Why the West fears Putin. Part III

Continued. Read Part I and Part II of the article

President Reagan and Solzhenitsyn.

Reagan called the Soviet Union the evil empire and rightly so. "The Soviet Union was the Russian people held hostage by the Communists"- Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Solzhenitsyn wrote about the evils in many of his books, which Reagan was well aware of. On May 30, 1988 in Moscow, President Ronald Reagan was at the Danilov Monastery. He said, "There is a beautiful passage that I'd just like to read, if I may. It's from one of this country's great writers and believers, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, about the faith that is as elemental to this land as the dark and fertile soil. He wrote: "When you travel the byroads of central Russia, you begin to understand the secret of the pacifying Russian countryside. It is in the churches. They lift their bell-towers-graceful, shapely, all different-high over mundane timber and thatch. From villages that are cut off and invisible to each other, they soar to the same heaven.... The evening chimes used to ring out, floating over the villages, fields, and woods, reminding men that they must abandon trivial concerns of this world and give time and thought to eternity."

Reagan helped destroy communism and later even had Gorbachev at his ranch in California.

Liberals and the media hated Reagan especially for his religious beliefs. So, naturally they will hate Putin as well. Reagan made 1983 the "Year of the Bible". Reagan reminded America, "If we ever forget that we are One Nation Under God, then we will be a nation gone under." He well understood the meaning of separation of church and state.

Church and State.

In America separation of church and state means that the government cannot interfere with religious expression or the churches activities. On the other hand, the liberals, atheists and communist groups insist that religion should not be seen in the public arena. They claim the government is promoting religion. They seem allergic to Christianity and prefer any sign of it to be hidden almost as though they were the devil himself who hates it.

Liberals would prefer to stay away from Russia. Indeed, they would dread a country with censorship. In November of 2007 Putin met with the Orthodox Church's Patriarch Alexy II who asked for "tighter controls on the content of television and radio broadcasts" saying they were promoting "vicious behavior."

In America there are stories of artists depicting a religious crucifix in urine or more recently a crucifix covered by ants at the Smithsonian Institute. The latter was removed after much protest. YouTube always has blasphemous videos against the Catholic Church.

Free speech in America includes blasphemy against religion with the exception of the Muslim religion. Liberals value their lives and therefore focus their hatred against the Christians. It is also a shame that anyone is free to file a lawsuit against a nativity scene, Ten Commandments or cross in the so called "public view" or on government property.

Liberals have used the freedom their Founding Fathers gave them like spoiled brats. One Russian took notice of it and spoke about it at Harvard in 1978. Solzhenitsyn said, "In today's Western society, the inequality has been revealed of freedom for good deeds and freedom for evil deeds..." at 7:38 here.
"Destructive and irresponsible freedom" - 9:36 here.

"Such a tilt of freedom in the direction of evil has come about gradually but it was evidently born primarily out of a humanistic and benevolent concept according to which there is no evil inherent to human nature". Hear it at 48 seconds here.

Evil is a myth and subsequently ignored in America by liberals who think they are above it all. Russia, under communism, has already met evil face to face. Fortunately, Russia loves and fears their Creator. They have laws against blasphemy. In Moscow, a court convicted two artists of "inciting religious hatred". One of the paintings showed Jesus as Mickey Mouse. The artists were convicted with heavy fines. This should happen to the Smithsonian Institute and YouTube but freedom in America gives a right to express evil.

In Russia, God and country are intertwined. Reuters story from November 2007, titled, "Putin promises support to Russian Orthodox Church": "President VladimirPutin promised onMonday further strong state support for the dominant Russian Orthodox Church, urging believers to be active in crucial elections in December and March." State support for the church has grown even stronger under Putin as Russia has turned away from Western-style liberalism of the first post-Soviet decade to traditional values.

Putin: "Orthodoxy has always had a special role in shaping our statehood, our culture, our morals, Putin told dozens of high-ranking black-robed priests led by Patriarch Alexy II. "We highly appreciate the church's striving to revive in Russian society ideals and values which have for ages served us as moral guidelines," Putin told the priests.

Reuters left out Putin saying, "One should not completely draw a line between the culture and the Church. Of course, in our country the Church is separate from the State. But in the soul and the history of our people it's all together. It always has been and always will be."

A few Russians are not happy with this religious fervor. Members of the Russian Academy of Sciences wrote Putin a letter. Dear Mr. President: "We have watched with deepening concern the increasing clericalization of Russian society, the Church's infiltration of all areas of public life. The Constitution of the Russian Federation declares our country to be secular and separates the Church from the public education system. We address this letter to you as the holder of the highest office in this country and guarantor of the Constitution's basic principles."

