Упрощенная HTML-версия
Author : L. Reshetnikov
Director of Russia's Institute for Strategic Studies, Candidate of Science (History)
NINETY YEARS AGO, in November 1920, the Civil War
in European Russia ended with an evacuation of the Russian
Army of Baron Wrangel from the Crimea; thousands upon
thousands of our compatriots of all social groups, religions
and nationalities found themselves abroad. The Russian Ex-
odus created a unique phenomenon of Russian emigration,
a great tragedy of the great people which cut both sides -
those who left Russia and those who stayed behind.
The moral and spiritual ties which for centuries had been
keeping the nation together snapped. For many decades,
Whites and Reds remained divided by an abyss of irreconcilable enmity.
All sober-minded people in Russia and abroad know that the two parts of the formerly
united people should be reconciled and re-united.
To unify the country and to chart its road, we should go back to the reference point to
sort out what happened to us ninety years ago. This spiritual and moral analysis is indis-
pensable for Russia's development as one of the world's leading countries which speaks
to other nations, explains its aims and reveals the meaning of life.
Russians were destined to serve the Divine Truth; their predestination was their strength;
this was why for many centuries the Russian Empire attracted other peoples; this was why
Muslims, Buddhists, Judaists and even pagans accepted the Russian czar as their ruler.
The Righteous Saint John of Kronstadt warned: "You have forgotten God and abandoned
Him and He abandoned you with His Divine Providence to wild and unrestrained des-
potism."
Atheism of Russian intelligentsia divorced them from real life and real Russia; it misled
them to believe that they alone "knew what people needed"; hence their conviction that
social upheaval should be imposed on society by force.
Let me state here that in the first decade of the 20th century the "educated" part of Russian
society became alienated from Russian spirituality and traditions to the extent that it was
equally alienated from Russia's historical statehood.
We should never forget that Constitutional Democrats and Socialists-Revolutionaries, the
enemies of imperial Russia, joined the coalition yet insisted on their liberal or revolutionary
and frequently terrorist ideologies. Common people, on the other hand, first took the Civil
War for a war waged by the czarist army against godlessness.
Электронное приложение к журналу «
Международная жизнь
»
Spiritual and Moral Roots of Russia's National Catastrophe