Reactionary Rus

Russia seems either both European and Asian or neither European nor Asian.  Is it Marxist or conservative?  Atheist or Orthodox?  Democratic or despotic?  The West is never really clear about Russia, as Winston Churchill once succinctly put into a pithy comment.

Today the liberal Western media is wringing its hands about a further step towards despotism, voted for by the Russian public.  What makes the media more upset is that the new constitution voted upon by the Russian people not only in effect seems to give Putin power for life, but has been sold to the people as a restoration of traditional values, particularly in terms of protecting marriage as between man and woman and including God in the constitution.

Traditional values are thus seen as the clever ploy and part of a despotic manoeuvre to seize power.  Worse is that the Western media regards this as an appeal to prejudice as though Putin has manipulated base instincts to rally support for his prolonged presidency.

The constitution itself does place a strict limit upon the presidency of two terms of six years.  It nonetheless resets the clock allowing Putin to begin his terms all over again.  Hence the accusation of an attempt to fix up a lifelong presidency. 

The role of a little-known body called the State Council is also raised in importance and power.  Again Putin’s critics have accused him of using this body to ensure he retains power as a member.

Whatever the politics, and this article is not meant to defend Putin, the interesting question is how Putin has relied upon social conservatism as an integral part of these constitutional changes.  By contrast, in the West, with its representative democracy, widely-held socially-conservative views remain excluded from political debate.  It is as though socially-conservative views cannot break through the dominance of liberalism in the Western party system, while Putin’s ever increasing power has meant the focus of accountability is directly upon him.  If Russia were to introduce same-sex marriage only one man could be held responsible for that.  Meanwhile in the United Kingdom a Conservative Government could introduce same-sex marriage with very little consequence in terms of electoral losses amongst small-c conservative voters. 

It would be a mistake to see social conservatism in Russia as somehow imposed as false consciousness from above.  Anyone who has encountered the revival of Christianity in Russia or discussed traditional values with Russians will have found that socially-conservative views remain mainstream for many.  It is far more likely that Putin is following the instincts of grass-roots attitudes that survived seventy years of atheistic Marxism to win his referendum.

What the overwhelming vote for Putin’s constitutional changes therefore demands from Western social conservatives is that they ask themselves why they are losing so badly compared to the victory in the cultural war in Russia.  And it is not just in Russia,  indeed many of the former Warsaw Pact nations are seeing a revival in both conservative Christianity and social conservatism, from Hungary to Poland.  Meanwhile, without any violent revolution in the West, values have been stripped away leaving a meaningless liberal anomie somehow fraudulently compensated for by Left-wing identity politics.  Most social conservatives will appreciate which of the cultural options will lead to greater human flourishing.  The disconcerting thing is that in Russia it appears to come at the cost of stable rule of law and democratic politics.

But is the political contrast so black and white?  While there is clearly a healthy bedrock and foundation of rule of law in the West, it is undeniable that as the cultural Marxist and postmodern outlooks have rapidly spread from the Academy into politics, law enforcement and the legal system, those fundamentals cannot be taken for granted.

 

There is a sort of totalitarianism-lite in the West.  In a free market economy it is vital to be able to survive in the world of employment.  With legislation on hate speech and equality goals any challenge to the cultural Marxist agenda can result in loss of employment - permanently.  There is no need for the Gulag or brutal oppression when people are scared about not being able to pay their mortgage or feed their families.  Meanwhile elections might change the finer details of economic policy, but whatever the voters want, the agenda of attacking traditional values continues under whichever party is in power.  There is a sort of liberal oligarchy installed in the West, with much more in common across borders than with the people within politicians' own nations.  In the UK the Brexit vote was a sign of this disparity and the same was true of Donald Trump’s election victory.  

Nonetheless, even without the heavy-handed legislation and the confident arrogance of the liberal oligarchy, the public in the West are very unsure about their conservative instincts.  While Russian babushka grandmothers ensured values survived Soviet oppression during the years of the Godless regime and the various nationalistic movements in Catholic Europe looked to Pope John Paul II, in the West the tide of consumerism and popular culture has almost drowned any residue of conservatism.  It is not just a detached oligarchy, but a confused public that ensures the onward and unimpeded march towards Sodom and Gomorrah.   

