Union of Brest-Litovsk of 1596

Cathedral. The beginning of the struggle against the union

Opening of the cathedral

After the Brest Cathedral

Preface

None of the Christian European peoples is characterized by the temptations of such self-denial as the Russians. If this is not a total denial, as in Chaadaev's case, then it is an open, on occasion, emphasis on our backwardness and weakness, as if our qualitative by nature is secondary. This very old-fashioned "Europeanism" has not yet been outlived even in our generations, which are already leaving the scene, nor in our youth, who are growing up in emigrant isolation from Russia. And there, in the large and distorted former USSR, the opposite extreme was imposed. There, both Europeanism and Russism are denied and overshadowed by a supposedly new and more perfect synthesis of so-called economic materialism.

In contrast to these two extremes, we, who have been nurtured by the old normal Russia, continue to carry within us an experiential sense of its spiritual values. Our premonition of a new rebirth and the future greatness of both the state and the Church is nourished by our national history. It is time to cling to it with a patriotically loving heart and mind, wise with the tragic experience of the revolution.

Lomonosov, by the manifestation of his personality and the confession of his conviction "that the Russian land can give birth to its own Platons and quick-witted Neutons," instilled in us the confidence that we will become what we instinctively, by unerring intuition, we want to be. Namely: we want to be in the first, leading ranks of builders of universal culture. For there is no other worthy primacy for earthly humanity.

And this, not thanks to the museum-preserved relics of Monomakh's crown and the title of the Third Rome, and not thanks to Avvakum's fanatical devotion to the letter – all these were only noble premonitions – but through an impulse worthy of a great nation to take an equal place on the world front of universal education.

The ancient consciousness bequeathed its heritage to us in two more versions of the antithesis: I) the Greeks and the barbarians, and II) Israel and the pagans (goyim). The Christian-European consciousness has merged this obsolete bifurcation into one: into a single and supreme, final cultural association for the peoples of the whole world. In their racial, religious, and national diversity, the inhabitants of the globe remain for indefinite periods of time imprisoned in the various shells of their hereditary forms of life, so dear to them, recognized as national. But this is not an essential and decisive historiosophical point. Whether someone wants it or not, the objective fact of the exhaustion of the scheme of the global history of earthly mankind as a whole is obvious. No revisions are conceivable here. We, Christians and Europeans, must accept this fact with gratitude for honor and chosenness as the holy will of Providence and with prayer and reverence make our earthly march to the ultimate good goals known only to the Creator Alone.

No matter how hotly lively, historically topical tasks may become more acute, from time to time and place, whether for us or for other peoples of the world, we, who have once overcome the self-sufficiency of national particularism, cannot and must not waste our strength on this phase of cultural service, which in principle we have already overcome. National forms of culture, like languages and religions, continue to function, but no one and nothing has the right to abolish and replace the qualitatively leading and commanding heights of its ministry, which have already become clear and have been revealed to advanced Christian humanity. In this limitation of ministries there is an irrevocable moment of bestowal and the right to leadership. Only on this path is the overcoming of the "flesh and blood" of nations, with their zoologically humiliating and inevitable wars, accomplished. Only on this path is there a light and hope to overcome and conquer the great demonic deception of the godless international. Only in universal Christian guidance is there a promise of true freedom of man and peace to the whole world. And on this path is a worthy, supreme, holy place of service for Russia and the Russian Church, and not under the banner of "Old Testament," decaying nationalisms.

Introduction