Post by Deleted on Aug 20, 2023 2:09:52 GMT
The Paradox of Soviet Power
19th of August 2023.
In effect, the Soviet Union existed for almost 75 years. It shaped multiple generations of people, including the generation of people in post-Soviet states who are over the age of 50. The Soviet Union was from the very beginning fundamentally founded upon and ruled in accordance with the ideology of Marxism-Leninism, an evil ideology which the Church of Christ and her Supreme Pastor has condemned many times. Pure Marxism-Leninism believes in a scientific-materialist worldview which has no place for God or His Church. Marxism-Leninism is not only atheistic, but it has no basic conception of rights except the rights of the collective which themselves are subject to what are believed by Marxists to be the eternal laws of societal development. And the eternal laws of societal development, so they believe, necessitate the institution of an authoritarian state which will forcibly guide the people towards a sort of utopian communist future by means of mass repression and violence.
This, in its most basic form, is the ideology that guided the Soviet Union’s leaders for 75 years. Tens of millions of people died as a result of the implementation of this ideology, particularly in the early years under Lenin and Stalin.
In spite of this, we can state that the Soviet Union’s 74 years of existence are inherently paradoxical. On the one hand, it was a repressive, atheistic, theomachist state. Its whole being was based on the evil, sacrilegious execution of the Christian Emperor and his innocent family. The USSR was built on the martyrdom and blood of Old Christian Russia. Yet it also transformed Russia from a peasant kingdom into a modern industrial country, promoted a patriotic-nationalistic worldview, and in its later years was characterised by unprecedented domestic peace, a rise in the standard of living, a comparatively tolerant attitude towards Christianity through support of the institution of the Russian Orthodox Church, and the promotion of the importance of the nuclear family and complementarian gender roles. By 1964 it had moved away from promoting internationalism to de facto prioritising Russian nationalism over communist ideals of brotherhood.
The Soviet dissident and Orthodox Christian Gennady Mikhailovich Shimanov (1937-2013) stated that “Soviet power is not only godlessness and the greatest thunder in the world, but also an instrument of God’s providence”. A similar statement was made by Metropolitan John of Saint Petersburg in his book Autocracy of the Spirit.
How on earth can a Christian understand such a statement. Is it not a contradiction? Yes, of course it is. It is a contradiction. But we must understand that the basis on which the Soviet Union was ruled - Marxism-Leninism - was at some times of that nation’s history merely an excuse to rule. Under Brezhnev, for instance, Russian nationalism, reminiscent of that promoted by the Orthodox Tsars, prevailed, and Marxism-Leninism was in a sense an “excuse” for the government to rule. It was a framework that provided for the state’s legitimacy.
In this regard, we can divide the Soviet state into a couple of different periods. From 1917-1941, the early years when the country was ruled by Lenin and Stalin, the USSR had virtually no redeeming qualities. State terror prevailed. Tens of millions were killed in state-supported famines, mass campaigns of terror, concentration camps known as GULAGS, and on-the-spot executions without trial. The Russian Orthodox Church - the spiritual support of the Russian State - was persecuted almost out of institutional existence. By 1941, only two or three bishops and as few as 100 out of 50,000 churches remained open. On the 22nd of June, 1941, the last great cathedral in Moscow, the Epiphany Cathedral at Yelokhovo, was scheduled to be closed. The priest celebrated what was thought to be the final Divine Liturgy before the locks were put on the church. The church however was not closed. Nazi Germany invaded later that day. The state did not close the Church.
Herein lies the first extraordinary paradox of Soviet history. As soon as Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Stalin turned away from communist internationalism and atheistic repression. He immediately began exploiting Russian nationalism and set about reviving the Russian Orthodox Church. When he addressed the people of the Soviet Union just after the Nazi invasion had begun, he did something amazing. He addressed the Soviet people with the following words: “Brothers and sisters! … my dear friends!”
Now what is the significance of this? It is that Lenin and Stalin had always eschewed the phrase “Dear brothers and sisters” in favour of “Dear comrades” or “Dear citizens”. “Brothers and sisters” was what Orthodox priests said at the beginning of their homilies when addressing the faithful. Lenin and Stalin had viewed it as a symbol of the old order that needed to be abolished.
