Alexander Verkhovsky

One should not be surprised that Orthodoxy reveals a preferential religious orientation toward the radical-nationalist movement. Yet Orthodoxy does not dominate the movement unconditionally. On the one hand, there is the strong position of the neopagans (cf. the speech by Vladimir Pribylovskii, "Neopagan Clamour in Russian Nationalism") that is linked to the neopaganism of German Nazism, as well as with the search for national identity in the face of a "too Jewish" Christianity. On the other hand, Russian society is not very religious in the traditional sense of that word. One could just as well say, that some sort of vague religiosity is dominant, a mixture of elements from Orthodoxy, other religions, astrology, and other para-religious teachings. Obviously, all of this has a bearing on the radical-nationalist movement.

Therefore the specter of the return of "church or secular self-determination", "Orthodoxy or paganism" viewpoints is more than fully met. We have already written about this earlier, and the situation has not changed fundamentally during the most recent period.


RNU - Semi-Orthodox

The largest radical nationalist organization in the country, the Russian National Union (RNU) split in the autumn of 2000. There now exist four relatively large and independent fragments of the RNU. In none of these did any information surface about a change in religious orientation. Obviously, all four parts of the RNU remain formally Orthodox.

Nevertheless, the program documents of the RNU lack the demand - very widespread in Russian political programs - for a strengthened role for the Russian Orthodox Church, a feature that signifies a notable bad will toward the latter. That should not really be surprising. The Moscow Patriarchate is loyal to the authorities, whereas the RNU is radically opposed to it. Not long ago the Patriarch himself formally judged the RNU to be a non-Orthodox movement.

Further, the RNU confesses Orthodoxy in its own fashion. As stated in its current programme: "Members of the RNU conform their lives to a more ancient, medieval form of Orthodoxy, which served our forebears as spiritual basis for the formation and strengthening of the Russian government.; Such forms of Orthodoxy the RNU determine themselves, for which they are regarded indeed as Orthodox nationalists.

From a churchly and canonic point of view, the RNU groups are without question non-Orthodox, but that has not hindered them from having positive contacts to clerics of the ROC. Just recently, on August 5, 2001, on the 10th anniversary of the return of the relics of Saint Serafim of Sarov, the Diveevo Monastery provided camping facilities for about 150 Barkashovtsy.


What Matters More - Orthodoxy or Nationalism?

It is not proper to divide the organization on the basis of such sharply formulated criteria. There are of course those, for whom the answer is obvious: for the RNU nationalism is more important, and for the "Radonezh" society, Orthodoxy matters more. One can designate those also, for whom the question has not yet been decided, which leads to specific consequences.

Take for example the fully Orthodox Russian All-National Union (RANU) of Igor Artemov. Yet RANU considers itself as a secular, not a churchly organization. RANU is not well known, but at the parliamentary election in 1999 Artemov made a respectable political showing - he alone among the national-radicals was close to the victory of the elections. In his voting district in Vladimir Oblast he gained nearly 15% of the votes, which far exceeded the gains of other radical-nationalist candidates (who took only 1-3 %, or even less). He was only 1.6% behind the winner. Then in 2001 Artemov became a deputy of the legislative assembly in Vladimir Oblast.

Another example - the Orthodox monarchist celibate priest Nikon (Belavenets), raised to that rank by the Patriarch as recently as the beginning of 2000, continues to work closely with activists who are avowedly non-Orthodox, is close to the :New Right;, to anarchists and skinheads. If however, Father Nikon is known for his very unusual behavior, far less easily explained is the fact that Leonid Simonovich, chair of the Union of Orthodox Brotherhoods gave a speech at a meeting organized on August 17, 2001 by the party of anarchists and rock musicians surrounding the Nazi-like sect of Sergei :Spider; Troitsky.

Such are the extremes in researching the combinations of nationalism and orthodoxy. Then there is also the main stream, the longer established formula for such a combination of nationalism and orthodoxy.


Russian Orthodox Fundamentalism

This formula, of course, exists in a variety of modifications. But its essence consists of the claim that to be able to assert that the Russian (usually including Ukrainians and Byelorussians) :Orthodox Nation;, bears the true faith (most probably meaning the one and only). Then even its enemies simultaneously intermix ethnic and religious terminology. Here the question of faith in principle stands above the question of ethnicity, but at the same time it also exceeds (pogloshaet) it, revealing a contradiction. But as a political understanding of the utility of contradictions, it is so much easier to fashion a product out of religious understandings.