The Academy, the political world and the media reinforce the enthusiasm and commitment of each other for pursuing an agenda of radical liberalism that can only end in anomie.  Those institutions (such as the Church and the Tory Party) that should give leadership in this cultural battle are dominated by the same group of people – liberal, privileged and tending towards a relativism learnt at university.  The non-values dressed up as worthy tolerance and open-mindedness that these powerful people share give them some sense of purpose while allowing moral decadence in their own lives and in society at large.  While ideas inherited from the Protestant roots of much of the West in terms of probity in public office and the rule of law persist at least for now, there is a programme of undermining the standards and meaning bequeathed to us by Christian civilization.  The corruption is benign and amoral at the moment, not violent and criminal.  In a sense that makes it all the more corrosive to the soul of Europe.  It is spiritually and morally bankrupt, but sees itself as righteous and worthy.  This is a very dangerous situation.

 

It is dangerous not because of the risk of some extremist movement from beyond the Overton Window (although such a risk should not be breezily dismissed, as we saw from the rise of Black Lives Matter with its Marxist agenda of erasing history and silencing opposition over the summer).  Even in the straitened times of Covid 19 and in the post- Credit crunch world, material life will not turn into unbearable suffering for most.  Instead there is a risk of falling into a state of anomie in part because of all our wants being met in a consumerist society and all our freedoms to follow our passions respected as long as we “respect” the driving passions of everyone else.  Fundamentally important to this nadir of Western civilization is the disappearance of Christianity.  What remains of the Church as an institution in most Western countries is run and led by that same anti-traditional section of society, thereby ensuring no genuine revival is possible.  Combine that with the continual pushing at lowering of moral standards and promotion of immorality in drama and in all aspects of the media and the trajectory of the West looks to be pretty vertiginous.

 

To look specifically at the UK, where social conservatism is almost silenced, there is no mechanism such as the primary system that the United States has, to give direct democratic input into the selection of the prime minister.  True we are a  monarchy, not a pure republican democracy.  A primary system for the potential Prime Minister does not necessarily mean that the Queen would not still have the formal role of appointing her first minister, only that the party would select him differently and then recommend him to the Queen.  That primary system would be a safety valve to overcome the control the party has over selection of candidates.  It would be a means to start dismantling the liberal oligarchy.

What the Left dismisses sniffily as “populism” must have democratic avenues to be expressed, because it reflects the attitudes and prejudices of a nation.  Despotism from the Right remains a very remote risk in the West of course.  The real danger is the growing power of cultural Marxism to which dominant liberalism has been unable to present any serious ideological resistance.  Freedom of speech, political diversity and honesty are all under threat from the cancel culture of the Left.  Electing a Conservative Government in the UK has done very little to slow down the increasing power of the Marxists, as has been seen by the ease with which they seized control of the streets and attacked precious monuments with seeming impunity. 

Thus there are a number of reasons why traditional perspectives are locked out of the public square – the lack of Church leadership, the cultural changes forced by the media, the infiltration of the Conservative Party by hard-line social liberals, the politically-correct restrictions enforced through intimidation and by means of new laws.  Meanwhile the Academy continues its programme of brainwashing our young people with Marxist indoctrination. 

Nonetheless, Russia faced all this too and yet retained its belief in traditional values.  Perhaps the iron fist causes a reaction of resistance; but more likely, despite Sergeism, the values were more deeply instilled in the Russian people and could not be erased.

In the West since before the Enlightenment, all the way back to William of Ockham and the Nominalists, truth and values have been attacked.  This has disorientated ordinary people, meaning they are not sure how to justify what they feel in their spirit to be true.    The real problem therefore lies in centuries of dismantling our Christian values.  It lies in the very liberal paradigm that tried to accommodate the fracturing of Protestantism into different sects and the loss of a coherent and sustaining tradition.  It lies in the European narrative from a Humanist perspective of an oppressive Church that played the role of Caesar.  It lies in the doctrine of Papal Supremacy that broke the West from the East and eventually led not to a rebuilding of cohesion, but everyone becoming their own Pope through Protestantism.

Therefore even with avenues for populist expression, whereby the residue of traditional values amongst ordinary people that have not yet been erased might find expression, that incoherence of tradition will not be overcome.  Instead only a spiritual renewal will achieve anything in secular society.  Only a rediscovery of Tradition in the sense of a uniting, objectively true and subjectively encountered reality can heal the West.  Its very dynamic scientific and material successes are in part both due to and a cause of the break down of that cohesive Tradition.  The worldly comforts and riches achieved were pursued after the loss of Tradition and distract from the need for a return to Tradition.  The West has gained the whole world, but lost its soul.

Russia undoubtedly has its problems, as indicated by high levels of both single parenthood and abortions.  There is financial and criminal corruption in high places.  It was badly damaged by the Revolution and prior to that there were Oriental forms of oppression by the Tsarist state despite its Christian ethos that was so deeply rooted.

