In May of 2015, an extraordinary event happened, as described by Orthodox Christian and Russian military analyst and blogger The Saker:
Today will go down in Russian history, as a truly historical celebration of the victory over Nazi Germany…But something else, no less amazing, also happened today: Defense Minister Shoigu made the sign of the Cross before the beginning of the celebrations:
This is an absolutely momentous moment for Russia. Never in the past history had any Russian Minister of Defense done anything like it. True, the old tradition was to make the sign of the Cross when passing under the Kremlin’s Savior Tower, if only because there is an icon of the Savior right over the gate. However, everybody in Russia immediately understood that there was much more to this gesture than an external compliance to an ancient tradition.
Icon of the Savior
The Russian journalist Victor Baranets puts it very well when he wrote: “At that moment I felt that with his simple gesture Shoigu brought all of Russia to his feet. There was so much kindness, so much hope, so much of our Russian sense of the sacred [in this gesture].”
He is absolutely correct. To see this Tuvan Buddhist make the sign of the Cross in the Orthodox manner sent an electric shock through the Russian blogosphere: everybody felt that something amazing had happened.
For one thing, nobody in his right mind would suspect Shoigu of ever doing anything just “for show.” The man has an immense capital of popularity and credibility in Russia and he has no need for political hypocrisy. Furthermore, those who saw the footage will immediately see that Shoigu was very concentrated, very solemn, when he did this. Personally, I believe that Shoigu quite literally asked for God’s help in one of the most dangerous moments in Russian history in which he, the Russian Minister of Defense, might be called to take momentous decisions from which the future of the planet might depend.
Obviously, the Russian people have gone through a great change from the time they were Lenin’s and Stalin’s willing executioners; I hope that there are enough people of faith in both nations who share the desire to work for peace, against the evident edicts of the ruling “elites,” as even Pat Buchanan noted “how nations escape the quagmires of debt” through war.
Current Prices on popular forms of Silver Bullion
As Peter Hitchens wrote with sympathy and insight in The Cold War is Over, which I found through a post at LewRockwell.com, elaborating on the Russian word for security:
People often say silly things about other people’s languages, such as George W. Bush’s rumored claim that “The problem with the French is they have no word for entrepreneur.” (The source is former British Cabinet Minister Shirley Williams, the Baroness Williams of Crosby, who may have been being mischievous.) But I have checked the following carefully with Russian friends, and
To Russia With Love Best Price: $8.77 Buy New $9.30 (as of 09:57 UTC - Details)
it is true. The usual Russian term for safety or security, bezopasnost, is a negative word meaning “without danger” (bez = “without”; opasnost = “danger”). The natural state of affairs is danger.
Safety, for Russians, is something to be achieved by neutralizing a danger that is presumed to exist at all times. From this follows a particular attitude to life and government. If the U.S. had China on the 49th Parallel and Germany on the Rio Grande, and a long land border with the Islamic world where the Pacific Ocean now is, it might be a very different place. There might even be a good excuse for the Patriot Act and the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI. If Russia’s neighbors were Canada and Mexico, rather than Germany, China, Turkey, and Poland, and if its other flanks were guarded by thousands of miles of open ocean, it might have free institutions and long traditions of free speech and the rule of law. It might also be a lot richer. As it is, Russia is a strong state with a country, rather than a country with a strong state. If it were otherwise, it would have gone the way of the Lithuanian Empire or, come to that, the Golden Horde.
You will have heard that Europe ends at the Ural Mountains. This is not true. The Urals are a much overrated geographical feature, but even if they weren’t, you can find Asia in Moscow, and feel its closeness. In the days before Christmas, when I lived there, Moscow took on the mythical characteristics of the East, as old women wrapped in black took up station on street corners, selling fresh-killed geese raised in snowy clearings. I would not have been surprised if these ageless crones had offered me a handful of magic beans or three wishes. In thundery summer, the great eastern highways out of the metropolis had a feeling of endlessness. There was nothing much, really, between me and China but a failing power, trembling in its armor. In those moments, I found myself wanting a Russia more muscular, not less so.