Thus when Stalin addressed the faithful as “Dear brothers and sisters”, he did so to set an example. Indeed, from the very beginning of the Nazi invasion of the USSR, Stalin began a massive revival of Christian faith in the USSR. 25,000 churches were opened. The repressed Orthodox Church was ordered to elect a Patriarch. Even under the Tsars, it was forbidden to elect a Patriarch! Peter the Great had abolished the office of Patriarch so that he could control the Church. Stalin, however, said there needed to be a Patriarch because Russia needed a spiritual leader as well as an earthly one. Stalin then said to the bishops that they needed to open all the theological seminaries again. The bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church were shocked at this - “Stalin, Stalin, is now asking us to open all the seminaries”? But Stalin said that they needed to be opened. The spiritual revival of Russia was dependent on it.
Soviet battalions went into battle against the fascists not just with the standards bearing the hammer and sickle, but with standards showing the traditional Orthodox depictions of Christ the Pantocrator and banners showing the Holy Mother of God. Priests threw holy water on the Soviet Army before it went into battle. Upon hearing of a dream an Orthodox monk had had that if the revered Icon of the Virgin of Vladimir were processed around Moscow thrice, the city would not fall, Stalin did just that. As the Nazis approached Moscow, he ordered the icon flown around the city three times - it was said that the Holy Virgin Mother would not let the city fall. The German Army turned around. German soldiers recalled they were so close to Moscow they could see the golden crosses on the domes of the Kremlin. Yet they did not get any further. Even after the Second World War, Stalin continued to support a revival of the Orthodox Church. In 1948, all the Orthodox Patriarchs were invited to Moscow, and churches continued to open. It is even said that Stalin confessed to a priest around this time. Who knows if that is true or not.
The Second World War killed 27 million Soviet citizens. The fascist German Army murdered 19 million Soviet civilians and 8.7 million Soviet soldiers. In much of the former USSR, it is known as the “Great Patriotic War”. What is so extraordinary is that Stalin knew that his people would never fight for communism, or atheism. They would fight for Russia, they would fight for their Motherland, they would fight for their right to exist as Slavic peoples, they would fight for the preservation of their Christian nation.
The Soviet people were fighting what was described quite rightly as a “sacred war”. It was a war to preserve the existence of Soviet people, whom the Nazis wanted to annihilate. It was not a fight for the theomachist regime. It was not a fight for Stalin. It was a fight to preserve the eternal soul of Christian Russia. Stalin knew this quite well even if he never would have admitted it. He was cold, brutal, and evil. But he was also extremely clever.
The era of the Second World War marked an extraordinary change in the Soviet understanding of their role in the world. Until then, the Soviet Union had been in some respects a genocidal state focussed only on fighting God, and indoctrinating the people through never before heard of repressions. In terms of its principles, it believed in communist internationalism, an unending fight against Christianity, and the creation of a New World Order based on harsh, materialistic, and atheistic principles.
Officially, this did not change. But in practice, atheism and communist internationalism were sidelined and in some respects de facto abandoned. This lasted until Stalin’s death in 1953. In fact, the last twelve years of Stalin’s rule exhibited quite perfectly this Soviet paradox. When Stalin died, the official cameras showed Russian Orthodox bishops, including Metropolitan Nikolai (Yarushevich) weeping before his body, and peasant women crossing themselves as they passed by the bier. On the one hand, the state remained officially atheistic. It also remained deeply repressive. Yet it also supported a massive state-sponsored revival of the Christian religion and Russian nationalism superseded Bolshevik communist internationalism.
After Stalin’s death in 1953, everything changed once again. Thank God, the mass repressions and executions ended. The GULAG prisoners were freed. Yet alongside Khrushchev’s so-called “liberalisation” of Soviet society, which was based on a rightful rejection of Stalin’s methods of mass terror and cult of personality, there was a clear return to communist internationalism and a fundamentally atheistic scientific materialist worldview. Khrushchev began once more to persecute the Russian Orthodox Church. He emphasised communist internationalism and the necessary onward march towards a utopian stateless and godless future. In other words, a march towards the creation of Hell on Earth, from a Christian perspective.
