On July 28, 12 streets in the city center of Yoshkar-Ola will be closed on the occasion of celebrating the Christianization of Kyivan Rus’

A natural question arises: why don’t they block the city center of Moscow on the occasion of the Christianization of Armenia, Bulgaria, or even the Christianization of the population of Mari El itself?  Besides the fact that we are forced to celebrate an event that has nothing to do with us, it also has nothing to do with the Kremlin statehood. Neither the Russian Empire, nor the Tsardom of Muscovy, nor even Moscow existed back then, and they wouldn’t appear until much later. If something like this is to be celebrated in the capital of Mari EL, it should be a celebration of the Christianization of Constantinople, where the Ecumenical Patriarchate is located, not in Kyiv and not in Moscow. Although the ROC would never agree to something like this — because the mother church of all Orthodox Christians simply never authorized the existence of the ROC and the Moscow Patriarchate. They are nothing more than impostors.

For reference:

In 1448, without any authorization from the mother church, Moscow proclaimed its metropolis, declaring the mother church to be “schismatics,” though in fact Moscow itself was a schismatic. In 1588, the Muscovites decided to become a new center of Orthodoxy — and to do this, they needed to somehow get rid of the status of heretics. The then Tsar Boris Godunov ordered to capture Patriarch Jeremias II of Constantinople, who decided to visit Muscovy at that time. By torture and blackmail, the Muscovites forced the patriarch to issue a tomos recognizing the Moscow Patriarchate.

This tomos, though illegally obtained, was in effect until 1935, when the ROC dissolved the synod by order of the Bolsheviks. In 1943, Stalin ordered the ROC to convene an “ecumenical” council and renew the Moscow Patriarchate, because he realized that by embedding his agents in the churches, he could influence the population even more effectively. “Ecumenical” is a bit of an overstatement, since no one from the Ecumenical Patriarchate was present.

In the times of the Russian Empire, the affairs of the ROC were managed by Ober-Procurators — secular officials appointed by the Tsar. In the USSR, the affairs of the ROC were managed by the Department for Church Affairs.

In Muscovy, the affairs of ROC were always managed by tsars and leaders, and priests were only middlemen, who better corresponded to the status of state agitators than clergymen.

Since the ROC is not a legally recognized church, all churches in Mari El have a legitimate right to appeal to the Ecumenical Patriarchate with a request to grant autocephaly, so that the local church would not be subordinate to Moscow. Then no celebrations imposed by the ROC and the Kremlin will not have to be tolerated.

Of course, Orthodoxy in Mari EL is a consequence of Moscow’s conquest, but if it is here, we can at least use it in our favor, putting another crack on the map of Moscow’s under-empire.