Too bad so sad for the liberals in Russia. Putin has not only embraced the church but has helped restore it and will continue to do so. Putin and Patriarch Kirill had met earlier this year of 2010.

Talk is cheap but not for Putin.

Vladimir Putin said as president, "The state will continue to support the Church in all its work to enlighten the moral education of our citizens, strengthen the influence of family values, and consolidate unity in the Orthodox community."

Recently, Dec 3, 2010 Patriarch Kirill said A total of 23,000 Orthodox churches have been rebuilt in Russia in the past 20 years. "Nothing of the kind has happened in any country at any time in history; This has been happening against the backdrop of all social, political and economic confrontations..."

"The world should see the Orthodox Russia's great feat of rebuilding all that was destroyed," he said.

There was an AP story relayed by Fox News that seemed to hint that Putin and Medvedev were at church for the first time to get the church's blessing as Medvedev takes over as president.

Just because it was Associated Press' first time at the Cathedral does not mean it was Putin and Medvedev's first also. They have a strong faith and go many times to church. I can attest to the fact that Putin was at the Cathedral December 2008 during the requiem service for Patriarch Alexy.

On October 30, 2007, "The Day of Soviet Political Prisoners" Putin said he wanted the innocent Soviet prisoners of the past to be remembered to avoid the same mistake in the future. He said, "Today we commemorate the victims of political repression," Above all, law enforcement agencies should provide the public with all relevant information that can be used in their rehabilitation."

Dimitry Medvedev.

Putin's right hand man is Medvedev. He is not a Jew as some rumors abound. Medvedev's speeches may even be considered more fervent. Russian President Dimitry Medvedev said, on June 29, 2008 at a Russian Orthodox Church's celebration of the yearly anniversary of the Baptism of Russia saying:

"The continual work of the Russian Orthodox Church will affect the revival of Christianity in our nation. Thanks to the Orthodox faith Russian culture through the years has acquired Biblical values on which the system of moral ideals for our nation is built."

"When we celebrated the millennial anniversary of the Baptism of Russia twenty years ago it was the beginning of churches being rebuilt and the restoration of the integrity of the Orthodox Church"

Medvedev condemned Stalinism.

October 30, 2008: "Let's just think about it: millions of people died as a result of terror and false accusations - millions," Medvedev said. "But even today you can still hear voices claiming that those innumerable victims were justified for some higher national purpose. I believe that no national progress, successes or ambitions can develop at the price of human misery and loss. And there is no excuse for repression. Stalin's crimes cannot diminish the heroic deeds of the people who triumphed in the Great Patriotic War, who made our country a mighty industrial power, and who raised our industry, science and culture to leading world standards."

Medvedev's wife.

Svetlana, like her husband, is also active in the Russian Church. She sponsors a program entitled "Movement for the Moral and Spiritual Culture of the Younger Generation in Russia." This movement is responsible for bringing religion back into Russian public schools. She received a medal from the Orthodox Church for her church educational program. She has helped with the spiritual and moral discipline of the younger generation. She has restored what the Bolshevik revolution did when it banished priests from the classroom.

Russian Faith Survives.

The Russian people still cling to their precious Christian faith which has survived the Mongols, Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin; civil war between the reds and the whites; and the communist's atheistic war on Christianity. In other words, God as he does with all people who pray to him, helped Russia many times.

As I said in my article regarding liberalism, "The spiritual life is the fourth dimension that cannot be measured by a tool. However, it can be measured by cause and effect." Russia has always seen the results of prayer.

More people were killed under Communism than during the first 300 years of Christianity. How could such a terrible thing happen? Was not God there to prevent it all? Alexander Solzhenitsyn answers the question.

"Men had forgotten God; that is why all this has happened."

The former communist is only one of many witnesses. "In the intoxication of my youthful successes I had felt myself to be infallible, and I was therefore cruel. In the surfeit of power I was a murderer, and an oppressor. In my most evil moments I was convinced that I was doing good, and I was well supplied with systematic arguments...Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either-but right through every human heart-and then all human hearts... ."

In 1931, December 5, the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow was vandalized and destroyed by the Soviets. A sign of what was to come. As the building fell, so many innocent millions were murdered, swept away. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were unleashed. The Red terror continued and slave labor camps were established called "gulags". The Ukraine was one giant concentration camp, "Holodomor". The sufferings and deaths of these Russian Christian martyrs will bear fruit just as the blood of the early Christian martyrs converted Rome.

