In June 1998, a hurricane swept over Moscow. In church circles, they immediately started talking: "This is a warning to the Moscow authorities to close dens and the condom trade..." Yes, for the believing eye this is an undoubted sign of God's wrath. But whose sins caused this anger? And I would be glad to consider that this is God's wrath for the propaganda of debauchery, but I cannot. After all, the hurricane tore off the crosses from our churches (including in the Novodevichy Convent), and did not sweep away the condom warehouse. The hurricane left untouched the casino, located next to the Church of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist on Krasnaya Presnya, where I serve, but tore the cross off the bell tower of my church. So we should not look for other people's sins.

It is we, the Orthodox, who live in such a way that God has to warn us with such storms. Maybe the domes were torn apart because we put too much effort into gilding the domes and crosses instead of preaching the Gospel? Yes, the cross shining in the heavenly heights is also a sermon, also a reminder of God. Remember Gumilev's St. Isaac's Cathedral in St. Petersburg: "By the faithful stronghold of Orthodoxy Isaac is carved into the sky..." But there are also Gospel lines: "Some Pharisees said to Him: ... rebuke Thy disciples! But he answered and said to them, ... if they are silent, the stones will cry out" (Luke 19:39-40). This was the case in the years of state atheism, in those years when the Constitution recognized "the right to conduct atheistic propaganda and worship." The right to "religious propaganda" was not provided. The Church (people) was silent at that time, but the stones (temples) and icons preached the beauty of the Gospel. At that time, the icons of St. Andrei Rublev brought more people to faith than the efforts of any preacher. But now you can address people directly. And you can call people to church not with the voice of a bell, but with a human word. It is not the beauty of a stone church, but the power of thought and persuasion that can lead people to Christ. Maybe that's why the bell towers were damaged by the hurricane? Maybe this is a reminder that it is not with a bell, but with a living sermon that people should be summoned?..

Church Moscow was not horrified that day, did not kneel down, but breathed a sigh of relief with joy when Fr. Alexander Shargunov prompted it: it is not God who is angry with us, it is with the "new Russians." Icons of the Mother of God weep, and official church publications write: "To accept this miracle as a sign of God's mercy." Indeed: "What else shall I beat you into"...

Rep.: And what exactly do you think about the future of Russia?

A.K.: I am not a prophet at all, and I can only share some experience of observing the life of the country, an experience that I take away from my many trips. I would summarize my observations as follows.

First. As a Muscovite, I have a sense of guilt towards the rest of Russia. Especially today. Against the background of general ruins, Moscow under construction looks like a kind of "vampire" who sucks living juices from everywhere. Perhaps partly because of this, it seemed to me that the salvation of Russia would come from the provinces, that healthy, deep popular forces would arise from there, that new Minins and Pozharskys would come... After traveling, I parted with this hope. I have the impression that Moscow is the brightest, most ecclesiastical city in Russia. Yes, there is a lot of dirt, a lot of filth, but at the same time, there is such a lively church life here as nowhere else. Monasteries, church institutes, brotherhoods, hospitals, newspapers, radio. There are wonderful priests and wise spiritual fathers. The fact that there are half a thousand parishes in Moscow862 means that a person has the opportunity to choose his own church and spiritual father, his style of spiritual life. A Muscovite has no right to complain that I would like to know something about Orthodoxy – but there is nowhere to go... And in the provinces, I see too often that church life there is still reduced to the need for correction, and missionary work and education have been forgotten. So evil is spreading from Moscow, but spiritual revival will also begin from Moscow.

Second. I do not want people to place too much hope in the Church. We should not be fascinated by the Church (the earthly Church, for those who see political power in us do not even think about the Heavenly Church), so that we do not have to be disappointed. Our Church today is very weak, it is disabled both in Moscow and throughout the country. An invalid cannot be required to take and challenge the miracle judo to a mortal battle and knock off three of his heads in one fell swoop.