Nonetheless what survived in Russia and what often seems alien to those of us unable to see the world from outside the liberal paradigm, is the tradition of faith that is life sustaining in an eternal sense.  Of course, even the Church was heavily compromised by the Soviet regime, but the Tradition through the Holy Spirit exists within each member of that Church, as Lossky explained.  It is far more possible to remain unperturbed in one’s faith in the Orthodox Church when there are profound sacerdotal failings than under the sacerdotal hierarchy of all forms of Western Christianity.  Priesthood and laity are understood differently.

What we see in Russia is a suffering nation and through suffering Christianity flourishes.  Western material success combined with a reductive strand of theology has led to a hollowing out of the Tradition. Only from the small seeds of faith and re-connection with the Holy Tradition will the West be rescued in a sense far more important than maintenance of the rule of law and democratic rights.  Perhaps a time will come when those fundamentals of law and freedom are lost so that providentially we might rediscover what is important.  In the West we have lost the sense of what is most important and that is why we have become obsessed in a maniacal way with cultural Marxist causes.  The rise of Left wing extremism is indicative of the craving for meaning, but it will not be found there.  It will only be found in a return to Traditional Faith and the Church.  Russia has already learnt that lesson the hard way and furthermore at a grassroots level it never fully lost touch with Tradition.   We need to be able to understand what is happening in Russia and we can only do that by stepping outside of our liberal secularist paradigm.    

PROGRESS - THE MODERN IDOLATRY

What is very interesting about the typical progressive is their dismissal of religious faith based upon personal revelation and inherited tradition as blind. The ideology of the progressive does not stand up to the sort of scrutiny to which traditional Christianity is continually subjected.  By that ideology I mean the unquestioned premise that the direction of history is towards a positive state and that the new is good by dint of being new.

Such an ideology can be traced back to the Victorian Positivists and further back to the Whiggery of Eighteenth Century England.  The Whigs won the battle of history and wrote history as though it had a providential direction towards the Hanoverian state.  This was taken up as a sort of pseudo-science and spawned the social Darwinism of Spencer, the Dialectical Materialism of Marx and Engels and the liberal assumption that society will become ever-more liberal and ever-more free.  The irony is that such philosophies of blind faith in blind progress have led to persecution, eugenics, concentration camps, class war, the GUlag and the destruction of freedom under the heel of the jack boot of the modern state.

It is to these dangerous roots that the modern Progressive consciously or unconsciously receives the succour for his ideology.  And the key point is that while religious faith is rejected as superstitious and as contradicted by empirical evidence, the Progressive himself places a blind faith in an ever-improving society as state power, censorship and bureaucracy increase, despite the overwhelming lesson of history that from Oliver Cromwell, through to Robespierre, Lenin and Hitler, the radical rejection of inherited society in favour of state-enforced progress has led to misery for countless millions.  From the French Terror to the millions dead in Ukraine from the collectivisation of farms, this blind and superstitious faith in progress has led to misery.

At root is the heresy often criticised by the late Seraphim Rose, the American convert from atheism to Eastern Orthodox Christianity - the heresy of Chiliasm.  That heresy was the belief that God's Kingdom could be created on earth, by political action.  Like so many heresies it moves away from orthodoxy by only the slightest degree, yet the consequences of the original error increase exponentially, so the last state is far worse than the first.  The second commandment of loving one's neighbour is distorted to create an ultimate solution for all our neighbours even at the expense of love of God.  The result has always been and always will be misery.  Utopia on this earth is impossible and to achieve it shows a lack of genuine faith and instead a dangerous blind faith in the inevitability of progress resulting from political action.

The answer to this serious error in Western thinking is to view society as being better or worse depending upon how much it participates in Truth.  This then removes the philosophical error of assuming history is going in one direction.  Further, rejecting this premise makes us aware of the danger of decline and decadence, and helps us to look for ways to maintain and achieve human flourishing through inherited wisdom.

Man lives a more flourishing life the closer he conforms to Truth, not as a result of being more modern or forward thinking.  This living life in a full and flourishing way can appear reactionary or old-fashioned - for example living life in the vocation of a husband and father or housewife and mother.  It can also be progressive, but not for the sake of being progressive.  William Wilberforce did not fight slavery through an appeal to abstract theory or the demands of progress; he fought and defeated slavery by an appeal to the internal and inherited traditions of Western civilisation - Christian values.  One might say Judaeo-Christian values when one thinks of the emphasis in the Old Testament on God freeing His people from slavery to a human master in the form of Pharaoh.

It is quite simply shallow to place one's faith in an ill-defined concept of progress.  We need to ask rather, does this social or political reform bring us closer to or further from the Truth?  An idea of progress for the sake of progress cannot help here.  We cannot know whether a change is for good or bad unless we turn to inherited tradition and personal faith (if these two work against each other something is very wrong with a civilisation and culture).

