Eye on Eurasia: Believing the 'Protocols'


By Paul Goble
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL

Tartu, Estonia, Apr. 12 (UPI) -- A senior official of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate argues the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" -- a notorious anti-Semitic forgery of the late tsarist period -- accurately predicts the directions in which Europe and Ukraine are moving.

Vitaliy Kosovskiy, secretary of the Patriarchal Church in Ukraine and a professor at the Kyiv Spiritual Academy, earlier this month posted on the Church's Web site an article suggesting "regardless of who wrote these 'Protocols' -- employees of the tsarist police or 'the Zionist elders'" -- was a matter of indifference.

What was "important," he said, is that "although written more than 100 years ago, they reveal the contemporary course of history." And taken together with the Bible and the writings of the Church Fathers, he continued, they can help the Orthodox faithful in Ukraine understand what is happening to them and why (orthodox.org.ua/page-1513.html).

Kosovskiy wrote the main indication of the coming of apocalyptic times is the "presence of world rule," something he suggested is being promoted by globalization and "the community called the European Union." And he says one can tell where these trends will take Ukraine in the future by looking into the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion."

Taking at face value language from that work, this pro-Moscow churchman argued "'Europe without borders, with a common currency and with the unification of the human personality" is "the beginning of the end" of the world foretold in "Protocol No. 3."

Kosovskiy's reliance on this notorious anti-Semitic forgery already is disturbing many in Ukraine. It should be worrying others, too. Writing in Kiev's Zerkalo nedeli last month, Pavel Gavrilyuk argued Kosovskiy's article was appalling on many levels (religare.ru/print15602).

First, Kosovskiy's approach violates all the principles of the Church. The notion that a forgery like the Protocols should be treated as of equal value to the Bible or the works of the Church Fathers for interpreting the world is a dangerous absurdity, Gavrilyuk wrote.

Second, it promotes anti-Semitism within the Patriarchal church and thus destroys its reputation and its influence. Gavrilyuk added such anti-Semitic comments were a frequent feature in Patriarchate churches.

He reported he had once heard a priest in church near Moscow deliver a sermon arguing that: "1.the Jews crucified Christ, 2. atheism -- comes from the intelligentsia and science, 3. all the moral degradation in Russia has been brought in from America, 4. Russians are a God-chosen people, [and] 5. the predictions of the Apocalypse of St. John must be applied to the contemporary situation ...because the time of the end of the world is near."

And third, Kosovskiy's words and their appearance on the Web site suggests the pro-Moscow church is prepared to play the anti-Semitic card in a last desperate effort to try to maintain its position in Ukraine and Moscow's influence in that country, a play that Gavrilyuk argued was based on a complete misreading of where Ukraine and Ukrainians are now.

Ukrainians want to be part of Europe, Gavrilyuk insisted, precisely because they have escaped from the dangerous fantasies of the past including anti-Semitism and because they believe they can build a better future here and now rather than adopting the fatalistic notion that they must simply do nothing because the end times are near.

Kosovskiy's language, Gavrilyuk continued, is thus not only morally offensive but politically counterproductive, too. Indeed, Gavrilyuk suggested, the very obscurantism Kosovskiy offers will drive Ukrainians either into other Orthodox churches or out of the church altogether.

But such anti-Semitic and apocalyptic language inevitably must be of concern to more than just the Ukrainians at whom it is addressed in the first instance. It must be of concern to people of good will everywhere. And in addition to denouncing the use of such language, they need to be asking two fundamental questions:

On the one hand, why has the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate not disowned Kosovskiy's words but chosen instead to distribute them widely and with its apparent imprimatur on its Web site? And on the other, why is Russian President Vladimir Putin so ready to cooperate with that church and with church officials like Kosovskiy?

To the extent Gavrilyuk is right, Ukrainians are appalled with the answers to these questions. The rest of us should be as well.

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(Paul Goble teaches at the EuroCollege of the University of Tartu in Estonia.)