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Today we are going to talk first about Marxist/Bolshevik revolution in itself, which is not something limited to Russia nor a thing of the past, but rather international and currently going on; and then we will discuss pre-Revolutionary Russia and its strengths and weaknesses. In conclusion today, we will discuss the apocalyptic, eschatological significance of Russia and her relationship to Orthodoxy.
Introduction – Bolshevik Revolution and the Orthodox Philosophy of History
A. Review of last class’s introduction:
1. You need the big picture. Teleology of history.
2. The big picture is knowable.
3. Two reductionisms: “leave it to the experts” vs. arrogant ignorance
4. Ahistorical false spirituality
5. The right approach: Acquire the big picture, practice discernment
B. Christian Order vs. Anti-Christ Disorder
1. There is such a thing as Christian order of society. That’s the whole lesson from the 1600 year history of the Constantinian period of history. There are more perfect, more Orthodox examples, but even the RC and Prot examples participate to a greater or lesser degree in the reality of Christian order. The age of revolution since 1789 is the open revolt against this order to replace it with Anti-Christ disorder.
2. Christian order is based on obedience to God. Human law reflects the divine law to a significant extent. God’s rights are primary, human rights are derivative.
3. Anti-Christ order – or, rather, disorder – is based on disobedience to God. It is the rejection of the Logos. The motto of Lucifer is “I will not serve.” The clenched fist salute symbolizes this. Since God’s rights are not primary, or the source of human rights, the appeal to human rights is completely deceptive, because the only principle of action is the will to power, and therefore the entire system is inherently criminal.
4. There are both diabolical and human agencies at work. Defect of secular anti-communism is to look only for earthly explanations. Defect of falsely-spiritual approach is to say only demons are our enemies, and you should not try to comprehend the human aspect of the situation. This latter is not really pious, but is both childish and morally irresponsible, being an extreme of imprudence. We always pray to be delivered from enemies both visible and invisible. Prudence demands that we identify the visible enemies.
I. Marxism as a Philosophy vs. Marxist Action
A. Remember that all Antichrist ideology is a cover for demonic criminality.
1. Marxism as philosophy is junk, yet it has demonic power (like Darwinism and Freudianism). There is an invisible power at work that appeals to the demonic love of power in the unregenerate soul. Remember that apart from Faith and Baptism, man is born in a state of enmity with God. Marxism appeals to this enmity, characterized by envy: envy of God, envy of all that is good, noble, beautiful, and true. It is simply nihilism – worship of destruction, of the endless descent into nothingness.
2. Marx (Mordechai) was simply a satanist. Some say his work was dictated directly by demons while he was in a trance-like state. But it is not necessary to prove this in order to perceive that his writings have demonic false wisdom and demonic power.
B. Therefore to spend thousands of pages analyzing Marxism as a historical or economic theory is a waste of time. It does not deserve analysis, because it is trash. More importantly, to spend one’s time doing this, besides being a degradation of the mind, is a distraction from the real task, which is organized, active, militant, and intransigent opposition to a gang of criminals and devil worshippers who hate the Church, and who have murdered millions and intend to murder further millions of people.
1. No one is really a philosophical materialist; everyone has some kind of mystical or metaphysical assumptions and some kind of inner, mystical life. E.g, Richard Dawkins, the great supposed atheist, believes in “aliens.” Either there is the personal God of the Bible or there is just “stuff,” but those who claim to believe in “stuff” have some occult (i.e. hidden) spirituality involving self-worship or aliens or science fiction or direct devil worship.
2. The “march of history” in Marxist thought is just a disguise for the demonic will to power, the program of Anti-Christ. There is no impersonal “force” or “material dialectic.” That’s all nonsense designed to destroy the will of the good to resist.
C. So what we are concerned with is not Marxist “thought,” but Marxist action; what they do as they try to gain power and what they do once they are in power. While they are trying to gain power, they have to act covertly, disguising themselves as something either invisible or as benevolent. Once they are in power, they ruthlessly murder their opposition and install a reign of terror over the bodies and minds of those left alive. Remember, their only justification is their own will to power. This is why a liberal, “fair-minded” or “balanced” approach to dealing with them is useless and suicidal. You don’t negotiate with someone whom you find in the act of killing your family: you shoot him.
D. So-called Marxist revolution is not something only in Russia or Eastern Europe or China. It is the systematic overthrow of traditional society in every part of the world since 1789. It covers every inhabited continent, it uses the same methods everywhere, and it is about to move to a new and possibly final stage here in the United States.
E. Remember the two methods: Violent action and Gramscian march through the institutions. Recall last week’s link to Fr. Peter Heers’s talk: Method of creating a false crisis and offering a false solution to the crisis. Samuel Francis’s concept of “anarcho-tyranny” and current examples:
– Anarcho: Flu hysteria and mob violence
– Tyranny: “Lockdowns,” compulsory vaccination and microchip in response to the manufactured flu crisis; destruction of local police authority and replacement with national (or global!) police in response to the manufactured mob crisis.
