Autocracy, despotism and democracy - bet 46

Riasophor-Monk Anempodist, “Sviaschennomuchenik mitropolit Vladimir (Bogoiavlenskij) i bor’ba s revoliutsii” (Hieromartyr Metropolitan Vladimir (Bogoiavlensky) and the struggle against the revolution), Pravoslavnaia Zhizn’ (Orthodox Life), 53, № 1 (636), January, 2003, pp. 2-10. Metropolitan Vladimir’s strong monarchist convictions were apparent already at his ordination, when he said: “A priest who is not a monarchist is unworthy to stand at the Holy Altar. A priest who is republican is always of little faith. A monarch is consecrated to his power by God, a president receives power from the pride of the people; a monarch is powerful through his carrying out of the commandments of God, a president holds on to power by pleasing the mob; a monarch leads his faithful subjects to God, a president leads them away from God.” (Valentina Sologub, Kto Gospoden – Ko Mne! (He who is the Lord’s – Come to me!), Moscow, 2007, p. 45)
723
Oldenburg, op. cit., p. 337.
724
Oldenburg, op. cit., p. 349.
725
Oldenburg, op. cit., p. 355.
726
Ariadna Tyrkova-Wiliams, “Na Putiakh k Svobode”, in Petr Stolypin, Moscow, 1998, p. 221.
727
Bokhanov, op. cit., p. 272.
728
Oldenburg, op. cit., pp. 365-366.
729
Lebedev, op. cit., pp. 403-405.
730
Lebedev, op. cit., p. 406.
731
Yakobi, Imperator Nikolaj II i revoliutsia (Emperor Nicholas II and the Revolution), Moscow, 2010, p. 73.
732
Bokhanov, op. cit., pp. 273-273.
733
Alferev, Imperator Nikolaj II kak Chelovek Sil’noj Voli (Emperor Nicholas II as a Man of Strong Will), Jordanville: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1983, pp. 92-92.
734
Suggestions of the Diocesan Hierarchs on the Reform of the Church, St. Petersburg, 1906, vol. 3, p. 443.
735
Firsov, op. cit., pp. 222-223.
736
Journals and Protocols of the sessions of the Preconciliar Convention Established by His Majesty, volume 3. On the second section on Georgia. St. Petersburg, 1907, pp. 55-58.
737
Professor M.G. Kovalnitsky. On the Significance of the National Element in the Historical Development of Christianity, Kiev, 1880, pp. 3-4.
738
Journals and Protocols, p. 56.
739
Eugene Pavlenko, “The Heresy of Phyletism: History and the Present”, Vertograd-Inform, September, 1999.
740
Svod Zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii (The Collection of the Laws of the Russian Empire), 3rd series, vol. 1, pt. 1. St Petersburg, 1912, pp. 5-26.
741
Smith, op. cit., p. 58.
742
S. Anikin, “Buduschee prinadlezhit trezvym natsiam” (The Future Belongs to Sober Nations), Vernost’, 142, March, 2010, http://metanthonymemorial.org/VernostNo142.html.
743
Metropolitan Anthony was said to be an enemy of St. John of Kronstadt and even a Freemason. See Fomin & Fomina, op. cit., pp. 391-392; M.B. Danilushkin (ed.), Istoria Russkoj Tserkvi ot Vosstanovlenia Patriarshestva do nashikh dnej (A History of the Russian Church from the Restoration of the Patriarchate to our Days), vol. I, St. Petersburg, 1997, pp. 78-80, 771-783; Nadieszda Kizenko, A Prodigal Saint: Father John of Kronstadt and the Russian People, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000, chapter 7.
