Authority as an obstacle for personal and social development
At the end of January – beginning of February 2008 “Russia” TV-channel has two times shown the film “The Fall of the Empire. The Byzantium Lesson”, filmed by “the pastor” archimandrite Tikhon (Shevkunov, who has been raised to the rank of V. V. Putin’s “personal confessor” by mass-media), and who has got a cinematographic education. According to the concept of Byzantium history stated in the film, in the history of Russian Empire – USSR – post-Soviet RusZionia those cultural and political mistakes, which by Tikhon’s opinion have brought Byzantium to ruin, have been repeated in many aspects. The main mistake (in his representation) is the of Empire people’s apostasy of the so-called “orthodox faith” that caused numerous mistakes – consequences of that “principal mistake”.
In press (which in present RusZionia, as in 1980-90th, is still overwhelmed by the spirit of liberalism so the West is “all light in window” for them) all the discussion on film was reduced to the following. Reproaching Tikhon of tendentious interpretation of the history of the Byzantium society and its mutual relations with the outer world; indicating several actual mistakes and discrepancies; charging that the film groundlessly tries to convince RusZionian people that the West is the pathological enemy of Russia during all the history.
Actually the film has the indisputable advantage which hasn’t been noticed by liberal critics. It states the question: What defects does the so-called “Orthodoxy” have? The defects, since which the Byzantium society, based on the “Orthodox” worldview and world-understanding , wasn’t able to solve actual social and state problems in proper times and tried to find ready receipts at the West during thousand-year history of “East Rome empire”? In fact the, the same repeats as well in the history of Russia, which had accepted the “main treasure” of Byzantium – the so-called “Orthodox faith” (as it is stated in the film).
Without answering this question or without accusing its inconsistency perspectives of Russia’s revival as the society self-sufficient in the aspect of meaning of life – are vague. I.e. “the Time of Troubles ” as a crash of the historically formed culture may repeat.
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