There were periods in the history of Russia when it was the Church that led the people out of the crisis. Let us remember St. Sergius of Radonezh, let us remember the Hieromartyr Patriarch Hermogenes and the role of the Church in the liberation of Moscow from the Poles during the Time of Troubles. However, not all state-national crises in the history of Russia were overcome with the primary participation of the Church. For example, the victory in the Patriotic War of 1812 was brought by the heroism of Russian soldiers and officers, and not by the sermons of hermits who visited the army in the field; the terrorists of 1905 were pacified by Stolypin and his "ties", and not by the proclamations of the Synod. I think that Russia, if it is destined to get out of it, will be led out of the current crisis by people in uniform, and not by people in cassocks.

However, I am not at all sure that Russia will be able to get out of the current crisis. You know, I would like to preach today against riots, uprisings and pogroms, but, unfortunately, there are none. What I have listed is all outbursts of terrible, of course, destructive energy, but it is at least energy. When these outbursts are absent at all, it means one of two things: either the people have reached such a degree of perfection and holiness that they know how to live according to the Gospel and really forgive their enemies, or this is the apathy of a corpse that does not care what is done to it. And sad as it is to me, it seems that the second is true. Apparently, the Bolsheviks did break Russia, broke its back, and today it looks like a dog with a broken spine, which still whines, sometimes even barks, scratches with its paws, but it can neither guard its kennel (not to mention the house), nor bite a thief - it can no longer do anything. While a person is still alive, he has at least a knee-jerk reflex: if you hit the cup, pull your leg and hit the offender in the face with a shoe. But when they beat under the cup, and the leg no longer moves, it means that it is either a corpse or a paralytic. Over the past ten years, we have already been hit at all possible sore spots, especially by our television people and propagandists of the "new world order". All national, historical, religious shrines were desecrated, at least verbally, in a stream of mockery and caricatures. There is no reaction. The people drank through the collapse of the USSR, now they are calmly waiting for the collapse of Russia. Therefore, it seems to me that our people are "more dead than alive."

Folklore died out in our country. No songs, no poems lamenting the pain over the knee of the reformed Motherland... Not even jokes or ditties about "democratizers". And how do the inhabitants of Russia feel about Russian refugees from Kazakhstan and Central Asia, the Baltic States and the Caucasus? Help and sympathy or indifference and contempt meet them in Russia? And was Orthodox Russia truly able to celebrate the 2000th anniversary of the Nativity of Christ in a truly popular and sincere way? It seems that we can no longer rejoice or cry.

And I will say one more bitter thing. In the press, I came across information that alcohol consumption in Bashkiria has sharply decreased in recent years. This trend is a disgrace for our people, "baptized, but not catechumenized." After all, what does it mean? According to the laws of Islam, drinking alcohol is a sin. And now we see that the Bashkirs have taken seriously the return to the norms of life of their fathers. And in Russia, no matter how many churches we open, the consumption of vodka is growing. And I am afraid that this means that all our pathos of the "second baptism" will go into the bells, into the whistle, and not into the real revival of life.

Rep.: But Moscow is really the Third Rome. By the power of its statehood, it defended universal Orthodoxy after the fall of Byzantium, and the rest of the Orthodox peoples hoped for it. Remember in Lewis's "The Vile Power": when Merlin wakes up and sees how difficult the situation is, he says: "Let us appeal to the Christian kings!" – "Well, then let's appeal to the Byzantine emperor!" – "There is no emperor either." And Merlin says: "In terrible times I woke up"... 863

А.К.: You know, maybe that's why they don't exist, because too many hopes were pinned on them. Yes, the empire is a fence for Orthodoxy. But if you put too much effort into maintaining the fence, in its decoration and strengthening, then you may not notice that within the fence itself, the ground has ceased to bear fruit. It has been trampled underfoot, turned into an army parade ground, and therefore has become infertile. And today I am rather frightened by calls to restore the Orthodox monarchy. Too often, the tone and motivation of these appeals are such that one has to recall the words of Nietzsche: "These people pretend that they believe in God, but in fact they believe only in the police."

I am not going to answer for the whole Church: I have no right to do so. But I will say on my own behalf: I personally (I emphasize again – I am talking only about myself; let others talk about the spiritual needs of other people) do not need an Orthodox monarchy. We are told that monarchy is needed in order to protect the Church from heresies... Here, for example, is a quote: "Thus, autocracy is absolutely necessary precisely in order to give the Church normal conditions of existence, to protect it from a multitude of enemies."864