744
Monk Anempodist writes: “Metropolitan Vladimir went on to take part in the movement of the right conservative forces of Russia that was being formed. Thus in 1907 he took part in the work of the All-Russian congress of ‘The Union of the Russian People’. In 1909, while taking part in the work of the First Monarchist congress of Russian People, Metropolitan Vladimir was counted worthy of the honour of passing on a greeting to the congress from his Majesty the Emperor Nicholas II in the following telegram: “’To his Eminence Vladimir, Metropolitan of Moscow. I entrust to you, Vladyko, to pass on to all those assembled in the first capital at the congress of Russian people and members of the Moscow Patriotic Union My gratitude for their loyal feelings. I know their readiness faithfully and honourably to serve Me and the homeland, in strict observance of lawfulness and order. St. Petersburg. 30 September. Nicholas.’”Riasophor-Monk Anempodist, “Sviaschennomuchenik mitropolit Vladimir (Bogoiavlenskij) i bor’ba s revoliutsii” (Hieromartyr Metropolitan Vladimir (Bogoiavlensky) and the struggle against the revolution), Pravoslavnaia Zhizn’ (Orthodox Life), 53, № 1 (636), January, 2003, pp. 2-10.
745
Tatiana Groyan, Tsariu Nebesnomu i Zemnomu Vernij (Faithful to the Heavenly and Earthly Kings), Moscow, 1996, p. CXI.
746
Oldenburg, op. cit., vol. II, p. 60.
747
Vostorgov, in Fomin & Fomina, op. cit., p. 400.
748
Bishop Andronicus, “Russkij grazhdanskij stroj zhizni pered sudom khristianina” (The Russian civil order before the judgement of the Christian), Fryazino, 1995, pp. 24-25). In 1918 Bishop Andronicus would suffer martyrdom at the hands of these men-beasts by being buried alive…
749
Rklitsky, op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 173, 175-177.
750
Tikhomirov, “Poslednee pis’mo Stolypinu”, in Petr Stolypin, Moscow, 1998, pp. 235-237.
751
Oldenburg, op. cit., vol. II, p. 76.
752
See M.V. Danilushkin, Istoria Russkoj Pravoslavnoj Tserkvi, 1917-70 (A History of the Russian Orthodox Church, 1917-70, St. Petersburg, 1997, vol. 1, pp. 784-793; Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Dvesti let vmeste (Two Hundred Years Together) (1795-1995), part 1, Moscow: “Russkij Put’”, 2001, pp. 444-451.
753
“Let us remember,” writes Solzhenitsyn: “the legal restrictions on the Jews in Russia were never racial [as they were in Western Europe]. They were applied neither to the Karaites [who rejected the Talmud], nor to the mountain Jews, nor to the Central Asian Jews.” (op. cit., p. 292).
754
Fitzlyon and Browning, Russia Before the Revolution, London: Penguin books, 1977, p. 46.
755
Trial and Error: The Autobiography of Chaim Weitzmann, New York: Harper, 1949.
756
Massie, Nicolas and Alexandra, London: Book Club Associates, 1967, p. 229.
757
Vostorgov, in Fomin and Fomina, Rossia pered Vtorym Prishestviem (Russia before the Second Coming), Sergiev Posad, 1993, vol. II, p. 624.
758
http://www.revisionisthistory.org/page10.page10.html. Lisa Palmieri-Billig (“Historian gives credence to blood libel”, The Jerusalem Post, February 7 and 8, 2007) writes: “An Israeli historian of Italian origin has revived ‘blood libel’ in an historical study set to hit Italian bookstores on Thursday. Ariel Toaff, son of Rabbi Elio Toaff, claims that there is some historic truth in the accusation that for centuries provided incentives for pogroms against Jews throughout Europe. “Toaff’s tome, Bloody Passovers: The Jews of Europe of Ritual Murders, received high praise from another Italian Jewish historian, Sergio Luzzatto, in an article in the Corriere della Serra entitled ‘Those Bloody Passovers’.
“Luzzatto describes Toaff’s work as a ‘magnificent book of history… Toaff holds that from 1100 to about 1500… several crucifixions of Christian children really happened, bringing about retaliations against entire Jewish communities – punitive massacres of men, women, children. Neither in Trent in 1475 nor in other areas of Europe in the late Middle Ages were Jews always innocent victims.’
“’A minority of fundamentalist Ashkenazis… carried out human sacrifices,’ Luzzatto continued.
“Toaff offers as an example the case of Saint Simonino of Trent in March 1475, shortly after a child’s body was found in a canal near the Jewish area of Trent, the city’s Jews were accused of murdering Simonino and using his blood to make mazot.