II. Marxism as the Inversion of Value
A. In the demonic order of disorder, everything is upside down. Evil is good, war is peace, etc. (cf. Newspeak in Orwell’s 1984).
B. Primary goods are overthrown in the name of secondary goods, which themselves are actually never realized. The sins of those who uphold the primary good of order are blown out of proportion, while the crimes of those who impose diabolical disorder are called virtues.
C. There are pseudo-saints and a pseudo-piety. E.g., the pseudo-relic of Lenin, the “icons” of Che Guevara, cult of Nelson Mandela, or, in recent American society, the “martyrs” Trayvon Martin and George Floyd. Demonic idol worship, e.g., current bizarre ritual of bowing down to anarchists and the clenched fist.
D. Everything good and holy is criminalized, and criminality is normalized. Orderly opposition to tyranny is demonized and anarchical destruction is glorified as “freedom fighting.”
E. An anti-hierarchy is created, in which the lower is placed over the higher: e.g., feminism, permissive child-rearing, homosexualism, exaltation of savagery over culture, modern, senseless “art” over traditional art, etc.
To the extent one participates in or condones or refuses to oppose all this, one becomes an accomplice of the Anti-Christ revolt against God.
III. Russia as the Katehon
A. Russia’ s strengths – Orthodox Russia was the main target, because Russia was holding back the tide of revolution. It was the great Christian power that had several strengths inimical to Revolution:
1. It was the representative of the Christian autocratic authority: Pravoslavie, samoderzhavie, narodnost.
a. Orthodoxy
b. autocratic authority
c. “nativeness,” – love of one’s own native (birth) people and native soil, and the culture that springs from this
2. Combined with vast geopolitical power.
3. Financial independence.
4. Agrarian virtue combined with modern industrial and military might.
Note: Supposed weaknesses of the tsarist system itself are exaggerated. They were real but fixable. All of the great reforms that led to elevating peasant life and the plight of industrial workers were not the result of democratization but the prudent wielding of autocratic authority. Autocracy is the bulwark of the people against oligarchy – see Matthew Raphael Johnson at rusjournal.org. (Also, see Michael Hudson’s studies on the ancient Near Eastern kingdoms and the debt jubilees enforced by the kings to protect the peasantry from usurers.)
5. Greatest strength of Russia was, of course, Orthodoxy itself. The 19th century saw a tremendous spiritual rebirth in Russia, as we have discussed in early OSC classes (see OSC 24, in particular). Yet it only reached a portion of the society – it was not a comprehensive national repentance. Today we see something similar: There has been no rebirth of Holy Russia, because there is not a comprehensive national repentance, especially for the sins of regicide, apostasy, and complicity in mass murder of the Orthodox people.
B. Real Weaknesses: The bifurcation of Russian society
1. Apostasy of the aristocracy, the intelligentsia, and the liberal clergy.
Lack of repentance of the elite leadership class for Western-inspired secularization and outright persecution of the pious segments of society which began with Peter I.
2. Humanistic, liberal tendency even of the pious royal family due to English influence. Contrast of Alexander III with Alexander II and Nicholas II. The fatal flaws of Victorianism: humanistic softness, “progressive” Christianity of “social reform,” the “white man’s burden” instead of prudent and realistic white self-interest.
C. The Future of Russia is the Future of the World
Because of the peculiar place Russia has held in the world in the second millennium, the repentance and rebirth of Russia is key to what is to transpire here on earth in the near future. The Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia under St. Philaret of New York, had this to say in 1981:
“The Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, after hearing and taking note of the material presented to it by the Synod of Bishops on the development of the ecumenical movement and the wide participation in it of the Moscow Patriarchate, which completely submits to atheistic anti-christ authority, as well as the report on the growth of anti-christ principles in the world, defines:
“1. In accordance with the prophecies of the Holy Scriptures and the interpretation of the Holy Fathers of the Church, it is certain that we are entering one of the apocalyptic periods of human history. In it, the forces of evil threaten to seize leadership around the world. Only repentance and the rebirth of the Orthodox Church in Russia can stop this process. The true Church is already in an undoubted minority, becoming the “little flock” predicted by the Savior. However, He also told Christians not to lose heart even when they survive to the last years of the existence of the world.”
This is the first statement in a longer conciliar resolution whose entire text you can read at https://remnantrocor.blogspot.com/2020/05/sobor-1981-resolution.html Note that the (old/true) ROCOR bishops here were concerned not only for Russia, but for the entire world. They clearly saw that the Antichrist revolt against God is open and proceeding throughout the world, and that only the restoration of a true Orthodox Russia as the katehon could stop this process.
Holy New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, pray to God for us!
