Posted on 11/06/2006 8:58:37 AM PST by vertolet
Among Russian President Vladimir Putin's many sins, surely the most outrageous is that he dares to compare Russia to the West. He has clearly forgotten Russia's proper role in our Narrative of Western Civilization: to serve as a poignant example of all the sins that we never commit. Putin has the temerity to suggest that Russia and the West face similar problems, and the gall to think that the West could even learn a thing or two from Russia.
Quite understandably the US media have responded to such insolence with a collective "ecrasez l'infame!" After the Group of Eight summit on July 19, the venerable Times of London politely told Putin that we Westerners didn't appreciate his wisecracks about the scandals surrounding Lord Levy (Prime Minister Tony Blair's chief fundraiser, dubbed "Lord Cashpoint") or democracy in Iraq. "A little more grace, and less hubris," if you please, wrote The Times.
Hear, hear! The last thing any of us needs is to hear about corruption, criminality, and violence in our own countries. Why, the next thing you know Putin will discover racism in some benighted corner of our enlightened lands and start quoting Samuel Johnson at Americans: "How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?"
The Times editorial quite properly pointed out that...
(Excerpt) Read more at atimes.com ...
It's debatable whether Russia is a western nation at all, but if they are, then they are on the short bus of western civ.
Interesting article. Thanks for posting.
Russia can bite our collective nutsac.The barbaric authoritarians need to go back to what the do best murder journalist and buisnessmen who dont tag the government line,take over countries, and destroy democracy. Disgusting lot.
Quite right. Western civilization is the one that's rapidly de-Christianizing, with only 4% of the population of Western Europe attending church at all, while in Russia, under the Soviets, when it meant loss of jobs, being put to the back of queues for apartments and the like, 40% of the population still officially registered with the government as Orthodox Christians. Western Europe can't even agree to acknowledge the Christian roots of its civilization, and here the ACLU is trying to drive Christianity completely from public discourse while defending Islamic-prosylitizaiton curriculums in California schools, while Russia reinstitutes Christian religious education in its state schools. Plainly Russia isn't a Western country.
And, no, the West can't learn a thing from Russia, except maybe how to embrace our own heritage, something we need in the face of the challenge from Islam. Secularism, which offers nothing in particular, is not the basis for a defense against the Mohammedan hordes, as the paralysis of Western Europe in general, and France in particular shows.
A lot of bashing of Russia on this thread. Fact is, Putin's Russia has only begun to dig itself out from under the rubble of seventy years of Communist totalitarianism and of its autocratic past under the Tsars as well. Russia seen as non-Western is a product of those times. Also, Russia never experienced the Rennaissance, which is held to be the dawn of the modern era in the West.
Putin's remarks were his attempt to say, "we all have similar problems now, we nations of the West! C'mon, guys, I'm a member of the `club of the West', aren't I?"
There is among many in Russia great nostalgia for the days of the glorious, feared USSR. But restoring the old Soviet empire is a chimera; even once-subjugated Ukraine now thumbs its nose at Moscow.
True.
the government is concerned with raising taxes, not religios affiliation.
Not so. The government certainly favours Orthodoxy by funding building of churches as an example.
Even those who consider themselves Orthodox Christians have an dismal knowledge of church rituals and rites. For an average person Easter is when they eat painted eggs. The ignorance about religion they claim to associate themselves with is amazing.
There are truly lots of such people.
Claimimg Christian means nationality more than religious beliefs.
That's partly true, but many people would say that's outdated. 100 years ago any Orthodox speaking Russian would have been considered a Russian whatever his ethnical bacground were.
They are nominal Christians as well as nominal muslims. They don't practice religion. A large portion of the so-called Russian muslims eat pork like crazy.
Only when they're out of their traditional communities. Just try to offer pork for a wedding feast there.
The service in Russian Orthodox churches is conducted in Church Slavonic
That's true. which is an ancient form of Russian
not exactly.
Most people understand it as good as Latin, which means that they don't understand it.
Not so. That's more like XVI-century English to a modern Englishman. Knowledge about religious rituals is granted only to the priesthood.
Rubbish. There's enough literature anyone can buy and study.
Bibles in modern Russian are available only in protestant churches as well as the theological explanation of the Christianity.
Have you ever heard of the synodal translation?
Not more than a modern people in England have difficulties understanding Shakespear.
Knowledge about religious rituals is granted only to the priesthood.
Not true at all. You must be either twisting the facts or be completely misinformed. There are so many ways -- starting from going to lectures, organised by Church, down to reading websites and finally - going to the church and simply asking the priest.
Bibles in modern Russian are available only in protestant churches as well as the theological explanation of the Christianity.
Not true at all. You can literally go to any bookstore and in there you will be offered a selection of holy books for different religions. As well as ordering these books online.
As well as going to the nearest Orthodox church (and not not only Orthodox) and buying it at the store which nearly every one of them has. Typically these shops would be selling candles, reliogious books, crosses (and other symbols) as well as taking orders for prayers and masses.
I am reporting piety during the Soviet era, when, yes, the government was concerned with religious affiliation. Believers were persecuted. Subtly in the late Soviet era, but persecuted nonetheless, and the government was interested in knowing who was affiliated with which religion, and who was a 'good' state-atheist.
You also don't understand very much about Holy Orthodoxy if you think religious education is limited to the priests. Some of the most notable Orthodox theologians of the past two centuries have been laymen.
I take it you are a protestant and have been taken in by the protestant propaganda about needing to reChristianize 'atheist' Russia. Sorry, but *complete* versions of the Scriptures (including the books Luther arrogantly cut out of the Old Testament) have been available in vernacular Russian since 1879, and quite frankly, I hope the Rus have enough wit to say to the protestant 'theological explanation' the same thing they said to the Teutonic Knights: "The holy traditions of the fathers of the Seven Councils we scrupulously follow. As for your words, we hear them not, and we do not want your doctrine."
On numerous points, the protestant 'theological explanation' of Christianity is flatly heresy. Tell me which strain of protestant you are, and I can give you a bill of particulars, though common ones include denial of the reality of the Eucharist, belief in the Anselmian doctrine of substitutionary atonement, iconoclasm, and various modern analogs of ancient christological heresies.
"short bus of western civ."
Consider that stolen.
:)
Russian culture bump.
I have a book on Britain - a sort of stuff they publish for language students. There is an interview on Anglican Church with a bishop of it (I have forgotten his name, the interesting fact was he was from a Muslim family) and what you say on the Orthodox believers (or so-called believers) was said about the Anglican ones.
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