Dear friends of the Russia & America Good Will Association (www.raga.org) and antiwar colleagues!  
​
Happy Halloween! My Labor Day RAGA Antidote 37 dealt with natural and political hurricanes that hit the USA. I warned against the divisiveness of Vietnam war era coming back to haunt us.

--Now, A new poll co-sponsored by The Washington Post found that seven in 10 Americans say the nation’s political divisions are at least as big as during the Vietnam War, while nearly 6 in 10 said the Trump presidency is making the U.S. political system more dysfunctional.

--Meanwhile, in Russia, October 30 was declared a Day of Sorrow for all victims of Communist repression under Soviet rule. President Vladimir Putin, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia and Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin laid flowers to the Wall of Sorrow, a monument just erected in Moscow for the victims of Communist repression. http://tass.com/society/973243

Western media like to talk about Putin's KGB background but fail to mention that he befriended Alexander Solzhenitsyn to whom the US gave refuge for the long 1973-1994 years. Previously Putin laid a wreath to the monument to the prisoners of GULAG and he frequently quotes Solzhenitsyn on the essential issues of today. One might say that US mass media hostility toward New Russia is totally misplaced because, unlike the USSR, Russia of today is more similar to the USA economically and politically-- for better or worse--than ever before. All it wants is sovereignty that is the ability to run its affairs without paternalistic shouts much less threats from across the Ocean.

--For greater objectivity, I yield the pulpit to Patrick Armstrong of Canada, a former diplomat and now a keen Russia watcher. Patrick elucidates such events as Saudi Arabia King's visit to Moscow, Russia completing chemical disarmament, and the New Maidan in Kiev in which Yulia Timoshenko and US Georgia friend Mikhel Saakashvili try to dislodge president Poroshenko, another US client. https://patrickarmstrong.ca/2017/10/19/russian-federation-sitrep-19-october-2017/

--Al Jazeera English. Published on Oct 4, 2017
Saudi Arabia's foreign ministry hailed this week's visit of King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud to Moscow as "historic".

Riyadh and Moscow have been at odds for decades. The two oil superpowers produce almost half of the world's crude - and fiercely compete for market shares. Moscow's efforts that propped up Syrian President Bashar Assad's government have pitted Russia against Saudis and other Sunni Arab states.

 Yet, in the past year, an unexpected rapprochement between the two countries has been in the making amid Moscow's deteriorating ties with Washington and US President Donald Trump's unpredictable policy shifts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OseolgoOBUw

--John R. Bradley (UK, Spectator): How Putin came to rule the Middle East
Syria and Libya are just two examples of how the Russian leader has been running rings around the West.
 
The dismal failure turned out to be our cynical effort to install a Sunni regime in Damascus by adopting the Afghanistan playbook from the 1980s. We would train, fund and arm jihadis, foreign and domestic, in partnership with the Gulf Arab despots. This way we would rob Russia of its only warm-water naval base, Tartus, on Syria’s Mediterranean coast. In the process we would create a buffer between Iran and its Lebanon-based proxy, Hezbollah...

...For while the consequences of Netanyahu beating the war drums over Iran used to be non-existent, now Moscow could give the green light to battle–hardened Iran, Syria and Hezbollah to unleash hellfire against the Jewish state. It is easy to understand why Netanyahu is quaking in his boots, but should Europe be alarmed at Putin’s Middle East triumph? Not unduly so. 
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/10/how-putin-came-to-rule-the-middle-east/
John R. Bradley is the author of books on Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the Arab Spring, and has been covering the Middle East for two decades.

--Not only US friend Saudi Arabia woos the Kremlin, but also President of Croatia Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović who was educated in the USA and used to be a high NATO official.

<<At the talks, particular attention was paid to the energy industry, a traditional area of bilateral cooperation. Croatia is a major importer of Russian oil products. It bought 350,000 tonnes of oil from us last year. In addition, 2.3 million tonnes of Russia oil were delivered through Croatia’s ports and pipes for customers in southeast Europe... Russia’s Gazprom, for its part, supplies Croatia with almost half of the natural gas it consumes. It signed a long-term contract for gas supplies to 2027 with its Croatian partners in September....Putin thanked Croatia for unveiling monuments to Alexander Pushkin, Yury Gagarin and Sergei Yesenin in Zagreb in 2016–17. Russia, in turn, is considering installing a monument to Croatian philosopher and theologian Juraj Krizanic, whose life was closely tied to Russia.
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/55872

I have already reported about my own visit to Dubrovnic, Croatia, April 2017, and I see no reason why the two Slavic countries should not be even greater friends.
Dubrovnik, the Pearl of Civilization at Peace By Vladislav Krasnov

RAGA eschews partisan politics. RAGA looks for a sound mind, and once we find it, we want it to shine. Here is Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review, a strong anti-Communist magazine I used to read when the oppression of human rights in the USSR was rife. Now I let Rich cast some light of US hysteria about Russia's alleged current meddling.

