THE AGE of MAMMON (1945 to 1992)
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THE AGE OF MAMMON (1945 to 1992) PART VI OF “AN ESSAY IN UNIVERSAL HISTORY” From an Orthodox Point of View Vladimir Moss © Copyright: Vladimir Moss, 2018. All rights reserved. 1 No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and Mammon. Matthew 6.24. Western Europeans have lost what the Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno famously called the “tragic sense of life.” They have forgotten what the World War II generation so painfully learnt: that everything you love, even the greatest and most cultured civilizations in history, can be swept away by people who are unworthy of them. Other than simply ignoring it, one of the few ways to avoid this tragic sense of life is to push it away through a belief in the tide of human progress. That tactic remains for the time being the most popular approach. David Murray. As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil that they set out to destroy. C. H. Dawson. Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder. Arnold J. Toynbee. Since men are not endowed with the same capacities, if they are free they will not be equal, and if they are equal they are not free. Alexander Solzhenitsyn. The only way to convince oneself and the rest of humanity that the socialist system is best is to see to it that there are no other systems. Jean-Francois Revel (1985). The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e. the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e. the standards of thought) no longer exist. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951). Totalitarianism probably demands a disbelief in the very existence of objective truth. George Orwell. Man’s minds were out of balance. This explained everything and, by explaining it, condoned it. The penchant of psychology to explain the world solely in terms of the mind now received full play. Cruelty and sexual perversion were natural outlets for frustration induced by the suppression of the id by the ego. George L. Mosse, The Culture of Western Europe (1988). The violence wrought by the sexual revolution is incalculable: 50 million dead babies, countless broken homes, and generations of grown ups who can't grow up. Photius Avant. 2 ‘The nations of Europe must be guided towards a Superstate without their peoples understanding what is happening. This can be carried out in successive stages, each camouflaged as having an economic goal, but which will end up by leading them irreversibly into a federation. Jean Monnet (1952). The world is trying the experiment of attempting to form a civilized but non- Christian mentality. The experiment will fail; but we must be very patient in awaiting its collapse; meanwhile redeeming the time: so that the Faith may be preserved alive through the dark ages before us; to renew and rebuild civilization, and save the world from suicide. T.S. Eliot, Thoughts after Lambeth. It may be brethren, that soon you will experience a time of turmoil, and some of you will be called to take the path of denying our sacred laws and to submit to laws established by mere human authority. Beware of such a path! Beware of the path taken by the thief on the left; for by the weight of blasphemy, by the weight of reviling Christ, he went to his eternal perdition. St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco (+1966). Humanism is not an alternative to religious belief, but rather a degenerate and unwitting version of it. The main mark of modern governments is that we do not know who governs, de facto any more than de jure. We see the politician and not his backer; still less the backer of the backer; or, what is most important of all, the banker of the backer. J.R.R. Tolkien. It is time, it is the twelfth hour, for certain of our ecclesiastical representatives to stop being exclusively slaves of nationalism and politics, no matter what and whose, and become high priests and priests of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. Fr. Justin Popovich. The average person might well be no happier today than in 1800. We can choose our spouses, friends and neighbours, but they can choose to leave us. With the individual wielding unprecedented power to decide her own path in life, we find it ever harder to make commitments. We thus live in an increasingly lonely world of unravelling commitments and families. Yuval Noah Harari, (2014). The time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, will heap up for themselves