Down by the river in a great bend, near the horrible Lenin Stadium, which was used for the Moscow Olympics of 1980, sits the
Live From Red Square M... Best Price: $9.99 Buy New $15.78 (as of 09:05 UTC - Details)
Recently, the fifteenth anniversary of 09/11 passed. One would never think there is a connection with Russia—a profound one—but there is. I don’t know how many people are aware of the Tear Drop Memorial and its origin; however, I think it is necessary for us to remember how the people of Russia reacted to the suffering and grief of Americans after the events of 9/11 unfolded, events whose origin are debated even still.
Joseph Doria, former Mayor of Bayonne, New Jersey, a position he held from July 1998 to October 2007, provided a statement regarding the performance of Mozart’s Requiem for the fifteenth anniversary of the events of 9/11; significantly, he discussed the featuring of the Tear Drop Memorial on the concert poster and how it came to pass:
All roads were cut and communication lost after the attack that day. We were, for the most part, on our own. People were brought out of lower Manhattan by a spontaneous and self-organized deployment of any and all shipping vessels and seaworthy craft that could be mobilized by their individual owners. The people came by boat to Liberty State Park, site of the Statue of Liberty, and were put on lightrail trains to Bayonne. We in Bayonne took in over 600 people—some still in pajamas, tourists, nannies who had been walking children at the time of the attack and others. They were refugees from terror. We housed them in the tents of an abandoned military site on the peninsula, and our high school housed people who were stranded on roads, and on the Bayonne Bridge after all traffic stopped. Our restaurants fed people; our pharmacies gave them medicine; our doctors went to the hospitals to be prepared to take in the injured. There were great acts of generosity and courage and concern from our citizens—and there was, of course, great shock. We did what we could.
Hvorostovsky in Moscow Best Price: $14.99 Buy New $12.42 (as of 07:30 UTC - Details)
Then, within the year, a surprising offer was made by the famous Russian sculptor, Zurab Tsereteli, and by the Russian government to construct a massive monument in America, and ultimately, in Bayonne to show sympathy with the United States and its citizens, and to register a human response to the inhuman acts of terror. “Malice toward none; justice for all.”
My negotiations with the Russians concerning their proposal began in 2002, and construction occurred between 2005 when ground was broken, and 2006 when the dedication ceremony was held.
The monument, true to Tsereteli’s works, is huge, rising 100 feet in height, and all covered in bronze. Its structure depicts a block that is gashed asunder, representing the attack on the twin towers. Within the gash is suspended a falling, giant tear. The teardrop is 40 feet long, and weighs 40 tons, and is all steel. The monument and the tear are all visible from a far distance to ships coming into the area. Etched in granite at the base of the monument are the names of the victims from the trade center, the Pentagon, and the plane which crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, Flight 93. We negotiated with the Russians to also include the names of the victims of the 1993 attack on the trade center, one of whom was a worker from Bayonne. The Russians were very agreeable to all our requests. Bricks were added later around the monument, purchased by individuals to record the names of those who died, or first responders, or loved one who have passed away and whom they wish to memorialize…
People have asked me why it was built by the Russians. And I explain: The Russians wanted the United States citizens to know that the entire world cried after 9/11 to see this desecration and this slaughter of innocents for no purpose at all—terrorism—which most civilized people of the world abhor.
While the motives and perpetrators of 9/11 are subject to inquiry, the agony of human suffering is the one immutable truth; America has not been exempt from the horrors of war and we should recall that before this New Cold War environment, in that hour of crisis and grief, Russians reached out to us. Yet my purpose in writing is to make people aware of an impending catastrophe of potentially far, far greater proportions than 9/11.
Sadly, that genuine goodwill demonstrated and felt by Russia towards America has now vanished.
The provocative actions of the West, including recent NATO military exercises, have led the Russians to the realization that not only a new Cold War is taking place, but they are also facing the threat of a real military attack and that war with the West is in fact an existential threat to their nation and her people.
From an essay translated from the Russian, At the Threshold of a Third World War, one hears a tone unvoiced by our mainstream media. Russia is wounded, frightened and worst of all angry (although at least the author indicates they understand that America’s so-called elites are behind events):
Today, Russia is in a more difficult situation with more fronts—with the USA, with NATO, a semi-war with Ukraine, the war in Syria, the new iron curtain from the Baltics to Black Sea, the riots in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan with support from Afghanistan…
Is this a new 1980? No, it is not. At that time, the USSR had a powerful economic, military and social foundation. Today, the economy of Russia is much weaker; it is gasping for breath; its resources fund is becoming destroyed, and a painful reduction in spending is taking place. Against this background, what happened in the USSR in 1979-1985 looks like a slight headache compared to the current problems.