To give a specific example, there is a lot now said about the role of the male gender in a society.  The aggressive assaults upon our cultural understanding of what it is to be a male role model by the feminist ideologues has confused many.  They have conflated men when they fail, are violent, drunk or purposeless with the Gentleman.  The Gentleman is close to the Truth, tracing his antecedents in the idea of the Christian Knight, that civilised savage, courteous and true, yet strong and brave. To be fully-developed as a man is to look back to that inherited wisdom, which taught men to use their superior physical strength to defend the weak.  To avoid degenerating into a brute men should not be emasculated, but fulfil their potential as Gentlemen.  Here then we see that looking back enables us to reach closer to the Truth, as opposed to the confused situation resulting from progressive ideologies such as feminism.  When men behave as gentlemen it will be far more difficult for the Harvey Weinsteins of this world to misbehave - their behaviour would reveal them as cads because of the stark contrast with a social norm of chivalry. Our current progressive and socially-liberal milieu allowed cads and scoundrels to pass unnoticed for many years.

Progress as an idea is a false and shallow chimera.  It is superstition and nothingness.  It is far more irrational than faith placed in a personal God, discovered in personal revelation through the institution and inherited traditions of the Church. The progressive really should stop projecting their own flimsiness in their faith upon those who follow a deep, prescriptive and traditional religion.  The empirical evidence is clear, a belief in Utopia rather than Heaven has caused the greatest levels of misery in history, while those social reforms that have endured - equality under the law, the abolition of slavery, political freedom all rest upon an ancient and inherited notion of each man being made in the image of God.

ANTI-SEMITISM AND THE LEFT

One of the blind spots for the Left is that it is unable to accept it could be a source of bigotry or racism.  The Left is founded on the idea that it not only has different pragmatic and economic solutions, but that to subscribe to certain economic theories makes one morally superior.  The converse is also assumed, that however hard-working or diligent for the country a conservative is, he is morally bad perhaps even evil.  When coming into contact with decent conservatives, to keep their world-view of their moral superiority holding together, the Leftist will create some explanation, such as that this decent person has been fooled into being a conservative and is really Left wing under the surface.

Yet a perusal of history clearly shows that ideas put forward as progressive in every era have been responsible for more deaths, suffering, hatred and poverty than conservatism ever has been.  From 

Robespierre’s Terror to the Stalinist Gulags, to the economic catastrophe that is Socialist Venezuela (so admired by the current leader of the British Labour Party) it is the Left that has been the political movement most responsible for human suffering.  Nonetheless, when self-righteousness is the key foundation of one’s political involvement, it is an unthinkable thought that one’s beliefs might be the cause of suffering for the people you claim to help.  Thus begins the search for a scapegoat.  It is impossible for the average Leftist to take moral responsibility without his whole Weltanschauung and idea of himself as morally superior to his contemporaries being fatally undermined.

In the Twentieth Century anti-semitism was more associated with the Right and Jewish involvement in politics tended to be participation in Left wing Marxism.  If Nazism can be regarded as right wing, which is debatable given its anti-conservative, revolutionary and avante garde tendencies, that was of course the most egregious example of right-wing anti-semitism.  On the other hand, as Solzhenitsyn has pointed out, the high level of Jewish involvement in the Bolshevik movement was disproportionate in comparison to the number of Jewish Russians.  It is also worth mentioning that the involvement of White Russian emigres seeking revenge through the National Socialist movement in Germany is often overlooked.

Nonetheless, anti-semitism has a far more natural home with the Left.  Despite the terrible suffering of the Jewish people most have refused to give in to a victim status that would seem a natural default position given the extent of persecution.  They have not become passive clients of a Leftist narrative that feeds off resentment.  Of course many black people or other ethnic minorities refuse the resentment narrative fed to the them by White Leftists, but the Jewish refusal to give in to victimhood has been phenomenal and brave.  They have succeeded as a community in keeping their traditions alive (something intolerable to the anti-traditionalist Left) and individual Jews have often reached the very top of Western society, giving the lie to the Leftist narrative that our society is based on oppression, rather than the hierarchies of competence identified by Jordan Peterson.

Therefore there are twofold reasons to choose the Jews as scapegoats for the Left:  first they have refused to be compliant with the Marxist post-modern narrative of oppression by a white Anglo-Saxon protestant-establishment.  Secondly, by succeeding in a capitalist system they have become part of the oppressive conspiracy as set out in Left wing narrative.  The irony is of course that not only Karl Marx, but the founders of post-modernism or cultural Marxism were largely Jewish.  This Left wing involvement by some Jews says more about the experience of lacking roots in a society than it does about Western society itself.  This was of course a very important point for the Jewish Catholic writer and philosopher Simone Weil.