Russian Orthodox fundamentalism (hereafter - fundamentalism) relies on the notion of a :golden age;, to which one must return - return to a pre-revolutionary (pre 1905) Russian Empire. It proposes the restoration in all its basic features - full fledged autocracy, restrictions for foreign believers and (in part) for foreigners, the imperial structure for internal and external policy, ruling status for the ROC, and a rigorous state-Orthodox paternalism.

In concise form Konstantin Dushenov stated these views, who is one of the best theoreticians of fundamentalism, though not the most influential. Dushenov, editor in chief of the periodical Rus' Pravoslavnaia (the Orthodox Russia) and formerly secretary to Metropolitan Ioann of St. Petersburg & Ladoga, who can be rightly regarded as spiritual leader for forming fundamentalism, labeled his Programme the :Doctrine of Metropolitan Ioann;. The opening lines of the Programme are adequately substantive:

:The Russian Idea; - it is the tireless striving for holiness, justice and purity.

:Orthodox State; - it is a state, based on the highest truths of the Law of God [i.e. Scripture].

:Russian Democracy; - that is "sobornost'".

:Russian Ideology; - that is Orthodoxy.

:Russian Imperialism; - that is "derzhavnost' (power).

:Russian State; - that is Russia in all its manifold historical forms of statehood.

There exist a number of organizations, which to a very high degree of faithfulness and radicality embody these positions. In the first place are the Orthodox brotherhoods, among whom the society :Radonezh; (thanks in part to its radio station and newspaper) plays a basic role. Then follow the Union of :Christian Revival; (UCR), the Union of Orthodox Bannerbearers [Khorugvennostsev] (UOBB), Black Hundreds and others (more details in Stella Rock, :'Militant Piety': Fundamentalist Tendencies in the Russian Orthodox Brotherhood Movement;).

Here is a citation from the text of Anatolii Makeev, Elder of the St. Joseph of Volotsk Brotherhood. This text can be considered quintessential radical fundamentalism, since it reveals all the themes that preoccupied fundamentalists at the end of the 1990s (on changes in recent years, see below).

:Children, the Devil has conspired against our long-suffering motherland.

Greedy foreign hordes pillage and destroy our lands, our people. With the help of the authorities, numerous sorcerers, witches, sectarians and heretics corrupt and destroy the soul of the Russian people.

The mongrel-democratic government is moving toward the elimination of the line :nationality; in our passports, is preparing to erase the Russian national past, that which remains of it - its home.

Cosy cosmopolitans with the help of global elites, through fickle and traitorous means are usurping power in our country. Rootless democrats are trying to plunder and sell as worthless our source of food - the land.

Having lost their Russian nationality, their Russian land, the Russian people are losing their Orthodox faith and become easy prey for the New World Order. In stead of the Christian Orthodox Church stands the ecumenical church or Antichrist.;


Problems of Mutual Relations Between Fundamentalists and Communists

Fundamentalism in contemporary Russia is still quite marginal. Meanwhile Orthodox national-radicals strive as before for inclusion in major politics. Understandably, for some of them, political success comes before ideological purity. Those who are ready for compromise, are immediately confronted with the problem of what compromises to accept to join with the communists, as the basic anti-liberal opposition force. A relationship to the communists for the Orthodox in general, and for the nationalists in particular is naturally quite undesirable.

Those organizations, for whom their orthodoxy plays a secondary role, do not oppose creating a Bloc with the communists (for example, Russian Party (Russkaia partiia), All-Russian Conciliar Movement (Vserossiskoie sobornoe dvizhenie). This is a matter for the fundamentalists.

The first aggravation of the problem came in the presidential election of 1996, when the choice was between Boris Yeltsin and Gennadi Zyuganov. At the time only a small group of fundamentalists headed by archpriest Alexander Shargunov openly established a union with Zyuganov, which resulted in abuse of them from other fundamentalists and from the Patriarch.

But Konstantin Dushenov, though Yeltsin was a quite unacceptable figure, was prepared to establish a Bloc with him sooner, than with the communists. Already after the election he made a serious proposal to make the Russian Orthodox Church the motor of the new state ideology, as alternative to the "old' ideology - "red' or "white'. But the rapprochement between the Kremlin and the ROC remained at an extremely limited level.