--Rich Lowry: The Facebook Farce Oct 27, 2017

<<It’s unlikely that Russia’s Facebook ad buys had a significant impact on the 2016 election. The Kremlin knows a bargain when it sees it. We are supposed to believe that it bought the American presidential election last year with $100,000 in Facebook ads and some other digital activity. Frankly, if American democracy can be purchased this cheap — a tiny fraction of the $7.2 million William Seward paid to buy Alaska from the Russians back in 1867 — it’s probably not worth having.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/453023/russian-facebook-ad-buys-did-they-really-affect-election Rich can be reached via email: comments.lowry@nationalreview.com. 

--Alex Krainer in his book “The Killing of William Browder” deconstructs Browder’s narrative. Krainer gave an interview to Ed Lozansky for the Strategic Culture Foundation (SC) .
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/10/15/interview-magnitsky-act-comes-to-canada.html

--After reading diverse and objective analytical articles about Russia, another American, Robert Bridge, came to a serendipity idea: Why Vladimir Putin deserves a Nobel Peace Prize (seriously) By  ROBERT BRIDGE Oct 28,2017

The reality is that the Russian leader has done more to promote the cause of global peace and security than any other Western leader in recent times. Given Vladimir Putin’s extraordinary efforts to bring about the conditions of peace both in Ukraine and in Syria, it would seem that he is the most fitting candidate to win a Nobel Peace Prize. Of course, the Western capitals would never see things that way, which only highlights the great schism that now separates Russia from the West, which has lost its ability to judge right from wrong, truth from deception.
http://russiafeed.com/why-vladimir-putin-deserves-a-nobel-peace-prize-seriously/

Speaking of PEACE, I am happy to report about my participation in a GHA project which aims at reforming  UN in a way that it frees itself from the US paternalistic and selfish embrace in order to mature into a truly independent global association of all countries seeking PEACE though domestic HARMONY. Below is the letter of GHA founder Leo Semashko of Russia.

Dear GHA (Global Harmony Association) members, friends, peacemakers: 
I am happy to report on the responses (below) of two Nobel Peace Laureates: Ms Mairead Maguire from Northern Ireland and prof. John Avery from Denmark, with support for UN reform in the GHA 57th project (http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=769), but in different ways, in varying degrees and forms...

Please read more about Peace-makers of the World 

Prof. John Scales Avery
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate (shared 1995 award),  
Chairman of the Danish Peace Academy, 
Copenhagen, Denmark
http://www.fredsakademiet.dk 
http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=672 

Mairead Maguire
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate 1976
Stopped the terror in Belfast, Northern Ireland
Community for Peace People
http://www.peacepeople.com/MaireadCMaguire.htm/ 
http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=678 
One of the founders and coauthors of Global Peace Science:
http://peacefromharmony.org/docs/global-peace-science-2016.pdf  
"armed groups, militarism and war do not solve
our problems but aggravate them challenges us to use new ways and that is
why we need to teach the science of peace at every level of society"

In quest for PEACE, we should be open to uniqueness of each culture of the world as it contributes to universal harmony. My colleague William Brumfield, Professor of Russian Studies, Tulane Unversity, does the utmost by photographing ancient Russian church architecture that conveys the message of spiritual harmony. Of course, Russians are grateful that the Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky Collection was preserved in the USA because Soviet leaders, in the wake of the October Revolution 100 years ago, did not really care about the glory of pre-Communist Russian culture.

Trinity Cathedral at Ipatiev Monastery:   https://www.rbth.com/travel/326471-trinity-cathedral-at-ipatiev-monastery / Juxtaposition of early 20th-century photographs from the Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky Collection (Library of Congress) with photos from William C. Brumfield Collection (National Gallery of Art, Dept. of Image Collections). 182-nd article in "Discovering Russia" series for "Russia Beyond"

General link:
https://www.rbth.com/special-discovering-russia

Same in Russian - Свято-Троицкий собор Ипатьевского монастыря:
https://www.rbth.com/travel/326471-trinity-cathedral-at-ipatiev-monastery

Sincerely,
W George Krasnow (http://wiki-org.ru/wiki/Краснов,_Владислав_Георгиевич)
President, RAGA

​All statements in this report are an opinion of the author. Act at your own risk. Russia & America Goodwill Association (RAGA) is not responsible for the content of the article. Any views or opinions presented in this report are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RAGA. Any liability in respect to this communication remain with the author.

