Mr Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin has been in charge of Russia since, arguably, 1999.
His march to restore his vision of Russkiy Mir, the "Russian Nation" of the former Soviet Union, is inexorable. He has demonstrated his willingness to inflict pain and suffering on not only Georgia, Chechnya, and Donbas, but also his own people.
It can be argued that Putin is just the most recent Russian Strong Man who has led Russia to achieve its strategic aims, at the cost of making the Russian people absorb horrific levels of pain and suffering.
It should be remembered that 20 million people lost their lives in World War II.
It is a Russian tradition for its Strong Man -- whether Tsar, or General Secretary, or Chairman, or Prime Minister -- to squander the lives and livelihood of not thousands, but millions of Russian men, women, and children.
Some would look at this pattern and call it noble. I think it is horrific, and certainly not anything to brag or sing about. To suggest that the suffering of Russia is somehow necessary to the Russian genius, the real achievements of its culture, is to propose the necessity of pain and evil for the existence of beauty in life.
I know that many hold to this idea. I do not. Beauty does not need evil to be beauty. Light does not need darkness to be light.
Evil has no essential reality, as it is only a privation of the good
But it does have its achievements in existence.
Here is a list, then, of the achievements of Vladimir Putin in his latest march to greatness, in the latest chapter of the wastrel sacrifice of Russian young men (and older generals and colonels), and the Ukrainian people:
- Putin has destroyed the credibility of the Moscow Patriarchate. Patriarch Kirill's partnership with Putin in extending the "Russian World" -- an ideology that he has advanced since 2000 -- has already disaffected not only the metropolis of the Moscow Patriarchate in Ukraine but elsewhere in Europe. The Moscow Patriarchate, for it to survive at all as a real Patriarchate, will have to have a succession. And the next Patriarch will have to renounce -- clearly and firmly -- the mere mention of Russkiy Mir. The next Patriarch will have to fully and definitively embrace democracy and turn away from the ancient Russian tradition of the Strong Man.
- Putin has unified Ukraine, and has clarified Ukraine as a nation completely distinct from Russia. He has shined a light on the bleak contrast between his Russia and Zelensky's Ukraine. The latter has shown itself to be resilient, tenacious, noble in the face of monstrous destruction and offense. Old women have berated armed Russian soldiers. Old men have stood on the road against Russian tanks. The people, unarmed, have marched in Kherson streets against columns of Russian troops. Meanwhile, over 20,000 Russian people have been detained by Putin's police for having the courage to protest the war. Thousands of Russians have left Russia because of Putin's dictatorship, and his captive State will suffer a real and irreversible "brain drain." Putin has throttled any semblance of a free press.
- Putin has highlighted the superiority of Western democracy. Western democracy is not merely one governmental alternative among others. It is ontologically superior to authoritarian structures. Putin's invasion of Ukraine has double-underlined the irrationality of any suggestion that an authoritarian state is appropriate for one group of people, while democracy is appropriate for another. Without the proposition that military adventurism should be waged for the sake of regime change (i.e., a la American neo-conservatism), it remains true that the suggestion that democracy is not appropriate for some cultures is the height of condescension. Western democracy values the rights of the person, the free press (that is always going to tend toward the Left, and that must needs be), and opposes any sort of authoritarianism. People want to go to democracies: they want to flee autocracies. This is rational -- to suggest otherwise is irrational.
- Putin has managed to discredit authoritarian movements in the West, particularly in America. If Putin falls, he will take Donald Trump (and the Trump movement) down with him. The American Orthodox romanticizing of Strong Men has been shown to be a sycophantic attraction toward Church-State collusion that has long been the perennial and heretical temptation of Orthodoxy. Within American Orthodoxy, certain romances are being discredited: like the Benedict Option and its constant complaints about the sexual transgression of the liberal West. Like the anti-modernist ideology of some communities in West Virginia (and elsewhere), as documented by Sarah Riccardi-Swartz in her upcoming publication, Between Heaven and Russia: Religious Conversion and Political Apostasy in Appalachia. Like the constant anti-Western drumbeat of not a few American Orthodox clergy, who openly wish for the replacement of democracy with other more "Christianizing" governmental forms. Like the Neo-Integralism of Adrian Vermeule (and others). Like the dominionism of the New Apostolic Reformation's "Seven Mountains of Influence."
All of these ideological romances are naive sentimentalizations at best, and cynical exercises in realpolitik at a more likely worst. They all use the cardboard image of "traditional values" as a rallying cry against the so-called 'liberal West." But these "traditional values" do not include the Biblical and Patristic witness for social and economic justice and stewardship of the environment. - Putin has revivified and unified -- and vindicated -- NATO as no Western leader ever could have. It used to be that American conservatives supported the mission of NATO in its post-World War II work to contain the expansionist aims of the Soviet Union. But since the early 1990's, some American Orthodox have begun to loudly denounce NATO for its bombing of Serbia, while relatively ignoring the outrages of Milošević. Then they complained about the US and NATO in its campaign against Assad -- and again, relatively ignoring Putin's destruction of Aleppo.
The present invasion of Ukraine has shown that NATO's mission of containing autocratic expansion -- whether communist or fascist -- has been vindicated. I'm sure there are those who suggest otherwise. And I agree with some measure of skepticism about Western militarism: I, too, agree with Eisenhower's critique of the military-industrial complex. I, too, disagreed with the Iraq war, and with the neo-conservative campaign for the protection of oil-production.
But I draw a distinction between neo-conservative imperialism (and colonialism), and the necessity of deterring and preventing totalitarian expansion. And I denounce the sham of complaining about the so-called "soft totalitarianism" of the West while shutting one's eyes to the real totalitarianism of Strong Men, whose Christian shibboleths are taken as sufficient bona fides for sophisticated cheers and adulation, and invitations to conferences and book-signings.
In any case, where would Europe be without NATO? Locked up in a totalitarian State that is very real and very hard. - Putin has divided American Orthodoxy. Because of Patriarch Kirill's outrageous support of Putin, about 100 of the 340 clergy from ROCOR, which usually honors and commemorates the Moscow Patriarch, have moved to Orthodox jurisdictions not affiliated with Kirill. A further 145 U.S. Church Abroad parishes have so far followed suit.
Still, there are many American Orthodox who remain committed to this deformed, nationalist and autocratic version of Orthodoxy. Many continue in their support of the Moscow Patriarch's refusal to commune with the Ecumenical Patriarch. Many clergy and laity openly condemn the Ecumenical Patriarch and the GOARCH Archepiscopal See of New York as "liberal," simply because of their courageous and consistent witness for social and economic justice and environmental stewardship.
I will continue to pray "For peace throughout the whole world, for the welfare of the holy churches of God and for the union of them all."
But I have to acknowledge the reality of the destruction of this peace, and the schism of the Churches of God -- the destruction and schism of which Vladimir Putin has been the primary agent, who has been aided and abetted by Moscow Patriarch Kirill (and Metropolitan Hilarion and others in the Patriarchate).
And thus I grieve. But still I pray in hope. Perhaps American Orthodoxy can survive this travail and rise afterward stronger, and more faithful to real Orthodoxy, instead of its many toxic deformations.