“After a medieval trial in which confessions were extracted by torture, 16 members of Trent’s Jewish community were hanged.
“Toaff reveals that the accusations against the Jews of Trent ‘might have been true’.
“Toaff refers to kabbalistic descriptions of the therapeutic uses of blood and asserts that ‘a black market flourished on both sides of the Alps, with Jewish merchants selling human blood, complete with rabbinic certification of the product – kosher blood.’”
759
S.V. Bulgakov, Nastol’naia Kniga dlya Svyashchenno-Tserkovno-Sluzhitelia (Handbook for Church Servers), Kharkov, 1900, p. 143. It is significant that in 1919 the Bolsheviks banned the chanting of hymns to the Child-Martyr Gabriel, whose relics reposed in the church of St. Basil the Blessed on Red Square (Vladimir Rusak, Pir Satany (Satan’s Feast), London, Ontario: Zarya, 1991, p. 13). For ritual murders demonstrated in court, see Dal’, V. Rozyskanie o ubiyenii evreev khristianskikh mladentsev i upotreblenii krovi ikh (Investigation into the Killing by Jews of Christian Children and the Use of their Blood), St. Petersburg, 1844; Rozanov, V. Oboniatel’noe i osyazatel’noe otnoshenie evreev k krovi (The Senses of Smell and Touch of the Jews towards Blood), St. Petersburg, 1913; O. Platonov, Ternovij venets Rossii (Russia’s Crown of Thorns), Moscow, 1998.
760
Uspensky, in Fomin and Fomina, op. cit., vol. II, p. 632.
761
Platonov, op. cit., pp. 748-754.
762
Archbishop Anthony, in Zhizn’ Volynii (The Life of Volhynia), № 221, 2 September, 1913.
763
As regards freedom, it is a paradoxical but true fact that Russia in the last decades before the revolution was one of the freest countries in the world. Thus Duma deputy Baron A.D. Meyendorff admitted: “The Russian Empire was the most democratic monarchy in the world” (Lebedev, op. cit., p. 405). This view was echoed by foreign observers, such as Sir Maurice Baring: “There is no country in the world, where the individual enjoys so great a measure of personal liberty, where the ‘liberté de moeurs’ is so great, as in Russia; where the individual man can do as he pleases with so little interference or criticism on the part of his neighbours, where there is so little moral censorship, where liberty of abstract thought or aesthetic production is so great.” (in Eugene Lyons, Our Secret Allies, 1953).
764
Jelavich, op. cit., p. 21.
765
Malcolm, op. cit., p. 194.
766
Malcolm, op. cit., pp. 219-228.
767
Malcolm, Kosovo: A Short History, London: Papermac, 1998, pp. 228-229.
768
Malcolm, op. cit., p. xlvi.
769
Malcolm, op. cit., p. 230.
770
Barbara Jelavich, History of the Balkans, Cambridge University Press, 1983, vol. 2, p. 21.
771
Pavlowitch, "The Church of Macedonia: 'limited autocephaly' or schism?", Sobornost, 9:1, 1987, p. 42.
772
Glenny, op. cit., p. 158.
773
Jelavich, op. cit., p. 91.
774
Jelavich, op. cit., pp. 92-93.
775
Pavlowitch, op. cit., pp. 43-44.
776
Glenny, op. cit., p. 193.
777
Glenny, op. cit., pp. 194-195, 199.
778
Glenny, op. cit., pp. 201-202.
779
Glenny, op. cit., pp. 205-207.
780
John Etty, “Serbian Nationalism and the Great War”, History Today, February 27, 2014.
781
West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, Edinburgh: Canongate, 2006, p. 12.
782
Ibid.
783
Evidence of this irredentist, revanchist mood is provided by Edith Durham, who records the following conversation among her companions in a railway carriage in December, 1903. Her companions "were all Serbs, young and aflame with patriotism... Talk all ran on unredeemed Serbia and King Peter who is to realise the national ideal. 'Now we have a King who is as good as yours,' they said, 'and Serbia will have her own again'." (The Burden of the Balkans, London, 1905, p. 86).