RAGA News
www.RAGA.org​

The dark forces in Washington are daily steering the world in an ever more dangerous direction. The US war machine’s massive anti-Russian propaganda campaign to revive the Red Scare of the McCarthy era has now sunk to the lowest depths by the invasion of Russian diplomatic property in America after Washington’s militarists failed to trigger an invasion of Russia itself.

Having already become a pariah internationally through its disastrous interference in other countries, America has now become a laughing-stock at home in the eyes of the world. On 31 August 2017 the FBI turned its campaign to softer domestic targets – the Russian diplomatic compounds in Washington and the US Consulate in San Francisco – in order to conduct ‘searches’ there. When they find nothing, as with their ‘investigations’ of alleged Russian ‘hacking’ and ‘invasions’, they will no doubt plant some fake ‘evidence’. One video posted on RT showed a man climbing a ladder to check whether there was anything hidden inside a ventilation system! It is farcical.

Washington is now operating in full Soviet-style dictatorship mode under the auspices of the US State Department, revealing its modus operandi as a flagrant violation of the basic norms and principles of international law by closing the Russian Consulate and Trade Mission in San Francisco and its two annexes in Washington and New York on 31 August 2017, and by even invading and searching the private homes of diplomatic staff.

These actions are a blatant violation of Articles 22 and 24 of the Vienna Convention (1) on Diplomatic Relations, which is incorporated in the United Nations Treaty Series, Vol. 500. (2) This agreement, formally signed by the US, is fundamental to the conduct of foreign relations and ensures that diplomats can conduct their duties without threat of influence or interference. It is universally called the principle of ‘diplomatic immunity’. Former MI5 intelligence officer Annie Machon put it precisely: “The international law lays it down really clearly. The 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations says that any diplomatic and affiliated premises in a foreign country are inviolable (3); and any incursion on that territory is therefore seen as an attack on the country that is hosting that diplomatic mission.” She describes it as a parade of power to reassert America’s global dominion. Russia’s RT website called it “illegal, meaningless clownery” (4).

Whatever became of Trump’s promise to improve relations with Russia? Instead, America has now begun to treat Russians and Russian property in the US in a manner reminiscent of Nazi Germany’s treatment of the Jews. In an overseas context too, America used neo-Nazis to overthrow the democratically elected government of Ukraine, and is still training them, and refused (with Ukraine and Canada) to sign the UN anti-Nazism declaration of November 2014 (5). Hillary Clinton bizarrely attempted to compare President Putin with Hitler, while Russia did more than any other country to eliminate Hitler and Nazism in the Great Patriotic War and still celebrates that triumph on 9 May every year as its most important secular holiday – the Day of Victory (День Побе́ды).

1) https://www.rt.com/op-edge/401858-us-search-russian-diplomatic-missions/
2) http://legal.un.org/ilc/texts/instruments/english/conventions/9_1_1961.pdf
3) http://legal.un.org/ilc/texts/instruments/english/conventions/9_1_1961.pdf
4) https://www.rt.com/news/401842-trade-mission-dc-closed/
5) https://ukraineantifascistsolidarity.wordpress.com/2014/11/25/us-canada-and-ukraine-vote-against-un-resolution-condemning-glorification-of-nazism/

SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Arthur Noble is Emeritus Professor of German at two European universities. He has published books in German, English and French and contributed numerous articles to academic periodicals. He writes regularly for the British Church Newspaper on current affairs and is an active musician.

​All statements in this report are an opinion of the author. Act at your own risk. Russia & America Goodwill Association (RAGA) is not responsible for the content of the article. Any views or opinions presented in this report are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RAGA. Any liability in respect to this communication remain with the author.

RAGA News
www.RAGA.org​

Dear friends of the Russia & America Good Will Association (www.raga.org) and antiwar colleagues!

In my previous RAGA Antidote 36,  I promised to reduce information overload for the Labor Day holiday. Alas, a number of natural and political hurricanes and tornado in the USA force me to urgently issue emergency Antidote 37. 

