AN ESSAY IN UNIVERSAL HISTORY From an Orthodox Christian Point of View PART 6: THE AGE OF MAMMON (1945-2001) Volume 3: From 1992 to 2001 Vladimir Moss © Copyright Vladimir Moss, 2017: All Rights Reserved 1 The communists have been hurled at the Church like a crazy dog. Their Soviet emblem - the hammer and sickle - corresponds to their mission. With the hammer they beat people over the head, and with the sickle they mow down the churches. But then the Masons will remove the communists and take control of Russia… St. Theodore (Rafanovsky) of Belorussia (+1975). In order to have a democracy in society there must be a dictatorship in power. Anatoly Chubais. 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. Globalization is all about wealth. It knows the price of everything and value of nothing. Without borders the world will become – is becoming – a howling desert of traffic fumes, concrete and plastic, where nowhere is home and the only language is money. Peter Hitchens. The best way to shake people out of their inertia is to put them in debt. Then you give them the power to realize their dreams overnight, while ensuring that they’ll spend years paying for their dreams. This is the principle upon which the stability of the Western world rests. A Serb. 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. Twenty years ago, we said farewell to the Red Empire with damnations and tears. Today, we can take a look at the recent history with calm, as if it were a historic experience. It is important because the debate on socialism has not been settled. A new generation has grown up that has a different worldview; but many young people still read Marx and Lenin. Stalin museums are opening up in the Russian cities, Stalin monuments are being erected. The Red Empire no longer exists, but the Red Man has been preserved. He lasts. Svetlana Aleksiévitch, Nobel Prize Lecture. Once a Chekist [KGB agent], always a Chekist. Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. What began in Russia will end in America. Elder Ignaty of Harbin (+1958). Let no one deceive you by any means: that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition… II Thessalonians 2.3. 2 3 V. GLOBALIZATION 6 78. GLOBALIZATION AND THE EUROPEAN UNION 7 79. SUPER-ECUMENISM (4) 22 80. RUSSIA IN THE 1990s: (1) THE GLOBALIST NIGHTMARE 27 81. RUSSIA IN THE 1990s: (2) THE SPIRITUAL CATASTROPHE 47 82. THE FALL OF YUGOSLAVIA: (1) THE BOSNIAN WAR 68 83. THE PROGRESS OF ROCOR’S MISSION 78 83. ROMANIDES AND THE NATURE OF SIN 86 85. AMERICA, ISRAEL AND RUSSIA 100 86. FROC: THE FOREIGN BISHOPS INTERVENE 113 87. THE ROCOR-CYPRIANITE UNIA 131 88. ORTHODOXY IN THE THIRD WORLD 136 89. THE RUSSIAN ORTHODOX AUTONOMOUS CHURCH 141 90. THE GREEKS DIVIDE AGAIN 151 91. THE SERGIANIST CONQUEST OF JERUSALEM 162 92. THE FALL OF YUGOSLAVIA: (2) THE WAR IN KOSOVO 175 93. ROCOR AND THE SERBS 188 94. THE EVIL EMPIRE STRIKES BACK 192 95. THE MP’S “JUBILEE” COUNCIL 198 96. “THE SECOND OCTOBER REVOLUTION” 210 97. PUTIN’S REVOLUTION: (1) POLITICS AND ECONOMICS 216 98. PUTIN’S REVOLUTION: (2) RELIGION 225 99. THE ABOLITION OF MAN 232 EPILOGUE. THE WORLD AFTER 9/11 256 1. The West 257 2. China 261 3. The Islamic World 264 4. Russia 267 Conclusion 270 APPENDIX 1. ANONYMOUS PROPHECY OF MOUNT ATHOS (1053) 272 APPENDIX 2. A PROPHECY OF ST. NILUS THE MYRRH-GUSHER OF MOUNT ATHOS (+1596) 273 APPENDIX 3. A PROPHECY OF ST. THEOPHAN OF POLTAVA (+1940) 274 4 APPENDIX 4. THE FALL OF ROCOR 276 5 V. GLOBALIZATION 6 77. GLOBALIZATION AND THE EUROPEAN UNION During the Cold War, there had been two very different worlds, Capitalism and Communism, and a third world that swayed from one side to the other. By the end of millennium there was essentially only one world, the world of globalization. Even Russia and China became partially globalized: only North Korea and to some extent Iran remained outside the new global empire. While periods of globalization had existed before in human history – we think of the Roman empire, and of the world before 1914 – they had not truly included the whole world. Only now was there a single world – and therefore the real possibility of a single world ruler. “I believe,” wrote Thomas L. Friedman, “that if you want to understand the post- Cold War world you have to start by understanding that a new international system has succeeded it – globalization. This is ‘The One Big Thing’ people should focus on. Globalization is not the only thing influencing events in the world today, but to the extent that there is a North Star and a worldwide shaping force, it is