The countries with which Russia feels at odds today are not the “enemies”, but the “unfriendly” countries. To understand this definition in depth, one can recall the thesis of Vladimir Solov’ev, who on the threshold of the 20th century spoke about the “feminine nature” of Russia. In this perspective, war is a reaction that affirms the injustice and masculine violence of a West that lives only on itself and does not honor his wife’s capacity for sacrifice, his desire to engender a new world.
The war in Russia, which has already exceeded four months of violent clashes, seems to have been limited to the control of the Donbass regions, considering this area in its largest version, but in any case reduced to the southeast of Ukraine. From the mists of the Kremlin’s bunkers, proclamations of new attacks on kyiv and the rest of the “nazified” countries emerge from time to time, which perhaps include the Belarus of the uncertain Lukashenko, and some Duma deputies even threaten Lithuania that is blocking transit to Russia’s Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad, not to mention recurring nuclear threats from Putin and his drunken sidekick Medvedev.
Beyond the strictly warlike facts, the war of Russian resentment against the West has much broader and deeper horizons and dimensions, because it has to show the whole world that it must listen to the message of salvation that Russia sends to all humanity, as stated the new “foreign minister” of the patriarchy, the young Metropolitan Antonij. So it’s not just about drawing the line of the Ukrainian or Lithuanian front, and not even the much-hated NATO of the Anglo-Saks and their European settlers. There is a Russian term that distinguishes the countries with which Russia feels in opposition and duty to bear witness to the trampled truth: they are not the “enemies”, but the “unfriendly” countries, nedružestvennye strany. The term does not even indicate hostility or ideological opposition, as in the good old Soviet days, but rather a “moral and sentimental diversity”: the drug is the friend, the nedrug is the friend who has betrayed you and taken a wrong path.
The list of “unfriendly” countries has been expanded in recent months from 2 (Czech Republic and USA) to 48, which includes all of the EU (except Hungary to some extent), Switzerland, the countries of NATO and its Asian allies, all those who in some way support Ukraine and join even a little in the sanctions against Russia. Students from those countries are no longer accepted, although businessmen and tourists who are still interested in visiting the country are not prevented from entering, because “Russians are no one’s enemies”, as the Kremlin spokesman often repeats , Dmitry Peskov. The definition of “unfriendly” was specified by a 2018 law, applying it to those states that “conduct unfriendly actions towards the Russian Federation, Russian citizens or Russian institutions.” Of course, sanctions are included as the main extremely unfriendly action, but it also refers to initiatives that endanger “Russia’s territorial integrity or are aimed at its economic and political destabilization.”
The Czech Republic and the US inaugurated the non-friendly list that expelled a large number of Russian diplomats in April 2021, and additional sanctions against Moscow also came from Washington. The one who decides to whom the title of sentimental betrayal applies, by law, is only the president of Russia, who has the right and the duty to “decide on compensatory measures” against the former friend, which can range from the prohibition of cooperation with Russian legal entities to trade in different productive sectors. There is actually no formal limitation on these measures, which can affect any dimension of relationships that expresses the efficacy of punishment for those who have inflicted pain and humiliation on Russia, such as a betrayed wife.
To better understand this feminine sensitivity of Russians in relation to affections and denied friendship, we can recall the thesis of one of the most famous Russian philosophers, Vladimir Solov’ev, who at the beginning of the 20th century spoke about “feminine nature” of Russia, its ženstvennost. The expression is not intended to circumscribe gender (Solov’ev was a feminist ante litteram), but to apply a dimension that belongs to any form of life of the human race: men, women, peoples and nations, churches and parties, but above all to the human beings called to exercise power. In “Three Speeches in Memory of Dostoevsky”, Solov’ev recalls Saint John’s vision in the Apocalypse about the “woman clothed with the sun”. According to him, she represents the Russia that engenders a new word, the word of truth that the Russians must announce to the whole world. For the philosopher, this message is “the word of reconciliation between East and West, in the union of God’s eternal truth with human freedom.”
It would take a long time to review Solovian interpretations of the masculine and feminine principles, which he described in several works as the “Sense of love.” Certainly the “feminization” of Russia is seen as a reflection of the eschatological union of humanity, understood as the Bride, with her Spouse who is Christ, according to the biblical image of the Song of Songs. Jesus himself uses that image in many nuptial metaphors and references, such as that of the friend of the Bridegroom, that John the Baptist who must attest to the consummated conjugal union between the human and the divine. Solov’ev even tried to translate these visions into a political-spiritual project, expressed in his monumental reflection on “Russia and the Universal Church”, in which the Russian Tsar joins the Pope of Rome in a grandiose union of Christians and the peoples for the affirmation of what he calls “free theocracy”, the system that fully realizes the incarnation and redemption of man in Christ.
The Russian philosopher explains that “the foundation of Eastern culture is the submission of all of man to the supernatural force, while Western culture teaches the autonomy of man who makes himself”, in a comparison between “humility” and ” dignity” that generates the need for a “third force”, represented precisely by Russia, which “reconciles the unity of the highest principle with the multiplicity of the various forms of freedom”. Russia’s mission is carried out, then, by overcoming “the outward appearance of the slave, the miserable condition of economic and social inferiority that does not contradict his vocation, but exalts it”, because as Dostoevsky, friend and inspirer of Soloviev himself, also says, Russians express “the unusual ability to appropriate the spirit and ideas of other peoples, to reincarnate them in the spiritual essence of our nation.” Solov’ev concludes that “we as a people are not saved by selfishness and conceit, but by the spirit of national sacrifice, in which our authentic identity consists”. This spiritual and religious ideal, inherent in the soul of the Russian people, distinguishes it from “proud France” or “ancient Anglia”, and also from “faithful Germany”, to show the world “holy Russia”.
Solov’ev’s visions are not often quoted in Russia due to the official ostracism to which he was sentenced for his conversion to Catholicism, which he decided to “feel genuinely Orthodox”. Nor were his great ecumenical and social proposals accepted, which nevertheless inspired many, including Pope Leo XIII, to whom he submitted them and which are somehow reflected in the papal doctrine on the “third way” between liberalism and socialism. However, the great philosopher proposed in a “mystical” way what the Russians have always tried to achieve and still dream of today, that new synthesis in which there is no opposition between East and West, but a revelation of the authentic face of both.
That is why Russia cannot have “enemies” and presents herself as the beloved of the Canticle who searches for her husband in every garden and in every corner of the valley. If the beloved betrays you, it is the “non-friend” that provokes a feeling of disappointment and deep resentment, and more than the betrayal what makes Russia suffer is that it is not taken into account, the offense of indifference, the inability to see the beauty of the beloved. The Russian war is a feminine reaction, which affirms the injustice and masculine violence of a West that lives only for itself and does not honor his wife’s capacity for sacrifice, her desire to engender a new world. The world of masculine pride is nourished by material satisfactions and believes that it imposes itself with banal economic sanctions, without knowing that in this way it will make the purity and wonder of the eternal feminine of holy Russia shine even more.
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