teachers, and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables. II Timothy 4.3-4. People have moved away from ‘religion’ as something anchored in organized worship and systematic beliefs within an institution, to a self-made ‘spirituality’ outside 3 formal structures, which is based on experience, has no doctrine and makes no claim to philosophical coherence. Clifford Longley. That which is called democracy is always in fact plutocracy. The only alternative to the rule of the rich is to have a ruler who is deliberately made more powerful even than the rich. It is to have a ruler who is secure of his place, instead of rulers who are fighting for their place. G.K. Chesterton. Israel is where Jews are. It is not a line on a map. Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir. The death of God does not mean that man will believe in nothing, but that he will believe in anything. G.K. Chesterton. ...Today's concept of democracy, this horrible political correctness that so marks Western society: the people can do anything they want, but they don't trust themselves to think independently. Daniel Barenboim. We have placed too much hope in political and social reforms, only to discover that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life. Alexander Solzhenitsyn. We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis... and the nations will accept the New World Order. David Rockefeller. 4 INTRODUCTION 8 I. THE DANGEROUS YEARS (1945-1953) 14 1. ANARCHY IN EUROPE 15 2. THE SOVIET OLD ORDER 23 3. THE MARSHALL PLAN AND THE BERLIN AIRLIFT 33 4. THE COLD WAR 41 5. THE SORROWS OF THE RUSSIAN CHURCH 48 6. THE CHURCH IN EASTERN EUROPE 59 7. THE YUGOSLAV WAY 68 8. AMERICA, JAPAN AND CHINA 78 9. MAOIST COMMUNISM 84 10. THE FALL OF THE BRITISH RAJ 90 11. THE PROS AND CONS OF EMPIRE 99 12. ORTHODOXY AND THE WORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES (1) 104 13. THE STATE OF ISRAEL 110 14. THE KOREAN WAR 122 15. DIVISIONS IN THE GREEK CHURCH 126 16. ORTHODOXY AND THE WORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES (2) 138 17. THE CULT OF STALIN 143 18. AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGY 147 II. THE AFFLUENT YEARS (1953-1971) 155 19. THE SUCCESSORS OF STALIN 156 20. ROCOR AT THE CROSSROADS 163 21. CHRISTIAN THINKERS IN THE POST-CHRISTIAN AGE 177 22. THE REVOLUTION IN BIOLOGY 186 23. THE BIG BANG THEORY 194 24. SCIENCE AND FREE WILL 204 25. THE EUROPEAN UNION 211 26. ARAB NATIONALISM, SUEZ AND THE SIX-DAY WAR 225 5 27. BRITAIN’S MORAL COLLAPSE 235 28. THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION 242 29. ORTHODOXY AND THE WORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES (3) 252 30. THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS 263 31. THE KHRUSHCHEV PERSECUTION 273 32. THE PASSPORTLESS MOVEMENT 278 33. THE OLD CALENDARISTS RESTORE THEIR HIERARCHIES 283 34. MAO’S WAR ON CHINA 293 35. THE VIETNAM WAR AND THE SIXTIES GENERATION 301 36. FROM PARIS TO PRAGUE 308 37. THE LIFTING OF THE ANATHEMAS 318 38. THE FALL OF THE SERBIAN AND BULGARIAN CHURCHES 329 39. ORTHODOXY AND THE WORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES (4) 350 40. THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL AND CULTURAL MARXISM 368 III. CAPITALISM WAVERS (1971-1982) 386 41. NIXON IN CHINA 387 42. THE NIXON SHOCK AND THE GLOBAL MINOTAUR 395 43. THE COSTS OF THE REVOLUTION 402 44. THE AMERICAN RELIGIOUS RIGHT 419 45. SOLZHENITSYN, DÉTENTE AND APPEASEMENT 426 46. THE COLD WAR IN LATIN AMERICA 441 47. THE COLD WAR IN EAST ASIA 446 48. THE COLD WAR IN AFRICA 453 49. COMMUNISM VERSUS LIBERALISM 459 50. ROCOR’S THIRD ALL-EMIGRATION COUNCIL 463 51. THE GEORGIAN CHURCH AND THE KGB 477 52. “NIKODEMOVSCHINA” 480 53. SUPER-ECUMENISM (1) 484 54. THE ISLAMIC REVOLUTION 490 6 55. THE DECLINE OF MARXISM-LENINISM 501 56. STATES AND INDIVIDUALS 507 IV. COMMUNISM IMPLODES (1982-92) 511 57. THE POLISH COUNTER-REVOLUTION 512 58. THE REAGAN-THATCHER ALLIANCE: (1) POLITICS 517 59. THE REAGAN-THATCHER ALLIANCE: (2) ECONOMICS 521 60. FRIEDMANITE ECONOMICS AND THE THIRD WORLD 527 61. THE ANATHEMA AGAINST ECUMENISM 538 62. CHAOS AMONG THE GREEK OLD CALENDARISTS 542 62. ROCOR BEGINS TO CRACK 568 64. SUPER-ECUMENISM (2) 578 65. ROCOR AND THE CATACOMBS 584 66. GLASNOST’ AND PERESTROIKA 590 67. CHERNOBYL 593 68. SOVIET DEMOCRACY? 601 69. ROCOR’S MISSION INSIDE RUSSIA 606 70. POLAND’S JOYS AND SORROWS 614 71. THE TIANANMEN MASSACRE 620 72. THE FALL OF THE BERLIN WALL 631 73. THE ROAD TO THE EURO 640 74. SUPER-ECUMENISM (3) 646 75.