First, my condolence goes to East Texas hit by the terrible Harvey hurricane. I am rather partial to the people of Texas whom I have always liked for the independence of mind and who treated me well when I lived there. Now I hear that some of my friends' houses were destroyed. In fact, I started my career in Texas, became US citizen, and both of  my children were born there. I started as an instructor of Russian Studies at the University of Texas, Austin, then became professor at the SMU in Dallas before moving to Monterey, California in 1978. 

As if by accident, my UT Austin office was in Robert E Lee Hall. My first thought was how great  America was that it managed to heal the trauma of Civil War not by summary execution or endless repression of the defeated, as was done after the civil war in the USSR, but by treating the vanquished fairly, giving them credit for military skills and noble behavior, as the film "Gone With the Wind" wonderfully portrays. Moreover, after the demise of the USSR, during the 1990s I went several times to interpret for the US-Russia joint program in Houston NASA Center as part of the International Space Station mission. I am sorry to hear that the NASA building sustained heavy damages.

Harvey is not just a natural disaster. It is also a colossal failure of political leadership of US government which wastes time and resources on hunting witches abroad but neglects the primary duties at home. The best analysis I have seen is this:

Hurricane Harvey: An Environmental Nightmare, America’s Neglected Infrastructure

By Stephen Lendman
Global Research, August 30, 2017
Natural disasters like Hurricane Harvey are greatly exacerbated by America’s neglected infrastructure nationwide – a deplorable situation unaddressed by Republicans and undemocratic Democrats alike for decades.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/hurricane-harvey-an-environmental-nightmare-americas-neglected-infrastructure/5606488

To remind the government of its domestic duties, I signed a petition calling on the Trump administration to restore Pres. Obama's flood safety rules, which would protect future infrastructure from increased sea level rise and flooding. Will you join me?
https://act.credoaction.com/sign/flood-rules?referring_akid=a285703520.3406495.YxKuks&source=conf_email&aktmid=tm47208369.sFw0GV&akid=a285703520.3406495.YxKuks&t=1

The same author, Stephen Lendman of Chicago, reminds the Trump administration of its international duties as well, especially when they attack diplomatic facilities of a foreign nation in the manner of tornado. Global Research, September 03, 2017.

On Saturday, FBI agents searched their premises, a flagrant Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations violation.
 Under Article 22(1), “(t)he premises of the mission shall be inviolable. The agents of the receiving State may not enter them, except with the consent of the head of the mission.”
 Article 22(3) states:
“The premises of the mission, their furnishings and other property thereon and the means of transport of the mission shall be immune from search, requisition, attachment or execution.”
http://www.globalresearch.ca/russia-protests-us-searches-of-its-diplomatic-facilities/5607229

• You might recall that last time, in a non-partisan spirit, I defended President Trump against the storm of media criticism he sustained for his comments on violence in C-ville <<Whether we like him or not, we have to give him respect and support that our Constitution requires so that he could carry out his duties. Instead, the MSM harps at him for suggesting an even-handed course to stem violence between the radical Right and the revolutionary Left.>> I cited Peter Beinart's article The Rise of the Violent Left. Antifa’s activists say they’re battling burgeoning authoritarianism on the American right. Are they fueling it instead?​

As it turns out, Beinart's criticism of Antifa's violent ideology was seconded by other analysts

How ‘Antifa’ Mirrors the ‘Alt-Right’. By Chris Hedges, August 29, 2017 "Information Clearing House"
Editor’s note: A Berkeley, Calif., rally organized by a right-wing group turned violent Sunday after arrival of a group that carried an anarchist banner.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/47717.htm#.Wab6B_cEJ6I.email

August 29, 2017 "Information Clearing House" - Behind the rhetoric of the “alt-right” about white nativism and protecting American traditions, history and Christian values is the lust for violence. Behind the rhetoric of antifa, the Black Bloc and the so-called “alt-left” about capitalism, racism, state repression and corporate power is the same lust for violence.
  The two opposing groups, largely made up of people who have been cast aside by the cruelty of corporate capitalism, have embraced holy war. Their lives, battered by economic misery and social marginalization, have suddenly been filled with meaning. They hold themselves up as the vanguard of the oppressed. They arrogate to themselves the right to use force to silence those they define as the enemy. They sanctify anger.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/47717.htm#.Wab6B_cEJ6I.email

• Even the heavily anti-Trump The Washington Post turned around and put Antifa's violence on the level with the "white racists" 

