The Log House Has Not Burned Down - It is Still Burning. Part 4. #

V.V. Buzhinsky

So where is the way out? The solution lies, first and foremost, in the spiritual healing of society. In such cases, people often speak of repentance—including repentance on the part of the dominant Church. However, if we follow our usual logic, then truly: must a believing Nikonian repent for the sins of distant ancestors, especially when it is unknown whether they themselves participated in murders, burnings, tortures, persecutions, and the like? Most likely, those who did participate and commit these things already paid the price across three or four generations—through the extinction of their line in epidemics, wars, or natural disasters—unless their descendants awakened from their forgetfulness. The state, after all, is faceless, and it is no longer quite the same state. The Church? One patriarch today, another tomorrow. It would seem there is no one to hold accountable. And yet, for the deeds of the 17th century, the descendants have now been paying the price for over three centuries. If there was blood and sorrow, and it remains unrepented, then all of it has been stored up in the “coffer” of national sins.

What is it, then, that keeps us from shedding this centuries-old burden? Could it be some fundamental deficiency in ourselves? And if so, how does it manifest?

The answer, perhaps, is disarmingly simple. Nikonians—every day, many times over—in morning and evening prayers, during services, in churches and monasteries, confirm the choice of their ancestors through the sign of the cross made with three fingers. They confirm both their ancestors’ choice and their own indifference, apathy, laziness of mind, and forgetfulness. Are such people of use to the Lord? Will He help them?

There is yet another, seemingly crucial, matter. Do you remember the two unused fingers in the three-finger sign of the cross, which are described as “bent and idle”? Why did the “reformers” write it that way? How could such an egregious phrase have been allowed? It could have been worded differently—“pressed to the palm,” or something else. One could think of many alternatives, but why did they write precisely this: “bent and idle”?

Indeed, it turns out these fingers are treated as if they are unnecessary, dispensable. And this, in the sign of the cross—a mystical act, and perhaps the most important act of spiritual protection—where nothing should be idle! This means that something in us is defective if we are incapable of engaging those two fingers. It means we are somehow incomplete. Even the deaf and mute, in this regard, seem more whole—for in their language, all fingers are engaged. But we address God in a deficient language!

Could this be a hint, whispered to us from the depths of the centuries?

It seems the Council could not phrase it otherwise. It HAD to be written precisely this way: “bent and idle!”

So concisely and vividly were enshrined, for all future generations, our subservience to foreign influence and our idleness—traits that have come to characterize the national spirit. In describing the unused fingers, the Council was actually describing us, here and now—issuing judgment on itself, on the religion it had violently established in blood, on the Romanov dynasty that made the new religion its state religion, and ultimately on the state itself, called Russia. And after all, this is a proven route into oblivion—for Byzantium too, at one point, adopted the three-finger sign of the cross.

But it is written: “No man that hath a blemish… shall come nigh to offer the offerings of the Lord… he shall not come nigh to offer the bread of his God” (Leviticus 21:20).

And what defect could be greater than a physical one—surplus fingers?

Of course—a spiritual one! Physical defects are but the visible result of spiritual ones. The physical is needed to make visible the inward corruption. It turns out this is the most reliable way.

And in this “defect upon us” lie fatal, tragic components: the unrepented sin of ancestral indifference and forgetfulness, embodied in the continued confirmation of their choice through the three-fingered sign; our infamous negligence and sloth, which stem from idleness—for we do not even pause to ask why such things happen to us.

Indifference… One must admit, we have walked right into this “trap” beautifully. Having carried this corruption from generation to generation for three and a half centuries, we now no longer recognize ourselves. The events of recent years are vivid proof of this. In just ten years, our great country has been reduced to a raw materials appendage of the “golden billion,” and we have met this with astonishing apathy. This phenomenon astonishes everyone today and remains incomprehensible.

Indifference and apathy greatly grieve the Lord: “I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot” (Revelation 3:15).

Forgetfulness, it seems, has always been with us—but now, magnified by apathy and indifference, it threatens to lead us to the irreversible. Soon there may be no one left who is able—or willing—to remember who he is, or where he comes from.

Nearly everyone who considers themselves a Christian knows—and true believers actively make use of—the protection against “demonic arrows” (as one prayer calls them) that comes from making the sign of the cross. And naturally, the sign of the cross must be made correctly. Clearly, there is a difference between the two-finger and three-finger form.

Anticipating future objections, denials, or accusations of incompetence, we can respond as follows: “If people were killed for making the sign of the cross with two fingers, then how you cross yourself must have enormous and fundamental significance.”

Thus, the act of crossing oneself with three fingers—enshrined in blood—has acquired a special mystical and sacred meaning and now bears two independent and fateful aspects:

• the absence of reliable spiritual protection (that is, the three-fingered sign is inherently defective);

• the affirmation and acceptance of the sin of one’s ancestors.

And indeed, Archpriest Avvakum was right. A new church—the Nikonian church—was effectively created. We may call it something else, but it changes nothing. After all, there are Lutherans, Calvinists, and so forth—why not Nikonians?