Between the years 1959 and 1964, this view prevailed particularly strongly. The Russian Patriarch privately expressed the belief that the institutional Russian Orthodox Church would survive no longer than around 20 years. Then it all changed again. When Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev came to power in 1964, he immediately stopped the evil persecution of the Church, gave it a protected position in society, and moved back towards courting the eternal flame of Russian state greatness and the prioritisation of nationalism over communist internationalism.
The Soviet Union as it was from 1964 to 1985 - under Brezhnev and his two like-minded successors can be characterised as the most paradoxical of all. On the one hand, atheism was officially promoted and religion was discouraged. The repressive hand of the state was used against dissenters. Leftist and anti-colonial regimes and fighters were supported abroad. Yet on the other hand, the Russian Orthodox Church was returned to a protected position in society, very few churches were closed and some were even built whilst the institutional Church was protected, nationalism and patriotism again prevailed over internationalism, there were no mass repressions or executions, there was unprecedented domestic peace in both political and social respects, the government was stable and the country ruled based on consensus in the Politburo rather than an arbitrary cult of personality surrounding one man, traditional family values were promoted, historical Russia was more powerful than it had ever been, and the standard of living continued to rise.
Under Brezhnev, the Soviet state came to the belief that in essence, a utopian communist future was a theory that would take a long time to reach. Brezhnev's support of “developed socialism” was effectively support for the entrenchment of the status quo, which was characterised by nationalism, social conservatism, and relative freedom of religious worship (in comparison to in the past). Brezhnev himself was perhaps the most spiritual of all the Soviet leaders and whilst likely not a believer himself, he had clear sympathies towards the Orthodox civilisational ideals that he recalled nostalgically from his pre-Revolutionary childhood. This informed aspects of his policies. On the one hand, his official support for the atheistic-scientific-materialist worldview, and on the other hand his protection and cultivation of the institutional Christianity that for so long had been the mainstay of the Russian state in the realisation that without it there would be no Russia.
In a Marxist state, the concept of “developed socialism” was a necessary ideologically formed excuse for the stalling of what Marxist theory holds to be the inevitable onward march towards a godless “utopia”, which would of course be a Hell on Earth. Under Brezhnev, the internationalist and anti-religious slogans remained but in practice were supplanted by Soviet (in reality Russian) nationalism and appeals to the greatness of historical Christian Russia, albeit not to the extent that this was applied in the late Stalin period, where the Orthodox Church was almost being revived to something far greater than its pre-Revolutionary glory. And this in a state that was formally communist and atheistic!
It is at this point I should like to point out two factors of great importance. Firstly, the ancient capital of Russia was Moscow, but the reforming, pro-western Emperor Peter the Great had moved it to the deliberately European city of Saint Petersburg. The Bolsheviks moved it back to Moscow. Secondly, whilst Lenin initially supported various forms of local ethnic nationalism, every subsequent Soviet leader promoted the Russification - soft at times, harsher at others - of the entire Union. In consideration of the other factors I have outlined, I believe it is obvious that this leads us to the conclusion that the Soviet Union was in a sense a mixed and melted contradiction for its whole being was simultaneously based upon both the scientific and social theories of the German philosopher Karl Marx, and the revival of the ancient Russian, and at times even Christian spirit in the recognition of the fact that this appealed to the hearts and souls of the Russian people. At its core, these inherently contradictory principles were an inseparable part of the Soviet state, although at different times different principles prevailed.
Just before he died in November 1982, Brezhnev handed over the great Danilov Monastery back to the Russian Orthodox Church. As far as he was concerned, the Russian Orthodox Church had become such an important part of the entrenched Soviet system that it deserved a proper and permanent administrative complex in a huge monastery at the centre of Moscow.
