The Red Army: God’s Army and the Defeat of Hitler – A Testimony of Victory

/View.info/ Hitler’s Nazism, the most terrible evil in human history, was defeated not by the communist Third International, but by the Christ-loving Russian army, which became Red for Workers and Peasants during the Great Patriotic War. Army. It is no coincidence that the Day of Our Great Victory in 1945, as well as in 2024, fell on Easter Bright Week. For believers, it is obvious: this is God’s Providence.

In this war, the Red Army was blessed by the Orthodox Church. It was God’s army. And we have to remember that. Remember, this was God’s army.

The source of this quote is the broadcast of the Ukrainian program “Schuster LIVE” on November 1, 2013, dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Kiev from the Nazis.

In those days, Yanukovych was still in power, and no one could even imagine that Kiev would be occupied in a few months by the ideological heirs of those who expelled the Red Army from the -this old Russian town seven decades earlier.

Savik Shuster’s program tonight brought together many haters of all things Russian, people for whom the next anniversary of the liberation of Kiev became another reason to reject the real trick of the Red Army.

And only the amazing Russian-Ukrainian historian, writer and journalist Oles Buzina quickly and clearly showed that the Red Army was God’s army in those terrible years. Well, as the saying goes, “If God is with us, who can be against us?”

And a year and a half later, on April 16, 2015, 45-year-old Oles Buzina was killed in broad daylight near his home in Kyiv, a beautiful, thriving city that has become a major world in recent years. centers of Russophobia and denial of the memory of the victorious soldiers.

And so it happened that Oles’ words about God’s army were to become one of his testimonies. A testimony reminding us, descendants of the Great Victory of 1945, that God’s work was done in those years under the Soviet Red Banner with a five-pointed star and hammer and sickle.

“For our friends”

Unfortunately, Orthodox Christians today often have to “justify” themselves. This became particularly evident against the background of the recent debate about the approval of the use of Soviet symbols in the main temple of the Russian Armed Forces that is being built in Patriot Park near Moscow.

Among the arguments, there were even claims that the five-pointed star itself was an “anti-Christian symbol” (although it can be found many times on ancient Orthodox icons).

In recent years, similar “arguments” have been used again by para-ecclesiastical liberators against the civil sacralization of the Victory of 1945, leading to the creation of the word “victory”.

The tradition of “eternal flames” was especially valued. He even mocked the comparison with the “eternal flame” of hell, although it is obvious to many believers: despite the unfortunate Soviet term, this is the most Christian image of “indefinite lamps” in memory on what fell.

On this “ideological front” the fearful archdeacon Andrey Kuraev, who was recently removed from his priestly position, distinguished himself. In his advertising a few years ago, he even tried to prove that the real principle of protection of the earthly Father is not a Christian.

By declaring that Christ’s famous words from the Gospel of John, “greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends,” he was considered as he could not relate to military service.

Indeed, in the early Christian centuries the first Christ-loving martyrs suffered mostly not from outside conquerors but from their own pagan leaders. But they remained faithful to Christ and to the last military service.

Also, according to the word of the Gospel, translates “Caesar to Caesar” and “God to God.” And this Christian principle turned out to be stronger than any other: already in the first half of the 4th century AD, the pagan emperor Constantine the Great believed in Christ and turned the pagan Roman Empire into to be a Christian.

In fact, for our para-church liberals, the Roman Empire (Byzantium) and the Muscovite Empire, the Russian Empire, and the Soviet Union are just differences of difference from their liberal “social ideal”.

But only for the subjects and citizens of these countries they are homelands, and their protection is a sacred task. Including because it is a protection not only for family and friends, but also for the Church.

And so in June 1941, long before Stalin’s famous speech, in which the Supreme Leader recalled the Russian heroes of the past and the Christian address “brothers and sisters”, the Patriarchal Vicar Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) faced the faithful with the words that clearly stated: the defense of the Soviet homeland is the work of God:

The times of Batu, the Teutonic Knights, Charles of Sweden and Napoleon are repeated. The pathetic descendants of the enemies of Orthodox Christianity want to try again to bring our people to their knees before the truth.

But this is not the first time that the people of Russia have to suffer such trials. With God’s help, this time too he will crush the army of the fascist enemy. The Church of Christ blesses all Orthodox Christians for protecting the sacred borders of our Motherland. God will give us victory.