Actually: there is nothing new. Only a new act in the drama Russia-the West, which started a hundred years ago.
At the end of 1812, Emperor Alexander I informed Kutuzov about the necessity to “go to Europe, to Paris.”
Kutuzov objected: “We have nothing to do in Europe.”
“We are in Europe now, aren’t we?” the Emperor asked. “Are we in Asia, perhaps?”
Son of Thunder: The Sp... Buy New $12.00 (as of 04:45 UTC - Details)
“We are not in Asia either. We are Russia,” Kutuzov replied.
A hundred and fifty years later, Putin added: “It is not Russia that is between the East and the West. The East and the West are on the left and on the right of Russia.”
The war against Russia is not for a long time, it is forever. It means that even now, the war against Russia is not to stop Russia from its revival. The stakes are much higher. The point is a global leadership. In this battle, America is losing and this provokes its ruling elite to aggression.
The war in Donbas
Since the tradition of the USA is to prepare several provocations simultaneously in different places, they chose the hot August for resuming the military activities of Kiev against Donbas.
The captured terrorist group in Crimea is a war.
The terrorist act against the leader of the Lugansk People’s Republic, Plotnitski, on 6 August is a war.
A war is also the military structure of NATO coming out to the borders of Russia from the Baltic to the Black Sea. The war is for Russia and for the Ukraine. It is about the strategic security of Russia, above all about the flight-time of the missiles. A Third World War.
That’s why Crimea was returned. A Crimea of NATO would have cut off the European south of Russia. That’s why Russia left the Treaty of Limiting Armed Forces in Europe and positions new interesting “things” in Kaliningrad.
Russia will respond quickly and surprisingly. When? When the general headquarters evaluates that the improper deployment of NATO missiles could destroy Petersburg and Sevastopol. Then the decision will be made instantly. And neither the USA nor NATO will help.
And Putin warned about this at the economic forum in Petersburg:
“We know what will happen year after year, and they know that we know… Russia will no longer play games with the USA and get involved in deals in the dark. Russia is ready for serious negotiations, only if they contribute to collective security. All aspects of global security now lie in ruins. There are no more international guarantees for security and the country responsible for the destruction of the global security is the USA. Russia does not intend to reform the world according to its own views, and will not allow itself to be reformed according to foreign views. Russia will not close itself for the world, but anyone who tries to close it to the world will harvest storms. Russia will not act as the savior of the world either, as in the past. Russia does not want war and does not intend to start a war. But today, Russia can see that the explosion of a global war is almost unavoidable and is prepared and will continue preparing. Russia does not want a war but is not afraid of a war. Those who get Russia involved in this process will learn the real meaning of pain.” [Emphasis added.]
Actually there is nothing to comment on here. Russia does not want a war, but is getting ready for it and if it happens, Russia will enter it with all its power. No hesitations, like in the times of the USSR.
I am merely an observer looking through the window of the Internet. I have no personal ties to Russia; yet the situation of growing tension and hostility between our nations is tragic because it could have been avoided. Nor do I claim to understand the motives of those ordering aggressive actions and making confrontational statements, some of which I discussed here not too long ago.
Yet although I have no contact with individual Russians, I do admire Russia’s superb and unique cultural heritage, from her profound and beautiful literature to her astonishing works of art and music, the latter often tinged with deep melancholy. Therefore, I have to recommend to American and Western audiences to experience the unique and beautiful film Russian Ark (Blu-ray, DVD here).
