Posted by The war in Ukraine is going to be a long war. The history of Russia tells us this, as is explained below.
The unfolding horror of the Ukraine war follows the pattern of the history of planet earth and humanity, which can be summarised as one long, relentless, series of violent acts involving massacres, assassinations, bombings, torture and beyond, all for the purpose of greed, looting, theft, and control of people, resources and land. Whichever history book one reads, this is the reality. It is never long before peace and happiness are broken by war, causing citizens to lose everything and be forced to start all over again, for no good reason that benefits humanity as a whole.
Gary Lachman’s The Return of Holy Russia tells the same story: a relentless drive to control “Russian Man” and the vast territories of the Russian Empire through violence and authoritarian methods. Monarchs, leaders, their spouses and families rarely survived to old age.
Is there anything new to tell the world in this well researched book on the esoteric aspect to Russia’s history, or is it just another story of learning to master the lessons of the “Earth Life System”, the school of hard knocks on the way to higher spiritual levels?
It seems that there is. This is the idea that, notwithstanding the Western world painting Russia as the ‘evil villain’, in reality Russia may pose the last chance for humanity in the on-going spiritual war on planet earth.
The idea involves the concept of an Armageddon-style final and decisive clash between two different superpower cultures, the Atlanticist West, which is determined to turn the world into a borderless, controlled, marketplace, and the spiritual civilisation and ‘traditional values’ of Eurasia, resolved to resist the commercialisation of Earth.
Whilst this view may sound bizarre to Western minds, the Russian leader Putin appears to believe in this mission for Russia, based on the many speeches that he has given referencing this in recent years. This is why the war in Ukraine has many levels to it.
Indeed, Putin has even gone so far as to make the written works of certain Russian philosophers, namely Nikolai Berdyaev, Vladimir Solovyov and Ivan Ilyin required reading for his regional Governors, and in particular, Ivan Ilyin’s On Resisting Evil with Force. Putin has described Ilyin as a profound influence on him. This idea of Russia having a special place in the future of the planet is echoed by important Russian authors such as Fyodor Dostoyevsky, who refers to it as the “coming Russia”.
This “coming time” relates to Russia’s deep connection to Christianity, which is also fundamental to Putin’s vision of the future. This vision includes the linking of East and West in what has been termed “the Third Way”. This is a mission of Putin’s, and as was stated by Berdyaev’s in The Russian Idea (another of Putin’s “required reading list”), Berdyaev remarks that “the Russian has a greater capacity for enduring suffering than the man of the West”. In other words, suffering to achieve the end goal is not a problem for Russians, as they are used to it, unlike the pampered Western population.
The origins of the “Russians” are inextricably linked to Kiev, and hark back to the days when Scandinavian elite warriors called the Rus took control of Kiev in the 9th century. For Putin, this historical link is important. With the help of Orthodox Christianity a thousand or more years ago, Russia rose to become a unified nation, and the Kievan Rus’ legends are firmly planted in the Russian psyche.
For Putin, Kiev is the geopolitical heart of the Russian state, the “mother of Russian cities”. His ultimate aim is to regain Kiev, the land of the original Rus’, echoing the aim of a previous strong-man ruler, Ivan “The Terrible” at the start of the 16th century. Putin has even commissioned a statue of Prince Vladimir of Kiev, which stands outside the Kremlin, confirming to the world the view he holds along with his favourite philosopher, Ivan Ilyin, that Ukraine is unquestionably part of Russia.
Orthodox Christianity, and its beginnings in Russian Kiev when Prince Vladimir converted to Orthodox Christianity from paganism in 989, is important to Putin, and in May 2016, he made a pilgrimage to Mount Athos, the birthplace of Orthodox Christianity. The “end times” are never far from Putin’s thoughts it seems, and at the same time as Patriarch Kirill, bishop of Moscow was warning in November 2017 that “one must be blind not to see the approach of the terrible moment of history about which the Apostle and Evangelist John the Theologian spoke in his Revelation”, Putin chose to conduct nuclear exercises.
Putin’s focus on the end times would likely have been influenced by Solovyov, who wrote in War, Progress and the End of History (another book in Putin’s list of required reading) that a great war between East and West would take place before long. This would bring about Solovyov and Putin’s “third way” for Russia, where Solovyov predicted that a “figure would cast a glittering veil of good and truth over the mystery of utter lawlessness which would characterise the end times”. Putin believes this “figure” is Putin himself.
Ultimately, Putin follows the philosophical direction of Nikolay Fedorov and Lenin, which centres on the West’s misguided ideas about freedom. The problem with the West is the belief in the “me”, not the “we”. This Putin considers to be the root of all evil. Consequently, Putin’s actions are not about the “individual”, but the “whole”. The individual doesn’t matter. Unity was central to Ilyin’s political and social views. For him, individuals on their own are nothing: they can only be “free” within the embrace of community.
This is why the West has underestimated the force of Putin, which is not simply about power and control, but has an ideological basis. The current war in Ukraine may therefore be a long and bitter struggle ahead for all, before its ending.
8 May 2022
[Book Review: Gary Lachman – “Return to Holy Russia”]
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