Whilst Khrushchev had promoted, above all, Marxism, communist internationalism, and the destruction of the Church partly in protest against what he viewed as the excesses of Stalin’s nationalistic and promotion of traditionalist Orthodox Christian patriotism, Brezhnev promoted Russian nationalism, the solidification of the Russian Orthodox Church’s position, the sidelining of the onward march towards a communist utopia, and the strengthening of the nation in accord with Russian national traditions. Whilst Brezhnev claimed that one of the greatest successes of decades of Soviet power was the emergence of a completely new group of “Soviet people” who regarded themselves as “Soviet” rather than Russian, Ukrainian, Armenian, or Georgian, in reality Brezhnev’s conception of the Soviet man was of a Russian or at least heavily Russified man. Brezhnev and his allies believed that the internationalism of the early Soviet era that was revived by Khrushchev was a danger to Russia. The Soviet Union could only be great, in their view, if it in some way continued the ancient traditions of supporting Russian nationalism and Orthodox Christianity. Yet in the context of a Marxist state, it had to do this whilst also promoting a scientific-materialist and atheistic socialist worldview that contradicted both nationalism and Christianity.
Brezhnev also condemned the idea that the national Republics of the USSR should be liquidated due to the emergence of the new “Soviet people”. He believed that there needed to be a Russia, a Ukraine, an Armenia, and a Georgia, because it was necessary for the states to remain in some sense separate, it being unnecessary to liquidate the Republics due to the natural unity of the various nationalities of the Soviet Union.
The Soviet state also indirectly cultivated a romanticised view of the Russian way of life, with the author Vasiliy M. Shukshin speaking nostalgically in Soviet state journals of Russian villages with the church and the priest at the centre. The idealised basis of Soviet society, it seemed to be, were the pious village people who had preserved Russia’s ancient Christian soul. These “village prose stories” were in the 1970s approved by the Soviet authorities and simultaneously emphasised the power of the poor Russian peasants and the importance of traditionalism centred on the primacy of the Orthodox faith. The Dostoevskyian ideal of the Russian Orthodox Church as the everlasting protector of an eternally embattled Russian civilisation was promoted in many state-approved stories though it contradicted the official Marxist line. The most basic unit of Soviet society, it was suggested, were the pious village people who kept icons in their home and devoted their lives to manual work and religious duties. Of course, the majority of Soviet citizens were far from this ideal, but under Brezhnev this was indeed promoted as a romanticised ideal not by official Communist Party magazines but by journals approved by the state.
Likewise, in the 1970s the artist Ilya S. Glazunov simultaneously painted portraits of Brezhnev which were published in official Party magazines and expounded the idea that one could not be Russian without being a Christian.
In September of 1980, the official Party magazine Pravda carried an article lamenting the destruction of Orthodox churches in the early days of the Soviet Union. On the 500th anniversary of the Russian victory against the Mongol Horde at Kulikovo in 1380, Communist Party mouthpieces began promoting the view that European civilisation had been saved by Russia. The Patriarch of Moscow joined in with the declarations that all of European Christendom had been saved by Russia in 1380.
In a sense, the Brezhnev era’s more restrained support for Russian nationalism and the preservation in some shape or form of the Russian Orthodox Church and the civilisation it engendered is more significant than the hyper-nationalism and Orthodox patriotism of the late-Stalin era. For here we see that at the height of the international dominance and material prosperity of the world’s communist showcase state, it was accepted that the national and Christian character of the nation needed to be preserved.
And that, itself is a showpiece example of the inherent contradictions of the state based on the moulding together of the ancient Russian soul, inherently linked to Christianity, with Marxism-Leninism.
The Soviet Union was on the one hand an oppressive atheistic state. On the other hand, a state which accepted at times in some way, shape, or form, that pure Marxism could never satisfy the need for national identity, traditional values, and belief in God.
In conclusion, I recall the words of the British television presenter Bamber Gascoigne, uttered at the height of the Brezhnev era in 1977 when he visited the town of Zagorsk (now Sergiyev Posad), the headquarters of the Russian Orthodox Church, on the feast day of Russia’s patron and the founder of Russian monasticism, Saint Sergius of Radonezh. Observing the procession of hundreds of priests, monks, and bishops, including the Patriarch of Moscow, amidst the rising of incense, the chanting in Church Slavonic, the constant sight of believers crossing themselves whilst priests chanted prayers to God for the Patriarch and for Russia, he said:
“60 years after the Revolution…on the Feast Day of Saint Sergius…it is hard to believe that the Revolution happened”.
Herein is the great paradoxical incongruity of Soviet power: after 60 years of scientific-materialism and atheistic rule, one could still go the heart of Old Christian Russia, and immerse oneself in a way of life and system of beliefs so inherently linked to Russia’s past as to doubt whether the Revolution ever happened.