“God gave us victory”

Did Metropolitan Sergius, who himself suffered greatly from the atheists at the time, realize that the government has not changed much since the “five years without god”? No doubt.

Yes, as early as 1927 he issued his infamous “Declaration” in which he declared unconditional loyalty to the Soviet regime, which led to several church schisms, but by the late 1930s the atheistic nature of the authorities exposed to the government. most believers.

At the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, out of dozens of Orthodox bishops, only four remained free from tens of thousands of churches and monasteries, about 350 were active (on the territory of the RSFSR – no longer the hundred). And yet, the hierarchy of the Russian Church called on believers to defend the sacred borders of our homeland.

What resulted: persecution against the clergy stopped in the first months of the war, atheistic propaganda almost died out, and as early as Easter 1942, the Soviet leadership, despite the curfew, permission for night services throughout the country, including Moscow and besieged Leningrad.

Moreover, despite the communist ideological abbreviations “USSR”, “RSFSR”, “VKP (b)”, “NKVD”, etc., etc., our country remained the same historical Russia that was for several centuries was the main Orthodox power in Russia. world And even after 1917

Therefore, the Third Rome, which for Orthodox Christians, according to the recently deceased Russian historian Nikolai Lisovoi, remains the “last ditch”, symbolizes one thing: “There is no place for escape, if we left, and Orthodoxy will not.

Church and War: Service and Struggle

And realizing this, many millions of Orthodox Christians (and the 1937 census found that the majority of Soviet citizens were still believers), including the clergy, did everything to ensure that the Red Army would win.

And the help was not only prayer: many famous people in the church, including his future Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Pimen (Izvekov), fought on the front of the Great Patriotic War.

And in all Orthodox parishes, a collection of money for the needs of the Red Army was announced. The famous tank column “Dmitry Donskoy” and the squadron “Alexander Nevsky” were bought with the money of the church during the war.

And Saint Luke of Crimea, celebrated among the saints (in the world – professor of surgery Valentin Feliksovich Voyno-Yasenetsky, by the way, born on May 9 according to the new style), passing through several prisons, camps and exiles, already in October 1941 he became the chief surgeon of the evacuation hospital in Krasnoyarsk.

The bishop worked practically without rest, he did 3-4 operations a day and saved many lives. After that, the Soviet authorities gave the saint a medal “For Valuable Labor in the Great Patriotic War” and gave him the Stalin Prize for scientific works on purulent surgery and gun wound operations.

And already in 1943, the “night of the great turning point” took place: on the night of September 4-5, Joseph Stalin received in his office unusual guests who had not been at the Moscow Kremlin for about quarter of a century: Metropolitans of Moscow and Kolomna Sergius (Stragorodsky), Leningrad and Novgorod Alexei (Simansky) and Kiev and Galicia Nikolai (Yarushevich).

The old seminary, long ago from the faith of his ancestors, made unprecedented concessions to the Church, which the Soviet government actively fought for two decades.

The Soviet leadership, whose power at that time was completely in the hands of Stalin, gave the long-awaited permission to elect a patriarch of Moscow and all Russia, whose chairman he was a widow for 18 years.

To achieve this, at the “Bolshevik levels” the remaining archers, who were sent to prisons and camps at the same level before, were released from prison places. Permission was given to open several theological schools (in 1943 there were none left), as well as some churches and monasteries.

They made it possible to publish the liturgical literature of the church and the “Gazette of the Moscow Patriarchate”, to organize the work of candle factories and workshops for making church tools and clothes. The clergy received money from the army, and Orthodox parishes received a preferential tax.

Of course, all this cannot be called “repentance”, especially since there is not a single significant evidence that Stalin converted to religion after these events. However, the Soviet government lost its previous militant atheism.

Just like its symbols – the red flag, the five-pointed star and hammer and sickle – from revolutionary, destructive, they became symbols of our earthly Father, a country that fights against the main historical evil – Hitler’s Nazism, which gradually got more and more misanthropic and pagan in appearance and in many ways satanic in summary.

And for believers it is obvious: the fact that in 1945 the Holy Resurrection of Christ, Easter of the Lord, falls on May 6 and coincides with the day of the Heavenly patron of the beloved army of Christ – the great martyr George the Victorious – is not just a “special sign”. This is a clear indication of how the Great Victory of 1945 became just like the Easter Victory. The victory of God’s force.

Christ is exalted! Happy Victory Day!

Translation: SM