Then for the parliamentary elections of 1999 Dushenov seemed ripe for a union with the communists. The resultant declaration was signed together with Dushenov by a number of other fundmentalist activists, including the chief editor of the news agency Russkaia liniia (Russian line) Sergei Grigor'ev, by the editor in chief of the almanac Pravoslavie ili smert (Orthodoxy or Death) Andrei Riumin and others. The authors affirmed, that Zyuganov's National-Patriotic Union of Russia (NPUR) and the :communo-patriotic bloc; named Pobeda (Victory), as proposed by the communist general Valentin Varennikov were not simply a tactical union, the :lesser evil; in comparison with the parties of the :Yeltsin regime;, but were a union, ideologically sufficiently compatible, to publicize the idea of :Russian Orthodox socialism;. This was the terminology of Dushenov, of course, not of Varennikov or Zyuganov, though one must recognize, that the CPRF [Communist Party of the Russian Federation] in fact completed a serious evolution into the :orthodox-patriotic; ideology.

In this declaration the fundamentalists employed precisely this argument for forming a union with the communists - only a friendly power could help the fundamentalists triumph over their opponents within the church itself.

At the time, nevertheless, the :zealots for Orthodox piety; (now the self-designation of the Dushenov circle) did not disappear in the electoral lists of the Zyuganov Bloc - the CPRF did not find it necessary to share seats with the minority in their union. Nor did a more radical variant of the communist-patriotic bloc, which some zealots planned to establish around General Albert Makashova, known for his extremism. Hegumen Aleksei (Prosvirin), editor in chief of the journal :Zealot for Orthodox Piety; (Revnitel' pravoslavnogo blagochestiia) and member of the board of editors of :Orthodox Rus'; (Rus` Pravoslavnaia), expressed complete solidarity with Albert Makashov in the heat of the scandal surrounding Makashov's antisemitic statements at the end of 1998. In Hegumen Aleksei's opinion, the word of the Apostle Paul that :in Christ there is neither Greek nor Jew;, that word is :not for all of us, sinners;. So in terms of a political ideology both then were included under the term :Orthodox Stalinism;.

In other words, in the majority of cases many fundamentalists were ready to renounce their anticommunism, but their concessions showed it was not necessary. Those who participated in the non-communist opposition bloc also did not succeed. Only the Union :Christian Revival; (Khristianskoe vozrozhdenie) and the Black Hundreds really tried to seek votes as part of the bloc - Movement of Patriotic Forces - Russian Deed (:dvizhenie patrioticheskie sil - Russkoe Delo;). The bloc reminded voters only that the first three on the list of candidates were named Ivanov, Petrov, and Sidorov. They received 0.17% votes.


Putin's Appearance and New Hope

The results of the 1999 campaign did not reduce the activities of the fundamentalists. Moreover, at the same time as the parliamentary elections there were preparations for the election of President Putin. While conducting the propagandistic campaign many national-patriots came to think that a change in governmental direction would be welcomed by them.

On the election of the president, the orthodox national-radicals were themselves divided. One could say that the UCR were definitely for Putin, but the Black Hundreds and the RNU were against him. But those who were against, did not urge members to vote for Zyuganov, but :against all;. Yet after the elections, the majority in one form or another expressed their readiness to support the new president in his proposed imperial policy.

Of course, Putin was not ready to deal with the radical nationalists. But the tone of the governmental propaganda did indeed become more authoritarian (derzhavinicheskoi), which gave them some reason for hope. On the other hand, the continuing rapprochement of the state with the ROC, which many were awaiting, did not come about, and Putin's Orthodoxness (pravoslavnost') seemed unconvincing. Putin visited monasteries more often than did Yeltsin, but that in itself does not show him to be an Orthodox person. (There was a rumor, that archimandrite Tikhon (Shevkunov) was his spiritual adviser, but there was no confirmation and the rumor died out.)

Fundamentalist Propaganda on the Rise

In recent years, the radical-nationalist movement within the Orthodox sector has made notable changes. The basic form of radical opposition activity has traditionally been propaganda. Here the larger role is played not simply by the Orthodox, but by the fundamentalistic circles. No doubt this is connected with their much higher intellectual level, but it is also due to more integration into the church.