Western culture is fundamentally Christian and that means the Jewish religion and Scripture is a core part of our culture and values.  We are a Judaeo Christian culture and it is that culture that the cultural Marxists, post-moderns and Leftists seek to destroy. 

If Western culture is a conspiracy of the capitalist class against the proletariat, it is a very fine line between making that claim and stepping into a dark conspiracy theory about a certain race that is successful in capitalism being behind globalist neoliberal economics. 

Being anti-conservative, whether as an international or national socialist or a post-modern, is about attacking the fundamental values and the fabric of our Christian culture.  That is why Leftists can make common cause with those attacking traditional gender roles and hard-line Islamists who believe in traditional gender roles.  It is not that these different groups have a shared positive cause, they are simply enemies of the Western inheritance.  The Jews are different – their great sin is to succeed as an ethnic minority in this allegedly oppressive society.  The Left has not achieved a claim over their loyalty necessarily – they are not supplicants to the morally-virtuous Left-wing politicians.  Of course this is a gross generalisation, but we must understand that the Left thinks in gross generalisations.  All the way back to Marx, people are not individual persons, but members of a class.  They are reduced to being part of an oppressor or victim class with their personal attributes erased in the eyes of the ideologue.  That of course is very similar to racism.     

It is therefore a very thin line between accepting the Marxist narrative and slipping into anti-semitism.  In the United States the dominance of intersectional theories of oppression places Muslims as a group above Jews.  The problem of anti-semitism in political Islam is therefore being overlooked.  In the United Kingdom the main Left-of-centre parliamentary party has been taken over by Hard-Left anti-parliamentary economic Marxists.  If you believe capitalism is a conspiracy against the poor, it is a very small step to believing Jews are oppressing the people.  We are already seeing serious problems with anti-semitism in the British Labour Party.  The willingness of the American Democratic party to see and hear no evil with regard to political Islam means they too are starting to turn a blind eye to anti-semitism, despite the party’s strong connections with the Jewish community in the United States.

What all this tells us is that the Left cannot reform or be self-reflective or critical unless it accepts being Left wing is not an infallible sign of moral righteousness.  Most politics is just about the mechanics of achieving economic growth for as many people as possible and ensuring civil society survives.  There are different theories as to how this might be done – from wealth creation and trickle-down economics to redistributive taxation.  The moral choice is not whether one is Left or Right, but whether one participates at all.  As long as there is this blindness about its own moral fallibility, the Left will fail to confront its own festering demons of anti-semitism and bigotry.

Novichok and Holy Russia

Russia’s recovery from Bolshevism and Return to Christian Values is a Beacon of Hope – yet where were these values in Salisbury?

It seemed like the Barsetshire Chronicles had met John Le Carre when a Russian former spy and double agent and his daughter were poisoned by a chemical substance.  The cathedral city of Salisbury has been the site of the first chemical attack on these islands.  Since then one British subject has died from novichok poisoning and another has finally been released from hospital.

The evidence appears to point to Russian actors.  Russia denies this.  The alternative, put forward by conspiracy theorists, that British intelligence was responsible seems far-fetched to British ears.  To regard such an accusation as credible would require most of us to reconstruct completely our understanding of how the British state functions.  This is far easier for a Russian who is familiar with a state that commits crimes. History is clear, the Soviet state committed moral crimes against its people.  One only needs to peruse Solzhenitsyn to find this out.  The idea that the British Government would have fabricated or staged the poisoning may seem incredible to us, but not to a Russian citizen.

Neither is it very persuasive to draw an equivalence with the British State’s assassination of Islamist terrorists in Iraq and Syria.  These are cases of war zones and the former state is one where the government is an ally of the British and the latter state is no friend of the Islamists.  By contrast, in Salisbury an attack was made on British soil with a chemical weapon, with callous disregard of the danger to lives and the local economy.  In parenthesis  it is simplistic to imagine that the vast state of Russia and its intelligence services are as centralised as those of the British state, nonetheless, on balance, as opposed to beyond reasonable doubt, the Russian state appears to be guilty.  Western allies rallied to the cause of Britain – showing Brexit Britain continues to have international stature.

Herein lies the main point – Russia may have seen many dramatic changes since the fall of the Soviet Union, but nonetheless its starting point is very low if we recall Stalin, the KGB and the GUlag.  It is a low that is now far more familiar to those in the West, as the Soviets enforced by the jack boot what left-wing university professors in the West are re-educating middle-class students to support – abolition of capitalism and suppression of the Church, mass abortion and shifting women en masse into the work place.  Once we grasp this then we can understand how a nation that is seeing a resurgent Church can also be connected to a crime that was committed with a cavalier attitude to the sanctity of innocent life.