"The entire 20th century is being sucked into the vortex of atheism and self-destruction...We can only reach with determination for the warm hand of God . .. There is nothing else to cling to in the landslide." - Alexander Solzhenitsyn

In 1990 a monk from the Russian Orthodox monastery at Zagorsk, carrying a life-sized crucifix seven feet tall, stood before Lenin‘s tomb. While he faced the dead Lenin and his heirs he cried out to Gorbachev in a voice of thunder: "Mikhail Sergeyevich, Christ is risen!"

Solzhenitsyn praises Putin.

One of the Wiki Leaks cables told how much Alexander Solzhenitsyn admired Putin. US ambassador, William Burns reported to Washington the following:

"Solzhenitsyn positively contrasted the eight-year reign of Putin with those of Gorbachev and Yeltsin, which he said had 'added to the damage done to the Russian state by 70 years of communist rule'. Under Putin, the nation was rediscovering what it was to be Russian, Solzhenitsyn thought."

Putin has obviously made Russia better since he was elected president in 2000. The Russian economy continues climbing upward. The average citizen is not economically better than the average American but they are better than they were before Putin became president. The church is also better off as it has freedom and more government help under Putin.

In the Summer of 2008, Alexander Solzhenitsyn's last interview was with Christian Neef and Matthias Schepp, Solzhenitsyn described Putin's early years. "Putin inherited a ransacked and bewildered country, with a poor and demoralized people. And he started to do what was possible - a slow and gradual restoration. These efforts were not noticed, nor appreciated, immediately."

Some find it ironic that Solzhenitsyn, who suffered under the Soviets gulags, praises Putin who was in the KGB. In an interview with German news magazine Der Spiegel he says, "Vladimir Putin - yes, he was an officer of the special services, but he was not a KGB investigator, nor was he the head of a camp in the gulag," Solzhenitsyn said. "And foreign intelligence is not negative in any country, sometimes it even draws praise. George Bush Sr. was not much criticized for being the former chief of the CIA.''

Conclusion.

It is true that one can make more money in the West than in Russia. However, evil has so much influence in the West that even Solzhenitsyn noticed it. When I first came to Russia it reminded me how society in America was and how much America has changed. When talking to other Americans we agreed that the current Russian society was like America in the 60's or late 50's. People are more polite and the crime is very low in comparison to America today. Granted, due to western influence, the old Russians complain they are not respected as they used to be but overall society is better, especially in cities other than Moscow.

This article is meant to show why liberals in the West fear Putin. It also explains that Russia's destiny is to renew Christianity, which has been allowed to grow under Putin. This article is not meant to evaluate the Russian economy, health care, military or to claim the world will join the Orthodox faith. Rather, the evil that spread from Russia in 1917 to the West will be destroyed by Russia's renewed faith that will heal the world.

The West has many so called experts with PhDs in Slavic studies and in Russian history that claim Putin is a dictator without even having lived in Russia for any length of time. They ignore people like Solzhenitsyn who suffered under communism. They ignore the fact that Russia is better now than it was before Putin was in charge. Both Putin and Dmitry Medvedev's approval rating has averaged around 70 percent.

Putin is obviously not a saint but very few of us are. God's mercy works through big and small sinners who believe and are open to him. We can see that in Putin's religious speech he meant what he said as he helped to restore the church in Russia. He listened to those like Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Those who listen to their elders tend to be wiser. Vladimir Putin allows Christianity to flourish unlike the liberals in America who have their own warped idea of freedom from God and a denial of evil's existence in the world. Unlike Putin, liberals have never listened to their elders.

There is a reason that most public schools in America do not teach the Bolshevik revolution and its true consequences. There are people in the West that want to remove everything related to Christ from "public view" just as the communists did during the Soviet enslavement of Russia. 20th century Russia is proof that Christianity can prevail against their darkness and confusion.

Today, the liberals who control the West fear Putin as though doomsday was tomorrow. It's not a nuclear threat but rather a spiritual renewal that threatens them. They try to persuade us by scaring everyone with ideas of Putin as the evil KGB out to destroy the world. They "reason" KGB is bad. Putin is KGB. Therefore, Putin is bad.

They conveniently ignore Putin's Christianity because it's not our world but their liberal world that is in danger of being destroyed. Their arrogance does not allow them to comprehend that the light of truth can overcome any darkness they promote. The man who hated communism, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, once reminded us:

"One word of truth shall outweigh the whole world." - old Russian proverb

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