19th of August 2023.
In effect, the Soviet Union existed for almost 75 years. It shaped multiple generations of people, including the generation of people in post-Soviet states who are over the age of 50. The Soviet Union was from the very beginning fundamentally founded upon and ruled in accordance with the ideology of Marxism-Leninism, an evil ideology which the Church of Christ and her Supreme Pastor has condemned many times. Pure Marxism-Leninism believes in a scientific-materialist worldview which has no place for God or His Church. Marxism-Leninism is not only atheistic, but it has no basic conception of rights except the rights of the collective which themselves are subject to what are believed by Marxists to be the eternal laws of societal development. And the eternal laws of societal development, so they believe, necessitate the institution of an authoritarian state which will forcibly guide the people towards a sort of utopian communist future by means of mass repression and violence.
This, in its most basic form, is the ideology that guided the Soviet Union’s leaders for 75 years. Tens of millions of people died as a result of the implementation of this ideology, particularly in the early years under Lenin and Stalin.
In spite of this, we can state that the Soviet Union’s 74 years of existence are inherently paradoxical. On the one hand, it was a repressive, atheistic, theomachist state. Its whole being was based on the evil, sacrilegious execution of the Christian Emperor and his innocent family. The USSR was built on the martyrdom and blood of Old Christian Russia. Yet it also transformed Russia from a peasant kingdom into a modern industrial country, promoted a patriotic-nationalistic worldview, and in its later years was characterised by unprecedented domestic peace, a rise in the standard of living, a comparatively tolerant attitude towards Christianity through support of the institution of the Russian Orthodox Church, and the promotion of the importance of the nuclear family and complementarian gender roles. By 1964 it had moved away from promoting internationalism to de facto prioritising Russian nationalism over communist ideals of brotherhood.
The Soviet dissident and Orthodox Christian Gennady Mikhailovich Shimanov (1937-2013) stated that “Soviet power is not only godlessness and the greatest thunder in the world, but also an instrument of God’s providence”. A similar statement was made by Metropolitan John of Saint Petersburg in his book Autocracy of the Spirit.
How on earth can a Christian understand such a statement. Is it not a contradiction? Yes, of course it is. It is a contradiction. But we must understand that the basis on which the Soviet Union was ruled - Marxism-Leninism - was at some times of that nation’s history merely an excuse to rule. Under Brezhnev, for instance, Russian nationalism, reminiscent of that promoted by the Orthodox Tsars, prevailed, and Marxism-Leninism was in a sense an “excuse” for the government to rule. It was a framework that provided for the state’s legitimacy.
In this regard, we can divide the Soviet state into a couple of different periods. From 1917-1941, the early years when the country was ruled by Lenin and Stalin, the USSR had virtually no redeeming qualities. State terror prevailed. Tens of millions were killed in state-supported famines, mass campaigns of terror, concentration camps known as GULAGS, and on-the-spot executions without trial. The Russian Orthodox Church - the spiritual support of the Russian State - was persecuted almost out of institutional existence. By 1941, only two or three bishops and as few as 100 out of 50,000 churches remained open. On the 22nd of June, 1941, the last great cathedral in Moscow, the Epiphany Cathedral at Yelokhovo, was scheduled to be closed. The priest celebrated what was thought to be the final Divine Liturgy before the locks were put on the church. The church however was not closed. Nazi Germany invaded later that day. The state did not close the Church.
Herein lies the first extraordinary paradox of Soviet history. As soon as Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Stalin turned away from communist internationalism and atheistic repression. He immediately began exploiting Russian nationalism and set about reviving the Russian Orthodox Church. When he addressed the people of the Soviet Union just after the Nazi invasion had begun, he did something amazing. He addressed the Soviet people with the following words: “Brothers and sisters! … my dear friends!”
Now what is the significance of this? It is that Lenin and Stalin had always eschewed the phrase “Dear brothers and sisters” in favour of “Dear comrades” or “Dear citizens”. “Brothers and sisters” was what Orthodox priests said at the beginning of their homilies when addressing the faithful. Lenin and Stalin had viewed it as a symbol of the old order that needed to be abolished.
