canonize than to over-canonize,” but there is a problem.

It is our consumerist attitude towards the saints that makes it inconvenient for us to turn to the new martyrs.

Asking them to save them from misfortune and suffering is quite strange. They immediately present us with a situation in which a person passes a test of his spiritual qualities when he finds himself in conditions of persecution and suffering. Therefore, until we learn the obvious truth that a Christian, in turning to both Christ and the saints, should not be a consumer of them, but a co-worker, ask them for learning to make his spiritual life better, have the strength to make a choice between good and evil, to lead difficult and a worthy life and thereby change the world around us, we will not understand the attitude towards the new martyrs.

Feelings of disappointment and doubt

When our contemporaries, brought up on the lives of the ancient saints, read the lives of the new martyrs, they will experience a feeling of disappointment and doubt. We do not encounter any miracles, nor denunciations from the lips of the martyrs addressed to their executioners, nor any supernatural healings, and it seems: what kind of martyrs are they after this, if no miracles were accompanied by their death? Either the unknown miracles of these saints remained hidden from us, and some found peace in this, or holiness as such is a fiction. This confused and continues to confuse many people.

And our Russian Orthodox mentality is very afraid of doubt. Although I think that this is very bad: only faith that has passed through the crucible of doubt can be truly solid. And faith that has not passed them, rather, smacks of credulity, which is easily replaced by credulity in something else, which is what happened in our history in 1917: from the creation of holy Rus' on earth instead of the Rus' of saints in heaven to the creation of a communist paradise on earth with the quasi-holy heroes of communist construction - both turned out to be a chimera.

The new martyrs were ordinary people who did not strive to become martyrs, who were afraid of this. Suffice it to recall the episode when, in 1937, one priest with many children, saying goodbye to members of his family, blessed his eldest son, so that the next day he would declare that he was renouncing his father and submit an application to the Komsomol - so that there would be at least one person in the family who would take the burden of supporting your mother and brothers and sisters.

How should one react to such a step by the new martyr? Bless the son for betraying not only his father, but also the essence of the cause of Christ. You will say that only Christ can answer this question. And for some reason it seems to me that in such a situation Christ would have forgiven his son, a Komsomol member, and would have understood the priest-father. The tragedy of the situation of our clergy was aggravated by the fact that they had families.

For many years, we, members of the canonization commission, saw the goal of our work as compiling reliable biographies of the new martyrs, which would reveal their feat to our church people. It only turned out that when reading them, a person is not inspired by anything, is not edified and thinks only about one thing: how good it is that nothing like this happened to me. This raises both questions and doubts and once again makes us think about the correctness of the point of view that the question of canonizing a deceased Christian should be raised only when there is some kind of veneration for him among the church people. But there was and is not a conscious and responsible and, most importantly, widespread veneration of the new martyrs in Russian church life.