After the regicide of the Tsar Russia began a moral decline into atheistic tyranny.  Truth was sacrificed to a materialistic ideology and the sanctity of the person was as nothing.  The state became all intrusive and claimed citizens’ loyalty over and above human loyalties to family, Church and God. 

Of course the resurgence of Orthodoxy and the veneration of the Romanovs is proof that for all this state oppression the human values of the Russians did not disappear, but simply went underground.  Yet as Jordan Peterson has pointed out, the effect of the totalitarian system of Communism was to replace Truth with the Lie.  In effect – the attempt to abolish the Logos.  It was in that sense a Satanic project.  Russia hit a nadir in its civilization, whatever the nostalgia now for the certainties of the Soviet period, following the abuse of the common weal by capitalistic oligarchs. 

Countries' stories are not straight lines, but always revert to national archetypes.  If we think of the history of nations and cultures as cyclical rather than progressive we not only get a more accurate understanding of what is happening, but can rationalise the apparent contradictions of that vast country Winston Churchill once described as “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma”.  Russia has hit the bottom point of a cycle and now is rising up again, but that does not mean the powers that be in the Russian establishment are untainted by the brutal system of the Bolshevik state of which many of the current establishment were part. Furthermore, any revolution is disruptive and undoubtedly criminal elements have benefited from the collapse of the Soviet Union, just as there has been the opportunity to resuscitate former traditions of value.

Quite apart from the apparent direct attack on our soil, why is this so important to us?  Because, continuing the theme of the cycle in the history of nations, it seems that Western civilization has reached a tipping point and is in precipitous decline.  The doctrines of the postmodernists and cultural Marxists have spread like a destructive contagion out of the university campuses and into mainstream life.  These destructive forces are too subtle to manifest themselves in the same bloody way that they did in Russia, but these forces are now more insidious.  Therefore Russia’s rediscovery of Christian tradition is the great hope of the West and to see it tarnished by the apparent disregard for the sanctity of the human person can seem to undermine this hope.

What must therefore be understood is this :  The shadow of brutal Bolshevik atheism is cast long over modern Russia, on the one hand.  On the other hand, the forces of tradition, religious faith and the Church were never extinguished and are now resurgent, with the support of the same state still tainted by a Bolshevik past.

Two parallel ideas are underpinning post -Soviet Russia, that of Holy Russia and that of Greater Russia.  In the figure of Vladimir Putin both ideas are honoured, although perhaps the latter to the greater degree.  Putin recognises the importance of religious faith and apparently was secretly baptised and raised as a believer.  Yet to believe he is manipulating religious belief and imposing it upon people to disguise his alleged tyranny is a complete misunderstanding of a very simplistic Western mind-set.

The Russian Church is a grass-roots phenomenon, its flame was kept burning by the people.  The Government has recognised this as a fact, just as Stalin had to recognise it during the German invasion.  A cultural Marxist narrative of religion being a means of control simply will not do as an intelligent analysis of what the situation is in Russia.

Furthermore, Putin is not having to contrive at remaining in power – he is very popular because he stood up to the oligarchs and because he, like the Russian people at large, felt the humiliation of the fall of the Soviet Union.  He is a patriot, for all his faults.

The western media may describe Putin as a kleptocratic reincarnation of Hitler, but this is almost a back-to-front misunderstanding.  Putin’s mind-set is defensive not aggressive, I believe.  He wishes to maintain Russia’s status and a sphere of national interest on the world stage.  That need not affect Western interests.  His speech at Munich in 2007 goes a long way to explain his world view.  The expansion of NATO, the stationing of US missiles on his border and Western intervention in the Ukraine, prior to his annexation of the Crimea have all created a feeling of encirclement. Russia had not expected this and initially believed that the end of the Cold War would mean a partnership of equality between the United States and the Russian Federation, with mutual respect for their different traditions.

We are rightly proud of our own turning point after another event in Munich, when we were to go on to stand alone against Hitler.  Yet this moment of true pride in our national valour sometimes misleads us into thinking every international situation is one of a moral test to resist the temptation of appeasement.  Anthony Eden arguably made this mistake over the Suez Canal.

Russia is changing or going full circle, rediscovering values and traditions we are on the point of losing.  Russia needs to know it is still an equal player on the world stage and that its own traditions, which are not liberal-democratic, can be regarded with respect.  Let us remember the U.S. started intervening in Russia’s choice of leader before Russia ever did so in US elections. 

