Fort Ross
Posted on 08/28/2009 6:34:19 AM PDT by Nikas777
Web Posted: 08/25/2009 2:31 CDT
Crowd calls for `Mikhail the Bloody' to quit
Associated Press -
Originally published on Dec. 10, 1990.
MOSCOW -- Religious chants echoed off the walls of KGB headquarters Sunday as thousands of human rights demonstrators prayed and wept at a nearby monument to the victims of Soviet repression.
Led by three Russian Orthodox priests bearing icons, marchers carried wreaths, placards denouncing President Mikhail Gorbachev, and photographs of human rights activist Andrei Sakharov, who died one year ago this week.
The 3,000 to 4,000 protesters came from near Red Square where they had rallied to mark today's International Human Rights Day. They shouted repeatedly for Gorbachev to resign and heard radical politicians deride him as "His Majesty, Mikhail the Bloody."
The 5-hour demonstration reached a more-somber climax across the street from the Lubyanka -- the secret police headquarters and former prison -- where a monument has been erected to the millions of innocents who perished under communist rule.
More than 10 million people are believed to have been shot or died from hunger, cold or hard labor in labor camps under previous Soviet leaders.
A small choir chanted as a priest clad in gold robes and carrying incense walked around the monument.
Their requiem, amplified through megaphones, reverberated off the pink, gray and yellow granite facade of the KGB building.
The 8-foot-long 3-foot-wide rock monument was dedicated in October.
Lighted candles flickered in the hands of participants, who stood stoically around the flower-strewn stone in 23-degree temperatures as dusk fell. Organizers released dozens of doves, which circled Dzerzhinsky Square.
The Rev. Alexei Vlasov, whose branch of the Russian Orthodox Church was formerly forced to operate underground, told the crowd of Josef Stalin's repression of the clergy.
He said the KGB harassed believers and "the church ceased to become a sacred place or refuge for people where they could confess their sins."
As he spoke, tears rolled down the cheeks of Lydia Terekhov. Wax from her candle dripped onto a sign held against her chest. The sign, with a photograph of her 19-year-old son, Igor, said the young KGB border guard was killed in Armenia in April.
Terekhov is one of dozens of mothers who have become fixtures at several anti-government demonstrations in Moscow this year, protesting the deaths of their sons and demanding the government explain how they died.
Other marchers mourned the loss of Sakharov, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and father of the Soviet Union's human rights movement, who died Dec. 14, 1989.
"Nobody can possibly replace Sakharov," said Lyudmilla Kocheyeva when asked whether any current political figure can take up the late nuclear physicist's role as the nation's conscience.
Organizers of the rally sent a delegation of lawmakers to place a wreath on Sakharov's grave in a southwest Moscow cemetery.
During earlier speeches to the demonstrators near Red Square, radicals accused Gorbachev of trampling on the human rights of the country's many diverse ethnic groups.
Nikolai Ivanov, who was fired as government prosecutor while trying to expose corruption, said Gorbachev was a "czar" who came to power by being chosen by 15-20 "senile Politburo members."
"Today, we can call him `His Majesty, Mikhail the Bloody,' because for decades, the country hasn't experienced such bloodshed," Ivanov said.
"Who bore responsibility for pogroms in Sumgait, Fergana, Baku, Osh and many other places?" Ivanov asked, referring to the sites of recent ethnic violence. "It's Gorbachev himself who is leading the country to civil war."
"Therefore, if we want to defend human rights, we must unite around such democratic forces as the Russian parliament, headed by Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin," he said, referring to the president of Russia, the largest of the 15 Soviet republics.
I wonder what the die hard commies must have been thinking when thousands of Orthodox Christians emerged holding icons and chanting hymns the commies though were no longer being taught and sung?
Did they think "How is this possible? " "Where did these people come from?" "Didn't we kill them off?"
Blast from the past.
Orthodox ping.
How quickly did Orthodoxy get normalized in “athiestic” Russia?
Today, before every Soyuz launch, the rocket is blessed by a couple of Russian Orthodox priests. The priests are former cosmonauts, who got ordained after retiring from the Russian space program.
Orthodox Christianity is again an important part of Russian life.
I think it is a thing Christians have not seen since the Roman empire and Constantine. People forget that that period of the Roman empire just before Constantine had his Christian vision was one of the most severe in repression of Christians.
And this was when the Orthodox Church in Russia was still supposedly an "arm of the KGB," as some western "experts" claim.
So much for their expertese, memory—and credibility.
The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church. How can you kill off a Church which thrives on being killed for Christ?
Он является и когда-либо должен быть
Sorry if I worked hard for a bad translation. I speak fewer than 15 Russian words.
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