The intimidated and the non-intimidated
The flashmob, during which the clerics and laity declare their allegiance to the Church, shows how people react to intimidation in different ways.
Someone brings back the memory of the frightened Soviet citizens of 1937, who loudly demanded the death of "enemies of the people" in the hope of being excluded from being among them. Others, on the contrary, call back the memory of the martyrs, old and new, who were not afraid and firmly held on to the Church of Christ.
The site “Mirotovorets” (“Peacemaker”) has already responded to the flash mob with a mocking message: “We want to help them in their desire to get into the SBU. Please assist in identifying the participants of the cassockmob for further entry in Purgatory. We will identify them to make it easier for the SBU to summon them. Let's do 2 good deeds. We’ll help both the priests in their desire and the SBU."
The mocking, derisive, sneering tone with which they write about “cassocks”, and (in their other messages) about God's work, about prayer, is well recognized – this is the tone of the Komsomol members of the “godless five-year” period.
Searches in churches and houses of bishops and priests, calls for “conversations” in the SBU — all these things are fairly obvious and rude attempts to intimidate the faithful to take part in the constituent assembly of a new church structure, which President Poroshenko, with the support (if not to say pushing through ) of American curators, creates together with Patriarch Bartholomew.
The question of what the “unifying council”, to which the SBU drives with the help of the “Mirotvorets” site, will cost – in the spiritual sense – does not even seem to be raised. There has been no talk of any spiritual purpose from the very beginning.
Different people react differently to these attempts to intimidate. Being under pressure from the security services is really scary, and this is quite a traumatic experience when people break into your house to turn everything upside down, especially for a peaceful and law-abiding person, who so far has not been in sight of the security forces.
No one wants to be among the disagreeable, and many citizens react almost instinctively, trying to defect to the side that is persecuting, away from those who are being persecuted. A lot of comments on the network repeat the old Soviet maxim "the charged is always guilty" "comrade wolf knows who to eat," if the security services press the priests, then the priests are to blame for something. Or rather, no matter whether they are guilty or not, it is better not to quarrel with comrade wolf.
Alas, even among the Orthodox believers, who harnessed themselves to the “unification project”, there are hardly any noticeable voices that would dare to protest. Their fellow believers are pressed by special services – and they prefer to approve or, at best, keep quiet. It seems that not only solidarity with their brothers in Christ but also concern about the future of the “autocephalous project”, for which such involvement of the SBU is a shame, could give rise to protests – but people prefer to take the side of comrade wolf.
Well, this is a common problem in the post-Soviet space – a person may consider themselves dignified Europeans or not, but to press them a little bit – and a frightened Soviet citizen of the Stalin era gets out of them.
It is difficult to judge people strictly for such faintheartedness – I don’t know how I would behave in their place - but, calling things by their proper names, this is just cowardice. Sometimes a simple, beastly fear that they will come to you; sometimes a more subtle fear of “not fitting in”, being “a foe” not “a friend”, but that is always a lack of the very dignity and courage that people can talk about so willingly.
I see people writing that the Church is “Putin's”, “KGB’s”, “FSB’s”; that the SBU is pressing it right and that this is not persecution of the Church but a struggle with the “fifth column”. Well, this phenomenon is already well known.
Now and then I have to argue with adherents to the "immortal ideas of communism" and admirers of comrade Stalin, who assert that there was no persecution of the Church under the Bolsheviks. Enemies slander. But what about the new martyrs – here are the names, the dates of death, the circumstances, the saved documents? Well, look – they say – for what they shot this or that martyr? For “counter-revolutionary agitation”, “plotting”, “spying for Japan”, etc. What would you like from the Soviet regime? That it would have ignored the rebels, spies and traitors? This no power can afford.
Indeed, although quite a lot of documentary evidence of the execution of bishops, priests, monastics and laity has been saved, the documents of the NKVD do not say "shot for faith in Christ". There is always some other reason – most often treason in one form or another, collaboration with a bunch of foreign intelligence services, and the like. They also wrote that the priests sheltered the "White Army bandits" and kept weapons – the motive that we hear now.
But in order to believe all these accusations, one must be an adherent to the "immortal ideas" and a fan of comrade Stalin – for all others, it is obvious that this is persecution for the faith of the regime ideologically fundamentally hostile to Christianity.
Of course, what is happening now, in terms of scale and level of ferocity, does not reach the level of those years. This phenomenon is similar in nature, but not in strength. But common features cannot be overlooked.
We do not know who will have been President by April, and how events will develop. But we know that time will pass, and people will remember – they were not intimidated. They were with the Church of God when the state attempted to press it because they have faith, courage and dignity.