784
Ulrick Loring and James Page, Yugoslavia's Royal Dynasty, London: The Monarchist Press Association, 1976, p. 60.
785
Loring and Page, op. cit., p. 62.
786
Brigit Farley, "Aleksandar Karadjordjevič and the Royal Dictatorship in Yugoslavia", in Berndt J. Fischer, Balkan Strongmen: Dictators and Authoritarian Strongmen of South Eastern Europe, London: Hurst & Company, 2006, p. 55.
787
Akçam, A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility, London: Constable, 2007, p. 19.
788
Glenny, op, cit., p. 215.
789
Thus they declared: “We can compromise with the Christians only when they accept our position of dominance.” One of their leaders, Namik Kemal, spoke of the Turks as “occupying the pre-eminent position in the Ottoman collective… on account of their great numbers and abilities, excellent and meritorious qualities such as ‘breadth of intelligence’, ‘cool-headedness’, ‘tolerance and repose’”. Another leader, Ali Suavi, declared that “the Turkish race [is] older and superior… on account of its military, civilizing and political roles” (Akçam, op. cit., p. 39)
790
Glenny, op. cit., p. 216.
791
Some words on the origin of Masonry in the Ottoman empire. As the Ottoman empire declined in power, it became more and more cosmopolitan, liberal and ecumenist, at least in the capital; and Freemasonry played no small part in this process. Thus Philip Mansel writes: “From 1884 the Cercle d’Orient, one of the main centres of news and gambling in the city, was housed in a magnificent building on the Grande Rue de Pera. It was open to men of every race and religion, and viziers were members ex officio. Freemasons had existed in Constantinople since the eighteenth century; the Bektashki order had remarkable, and remarked on, similarities with the Masons, perhaps due to contacts with France through Bonneval Pasha. The masonic message of universal fraternity and abolition of religious and national differences seemed especially appropriate to the Ottoman Empire. The lodge Le Progrès, founded in 1868, held meetings in Ottoman and Greek. It was joined by men of different religions… In another lodge called the Union d’Orient, in 1866, a French atheist cried, perhaps for the first time in Constantinople: ‘God does not exist! He has never existed.’” (Constantinople, London: Penguin, 1995, p. 293) An important member of Le Progrès was the wealthy Greek banker and believer in the Ottoman Empire Cleanti Scalieris (Kleanti Skalyeri in Turkish), who was born into a noble family in Constantinople in 1833. According to Jasper Ridley, he was “initiated in 1863 into a lodge which had been established in Constantinople by the French Grand Orient. He was friendly with Midhat Pasha, a high official in the Sultan’s government who was secretly the leader of the Young Turks. Midhat Pasha had been initiated as a Freemason while he was a student in England. After he returned to Turkey he was appointed Governor of the Danube region, and established a regime in which there was no religious persecution. In 1872 he was for a short time Grand Vizier, the head of the Turkish government.
“Scalieris and Midhat Pasha were able to exercise their influence on Prince Murad, the nephew of the Sultan Abd-Ul Aziz and the heir to the throne. Murad listened with sympathy to their progressive liberal views, and at their suggestion became a Freemason in 1872, joining a Greek-speaking lodge in Constantinople under the authority of the French Grand Orient. In 1876, while the Bulgarian revolt against Turkish rule was taking place and Russia was preparing to go to war with Turkey in support of the Bulgarians, Midhat Pasha carried out a coup, deposed Abd-Ul Aziz, and proclaimed Murad as the Sultan Murad V.
“A liberal-minded Freemason was now Sultan of Turkey; but within a few months he was deposed after another coup which placed the tyrannical Abd-Ul Hamid II on the throne. During his thirty-three-year reign he acquired international notoriety both by his despotic government and by the sexual excesses of his private life. At first he maintained Midhat Pasha as Grand Vizier, but then arranged for him to be assassinated. He kept Murad imprisoned in the palace. Scalieris tried to arrange for Murad to escape, but the rescue attempt failed. Murad died in 1904, having been kept as a prisoner in the palace for 28 years.
