(by Alberto Zanconato) (ANSA) – ROME, APRIL 23 – It is the 90s and Russia is in disarray: people literally dying of hunger, oligarchs who seize state enterprises for a penny, widespread terrorism and criminals who they shoot in the streets of Moscow. Two men meet at Lubyanka, home of the dissolved KGB. One is Vladimir Putin, who has become head of the new intelligence service, the FSB. The other is the monk Tikhon, who arrived from Pskov to reopen the Sretensky monastery, which once belonged to the Soviet secret services. Tikhon becomes the future president’s spiritual guide and convinces him to convert. From this alliance the idea of making Russia great in opposition to globalization and the invasion of Western values will take shape.
In that meeting, the origins of the invasion of Ukraine can also be partly found, observes Don Stefano Caprio, professor of Russian History and Culture at the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome, who was a missionary in Moscow for 13 years.
Since he was a seminarian, Caprio deals with Russia and has often met Patriarch Kirill. In his opinion, the strongest influence on the leader of the Kremlin is not that of the head of the Orthodox Church, but of the most extremist wing, the monastic one represented by Tikhon (aka Georgy Shevkunov). What he believes in the need to “defend oneself from the Western Antichrist”. What he sees as inextricably linked Russian power and the mission of Moscow as Third Rome.
“With this war – observes Caprio – Putin risks destroying everything he has done for Russia in the last 20 years. The only explanation is that he truly believes in his mission to affirm the great Russian idea. level of Stalin, or of Ivan the Terrible “.
In all of this, what is Tikhon’s role? “During Putin’s travels in Russia and abroad, ever since he was head of the FSB and then prime minister, the monk appears in his retinue. In 1999 he also convinces Putin, at that time prime minister, to pass a law which prohibited the sale of alcohol after 11pm. And which is presented in Parliament by the new Communist Party of Gennady Ziuganov “. The joint action of Marxists and Orthodox is not surprising. “Tikhon – underlines Caprio – managed to demonstrate to Putin that the return to orthodoxy would not have denied the Soviet past”. Russian power and defense of the faith become one. It is an ancient story. “Ivan the Terrible, the first to be called Tsar, that is Caesar – recalls Caprio – was crowned in 1547 in a ceremony in which he wore imperial and episcopal robes. Metropolitan Makary led him. In 1612 Patriarch Filarete had the Tsar appointed son Mikhail Romanov, then ruling with him for 20 years “. It was the founding act of the Romanov dynasty, which remained at the helm of Russia until the revolution of 1917. The advent of communism did not completely erase the ancient traditions. “In 1941, when the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, Stalin put the Church back on its feet to support the patriotic spirit. After all, as a young man he had been a seminarian, dreaming of becoming Patriarch. This policy continues in the years of Brezhnev. The crisis comes with the fall of the USSR. The Orthodox Church is seen as a collaborator of the past regime. But in 1997 a law sanctions the Orthodox supremacy over other religions “.
In 2000, during a Synod of Bishops meeting in Moscow – where, among other things, the canonization of the last Tsar, Nikola II, was decided – a document entitled ‘Social Doctrine of the Orthodox Church’ was approved. “A doctrine – says Caprio – inspired by Kirill, metropolitan of Moscow at that time, and which will become the basis of Putin’s political program, who took office that year. His is what we can call orthodox sovereignty: Russia it will not accept to submit to Western-led globalization and its values ”. But while Kirill, who became head of the Church in 2009, will try to maintain more moderate positions (for example, by refusing to participate in the celebrations for the annexation of Crimea in 2014), the uncompromising monastic world is increasingly influencing Putin, asking him to face more force “the Western Antichrist”. Behind the war in Ukraine, therefore, there is also the shadow of the monk Tikhon. (HANDLE).
Source: Ansa
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