Thus when Stalin addressed the faithful as “Dear brothers and sisters”, he did so to set an example. Indeed, from the very beginning of the Nazi invasion of the USSR, Stalin began a massive revival of Christian faith in the USSR. 25,000 churches were opened. The repressed Orthodox Church was ordered to elect a Patriarch. Even under the Tsars, it was forbidden to elect a Patriarch! Peter the Great had abolished the office of Patriarch so that he could control the Church. Stalin, however, said there needed to be a Patriarch because Russia needed a spiritual leader as well as an earthly one. Stalin then said to the bishops that they needed to open all the theological seminaries again. The bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church were shocked at this - “Stalin, Stalin, is now asking us to open all the seminaries”? But Stalin said that they needed to be opened. The spiritual revival of Russia was dependent on it.
Soviet battalions went into battle against the fascists not just with the standards bearing the hammer and sickle, but with standards showing the traditional Orthodox depictions of Christ the Pantocrator and banners showing the Holy Mother of God. Priests threw holy water on the Soviet Army before it went into battle. Upon hearing of a dream an Orthodox monk had had that if the revered Icon of the Virgin of Vladimir were processed around Moscow thrice, the city would not fall, Stalin did just that. As the Nazis approached Moscow, he ordered the icon flown around the city three times - it was said that the Holy Virgin Mother would not let the city fall. The German Army turned around. German soldiers recalled they were so close to Moscow they could see the golden crosses on the domes of the Kremlin. Yet they did not get any further. Even after the Second World War, Stalin continued to support a revival of the Orthodox Church. In 1948, all the Orthodox Patriarchs were invited to Moscow, and churches continued to open. It is even said that Stalin confessed to a priest around this time. Who knows if that is true or not.
The Second World War killed 27 million Soviet citizens. The fascist German Army murdered 19 million Soviet civilians and 8.7 million Soviet soldiers. In much of the former USSR, it is known as the “Great Patriotic War”. What is so extraordinary is that Stalin knew that his people would never fight for communism, or atheism. They would fight for Russia, they would fight for their Motherland, they would fight for their right to exist as Slavic peoples, they would fight for the preservation of their Christian nation.
The Soviet people were fighting what was described quite rightly as a “sacred war”. It was a war to preserve the existence of Soviet people, whom the Nazis wanted to annihilate. It was not a fight for the theomachist regime. It was not a fight for Stalin. It was a fight to preserve the eternal soul of Christian Russia. Stalin knew this quite well even if he never would have admitted it. He was cold, brutal, and evil. But he was also extremely clever.
The era of the Second World War marked an extraordinary change in the Soviet understanding of their role in the world. Until then, the Soviet Union had been in some respects a genocidal state focussed only on fighting God, and indoctrinating the people through never before heard of repressions. In terms of its principles, it believed in communist internationalism, an unending fight against Christianity, and the creation of a New World Order based on harsh, materialistic, and atheistic principles.
Officially, this did not change. But in practice, atheism and communist internationalism were sidelined and in some respects de facto abandoned. This lasted until Stalin’s death in 1953. In fact, the last twelve years of Stalin’s rule exhibited quite perfectly this Soviet paradox. When Stalin died, the official cameras showed Russian Orthodox bishops, including Metropolitan Nikolai (Yarushevich) weeping before his body, and peasant women crossing themselves as they passed by the bier. On the one hand, the state remained officially atheistic. It also remained deeply repressive. Yet it also supported a massive state-sponsored revival of the Christian religion and Russian nationalism superseded Bolshevik communist internationalism.
After Stalin’s death in 1953, everything changed once again. Thank God, the mass repressions and executions ended. The GULAG prisoners were freed. Yet alongside Khrushchev’s so-called “liberalisation” of Soviet society, which was based on a rightful rejection of Stalin’s methods of mass terror and cult of personality, there was a clear return to communist internationalism and a fundamentally atheistic scientific materialist worldview. Khrushchev began once more to persecute the Russian Orthodox Church. He emphasised communist internationalism and the necessary onward march towards a utopian stateless and godless future. In other words, a march towards the creation of Hell on Earth, from a Christian perspective.