For this reason President Trump, in the teeth of opposition from the Washington establishment and the military-industrial complex, is approaching Russia in the right way.  Friendship and mutual respect will bring the best out of relations with Russia.  Were Russia no longer painted as a pariah state we might also learn something from how traditional values can resurrect after Marxism.  This is a very necessary lesson we could learn as our own traditions and values, from Christianity to the meaning of gender are being corroded by unchallenged cultural-Marxists.

So what about Novichok?  Well again it seems that President Trump has it right in an approach that is both realist and principled.  While the UK is rightly going through the process of a criminal investigation, the President took a clear stand against Russia with the recall of diplomats, but he is now adopting the constructive policy of engagement.  For unlike National Socialist Germany, engaging with Christian Russia will undoubtedly lead to benefits for both civilizations. Engagement should not always be regarded as appeasement.   

The War to End a Gentler World

Much of the gentleness of Europe had been dissipated anyway, before the First World War.  Commercialisation, the era of the sophist, the economist and the calculator that Edmund Burke long ago identified had already come about.  It co-existed however with a continuing gentleness of Faith, Monarchy, rural life and homesteads.  Alongside the grime and misery of industrialisation, the older world still lingered – sustained because that was the natural way to live.  A portrait of that world was powerfully painted by Siegfried Sassoon in his book Memoir of a Foxhunting Man.

The Great War was the first industrial and first fully-mechanised war.  Men were no longer bands of brothers, but pawns to be sacrificed.  When the clouds of smoke cleared and the barren landscape remained, that gentler world could no longer survive.  The pressures were building, but the Great War ensured the victory of Modernity. 

The combatants indeed represented different worlds.  Austria-Hungary and Germany placed their faith in the new power of mechanised warfare.  The descendants of the Holy Roman Empire again turned on the remnants of Byzantium, supported by the Ottomans.  In its harassment of the small state of Serbia, Austria-Hungary was only following in the spirit of the Catholic Crusaders who sacked Christian Constantinople in 1204 for gain of its treasure.

The new nation of Germany allied with the Hapsburgs made war on an older Christian culture in its attack on Serbia, bringing Holy Russia into the conflict, in defence of its tiny Orthodox brother.  The mechanised horror of modern warfare the Germanic nations wrought on Russia, brought an end to the Orthodox Monarchy and saw the forces of materialism and modernity Dostoevsky foresaw taking control of Russia.  The Russia of greedy, crass oligarchs that we see today is the result of the triumph of those forces and the Holy Spiritual Russia is still battling to re-emerge.

In England things changed forever.  For many the painful losses of War at least meant the forces of Progress triumphed – women’s suffrage, class distinctions beginning to dissolve and a greater faith in science and the Machine (that force identified with all its dangers by that Anglophobe Anglican R S Thomas).

Yet with those many, many young men who died for us – to protect us from a German-dominated single State of Europe – did not something of England’s spirit die too?  For all our progress, didn’t something intangible yet profound die with our boys on Flanders Field?  Haven’t we been left with an uglier world all round – a world where money does the talking, faith is seen as blind not as vital for our existence and our beautiful countryside is disappearing, subject to the forces of greed and gain?

Edward Thomas died for the land of England more than anything else.  The England his poetry describes, however, seems more like a distant memory.

Yet I would not dare say they died in vain.  For by resisting Germany we did retain our freedom in the West despite all the ugliness of the modern world.  By keeping that freedom – unlike Russia’s fate as it fell under the control of the merciless Bolsheviks - we at least have the power to make the choice to rebuild that gentler world.  Much as consumerism and technology can separate us from trusting in older values, the young men who died protected our freedom to resist the erosion by the forces of modernity of our spiritual inheritance.

Twenty-first Century Bear-baiting

The bear has a sore head and it is on the loose, out of its pit.  Anyone who doubts bear baiting is cruel only has to see the suffering of Mr. Putin through his torment at the hands of Western powers.  NATO has crept up to Mother Russia’s borders, the West arbitrarily pushed for Kosovan independence, through which it broke from Serbia – Russia’s ally.  The United States invaded the sovereign state of Iraq (ruled by a brutal psychopath), ignoring Russian opposition.  The West encouraged a crony capitalism to rise from the ruins of the Soviet Empire, allowing the hated oligarchs to prosper.  Russia is smarting and now it is flexing its muscles.  The Crimean crisis is of course about protecting a Naval base and pipelines, it is about extending its sphere of influence, it is about protecting Russian speakers in the Crimea, but it is also about Russian pride, even Russian hurt pride. 