When did the fatal schism between the Catholics and Orthodox truly occur? Was it in the 11th century? No, it was later—when Constantinople was captured and plundered, and when blood was spilled between the churches. The reunification of Catholics and Protestants likewise became impossible because of bloodshed.

Is our own Schism destined to be healed?

“Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.”
God abandons those who forget—and then the devil takes over. Forgetfulness is itself a crime against God. Forgetfulness is a kind of murder—but even more dreadful. A murderer destroys only his own soul. But through forgetfulness, we destroy the souls of our descendants as well, who will find it even harder to remember. This creates a terrifying chain: forgetfulness → unbelief (soul-murder) → death. We must begin to feel ourselves connected to the past. Only then can we be connected to the present and the future. Only then will we begin to know who we are.

How many generations of forgetfulness (read: unbelief) does it take to initiate the self-destruction of a lineage? We do not know. Perhaps the same three to four generations. We can only guess. We cannot comprehend the providence of God. But we must decipher His signs. And we must do it quickly—for judging by the rapid decline in our population, the process is already underway.

Theoretically, there is a way out. But it requires pain for the Fatherland, goodwill, and the rejection of politics in matters of religion.

Two thousand years have passed since the Nativity of Christ.

One thousand years have passed since the Baptism of Rus’.
Yet we still sit with our mouths open, listening to smooth-talking preachers.
No prophet is accepted in his own country.

How beautiful are the words: “Liberty, equality, fraternity, democracy.” But now let us remember the commandments: “Love God, love thy neighbor, do not kill, do not steal, do not commit adultery,” and so on. Where is the place here for the freedom and democracy they preach to us? The freedom to kill? The freedom to commit adultery? The freedom to steal? What other kind of freedom is being pushed on us through television and other media? Freedom of speech? But even speech can be used to kill or to corrupt.

Now more than ever, we find ourselves in a critical situation.
We are slow to introduce our children to Church Slavonic—the liturgical language to which we are genetically close, the language in which our ancestors prayed to God for a thousand years, the language of spiritual defense.
But we eagerly teach them international English, believing it will ensure their worldly success.
And yet, without prayerful labor, success may never come—or it may prove false.
We refuse to consider this.

Not every student of English even knows the Our Father.
The problem is not with English, but with our neglect of our own native heritage.
And that, as history shows, is a national calamity.

Meanwhile, as we absorbed Western liberal wisdom—with its spiritual barrenness and moral depravity—the “golden billion” fully ripened, led by the foremost “defender of human rights,” the English-speaking USA.

Judging by the pattern of history, we should expect misfortune to come from the Anglosphere.
They may not even need to bomb us.
We are already under a “velvet” occupation.
This is no longer a pagan deception—it is a demonic cunning.

We ourselves extract our resources for them.
We educate our children from their textbooks.
Their mass culture is becoming our own.
And in this way, our God-chosen Orthodox people may sink into oblivion without honor.

What gave the Old Believers the strength to preserve their national identity and their faith under centuries of persecution?

The answer is simple: faith.

The leaders of that time grievously underestimated their people.
The faith of the people turned out to be far deeper than that of the elites—and this, it seems, is the chief lesson of our history, a lesson that may yet serve us, if we are not too late.

We must acknowledge that this great spiritual feat of the Old Believers has not yet been properly recognized.
And from that recognition follows a vital conclusion:
There are prophets in our land.
We are capable of creating our own civilization.
Mindless imitation is destructive.
We have our own path.

What matters now is that we take a few precise, righteous steps.
On our own, without anyone else’s prompting.
No one will help us—but ourselves.

And for that—we must be with God.

In each of us, to one degree or another, an Old Believer lives. It is already imprinted in us genetically. A people could not have forgotten its own great feat, begun in Kievan Rus’, in the Kyiv Caves Lavra, and continued in the forests of Muscovy and in the Solovki. This is affirmed by our glorious victories in every war that followed. It is proved by the act of a young Russian soldier in Chechnya who refused to remove his cross, paid for it with his life, but showed himself to be truly Russian.

It is astonishing how ancient and simple the methods of testing for Russianness are. In those days, they would order: “Make the sign of the cross!” The one who crossed with two fingers was sent to the stake or the rack; the one who used three fingers was released. No lie detector needed. And by today’s standards, one might think: why not cross oneself with three fingers in public, then go behind a corner and cross with two all you like? But still, the world is upheld by those who cannot stoop to such deceit. It reeks too much of betrayal. Russians know that one cannot deceive God.

Kostomarov [15] was unable to find a convincing explanation for the rise of the Old Believers, claiming that the Russian people were ignorant and indifferent to the faith. Yet he also noted the widespread literacy among the Old Believers, in contrast to the rest of the population. Nevertheless, he was convinced that with the spread of education, the Old Belief would disappear on its own: “…the schism is sustained by the absence of education.”

Today, with “enlightenment” having progressed significantly, the opinion that Old Believers are ignorant fanatics seems nearly unchallenged. But by that measure, nearly all early Christian saints and martyrs were fanatics. Nearly all of them had an escape route. So the young soldier in Chechnya, then—was he also an ignorant fanatic? And what of the thief who confessed Christ on the cross while the frenzied crowd mocked Him? Did that thief have a university degree—or even basic schooling?