Between the years 1959 and 1964, this view prevailed particularly strongly. The Russian Patriarch privately expressed the belief that the institutional Russian Orthodox Church would survive no longer than around 20 years. Then it all changed again. When Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev came to power in 1964, he immediately stopped the evil persecution of the Church, gave it a protected position in society, and moved back towards courting the eternal flame of Russian state greatness and the prioritisation of nationalism over communist internationalism.
The Soviet Union as it was from 1964 to 1985 - under Brezhnev and his two like-minded successors can be characterised as the most paradoxical of all. On the one hand, atheism was officially promoted and religion was discouraged. The repressive hand of the state was used against dissenters. Leftist and anti-colonial regimes and fighters were supported abroad. Yet on the other hand, the Russian Orthodox Church was returned to a protected position in society, very few churches were closed and some were even built whilst the institutional Church was protected, nationalism and patriotism again prevailed over internationalism, there were no mass repressions or executions, there was unprecedented domestic peace in both political and social respects, the government was stable and the country ruled based on consensus in the Politburo rather than an arbitrary cult of personality surrounding one man, traditional family values were promoted, historical Russia was more powerful than it had ever been, and the standard of living continued to rise.
Under Brezhnev, the Soviet state came to the belief that in essence, a utopian communist future was a theory that would take a long time to reach. Brezhnev's support of “developed socialism” was effectively support for the entrenchment of the status quo, which was characterised by nationalism, social conservatism, and relative freedom of religious worship (in comparison to in the past). Brezhnev himself was perhaps the most spiritual of all the Soviet leaders and whilst likely not a believer himself, he had clear sympathies towards the Orthodox civilisational ideals that he recalled nostalgically from his pre-Revolutionary childhood. This informed aspects of his policies. On the one hand, his official support for the atheistic-scientific-materialist worldview, and on the other hand his protection and cultivation of the institutional Christianity that for so long had been the mainstay of the Russian state in the realisation that without it there would be no Russia.
In a Marxist state, the concept of “developed socialism” was a necessary ideologically formed excuse for the stalling of what Marxist theory holds to be the inevitable onward march towards a godless “utopia”, which would of course be a Hell on Earth. Under Brezhnev, the internationalist and anti-religious slogans remained but in practice were supplanted by Soviet (in reality Russian) nationalism and appeals to the greatness of historical Christian Russia, albeit not to the extent that this was applied in the late Stalin period, where the Orthodox Church was almost being revived to something far greater than its pre-Revolutionary glory. And this in a state that was formally communist and atheistic!
It is at this point I should like to point out two factors of great importance. Firstly, the ancient capital of Russia was Moscow, but the reforming, pro-western Emperor Peter the Great had moved it to the deliberately European city of Saint Petersburg. The Bolsheviks moved it back to Moscow. Secondly, whilst Lenin initially supported various forms of local ethnic nationalism, every subsequent Soviet leader promoted the Russification - soft at times, harsher at others - of the entire Union. In consideration of the other factors I have outlined, I believe it is obvious that this leads us to the conclusion that the Soviet Union was in a sense a mixed and melted contradiction for its whole being was simultaneously based upon both the scientific and social theories of the German philosopher Karl Marx, and the revival of the ancient Russian, and at times even Christian spirit in the recognition of the fact that this appealed to the hearts and souls of the Russian people. At its core, these inherently contradictory principles were an inseparable part of the Soviet state, although at different times different principles prevailed.
Just before he died in November 1982, Brezhnev handed over the great Danilov Monastery back to the Russian Orthodox Church. As far as he was concerned, the Russian Orthodox Church had become such an important part of the entrenched Soviet system that it deserved a proper and permanent administrative complex in a huge monastery at the centre of Moscow.
Whilst Khrushchev had promoted, above all, Marxism, communist internationalism, and the destruction of the Church partly in protest against what he viewed as the excesses of Stalin’s nationalistic and promotion of traditionalist Orthodox Christian patriotism, Brezhnev promoted Russian nationalism, the solidification of the Russian Orthodox Church’s position, the sidelining of the onward march towards a communist utopia, and the strengthening of the nation in accord with Russian national traditions. Whilst Brezhnev claimed that one of the greatest successes of decades of Soviet power was the emergence of a completely new group of “Soviet people” who regarded themselves as “Soviet” rather than Russian, Ukrainian, Armenian, or Georgian, in reality Brezhnev’s conception of the Soviet man was of a Russian or at least heavily Russified man. Brezhnev and his allies believed that the internationalism of the early Soviet era that was revived by Khrushchev was a danger to Russia. The Soviet Union could only be great, in their view, if it in some way continued the ancient traditions of supporting Russian nationalism and Orthodox Christianity. Yet in the context of a Marxist state, it had to do this whilst also promoting a scientific-materialist and atheistic socialist worldview that contradicted both nationalism and Christianity.
