Desnitsky recalls that he first went abroad in 1992 and there met Orthodox believers from ROCOR, almost the same as Orthodox believers in Russia, but with one difference: «don't set foot in that church.» His interlocutors called the «red church» graceless because of Metropolitan Sergius's 1927 declaration. The author could not then understand this logic: no one had demanded that he himself sign the declaration, and the earthly church, in his reasoning, consists of sinful people, and the attempt to find a community without historical sins leads to a sect.
He quotes Metropolitan Sergius's formulation: «We want to be Orthodox and at the same time to recognize the Soviet Union as our civil Motherland, whose joys and successes are our joys and successes, and whose failures are our failures.» In Desnitsky's view, this is not so very different from Akhmatova's words: «I was then with my people there, where my people, unfortunately, were.» He stipulates that Sergius expressed himself ambiguously, but reminds us: the hierarch and his flock were under Soviet power, which could have set about the final eradication of Christianity in the republic. The author does not presume to judge the metropolitan and those who followed him: they did not renounce Christ and preserved the church organization and the possibility of preaching, and for possible intercession beyond the line of permissible compromise «they have already answered before God.»
Hostages and Their Condition
Answering the question of why Sergianism was hotly discussed more than half a century after the declaration, Desnitsky compares the church's situation to that of hostages held by terrorists: for a time one must forget about honor and dignity, just as religious norms are suspended when it is a matter of saving life. But with hostages, he writes, a strange thing happens: «Under the influence of severe shock, hostages begin to sympathize with their captors, justify their actions, and ultimately identify with them, adopting their ideas and considering their sacrifice necessary for the achievement of a “common” goal.» This, he says, is called «Stockholm syndrome.» He extends this mechanism to victims of childhood violence, who over time may perceive violence as a manifestation of love or as just punishment.
According to the author, the country lived for decades in conditions where violence was the norm, and these patterns of behavior were passed from generation to generation. «And when I hear and see what is happening in our earthly church, I increasingly come to the conclusion that Stockholm syndrome has not bypassed it either—and how could it, if the Church contains the same people as society?» he writes. As a historical parallel, he cites the 18th century, when hierarchs recognized and justified the synodal system, and Metropolitan Arseny (Matsievich), who did not wish to recognize Empress Catherine as «the supreme judge of the church,» died in prison.
What the Author Calls the New Sergianism
Desnitsky asserts that the forced compromise of a hostage over time became a habitual state: generations of church people grew up knowing no other state of affairs, and they began to justify it and find in it a higher meaning. «What was once done under threat of death came to be done out of habit, and later at the heart's command,» he writes. From this, in his opinion, stems much in church reality: the desire to adapt to the opinions of the current authorities and never criticize them in anything; the great-power rhetoric of struggle against the aggressive NATO bloc and the world conspiracy, which under Stalin and Khrushchev was called «the struggle for peace»; icons depicting Stalin and a lubok-propagandistic perception of national history; relations within certain parishes and dioceses reminiscent of party committee meetings.
The author is not sure that a gesture of «blowing and spitting» on the declaration will help get rid of this, but he believes it must be done urgently: more and more people are coming to the church who grew up in conditions of informational and personal freedom. According to him, there is no more malicious caricature of Orthodoxy than this whole complex—«whether Stockholm or Sergian, but certainly not churchly, not Orthodox, not Christian.»
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