Yesterday the President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, proclaimed the fall of the Third Rome and the fulfillment of the dreams of many generations of Ukrainians. This happened after a meeting of the Synod of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, which revoked its 1686 decision granting the Moscow Patriarchate ecclesiastical authority over the Kiev Metropolis. Instead, Constantinople established stavropegia, or direct control, over Ukraine. It also lifted the anathema («Orthodox takfir») imposed by the Russian Orthodox Church on its former metropolitan in Ukraine, Filaret Denisenko, who now claims to be the patriarch of the independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church, along with his followers.
The meaning of all this can be understood from this text. This is how the Ukrainian president characterized the magnitude of these events: «This is a matter of global geopolitics. This is the fall of the Third Rome as an ancient conceptual claim of Moscow for world domination».
It should be noted that the concept of the Third Rome is a doctrine according to which Muscovy, which later became Russia, declared itself the successor of two Christian world empires: the Roman and the Byzantine. As is known, in 1453 the capital of the «Second Rome» — Constantinople — was conquered by the glorious troops of Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror (may Allah have mercy on him!), and the Byzantine Empire ceased to exist. After that, some Greeks fled to the West and integrated into the Catholic world. Others remained under Muslim protection and returned to Orthodox dogma, which began to be broken as Byzantium drifted toward Catholicism after the Florentine Union of 1438-1445. The center of this movement became the Patriarchate of Constantinople, also known as the Phanar, which continued to consider itself the center of world Orthodoxy, but in a spiritual rather than a political sense.
On the other hand, a marginal part of the Greeks began to migrate to the rising Moscow in an attempt to subjugate it to their revanchist goals and turn it into a battering ram against the Islamic world. This was achieved in 1472 when Sophia, a Greek from the Palaiologos dynasty of Byzantine emperors, landed in Moscow with her Greek detachment, which took control of the ideological development of the growing state.
The doctrine of the Third Rome was always directed against Islam and Muslims, both geographically and ethnically, as well as culturally. Moreover, Russia-Moscow itself belongs geographically, ethnically, and culturally to the realm of the Golden Horde. Even during the reign of Ivan the Terrible, after the conquest of Kazan and Astrakhan, the mixing of Orthodox and Muslim customs and cultures at the Moscow tsar’s court, especially among his oprichniki (many of whom were formally baptized Turkic and Caucasian peoples), was so great that priests accused them of violating church norms. This duality was probably one of the reasons for the collapse of the first Moscow state. This is why the new dynasty, the Romanovs, established in 1612, had to rely on Ukraine and Belarus to separate Moscow from its eastern roots. This is also why Ukrainian and Belarusian cadres began to play a leading role in the Moscow Church, which eventually led to the assimilation of Ukraine and Belarus.
The decision of the Patriarchate of Constantinople in 1686 to grant the Moscow Patriarchate authority over the metropolis of Kiev finally solidified Moscow’s status as the successor to Kiev, the «mother of Russian cities,» which, of course, did not correspond to historical reality. It also made Russia the largest center of world Orthodoxy, thus solidifying its claim to the role of the Third Rome.
Now, more than three centuries later, the clock of this history has returned to its original position. It is not only the independence of the Ukrainian Church that is being recognized. If the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church had been wiser, they would have done it themselves after Ukraine’s independence, which would have contributed to the strengthening of the Slavic Orthodox brotherhood they claim to care about. This would have been a mature step for the national church of a state that does not reject its imperial history, but considers it as an asset, while recognizing it as a page turned to build relationships with the peoples who were once part of it as mature entities living their own lives.
Instead, Vladimir Putin declared the collapse of the USSR the greatest geopolitical catastrophe and, after the annexation of Crimea, claimed that Russians and Ukrainians were «one people. This insane resistance to the course of history has now not only recognized the independence of the Ukrainian Church from Moscow, but also retroactively relegated it to the 17th century, thereby nullifying the role of the Russian Empire as the leading force in the Orthodox world for the past three centuries.
Spiritually, not only the USSR, but also the pre-revolutionary Russian Empire is declared invalid, and the Kiev Rus, which has no relation to Russia-Moscow, arises in the shadow of the Golden Horde. This is the collapse of the entire mythology of the «Russian world,» the consequences of which have yet to be assessed.
President Poroshenko is absolutely right in his characterization of these events. But one could say more — we are witnessing not only the fall of the «Third Rome», but also of the so-called «Russian world», the cornerstone of which is the idea of Russia as the successor of Kiev Rus, which gives it the right to control Ukraine and Belarus. In turn, these countries, with their dwindling and deteriorating Russian populations (thanks to the policies supported by the Russian Orthodox Church), represent the last demographic reserve of Slavic identity in the post-Soviet space, which the «Russian world» will now lose in the long run.
What is happening is not only the recognition of the independence of the Ukrainian Church. If the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church had been wiser, they would have done this themselves after Ukraine’s independence, which would have contributed to the strengthening of the Slavic Orthodox brotherhood they claim to care about. This would have been a mature step for the national church of a state that does not reject its imperial history, but considers it an asset, while recognizing it as a page turned in establishing relations with the peoples who were once part of it as mature entities living their own lives.
Instead, Vladimir Putin declared the collapse of the USSR the greatest geopolitical catastrophe and, after the annexation of Crimea, claimed that Russians and Ukrainians were «one people. This insane resistance to the course of history has now not only recognized the independence of the Ukrainian Church from Moscow, but also retroactively relegated it to the 17th century, thereby nullifying the role of the Russian Empire as the leading force in the Orthodox world for the past three centuries.
Spiritually, not only the USSR, but also the pre-revolutionary Russian Empire is declared invalid, and the Kiev Rus, which has no relation to Russia-Moscow, arises in the shadow of the Golden Horde. This is the collapse of the entire mythology of the «Russian world», the consequences of which have yet to be assessed.