this system. What is new is the system. What is old is power politics, chaos, clashing civilizations and liberalism. And what is the drama of the post-Cold War world is the interaction between this new system and these old passions.”1 But what is globalization? Investopedia defines globalization as “the tendency of investment funds and businesses to move beyond domestic and national markets to other markets around the globe, thereby increasing the interconnection of the world. Globalization has had the effect of markedly increasing international trade and cultural exchange.”2 But it has eroded the power of national governments and increased those of multi-national corporations (150 MNCs now control two-thirds of the world economy). If national governments do not cooperate with the MNCs and the globalization process, they risk seeing factories and jobs removed to other, lower-wage-paying countries. So globalization is both a curse and a blessing, and a major source of instability in the world. The two most important political events in the western world in the 1990s were the continuing spread of globalization, and its terribly destructive effects on some major countries such as Russia, on the one hand, and the expansion of the European Union, on the other. We shall see that they are closely linked… Opinions on globalization are sharply divided – indeed, the debate between the globalists and anti-globalists is probably the sharpest debate in the contemporary world. Christians tend to believe that since the Tower of Babel, different languages and nations have been created by God to slow down the spread of evil, and as refuges against it. But for atheist globalists they are the evil. 1 Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree; in M.J. Cohen and John Major, History in Quotations, London: Cassell, 2004, p. 944. 2 http://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/globalization.asp#ixzz4ZuLDrfAT. 7 * Certain facts are indisputable. Yuval Noah Harari summarises them thus: “Since around 200 BC, most humans have lived in empires. It seems likely that in the future, too, most humans will live in one. But this time the empire will be truly global. The imperial vision of dominion over the entire world could be imminent. “As the twenty-first century unfolds, nationalism is fast losing ground. More and more people believe that all of humankind is the legitimate source of political authority, rather than the members of a particular nationality, and that safeguarding human rights and protecting the interests of the entire human species should be the guiding light of politics. If so, having close to 200 independent states is a hindrance rather than a help. Since Swedes, Indonesians and Nigerians deserve the same human rights, wouldn’t it be simpler for a single global government to safeguard them? “The appearance of essentially global problems, such as melting ice caps, nibbles away at whatever legitimacy remains to the independent nation states. No sovereign state will be able to overcome global warming on its own. The Chinese Mandate of Heaven was given by Heaven to solve the problems of mankind. The modern Mandate of Heaven will be given to humankind to solve the problems of heaven, such as the hole in the ozone layer and the accumulation of greenhouse gases. The colour of the global empire may well be green. “As of 2014, the world is still politically fragmented, but states are fast losing their independence. Not one of them is really able to execute independent economic policies, to declare and wage wars as it pleases, or even to run its own internal affairs as it sees fit. States are increasingly open to the machinations of global markets, to the interference of global companies and NGOs, and to the supervision of global public opinion and the international judicial system. States are obliged to conform to global standards of financial behavior, environmental policy and justice. Immensely powerful currents of capital, labour and information turn and shape the world, with a growing disregard for the borders and opinions of states. “The global empire being forged before our eyes is not governed by any particular state or ethnic group. Much like the Late Roman Empire, it is ruled by a multi-ethnic elite, and is held together by a common culture and common interests. Throughout the world, more and more entrepreneurs, engineers, experts, scholars, lawyers and managers are called to join the empire. They must ponder whether to answer the imperial call or to remain loyal to their state and people.