Reporters collect quotes. Often we hear people say things that are so haunting that the quotations stick in our minds and refuse to leave.
Let me share one of the quotes that has haunted me for more than a decade. It’s from an interview that I did with Victor Yelensky, a sociologist of religion from the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences, during a June 2009 forum in Kiev about religion and politics in Ukraine. I was one of the speakers, along with another colleague — the late Arne Fjeldstad — of the Oxford Centre for Religion & Public Life.
Here is that quotation, which I used to close this “On Religion” column: “Religion ghosts in Ukraine.” Yelensky said:
"For many Orthodox people in western Ukraine, it is simply unacceptable to live in any way under the leadership of the Moscow Patriarchate. At the same time, for many Orthodox in eastern Ukraine, it is simply unacceptable to not to be associated and in communion with the Moscow Patriarchate. In the middle are places like Kiev. ...
"This is a division that is inside Ukrainian society. Is it based on religion? No. Is religion right there in the heart of it? Yes."
Again, that was 2009. There has been all kinds of speculation about the degree to which Orthodox tensions in Ukraine did or did not influence Vladimir Putin’s arrogant, egotistical, truly sinful decision to unleash hell on the citizens of Western and Eastern Ukraine.
If you want more background on that subject, may I recommend my earlier post (“Eastern Orthodox thinking on Ukraine? Reporters can't settle for the predictable voices”) and the massive Plug-In feature by Bobby Ross, Jr. (“Why some experts insist Vladimir Putin is motivated by history and religion”). No one needs to agree with all of the voices featured in Bobby’s round-up, because they are all part of cacophony we are hearing, right now. I offered my own take in this week’s “On Religion” column for the Universal syndicate: “Will Russia listen to Orthodox prayers for cease-fire?” Here is how that column ends:
… Inside Russia, numerous Orthodox priests and abbots -- 200-plus early this week, speaking "each on our own behalf" -- began signing an online petition calling for the "cessation of the fratricidal war in Ukraine" and negotiations. "We respect God-given human freedom, and we believe that the people of Ukraine should make their choice independently, not at gunpoint, without pressure from the West or the East," said the text.
Noting that this was written after the Sunday of the Last Judgment on the Orthodox calendar, they added: "The Last Judgment awaits every person. No earthly authority, no doctors, no guards will protect from this judgment. Concerned about the salvation of every person who considers himself a child of the Russian Orthodox Church, we do not want him to appear at this judgment, bearing the heavy burden of mothers' curses.
"We remind you that the Blood of Christ, shed by the Savior for the life of the world, will be received in the sacrament of Communion by those people who give murderous orders, not into life, but into eternal torment."
The petition closed with: "Stop the war."
If you want to know more about the views of Russian Orthodox leaders who oppose the Putin invasion (and others around the world with a similar stance), see this post at the Orthodox Christianity website: “Consequences of the Russian Invasion for the Ukrainian Church.” Note this bitterly ironic cancel-culture note about the monastery in Kiev that is the heart of Slavic Orthodox history:
The website of the Holy Dormition-Pochaev Lavra was blocked after false accusations that the monastery is raising money illegal armed groups. Ironically, the block prevented the monastery from hosting its appeal to Patriarch Kirill to call on Russian authorities to stop the war in Ukraine.
One of the things we cannot know, in terms of pondering the twisted logic inside Putin’s mind, is whether the citizens of Ukraine would be enjoying a state of peace, right now, if the leaders of USA-EU had (they had several chances) signed an agreement to keep Ukraine (and Georgia) out of NATO and in a Finland-style state of military neutrality.
Would Putin have honored that? Would he have settled for some kind of compromise that divides heavily European Western Ukraine from the intensely Russian Eastern Ukraine? Would he settle for that now, in the current negotiations? Or is the symbolism of Kiev in the Russian mind simply too great?
Who can answer questions like these?
However, one famous political-science “realist” has insisted that USA-EU should have taken that deal. See this new Q&A at The New Yorker: “Why John Mearsheimer Blames the U.S. for the Crisis in Ukraine.” Here is some crucial material from that. This is secular, but there are huge religious implications in this:
Interviewer Isaac Chotiner asks:
You said that it’s about “turning Ukraine into a pro-American liberal democracy.” I don’t put much trust or much faith in America “turning” places into liberal democracies. What if Ukraine, the people of Ukraine, want to live in a pro-American liberal democracy?
If Ukraine becomes a pro-American liberal democracy, and a member of nato, and a member of the E.U., the Russians will consider that categorically unacceptable. If there were no nato expansion and no E.U. expansion, and Ukraine just became a liberal democracy and was friendly with the United States and the West more generally, it could probably get away with that. You want to understand that there is a three-prong strategy at play here: E.U. expansion, nato expansion, and turning Ukraine into a pro-American liberal democracy.
I added the bold-face text for the crucial word “probably.” Here is another crucial point:
When you said that no one’s talking about this as imperialism, in Putin’s speeches he specifically refers to the “territory of the former Russian Empire,” which he laments losing. So it seems like he’s talking about it.
I think that’s wrong, because I think you’re quoting the first half of the sentence, as most people in the West do. He said, “Whoever does not miss the Soviet Union has no heart.” And then he said, “Whoever wants it back has no brain.”
As for me, I continue to pray for a cease-fire and the negotiations. Also, as I have for more than a decade, I am praying for the safety of the monks of the Lavra monastery of the Kievan Caves. Will they survive yet another war?