BY MARC A. THIESSEN, The Washington Post, SEPTEMBER 03, 2017 11:00 AM
http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/op-ed/article170645147.html
Last weekend in Berkeley, California, a group of neo-communist antifa — “anti-fascist” — thugs attacked peaceful protesters at a “No to Marxism in America” rally, wielding sticks and pepper spray, and beating people with homemade shields that read (I kid you not) “No Hate.”
...And let’s be clear: Totalitarian is precisely what they are. Mark Bray, a Dartmouth lecturer who has defended antifa’s violent tactics, recently explained in The Post, “Its adherents are predominantly communists, socialists, and anarchists” who believe that physical violence “is both ethically justifiable and strategically effective.” In other words, they are no different from neo-Nazis...
http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/op-ed/article170645147.html

• Last night I watched a weekly news review by Dmitry Kiselev, the anchorman of ROSSIIA TV station. He talked about the withdrowal of the film "Gone with the Wind" from a Memphis movie theater. The Orpheum Theatre Group made the decision after patrons took issue with the screening of the movie starring Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4826210/Racially-insensitive-Theater-pulls-Gone-Wind.html#ixzz4rhOaqryi

Kiselev wondered if the Americans of today are not doing what the Russians did 100 years ago with the onset of the Communist "October" revolution: by erasing Tsarist monuments they initiated a period of unspeakable violence and nihilistic rage that spared no one, including, in the Stalinist purges two decades later, the most ardent revolutionaries. Kiselev mused in a fatherly tone that we, the Russians, have learned the hard way that hatred and rage is not a way for a better future. Aren't Americans repeating our mistakes?

Notice also that the Bolshevik usurpation of power in Petrograd hundred years ago in November 1917 was called officially The Great October Socialist Revolution. Yes, the Communists in Russia always portrayed themselves as the vanguard of world revolution, without any national identification. They were against any national tradition, customes, religion, and patriotism; they were for the liberation of humanity from capitalist oppression and imperialist domination. Their ideology was explicitly Western based on the writings of German political thinkers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Their political leaders, Lenin and Stalin, were but transplants of Marx and Engels on Russian soil. That is why when I wrote in the late 1980s my book "Russia Beyond Communism: A Chronicle of National Rebirth", I emphasized that for Russia, to move forward, she needs first go back to save and nurture the roots of her pre-revolutionary history and culture, including Russian Christianity, largely erased by the brutal utopian Communist misrule. 

At about the same time, George Will, a well-known conservative Washington Post columnist, quipped that there were more firely Marxists at Harvard University than in the USSR. Of course, it was an exaggeration, but it underscored the fact that Marxism and Communism are not just Russian or Chinese problem but an intellectual desease of Western civilization with its faith in the omnipotence of scientifically approved violence to resolve all problems of mankind and, certainly, to get rid of capitalism, racism, imperialism, inequality and poverty. As all my academic career was in the States, I knew of wide-spread infestation of academic ranks with such Marxist thinking.

In 1978, I published in the conservative "Modern Age" magazine an essay titled "Karl Marx as Dr. Frankenstein" in which I drew the analogy between Dr. Frankenstein endeavoring to create an artificial man but succeding only in producing a measerable monster and Communist efforts to impose an ideal society by force, but producing only an utopian society controlled by totalitarian rulers and isolated by the Iron Curtain. Mary Shelley envisioned correctly that the misadventure of Western "science" will be dumped in the wilderness of Russia and Tartaria.  Alas, none of the dozens of attempts to convert Shelley's vision to a film came even close to her spiritual insights: all stayed on the level of horror entertaintment. 
https://www.academia.edu/28227073/Karl_Marx_as_Frankenstein_Toward_a_Genealogy_of_Communism_Modern_Age_WINTER_1978_-_VOL._22_NO._1._pp._72-82_Vladislav_Krasnov_-_See_more_at_https_home.isi.org_karl-marx-frankenstein-toward-genealogy-communism_sthash.MmTrb2DQ.dpuf

It is wrong to think that the demise of the USSR and dissolution of Soviet Blok put the end to the ravages of Marxist ideological virus. The failures of neo-liberal economics and Neo-Con politics in the US and Europe in the past 25 years can only stimilate the growth of an anti-globalist movement which may rescucitate Marxist ideology of violent world revolution.  I hope, however, that those struggling for a just, equitable, free, peaceful and healthy Planet will not resort to violence as their Communist predessors did; and that they will be governed by higher principles and the ideas of such wise and moral people like Lev Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Mandela and John Avery, a more recent Nobel Peace Prize winner from Denmark. I also recommend Dr. Lev Semashko, a Russian anti-Marxist philosopher who 12 years ago founded the Global Harmony Association that unites in a peace movement a number of prominent thinkers from India, UK, Denmark, Kazakhstan, Germany,France, Brasil, Algeria, Israel, the USA, and a dozen more countries. John Avery is one of the GHA's  patrons.
http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=home

