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.
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
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.’
The post The Deep Folly of Confrontation appeared first on LewRockwell.