Russia: An Orthodox priest dedicates a monument to Stalin

The pastor’s participation in this ceremony provoked a reaction from the leadership of the Greater Lusk eparchy (diocese) of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), who assured that it took place without his blessing and consent, and that such actions “are not reflect the position of the ROC clergy and express the personal views and beliefs of these clergy.”

“blasphemous words”

The event took place on August 15. During the unveiling of the monument, p. Tatarintsev not only dedicated it, but gave a short speech in which he stated that during Stalin’s rule “the Church [wiele] ago”, but he immediately added that “because of this he now has many new martyrs and confessors”.

These statements were condemned by Bishop Sava (Tutunov), deputy head of the board of directors of the Moscow Patriarchate, calling them “outrageous” and “blasphemous”. He admitted that “the Lord turns evil into good and reveals in the days of persecution the unshakable faith of many Christians who are an example for us today”, but stressed that “this does not make crime less evil and it is not appropriate for us to feel gratitude for the persecution and for the persecutors”.

Meanwhile, spokesman for the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, Aleksandr Yushchenko, spoke in defense of Rusanov’s priest. Commenting for the magazine “Podjom”, he noted that Stalin is a “significant figure” for the ROC. He recalled that it was he who “in 1943 revived the patriarchal institution and strengthened the relations between the State and the Church, which [do tego czasu] therefore, according to the spokesman of the Communists, “It is to the credit of Stalin that today the Patriarch of Moscow and all Ruthenia serves.”

The monument was unveiled on the 15th. at the entrance to the site of the “Mikron” plant in Velikiye Luki in the Pskov region, had a history of several years. It was built in 2019 – on the 140th anniversary of the birth of the Soviet dictator and was initially supposed to be built in Volgograd (which was called Stalingrad in 1925-61), but the local authorities did not agree. A similar position was taken by the authorities of the Moscow and Voronezh region, where the promoters of the project also wanted to set up their work. Finally it was built in Velikiye Luki near the Russian-Estonian border.

Monuments to Stalin

This is not the only initiative of this kind and monuments dedicated to “generalissimo” (J. Stalin bore this title from 1945 until his death in 1953) have been erected in Russia more and more recently. The first such monument in post-Soviet Russia was erected in 2015 – together with the monument to Lenin – on the site of the meat factory “Zwienigowski” in the village of Szelanger in the Mariinsky Republic (on the middle Volga).

Despite the strong response of the ROC leadership in this particular case, Russia is currently blurring the line between the Moscow Patriarchate and Soviet-era communist activists. Recently, in many Christian circles in Russia itself, and even more so abroad, a great stir and scandal was caused by a photo of a group of clerics in front of a bust of Felix Dzerzhinsky – the main creator of the infamous Bolshevik Cheka secret police .

The guiding political ideal of the current regime of Vladimir Putin is the attempt to restore the Soviet Union in various ways with its internal means and methods and militant foreign policy. But unlike the communist era, when religion was persecuted, the ROC now plays an important role in this process as an official ideological ally. Such a policy inevitably leads to the “blurring of boundaries” in the consciousness of many Orthodox clergy, who try to link the “greatness of the Soviet Union” with its bloody anti-church repression. This process can also be observed, albeit with varying degrees of intensity, in some other post-communist countries, such as Bulgaria or Serbia.