• I also recommend a thoughtful and imaginative article by my friend and RAGA associate Israel Shamir. Like myself he is a former Soviet citizen. After emigrating to Israel, he quickly became disenchated with this Zionist "home for the Jews". Mr. Shamir has been since a daring, resolute and well-informed critic of Netanyahu's right-wing Zionist policies. Read now about their interplay with the US politics and global situation. Below are some highlights:

The Pink Revolution and How to Beat It
ISRAEL SHAMIR • AUGUST 26, 2017 • 2,200 WORDS • 94 COMMENTS • 
http://www.unz.com/ishamir/the-pink-revolution-and-how-to-beat-it/
  <<Colour revolutions usually occur only in the countries blessed with a US diplomatic presence. You need an American embassy to find the perspective ruler to be uplifted by a human swell and placed on the throne; you need an American embassy to bring in enough cash to cover expenses of the organised mayhem; you need an American diplomat to protect the revolutionaries and to order the present dictator to desist. Could it be that there is now an American Embassy in America?
....
 People close to power in the US know or feel the global hegemony. Its bearers are heavily Jewish liberal groups, who use their PC, their hostility to the Church, their approval of gender flux in order to undermine the mind and mentality of an ordinary American, of a redneck, of a working class Goy (as in the Goy, Bye headline). They ceaselessly tease and annoy this goy, in order to cause his premature acts of rebellion to be easily squashed. ..
...  Hegemonists have their own storm troops – Antifa. This extremist movement was born in Germany. There they walk on the streets on the anniversary of Dresden bombings with Israeli flags and chant: “Death to Germany! Long live Bomber Harris” (the British commander of the Air Force, a big fan of the carpet bombing of Germany). They managed to terrorize the Germans: as soon as someone objects they call their opponent a Nazi and beat him up. And if they encounter resistance, the police comes to the rescue. That’s why in Germany resistance to the mass inflow of migrants was almost imperceptible. It is spoken about in the kitchen, but not on the streets.
   And now Antifa came to America. They have the same mode of action as in Germany. Whoever is against them is a Nazi, or a “white racist”. They proved their mettle in Charlottesville, the city blessed with the Jewish mayor who chose the city police. Many Jewish activists came to participate, from as far as Boston. After the scuffle, the newspapers raised a hue and cry: Nazis attack Jews!
  President Trump condemned both sides participating in the brawl‚ both white nationalists and Antifa. It is exactly what his opponents were waiting for. His attempt to stay above the brawl was doomed to defeat: liberal hegemonists immediately branded him a racist and neo-Nazi.
...
It is easier to turn the racism weapon against the adversary, for the Jewish adversary of Trump is as racist as any KKK member is likely to be, or worse. Last week it became known, that in Israel, Jewish settlers established a road sign saying: “The area where you are located is under Jewish control. The entry of Arabs is absolutely forbidden and constitutes a mortal danger to you!” You couldn’t find such signs in the Deep South even in Jim Crow days! Was there any response from “antiracist” American Jews? (This is a rhetoric question)...
...
If you want to troll them a bit, call for removal of a memorial for a Jewish slave-driver David Levy Yulee, who was called “the Florida Fire Eater” for his inflammatory pro-slavery rhetoric in the U.S. Senate. He resigned his US Senate seat to support the Confederacy, but his statue still stands high in Fernandia, Amelia Island, Florida, reports Michael Hoffman who notes that neither the ADL nor the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) called for it removal. This is the time to demand Florida to overturn its (year 2000) designation of Yulee a “Great Floridian”.
...
I’d advise president Trump: Appeal to the better side of human nature. If your fellow Americans want less racism, give it to them – by rejecting Zionism. And proceed with your agenda.>>

• Lyndon LaRouche on August 30 called for a "sea change" in policy "right now." He called for the immediate creation of a national credit institution for new, high-technology infrastructure, like that employed by Franklin Roosevelt when the vast majority of our current infrastructure was built. There is no alternative to creating a national credit institution, like that employed by Alexander Hamilton and in accord with our Constitution, to fund the necessary trillions in new infrastructure investment. There must also be action on reinstating Glass-Steagall banking separation right now, as a new financial crisis looms and Wall Street speculation continues to prevent actual productive investment. Allowing Wall Street to eliminate the Glass-Steagall Act in the 1990s led to a crash that caused $10 trillion in lost wealth, mass unemployment, and untold loss and shortening of human lives.
  