Sretenskii monastery, headed by archimandrite Tikhon (Shevkunov) transformed itself into one of the church publishing houses and supports the fairly popular website Pravoslavie.ru. The :Radonezh; Society publishes periodicals popular in the parishes, and also runs a popular radio station. The most regular radical-nationalist periodical, Russian Herald (Russkii vestnik), is also orientated toward Russian Orthodox fundamentalism. The very active Petersburg :Zealots for Orthodox Piety; have been producing a whole bouquet of publications, the basic one is the periodical Orthodox Rus` (Rus' Pravoslavnaia) and the website :Russian Line; (Russkaia liniia). (In general, the fundamentalists are very active on the internet.)

In addition, the fundamentalists are carrying forth their offensive not only in secular society, but also in the church. The views of the fundamentalists are, of course, not those of the Patriarch, but they are widespread among the clergy and laity of the church, since there is often a nostalgia for lost positions. Moreover, we are not speaking of a natural conservatism, since the mindset of these persons is predominantly that of neophytes of the last 10-15 years. The poverty (and guilt) of the Patriarchate lies in the fact that it did not at the time give a sharp enough rebuff to the rise of fundamentalism in the church. Now, quite possibly, it is already too late.

The sharpest attack on the fundamentalists came in the speech of Patriarch Alexsei II at the Moscow bishops conference of December 23, 1998, resulting in the resolution of the Synod on :junior elders; (mladostartsakh). Although no one was named specifically, it was clear to all that the speech was directed to fundamentalistic priests. While this was happening, there began in autumn of 1999 a massive campaign, though smaller than a year earlier, against the barcodes and the INN (individual tax number), about which more below.

The canonization of the tsarist family at the Jubilee Sobor in August 2000 signaled an apparent defeat of the Patriarchate in the face of powerful pressures from below. The Patriarchate had dragged out the question for many years, and then, when it yielded in the end, not wanting the disagreements to become an open scandal, this filled the fundamentalists with optimism. Moreover, they continued to call Nicholas II a saint, quite rightly, although the Sobor canonized him at a different rank - as passion bearer, that is, even on this question there was no reconciliation.

The Patriarchate continued its policy of contradictory compromises. Two years after the speech on :junior elders;, at a regular Moscow bishops conference, the Patriarch complained that the problem had in now way been resolved. And then, literally two weeks later on January 10, 2001, he sent a letter of congratulation to the radical national Orthodox periodical Russian Herald (Russkii vestnik) on its tenth anniversary.

Nor does the quality of staff changes in the Patriarchate enable us to draw conclusions about any change in its policies. Recent examples are the appointment in July 2001 of archpriest Dimitri Smirnov as acting chair of the Moscow Patriarchate's department for cooperation with the military and judicial branches, and the August (2001) appointment of Sergei Chapnin as editor in chief of the patriarchal periodical Moscow Church Herald (Moskovskii tserkovnyi vestnik).

Chapnin, an independent Orthodox journalist, had been supporting the liberals, from the point of view of the church. Until very recently he was the editor in chief of the independent internet journal :Sobornost';.

Archpriest Dimitrii, on the other hand, was the spiritual leader of a group of fundamentalist oriented priests in Moscow. Here are some excerpts from his recent radio broadcasts:

:Take for example in Moscow - are there not enough bricks to smash all the sexshops? But so far no one has so much as smashed a window of such an establishment.

... Or take the example of the sects. Suppose that say 800 people would chase out the sects. To disperse a crowd of 800 - how many police do you need? And then, no prefect nor any other official likes it, that the people revolt.

... progress also has its shadow side. Had they not invented jet airplanes, no one would have smashed into a strange building, people would not have died... They say: :I need to fly there!;. But why fly there? You live in your village, and that's it. Twice a year you go to the market - that's enough.;


Politicization of :Moralism; as Legal Manifestation of Fundamentalism

Before his recent appointment, archpriest Dimitrii played no more than a marginal role in the church, just like Dushenov or Grigor'ev above. As pro-rector of the St. Tikhon Theological Institute and closely tied to the Orthodox medical-educational center Life (Zhizn) of Father Maksim Obukhov, he headed the struggle against abortion, contraception, etc. The Patriarchate did not simply condemn these activities, rather it supported them fully. The unique feature of the organized moralists in the Life center and of the public committee For the Moral Revival of the Fatherland (:Za nravstvennoe vozrozhdenie Otechestva;) of archprient Alexadner Shargunov lay in the fact that their propaganda was coordinated with politics and ideology.