Brezhnev also condemned the idea that the national Republics of the USSR should be liquidated due to the emergence of the new “Soviet people”. He believed that there needed to be a Russia, a Ukraine, an Armenia, and a Georgia, because it was necessary for the states to remain in some sense separate, it being unnecessary to liquidate the Republics due to the natural unity of the various nationalities of the Soviet Union.
The Soviet state also indirectly cultivated a romanticised view of the Russian way of life, with the author Vasiliy M. Shukshin speaking nostalgically in Soviet state journals of Russian villages with the church and the priest at the centre. The idealised basis of Soviet society, it seemed to be, were the pious village people who had preserved Russia’s ancient Christian soul. These “village prose stories” were in the 1970s approved by the Soviet authorities and simultaneously emphasised the power of the poor Russian peasants and the importance of traditionalism centred on the primacy of the Orthodox faith. The Dostoevskyian ideal of the Russian Orthodox Church as the everlasting protector of an eternally embattled Russian civilisation was promoted in many state-approved stories though it contradicted the official Marxist line. The most basic unit of Soviet society, it was suggested, were the pious village people who kept icons in their home and devoted their lives to manual work and religious duties. Of course, the majority of Soviet citizens were far from this ideal, but under Brezhnev this was indeed promoted as a romanticised ideal not by official Communist Party magazines but by journals approved by the state.
Likewise, in the 1970s the artist Ilya S. Glazunov simultaneously painted portraits of Brezhnev which were published in official Party magazines and expounded the idea that one could not be Russian without being a Christian.
In September of 1980, the official Party magazine Pravda carried an article lamenting the destruction of Orthodox churches in the early days of the Soviet Union. On the 500th anniversary of the Russian victory against the Mongol Horde at Kulikovo in 1380, Communist Party mouthpieces began promoting the view that European civilisation had been saved by Russia. The Patriarch of Moscow joined in with the declarations that all of European Christendom had been saved by Russia in 1380.
In a sense, the Brezhnev era’s more restrained support for Russian nationalism and the preservation in some shape or form of the Russian Orthodox Church and the civilisation it engendered is more significant than the hyper-nationalism and Orthodox patriotism of the late-Stalin era. For here we see that at the height of the international dominance and material prosperity of the world’s communist showcase state, it was accepted that the national and Christian character of the nation needed to be preserved.
And that, itself is a showpiece example of the inherent contradictions of the state based on the moulding together of the ancient Russian soul, inherently linked to Christianity, with Marxism-Leninism.
The Soviet Union was on the one hand an oppressive atheistic state. On the other hand, a state which accepted at times in some way, shape, or form, that pure Marxism could never satisfy the need for national identity, traditional values, and belief in God.
In conclusion, I recall the words of the British television presenter Bamber Gascoigne, uttered at the height of the Brezhnev era in 1977 when he visited the town of Zagorsk (now Sergiyev Posad), the headquarters of the Russian Orthodox Church, on the feast day of Russia’s patron and the founder of Russian monasticism, Saint Sergius of Radonezh. Observing the procession of hundreds of priests, monks, and bishops, including the Patriarch of Moscow, amidst the rising of incense, the chanting in Church Slavonic, the constant sight of believers crossing themselves whilst priests chanted prayers to God for the Patriarch and for Russia, he said:
“60 years after the Revolution…on the Feast Day of Saint Sergius…it is hard to believe that the Revolution happened”.
Herein is the great paradoxical incongruity of Soviet power: after 60 years of scientific-materialism and atheistic rule, one could still go the heart of Old Christian Russia, and immerse oneself in a way of life and system of beliefs so inherently linked to Russia’s past as to doubt whether the Revolution ever happened.