• 
  
• Ed Lozansky writes in The Washington Times about "Lost opportunity" in US-Russia relations after the collapse of the USSR: By Edward Lozansky - - Tuesday, August 29, 2017 ANALYSIS/OPINION: <<Are we preparing for the war with Russia over Ukraine? That’s how it looks if you saw in the news how U.S. Marines regularly do simulated battles with Russian-speaking insurgents. This is taking place in North Carolina and Germany, but the assumed country is Ukraine, where some American troops have established a combat training center staffed by Ukrainians and reportedly capable of hosting an entire brigade. While the Pentagon, the State Department and Congress are pushing for the sale of “lethal defensive weapons” to Ukraine, the U.S. Navy is establishing in the former Russian Black Sea port of Ochakov (now Ukraine) a center “to deliver flexible maritime capabilities throughout the full range of military operations.”>>
  
• 
  
•       Ed is right: <<When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, America had a historic opportunity to transform its top enemy into an ally, thus repeating two successful parallel experiences with Germany and Japan. Russia was ready for this, but the Washington establishment was not. The “end of history” that entailed total U.S. domination over world affairs had no room for Russia’s integration with the West as an equal partner. 
  
• 
  
•     Moreover, Washington’s strategic planning included continuous weakening of Russia through its encirclement with new NATO members from the former Soviet republics and East European countries, helping Russian oligarchs take over the economy and move capital abroad, supporting domestic opposition and even encouraging regional separatism, as in Chechnya.>>
  
• http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/aug/29/crosstalk-ukrainian-crisis-there-way-out/

Finally, as before, I let my friend and RAGA associate William Brumfield, Tulane University Professor of Russian Studies, to entertain you on Labor Day with photography of the beautiful Tsarist Russia church architecture the major part of which was destroyed, desecrated or abused during Soviet rule.

Juxtaposition of early 20th-century photographs from the Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky Collection (Library of Congress) with photos of same monuments from William C. Brumfield Collection (National Gallery of Art, Dept. of Image Collections).

14. The Tobolsk kremlin: Siberia's oldest cathedral.
https://www.rbth.com/special_projects/discovering_russia_1/2017/08/18/the-tobolsk-kremlin-holy-wisdom-in-siberia_824840
178-th article in "Discovering Russia" series for RBTH
General link:  http://rbth.com/special/discovering_russia
 
Sincerely,
W George Krasnow (http://wiki-org.ru/wiki/Краснов,_Владислав_Георгиевич)
President, RAGA

​All statements in this report are an opinion of the author. Act at your own risk. Russia & America Goodwill Association (RAGA) is not responsible for the content of the article. Any views or opinions presented in this report are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RAGA. Any liability in respect to this communication remain with the author.

RAGA News
www.RAGA.org​

Sequel to The Fallen of World War II, The Shadow Peace is a web series that combines data-visualization and cinematic storytelling to explore the driving factors of war and peace.

Please consider supporting this audience-funded series on Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/neilhalloran

All statements in this report are an opinion of the author. Act at your own risk. Russia & America Goodwill Association (RAGA) is not responsible for the content of the article. Any views or opinions presented in this report are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RAGA. Any liability in respect to this communication remain with the author.

RAGA News
www.RAGA.org​

Dear friends of the Russia & America Good Will Association (www.raga.org) and antiwar colleagues!

Last time I wrote was Independence Day. In respect for a Summer break, I wanted to wait for the Labor Day in September. However, the events in the USA prompt an early intervention. It's the Charlottesville. Some people suggestively abbreviate it to Cville-- War. I don't like what happened there nor the bitter aftermath when the mishandling of the clash between Alt-Right and Antifa people by the local police is being used as part of the incessant vicious campaign to unseat President Trump. 

RAGA eschews party politics. We take the high road of metapolitics: we stand above partisan bickering. Or, call it megapolitics, for our urgent goal is the survival and well-being of our Planet. This can hardly be achieved without the USA and Russia respectfully talking to each other, without shouting and name calling. For this to happen, both countries need to have a degree of maturity and domestic health. Strangely, now it appears that, while Russia stays calm and stable in spite of the vicious Western economic sanctions, the United States is less united as more people resort to verbal and actual violence at home and ignore US violence abroad. 