The grace once earned by our ancestors is being depleted. Today, we are consuming its final remnants. It is time to turn decisively toward our own path. It is time to proclaim the national idea of the Russian people—Ukrainians, Belarusians, Great Russians—arising from an honest reappraisal of our history:

The national idea is Holy Rus’.

We must understand that “Russian” was originally an adjective, signifying both a title and a duty; that we were meant to be Russian; that Russian is not a composition of blood but a condition of the spirit. One is not born Russian—one becomes Russian. And then, there will be no need to divide Crimea or Kuban, no need to distort history. In the face of looming danger, the task for all true patriots of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia is the same: to create a common spiritual space from the Carpathians and Brest to the Pacific Ocean, where Orthodoxy is understood as a way of life.

The more believers there are, the greater the holiness of society. Each believer builds a paradise in his own soul—Holy Rus’. On this sinful earth, not all can be believers. There may be more or fewer. But as our history has shown, there is a certain “critical threshold” of holiness, beyond which things begin to work out for us, and the efforts of our enemies simultaneously and inevitably collapse.

How do we achieve this? Where do we begin?

We must begin with repentance. We must remember our history.

We must remember who we are and where we come from—and come to our senses. We must understand that our thousand-year history is filled with both good and evil, holiness and filth; that our world is one unified world, divided by the Providence of God into three epochs—beginning, continuation, and preservation of Holy Rus’.

Yes, we have forgotten something very important—perhaps the most important thing. We have forgotten that “neighbor” means not only a relative, but also the stranger standing beside you on the tram. Even if you never see him again, you must love him as yourself—and in doing so, you yourself will benefit.

Where is this taught? Certainly not in school.

We have forgotten many essential, originally Russian words: conscience, honor, dignity, chastity, kindness, mercy, grace. Worse still, we often do not find in ourselves—or in our children—those qualities denoted by these words. The indifferent do not possess such qualities. One could go on. The word “love,” the foundation of life, has today been filled with a completely different, base meaning.

But we have learned new words: presentation, summit, contraception, exclusive, and many others. Is that not a recipe for disaster?

Look at your children’s school curricula. Will you find lessons on mercy, love of goodness, chastity? No. But your children will be taught “safe sex.”

Everything happening to us is happening because we are as we are. It is not the fault of the Freemasons, or the notorious “box” (television). They have been permitted to us. But the corruption lies within us—within each of us. The stick has two ends. It is quite possible to make your television a window into our own Russian world. After all, we have already proven that we are capable of forming our own civilization. Our ancestors did everything necessary for this. We are neither better nor worse than other nations—we are simply different, and we must live with our own mind.

History shows that only the people themselves make history. The hope that we will one day receive an Orthodox, believing ruler will arise only when we become worthy of one—when we establish a “critical threshold of holiness.”

There must be repentance—ecclesiastical, state, and civil. The Nikonian Church must reflect on this and take the lead in a process of repentance.

The state recognizes the continuity of the former Tsarist Russia—but only in regard to its financial debts. But what of the spiritual debts, which seem far more important? Restitution of monetary debts to the Old Believers could take the form of exempting all of their religious communities, of every confession, from taxation for the next 300–350 years, in reparation for the persecutions, ruin, the second poll tax, and so forth. In the spiritual realm, the entire activity of the state—its foreign and domestic policy alike—must be directed toward increasing the “holiness of society.” In this direction, many already know what needs to be done first and what will immediately bear fruit: introduce strict spiritual and moral censorship in mass media. In schools for Russian children—mandatory instruction in the foundations of Orthodoxy and Orthodox culture.

It is astonishing: there are ministries of health, emergency situations, social protection, and so forth—ministries designed to mitigate misfortunes rather than eliminate their causes. And few stop to think that if even a portion of the funds allocated to these structures were wisely invested in the spiritual health of the people, these very ministries would find their work much easier.

Civic repentance, it seems, lies in the return to the two-finger sign of the cross. Such a return must occur gradually and of one’s own free will.

And then the Lord will help us.

Holy Russian Land awaits Russian plowmen—those whose hands and thoughts are clean. We must be cleansed and begin to till the soil. Then an unseen garden will bloom and bear unimaginable fruit. Then the bedbugs and cockroaches will vanish, the Colorado beetles and rats, the blight and the mildew, and so on.

Of course, paradise on earth is impossible—but we must build it nonetheless. Otherwise, hell reproduces itself. “A holy place is never empty.”

The path ahead is lit by the light of truth from centuries past—including our own millennium. It does not shine behind us. We do not walk in our own shadow. It shines from the future. A new turn in history has begun. On this turning point we are awaited—either by the blessing of God, or by nonexistence and utter hell.

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

Viktor Buzhinsky

REFERENCES

15. Kostomarov, N.I. The Schism: Historical Monographs and Studies. Moscow: Charly, 1994. 608 pp.

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