As Casey Broadwater wrote about the film in his review at Blu-ray.com:
There was significant buzz earlier this year regarding the uninterrupted 17-minute opening shot of Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity. As impressive as it may be, it pales next to the logistical and artistic feat that is Alexander Sokurov’s Russian Ark, a 2002 period piece of sorts—or periods piece, rather, as it spans 300 years of Russian history—that was shot in a single 96-minute take with no hidden cuts or camera trickery. Of course, nearly all of the great directors have experimented with long takes—Hitchcock and Welles, Ophüls and Antonioni, Ozu and Tarkovsky—but Sokurov’s commitment to the concept is almost unparalleled, largely because Russian Ark’s form and content are so perfectly attuned. The technical accomplishment and the film’s thematic underpinnings are inseparable. The unseen narrator is joined by a fellow spirit, “The European” (Sergei Dontsov), a Frenchman based on the Marquis de Custine, a 19th century noble known for his highly critical travelogue, Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia. The two ghosts come to represent the attitudes that western Europeans and Russians have typically held towards one another. Sokurov’s anonymous Russian everyman is meek and defensive, while The European—dressed in all black, with Byronic hair and a bemused, above-it-all expression—is dismissive and even sarcastic. There’s no respect in his voice when he calls Pushkin “your great poet, your beloved one,” and he casually throws out jabs like “Russians are so talented at copying…because you don’t have good ideas of your own.”
Together, they give a running commentary over the series of time-skipping historical vignettes they witness from one room to the next. The hot- tempered Peter the Great dressing down one of his generals. Catherine (also the Great) running to the toilet after watching an elaborate musical spectacle. The ceremonial apology of a Persian emissary to Nicholas I after the death of a Russian ambassador in Tehran, and Nicholas II’s daughters—including the now-fabled Anastasia—twirling through the palace halls in the comparatively happy times before the Bolshevik revolution. Only hinted at are the darker days of WWII: The European briefly opens one door that leads to a chilly storeroom filled with empty picture frames and a lone peasant building his own coffin during the 900-day siege of Leningrad. (The Marquis scoffs in disbelief when Sokurov’s narrator mentions the number of those who eventually died.) Time moves inexorably forward, but the European opts not to follow the narrator into the future, preferring to stay in what we’re meant to see as the height of Russian life and culture—an enormous 19th century ball with hundreds of elegantly dancing aristocrats and bombastic music from influential composer Mikhail Glinka.
I can’t think of a better and more pleasant way to discover some of the magnificent history and art of Russia than to view this film and in so doing to realize as well the dreadful price Russia has paid for wars, frequently not of her choosing.
In her perceptive, powerful essay Globalism: The Religion of Empire, Fay Voshell wrote:
Like the Christian vision of the universal Kingdom of God, the religion of secular globalism claims universality, but it is actually an earthly minded substitute for the Church universal. The Christian vision sees the Church universal as God’s holy kingdom, a kingdom that transcends and informs all earthly rule. The religion of globalism sees an earthly, utopian world order in which all men pay allegiance to elite priests who rule over a World City without national borders.
Sometimes the substitute beatific vision is expressed in terms of a “global village,” a mystical and conveniently vague entity that takes the place of the family of God. The globalists’ family of humanity is to be without distinction of country, tribe or religious creed. The ideal human being is seen as detached from country and faith. He is exiled from everything that gives his life meaning in order he become an abstraction, a tabula rasa on which a new program might be written by those who are superior.
The universal citizen of the new secularist world order does not know yet what he will be. But rest assured he will be told by those who know better than he, much as the peoples of Stalinist USSR, Mao Tse Tung’s China and Pol Pot’s Cambodia were told what the perfect communist human being would look and act like.
And, as Russians discovered over some seven decades, the world citizen adrift in a sea without horizons would come to know this much: Anything to which he has been or is attached must be and would be demolished. The secularist vision required and requires complete destruction of the old; including nations, institutions, faith and even historical memory itself. Hence, for instance, the constant and relentless attacks on the Christian Church as well as on the reality and concept of nation and the human being. Devotion to faith, family, nation was and is not only suspect, but considered positively injurious to “progress” of the new World Order. The ideology of globalism involves stripping humanity of its former and unique status as beings created in imago dei and the substitution of the idea of humanity as genderless units…
Globalists embrace what Hoffer recognized as an “unbounded contempt for history.” The erasure of history inevitably means attacking the past and established institutions possessing history; institutions such as the Russian Orthodox Church. Only the future matters. The present is busy with wreckage of what exists, even if what presently exists has a thousand year or more heritage.