For example, the church-societal council for biomedical ethics, that was associated with the Life center, in a statement of April 2, 2001, on the demographic problems, based its concerns on the grounds that :that we will soon no longer be in a position to defend out territory;. Father Aleksei Kagirin, one of the prominent activists of the :moralist; movement stated the following:

:The word :Kike; (Zhid) refers to those persons who hate Christ. One could abstract from contemporary Judaism and imagine a Jew, who knows nothing about Christ - such a Jew (Iudei) would not be a Kike (Zhid).;

In the past five years, politicized moralism became an integral part of fundamentalist activity, together with the denouncing of ecumenism, opposing secular and churchly authorities and with nationalist propaganda. Here are the grounds for cooperation with the non-churchly radical-nationalists.

On March 20, 2001, for example, in the Kuzminki Park in Moscow the RNU, Union of Orthodox Bannerbearers, Union of Orthodox Brotherhoods and the Union of the Russian People conducted a new auto da fй. They burned a broad assortment of items: the journal Playboy, the neopagan book by V. Istarkhov, The Stroke of the Russian Gods (Udar Russkikh Bogov), Sexual Encyclopedia for Children, the books of Edward Radzinskii and Mikhail Gorbachev, the periodical Moscow Komsomolets, and pornographic videocassettes. Those gathered called for the adoption of the law :On Spiritual and Moral Censorship;.


Union of Orthodox Citizens (UOC)

:Life; is in fact one of the projects of the Union of Orthodox Citizens (UOC) - a broad coalition of Orthodox nationalists. It is so broad that its participants are practically incompatible in quality and degree of radicalism, including for example, the economist Sergei Glaz'ev (one time member of the Gaidar Cabinet, now a deputy of the CPRF) and the leader of the UCR, Vladimir Osipov.

The UOC, in spite of its motley staff, remains in a completely friendly relationship with the Patriarchate. We cite only one illustration. On June 11, 2001 on the occasion of presenting the churchly order of the holy saint Prince Daniil III of Moscow to Valentin Lebedev, the coordinator of UOC and editor in chief of Orthodox Conversations (Pravoslavnaia Beseda), journalist Natalia Babasian observed a somewhat comic scene. On the eve of organizing a Church procession in Kiev against the papal visit to the Ukraine Valentin Lebedev announced to Metropolitan Kirill (Gundiaev), chair of the department of foreign relations of the Moscow Patriarchy, :We carried out your charge;. In answer, Metropolitan Kirill merely said that :about that there is no need to speak before the TV cameras.;

The fundamentalism of the UOC is less extreme than that of the Black Hundreds or UCR, but is fully consistent:

:The nation, in contrast to the contemporary secular state, may be considered Orthodox.

... Not to recognize that, that a country, where there are many Orthodox, must be declared Orthodox, is discrimination on the basis of religious confession..;

:The boundaries of Rus` extend as far as the boundaries of the Russian Orthodox Church.;

:In the present time, from this governmental chaos can lead only to a dictatorship, one based on moral and national consciousness, on state prerequisites.; Further, such a dictatorship must develop into a full fledged autocracy.

:Never before were the European West and America set so openly hostile against Russia, as now.;

Many UOC activists voted in the parliamentary elections of 1999, but most unsuccessfully, since only Sergei Glaz`ev, who was not that tightly integrated into the union, got elected. Instead eveyone noted that Valentin Lebedev himself and still another activist, Viktor Selivanov, editor in chief of the periodical :Desnitsa;, showed up on the lists of the Bloc :Spas;, which was based on the RNU, and the first on the list was Alexander Barkashov. Such action by the chief editor of the nonpolitical Orthodox Conversations (Pravoslanoi Besedy) looked most unusual, but it is too circumstantial to be considered fundamental.

Such electoral losses were quickly compensated for with powerful public campaigns (UOC gained support through such a campaign - against showing the film The Last Temptation of Christ). Until August of 2000 the UOC fought actively for the canonization of the tsarist family. Then in spring and in June 2001 they carried out a massive campaign against the Pope's visit to the Ukraine. On December 26, 2000 during the break there took place the founding conference of UOC as independent public movement.

Then on May 12, 2000 the UOC together with the LDPR, but also with the participation of the movements - Rossia Pravoslavnaia, Union of Orthodox Brotherhoods, Union of Orthodox Bannerbearers, Union :Christian Revival; plus other organizations - conducted an anti-papal march with 1500 marchers (so the estimate of the police). For Orthodox nationalists, those are very large numbers.

