Bolshevik. Artist: Boris Kustodiev
I venture to write at least a few lines about how difficult it is to rid oneself of ideological intoxication, of falsehood hiding behind truth—moreover, intermingling with it. There is nothing surprising when an atheist, outraged by the injustice of the world, becomes a communist, socialist, or anarchist, but when a Christian becomes “left-wing”—this is evidence of colossal spiritual blindness, of darkness taken for light. I was born and raised in a “left-wing” family, traumatized by the villainy of the Yeltsin era, and my opinion of it has not changed to this day: that too was a time of monstrous ideological substitutions, which only a sober mind, enlightened for many years by Christ’s faith—which I did not possess—could sort out. Indignation at the collapse of the country and economic lawlessness predetermined my ideological choice at that time.
Indignation at the collapse of the country and economic lawlessness predetermined my ideological choice at that time
For this reason, the only alternative to the market chaos seemed to be socialism, moreover of the Soviet type, nostalgia for the USSR, primarily for the “stagnation,” which later degenerated into an apology for the Stalin era. Before coming to the Church, I was completely under the influence of these phantoms, believed in them, argued with teachers at school, although even then it was difficult for me to believe in the whitewashing of Stalin. Coming to the Church placed before me a series of pressing spiritual questions requiring immediate resolution, primarily practical ones: how to struggle against passions, how to live in a spiritually alien environment without judging anyone. For this reason, the problem of ideological orientation receded into the background.
In adolescence, I became fascinated with Western counterculture (beatniks, hippies, May 1968), read a lot, bought books about it, watched films; this interest did not disappear with coming to the Church: now it simply seemed to me that this was purely scholarly interest, although sympathy for the nonconformists was so strong that I was deceiving myself. Then it seemed to me that counterculture was a protest against rigid hierarchies, rigid institutions (both in the USSR and in the West). The romantic aura around the USSR began to gradually dissipate, but it enveloped the Western nineteen-sixties.
The situation changed with marriageю My wife’s difficulties at her public sector job quickly made her “left-wing,” but precisely in the traditional, not countercultural sense. It was my wife who finally opened my eyes to the fact that counterculture renewed and enriched contemporary capitalism, becoming its secret engine; it is counterculture that is responsible for the depraved atmosphere of the last few decades in the world, for repressive tolerance, the destruction of the family, and other woes.
It was then, in order to extricate myself from an irresolvable ideological contradiction, that I placed my bets on the doctrine of “Christian socialism” of George Fedotov, with which I was poorly acquainted but constantly referenced in conversations to justify the ideological confusion in my head. The final awakening from the ideological lie of communism began when I bought a collection of works by contemporary philosophers and theologians, “Orthodox Stalinism,” upon reading which I finally saw with eyes that truly see the contradiction within myself.
My attempts to link Christianity and “leftism,” primarily relying on the works of E. Mounier, left-wing Catholics, Protestant preachers of the “social Gospel” in the USA, “liberation theology” in Latin America, and many others, as it turned out, had already been undertaken by the “Izborsk Club” for the rehabilitation of Stalin and his era, but by other methods. If I relied largely on the experience of Western Christianity, subconsciously understanding that linking “leftism” with Orthodoxy would not work, then the “Izborsk Club” tried to find support for its strange constructions precisely in Orthodoxy. It was their theories that the authors of the collection “Orthodox Stalinism” smashed to smithereens in the first place.
The next step in the decommunization of my consciousness was reading The Black Book of Communism (albeit fragmentary, but memorable), watching the recording of Galina Volchek’s play “Steep Route” based on the book of the same name by Eugenia Ginzburg, as well as reading Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, Rybakov’s Children of the Arbat, Dudintsev’s White Robes, and Dombrovsky’s Faculty of Unnecessary Things. All this came crashing down on me so sharply, coupled with reflections on the fates of some New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, whose lives I read or heard (and sometimes remembered for a long time, such as the life of the Venerable Martyr Grand Duchess Elizabeth), that I could no longer detach myself from it or cope with the turbulent flow of often still unordered, not yet coherent reflections on what the “left” idea is and where it leads.
It is significant that The Gulag Archipelago was completed by the author in May 1968, when counterculture and thousands of students, hippies, and other nonconformists were shaking the bourgeois world. It was God’s will that the book that struck the hardest blow to the world communist movement was finished precisely then. Both personally for me and for those like me who studied counterculture for many years, this is very important. The value of human freedom, this gift of God to man, which, along with creativity, is a sign of the God-likeness of every person, together with man’s right to life (and how the “leftists” laughed and mocked this human right, moreover not only populists but also philosophers, like Alain Badiou in his Ethics)—it is precisely these two values in the world that are incredibly slandered and desecrated.
How much was said in the nineteen-nineties: “Here is your freedom, look what it has led to!” And it is so: the price of freedom consists in the fact that man is free to choose the evil of trampling freedom to the same degree as the evil of the arbitrariness of permissiveness, and no one can prevent him. Even God, Who does not save man without his free will. And is not man’s right to live, not to die, and his will to choose good or evil the most valuable thing in the world? The demons that invisibly act on earth, counteracting the Divine power of the Holy Spirit, always pervert that which is good by nature. That is what they have done with freedom, having fallen themselves and proposed (not pushed, not forced!) the same to Adam and Eve in paradise.
The demons that invisibly act on earth always pervert that which is good by nature. This is what they have done with freedom
And they agreed. And God did not interfere with their freedom; He chose a longer path to save stumbling humanity: through His Incarnation, Self-sacrifice on the Cross, and Glorious Resurrection.
So if even God does not violate our freedom, do we have the right to do so, and all the more to deprive others of life for disagreement with us and our doctrines? Communism takes this path; being absolutely convinced of its rightness, it leads to the systematic destruction of humanity, and chiefly—to its enslavement. That is why the demons of this man-hating doctrine are so terrible, so strong, and do not leave the world (where would they go, for they are eternal). Capitalism is also a demonic system, but it acts more cunningly; it tries to direct human freedom into the channel it needs, into the channel of indulgence in human passions (greed, fornication, and others). Communism, however, parasitizes primarily on envy.
The left ideology, apparently, will not soon disappear from my life, for enlightenment has only begun. And the main thing is not to become blind again, not to succumb to the subtle diabolical lie that has seduced millions, first theoretically—through the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin—and then practically; for it, this lie, completely shamelessly (which reveals its satanic character) knows how to pass off real blood as achievements, to hide, to lie, and to falsify at any attempt to resist it.
I would like to conclude with two phrases from Holy Scripture about the fact that one must not fear falsehood, for it is impossible to hide the truth about the Butovo firing range, for All things that are reproved are made manifest by the light: for whatsoever doth make manifest is light (Eph. 5:13).
And the second important quote: For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another (Gal. 5:13).