Russians have rejected globalism; it is no longer the Soviet Union, which is dead and buried. More so than Americans, having experienced the terror and pity of war over centuries, the Russian people understand its dreadful price and in films like Russian Ark they celebrate and share their rich cultural heritage with the world. Perhaps because Russia has abandoned and has no intention of embracing the “New World Order” she has become such an enemy of the ones who evidently rule America and the “West.” I cannot but shudder to think that there are those in our putative elites who would direct their ISIS proxies to reduce The Hermitage to rubble as they have Palmyra, all the better to enforce their profane doctrine of globalism.
If Senators Rand Paul and Christopher Murphy can work together to propose a bill to require Riyadh to follow safeguards to minimize civilian deaths in Yemen, perhaps they and others like them can be inspired—should enough voices of warning be heard—to work for diplomatic and not military solutions to the differences between America’s and Russia’s respective governments. As Lew Rockwell recently wrote—and I paraphrase—we wouldn’t tolerate Apple bombing Microsoft to increase its market share. Corporations settle disputes without resort to violence—why not nations?
I believe that we must do our best not to let an unthinkable war between Russia and America be born from misguided fury; that’s why I believe it cannot hurt for those who value peace to contact Representatives like Rand Paul and Christopher Murphy to use diplomacy and not threats of violence to resolve disputes. Perhaps Rand Paul’s father Ron would consider joining or promoting the work of East West Accord, in addition to his fighting for peace—a sacred oxymoron—as he always does. Perhaps in a great irony of fate America has now become the post-Christian nation with totalitarian impulses and Russia is in contrast exercising restraint and returning to her Christian roots, the latter I suspect a major cause of the elites’ enmity towards her. Perhaps in the future America will become a more spiritual nation and no longer follow the pernicious creed of globalism, but not I fear without undergoing her own great suffering, as Russia has done. We know Russia has learned the terrible truth of war and to her great cost over generations.
Aside from the fact of the potential, even without nuclear weapons, of sheer devastation befalling America, Lew Rockwell himself wrote of the deeper perils of war:
In short, war is inseparable from propaganda, lies, hatred, impoverishment, cultural degradation, and moral corruption. It is the most horrific outcome of the moral and political legitimacy people are taught to grant the state. Wrapped in the trappings of patriotism, home, songs, and flags, the state deludes people into despising a leader and a country that until that point they had barely even heard of, much less had an informed opinion about, and it teaches its subjects to cheer the maiming and death of fellow human beings who have never done them any harm.
Fortunately, there are numerous journalists and statesmen who are making known the folly of potential military confrontation between America and Russia. Yet I believe we should also listen to the words and music of artists as well as scholars, statesmen and journalists. For we must not let the truth sung in Mussorgsky: Songs and Dances of Death come to pass, as described especially in the music and the lyrics of “The Field Marshall,” sung by the superb Russian Baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky, for there is only one true winner of war in the end—the god Globalism and Empire worships:
The battle roars, the shields glisten,
The hungry weapons cry,
The regiments run, the horses gallop,
And the red rivers are flowing.
It is burning at midday, the people fight!
The sun has set, the fight grows stronger!
The twilight is waning, but the enemies
Are fighting even more ferociously.
And the night descends upon the battlefield;
The armies disengage in the darkness;
Everything grows quiet—and in the night’s mist
The moans rise up to the heavens.
Then, lit up by the moon,
Upon its battle steed,
Glistening with the whiteness of its bones,
Death appears! And in the quiet,
Listening to the cries and pleas,
Full of proud satisfaction,
As a general, it circles
The battlefield;
It climbs a hill, and turns around,
It stops…It smiles…
And above the battlefield
The fateful voice is heard:
‘The battle is over—I hold the victory!
All of you now kneel before me.
Life made you quarrel—I give you peace.
Stand up for the parade, dead men!
Solemnly march in front of me—
I want to count my army.
Then put your bones into the soil,
It is sweet to rest in the earth from life.
Years will follow unnoticed,
People will forget you—
But I will remember you always,
And forever will govern you at the midnight hour!
I will flatten the moist earth with my heavy dance
So that the bones will forever
Remain trapped under the earth,
And you will never rise again.’