“Abd-Ul Hamid continued to reign until 1909, when he was deposed and imprisoned after the revolution of the Young Turks.” (The Freemasons, London: Constable, 1999, pp. 216-217)
792
Glenny, op. cit., p. 218.
793
Glenny, op. cit., pp. 218-219.
794
Oldenburg, Tsarstvovanie Imperatora Nikolaia II (The Reign of Emperor Nicholas II), Belgrade, 1939, vol. 2, pp. 36-37.
795
Lieven, Nicholas II, pp. 191-192
796
Glenny, op. cit., pp. 225-226.
797
Tomes, King Zog: Self-Made Monarch of Albania, Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 2007, p. 13.
798
The Greeks claimed southern Albania, or northern Epirus, as they called it, for themselves, on the basis that it had been within the ancient Greek and Byzantine cultural sphere, and bishops from Epirus (northern and southern) had taken part in the First and Fourth Ecumenical Councils. (V.M.)
799
Tones, op. cit., pp. 17-19.
800
Carter, op. cit., p. 399.
801
Oldenburg, op. cit., vol. II, p. 94; Jelavich, op. cit., p. 97.
802
Radzinsky, The Last Tsar, London: Hodder, 1992, pp. 188-189.
803
Bokhanov, op. cit., pp. 319-320.
804
Glenny, op. cit., pp. 233-234.
805
Judah, op. cit., pp. 85-86.
806
Judah, op. cit., pp. 84-85.
807
Meanwhile, on May 4/16, 1914 there took place, as N.Yu. Selischev writes, “the signing of the document widely known in Greece as ‘the Corfu protocol’. The Corfu protocol gave the Orthodox Greeks a broad autonomy and sealed their religious, civil and social rights. The international control commission of the great powers (Russia was represented by the consul-general M. Petriaev) acted as a mediator in the quarrel and became the trustee of the fulfilment of the Corfu accord. In Russia the Corfu protocol… was known as the ‘Epirot-Albanian accord’. That is, the question of Epirus was not reduced to the level of an ‘internal affair’ of the newly created Albania, but was raised to the significance of an international agreement when the Orthodox Greek Epirots and the Mohammedan Albanians were recognized as parties to the agreement having equal rights. Our [Russian] press at that time – Pravitel’stvennij Vestnik, Sankt-Peterburgskia Vedomosti and the conservative Novoe Vremia – looked at the events in Epirus in precisely this way. “Unfortunately, to this day the protocol of Corfu has not been fulfilled and is not being fulfilled by the Albanian side, neither in the part relating to the religious, nor in the part relating to the civil and educational rights of the Greek Epirots. In this sense the unchanging character of Albanian hostility is indicative. In 1914 the Albanian prime-minister Turkhan Pasha declared to the Rome correspondent of Berliner Tageblatt that ‘there can be no discussion’ of the autonomy of Epirus, and ‘for us there are no longer any “Epirots”, but there are only the inhabitants of provinces united to us by the London conference.’ Decades later, in 1967, another Albanian tyrant, Enver Khodja, proclaimed Albania to be the first officially atheist country in the world, where the Orthodox Church was banned and destroyed. The Serbs talk about the destruction of 2000 Orthodox churches.” (“Chto neset Pravoslaviu proekt ‘Velikoj Albanii’?”, Pravoslavnaia Rus’, № 2 (1787), January 15/28, 2005, p. 11).
808
Barbara Tuchman writes that at the funeral of King Edward VII in 1910 Ferdinand had “annoyed his fellow sovereigns by calling himself Czar and kept in a chest a Byzantine Emperor’s full regalia, acquired from a theatrical costumer, against the day when he should reassemble the Byzantine dominions beneath his sceptre” (The Guns of August, New York: Ballantine Books, 1962, 1994, p. 3).
809
Cooper, “Balkan Ghosts”, New Statesman, October 4-10, 2013, p. 31.
810
Bokhanov, op. cit., p. 321.
811
Ferguson, The War of the World, London: Penguin, 2007, pp. 76-77.
812
Strachan, The First World War, London: Pocket Books, 2006, p. 42.