During this same period the UOC and the Sretensky monastery began to initiate close relations with the main pro-Kremlin propagandistic web-server :Strana.Ru;, whose religious department became the mouthpiece of the fundamentalists. But then at the end of August the department was closed entirely and the cooperation was broken off.


Orthodox Antiglobalism...

The main social campaign, however, broadly unfolded in the fall of 1999 and continuing a bit more quietly in the summer of 2001, were the wave of protests against the commercial bar code and the assigning of an identification number to taxpayers, the introduction of machine readable signatures in future passports and other such measures which, it would seem, had no special principled significance. The personal tax number (individualnyii nomer nalogoplatel'shchika - INN) became the symbol and bugbear of the campaign.

For the full details for what Grigor'ev aptly named the :INN Jihad;, see my paper :Radical Orthodox Anti-Globalism in 1999-2002;. It contains a short description of the chain of events before the artifical calm in the summer of 2001. The essence of the campaign, concerned not only the fostering of amazing prejudices, but also of the formation of a specific conception of Orthodox antiglobalism, in which the West once again appeared as the mysterious enemy of Russian Orthodoxy. The more moderate antiglobalists were prepared to ignore such :technical; problems as the introduction of the INN numbers, but the radicals insisted on drawing the line here already for resistance unto death.

Important for us is that the :INN Jihad; pulled in practically all Orthodox oriented groups, yes even a wide circle of monks, who in recent years have constituted the basic bulwark of fundamentalism in the Church. The more educated in Orthodoxy this or that group was, the more moderate was the position they took. So for example the RNU published a leaflet in which they devised quite bizarre things - some mole would insert into the barcode :all the data about you, even the most intimate;.

In so doing, the radicals responded to the arguments of the theologians, bishops and even respected elders (Startsy) with the elegant argument: :we need to defend our real needs, not our idealist and spiritual needs.;

On the other hand, the :INN Jihad; demonstrated, that among the Orthodox nationalists there existed not only an intellectual leadership, but that it had moved from non-church groups to inner-church groups.

Thus the resultant balance between the moderates and radicals was not entirely clear. It would seem that the moderates won out through a resolution of the Theological Commission of the ROC. They had already worked for some time on a document representing the ROC, which was approved at the conference :Spiritual and Social Problems of Globalization; (May 3-4, 2001.). It looked acceptable enough for both the fundamentalists and for the Patriarchate.


...And Its Potential

But the radical fundamentalists were in no way routed. The campaign against the INN elicited :among the people; activists, till then unknown, such as Konstantin Gordeev, editor in chief of the periodical Holy Rus` (:Sviataia Rus';, formerly :Serbskii krest;.) But above all, this campaign managed to bring society as a whole to understand the fundamentalist ideas at first on the level of general national considerations (compare this with the problem of the canonization of Nikolai II which was debated in society mostly as a political matter), and then over time moved all of the Orthodox nationalists out of their traditionally marginal status.

It is of course not obvious, how they will manage to build on their success. Currently there is a consolidation of the moderate Orthodox antiglobalists, which to some degree is related to the leadership of the Moscow Patriarchate. On the other hand, the anti-Western and antiglobalist tones brought forth by the attack on USA on September 11, a sentiment sufficiently widespread in Russia, may give the radical-nationalists new stimulus. Thus far much depends on which groups will play the more active role in the ideological maneuvers inside the Church.

One must keep in mind, that the arguments of the radical fundamentalists have the advantage, that they, like most radical systems, are internally very logical and tend toward simple and clear answers. When one of the radical ideologists, archdeacon Avel' (Semenov), shows throughout his book, that globalization is antireligious and, therefore :no compromise with it is possible;, it sounds understandable. In contrast to the proposals of archimandrite Tikhon (Shevkunov), initiator of the many campaigns against the barcode, he pays scant attention to the INN or the barcode, but protests against globalization as a whole.

There remain, of course, non-church nationalists, for whom the arguments of the radical fundamentalists sound too churchy, and church nationalists, for whom these arguments sound to sharp in relationship to the present church. We do not await the triumph of the radical fundamentalists. But with their :INN Jihad; they have already changed the ideological landscape of Orthodox nationalism.


[translated by Walter Sawatsky, 6/02]