This outlook may seem like Russian paranoia to those of us in the West, but it could still be a genuinely-held world-view and it seems this is perhaps how the world does look and feel to Putin and his allies.  I am sure there are many liberal Russians who would not see things this way.  It does seem the case though that the rising tensions between the West and Russia are at root to do with a failure to understand each other.

It also seems difficult for the West to understand why the Crimean people should vote in a referendum to join Russia (having arbitrarily been given away to the Ukraine by Krushchev) and thereby avoid closer links with the apparently morally-good European Union.  However, looked at dispassionately, the West might have offered material wealth, but it also offers spiritual poverty. The conservative society of Eastern and Southern Ukraine is presented with a liberal-individualist culture in Wetern Europe manifested through abortion on demand, same-sex marriage, secularism and materialism – is that really such an appealing culture to join?

The Slavic world has not done well out of contact with the West.  Before the Napoleonic Wars, Russia was an agrarian society based around the institutions of Monarchy and Church.  Invasion by France woke Russia up to its technological backwardness.  It therefore embarked upon a programme of modernisation and industrialisation, with all the ugliness and brutalisation that industrialisation brings.  We know in the West that industrialisation can lead to the loss of something precious – one only needs to think of Ruskin, Carlyle, the Romantic poets and the Distributists to hear the literary mourning for a lost world.  There is a constant theme in our men of letters that a better world has been cast away for riches.  Yes we have an easier life physically in the industrialised West, but are we not poorer emotionally and spiritually?  Church attendance is down, marriages are fewer and break more often, teenage-pregnancy rates are high, employees often suffer mentally (stress, nervous breakdowns) from the demands made of them by corporate employers.  What we have cast aside - the hard work of a traditional, agrarian life - might even have been the praxis leading to virtue.  The Russians would understand that.

Hyper-modernisation in Russia went hand-in-hand with a sort of hyper-Enlightenment.  Bolshevism reared its ugly head, throwing off the Church and tradition by taking the ideas of the Enlightenment to their inevitable conclusion – political violence and atheist values.  Thus, while the West preserved the Church and its political institutions, Russia took the pseudo-science of Enlightenment theory seriously and plunged into bloody revolution, followed by brutal oppression by an atheist regime.

Russia as the Soviet Union oppressed its own people and its subject peoples brutally.  People disappeared to the Gulag for opposing a regime that can only be regarded as evil, particularly under Joseph Stalin.  Whole peoples were moved to different locations, as a means of undermining the concept of nation that binds us together.  The West remained as a beacon of hope for many in that dark time. 

The Cold War saw the West win, not only because of its economic strength, but because there was still virtue residing in its culture, handed down by its heritage – a heritage Russia had violently forsaken.  However, during the latter part of the Twentieth Century the West became more and more detached from its own cultural values and developed a liberal-individualist anti-culture.  Liberal individualism would not have defeated Nazism and neither did it win the Cold War.

A financially and morally bankrupt Russian Empire disintegrated in the 1990s.  The West did not think it necessary to offer its heritage of political tradition and cultural values; rather, it introduced Russia to capitalism unlimited by values and cultural norms that still applied (however diminished) in the West.   The hated Russian oligarchs prospered.  Once again Russia was brought into contact with the worst aspects of Western culture.  Selfishness and materialism, not tradition and religion, were seen as the alternative to Socialism. 

The West might see itself as a bastion of the rule of law and political freedom.  To Russians it probably looks like the preacher of selfishness, licentiousness and materialism.  Western Europe was once built upon Church and Monarchy, now it appears to have subsided into moral turpitude.  The only value that matters is individual freedom or rather selfish licence unconstrained by values or taboos.  That at least is probably how we look to the Slavic world.

Of course it is difficult really to imagine how we look to others, if not impossible.  Notwithstanding that, we must at least feel some unease at simply proselytising the post-Soviet world into value-less liberal-individualism.  It really is a rather corrosive world-view and the Slavs, with their own traumatic history of destructive atheism and an all-powerful, oppressive State can probably see that.

Yet in the West we still presume that our earlier moral integrity means that even today, what we do is right because we are the ones doing it.  Thus, invading Iraq or supporting the breaking away of Kosovo is the morally right thing to do, but for Russia to annex Crimea or for the Crimeans to choose to leave the Ukraine is wrong.  Well perhaps it is wrong and certainly Russia is signed up to respect the Ukraine’s borders as part of the deal on nuclear weapons.  The West is therefore on relatively firm legal ground in opposing the annexation and it is right to be concerned about the fate of the minority Tartar people.  However, now that the modern West has descended into a value-less liberalism it is not in a position to preach to others.  So perhaps it would be less hypocritical to see this international crisis as a battle to extend spheres of influence on the part of the West as much as the East, rather than trying to claim the moral high ground.