As I pointed out in the newsletter right after the presidential election, Trump was elected fair and square by the majority vote against the enormous odds as of the money-establishment MSM supported the other side. Whether we like him or not, we have to give him respect and support that our Constitution requires so that he could carry out his duties. Instead, the MSM harps at him for suggesting an even-handed course to stem violence between the radical Right and the revolutionary Left.

The best article I have seen about the lack of even-handed approach to the current civil strife is Peter Beinart 's The Rise of the Violent Left. Antifa’s activists say they’re battling burgeoning authoritarianism on the American right. Are they fueling it instead? SEPTEMBER 2017 ISSUE
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/the-rise-of-the-violent-left/534192/

Beinart suggests that, while venting all its ire against the "racist" Alt-right, the left-liberal media have been coddling Antifa . Personally, I don't believe that the majority of those who are against the removal of Confederate memorials are racist. They are patriotic American citizens who want to make sure the horrors of civil war of 1861-65 stay behind us. Beinart points to a more serious source of trouble, The Antifa. 

Beinart disputes Antifa's democratic credentials the media is eager to bestow on them. "Since antifa is heavily composed of anarchists, its activists place little faith in the state, which they consider complicit in fascism and racism. They prefer direct action: They pressure venues to deny white supremacists space to meet. They pressure employers to fire them and landlords to evict them. And when people they deem racists and fascists manage to assemble, antifa’s partisans try to break up their gatherings, including by force".

Beinart points to dangerous dynamics: "To most left-wing activists during the Clinton, Bush, and Obama years, deregulated global capitalism seemed like a greater threat than fascism.Trump has changed that. For antifa, the result has been explosive growth". 
 
Understandably, "Trump supporters and white nationalists see antifa’s attacks as an assault on their right to freely assemble... The result is a level of sustained political street warfare not seen in the U.S. since the 1960s". 

Well, I witnessed the Vietnam era's student warfare at the University of Washington campus in Seattle when it claimed the largest number of clandestine bomb explosions in the nation, when anti-Communist professors were molested while "progressive" professors taught courses on home-made bombs. Do we want it to happen again?
 
Beinart accuses the liberal establishment of siding with Antifa as "this fuels the fears of Trump supporters, who suspect that liberal bastions are refusing to protect their right to free speech...Antifa believes it is pursuing the opposite of authoritarianism...But in the name of protecting the vulnerable, antifascists have granted themselves the authority to decide which Americans may publicly assemble and which may not. That authority rests on no democratic foundation", Beinart concludes. 

As self-proclaimed defenders of the poor and disenfranchised, Antifa is mired in Marxist class struggle and violent world revolution utopia. They are on the way to becoming totalitarians,  for their ideological progenitors are the Bolsheviks in Russia who claimed  they were defending minorities and poor people against the Tsarist police, "black hundreds" and "anti-Semites," but as soon as they seized power they showed the world what a truly totalitarian rule is like. 

I am writing this from a small provincial Russian town. I am squeezed in the mid of Sverdlov, Volodarsky and Uritsky streets so named after Bolshevik revolutionary terrorists. All three were Jews who renounced Judaism to help create the atheist Bolshevik regime which suppressed all religions and, among other things, forbade Jews to study Hebrew. Yes, the main street here is Lenin's. His bulky monument still dominates the town square. On August 19,  it turned 26 years since the USSR fell apart. Communist experiment ended miserably as Russia turned 180 degrees back to capitalism, imperfect as it was and is. Of course, many dwellers here fret about Lenin's stature and want historical names restored to the streets, but they also understand the need to be patient for the sake of public tranquility.

Do the United States need to go through a similar violent experiment? I think not. Therefore, leave the history alone, do not try to re-write it backward. To honor heroes of the Other Side is wise and noble as it wins time to sort things out.

On the other hand, Lenin's oversize stature in Seattle, brought there in 1995 from a garage sale in one of former Communist countries, got to go. It should not be destroyed. It should be moved to a museum and carefully preserved as a reminder of the greatest folly of the 20th century. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/08/19/in-seattle-people-are-protesting-monuments-to-the-confederacy-and-communism/?utm_term=.09f6819b6775

I don't want to sound alarmist, but there are some prominent people who worry about the future of the US. "America is under attack from within. Our culture, our history, our founding are under the most direct assault I have seen in my life... You might even get away with saying that we are on the cusp of a second civil war", says Rush Limbaugh
http://www.breitbart.com/video/2017/08/18/rush-limbaugh-cusp-second-civil-war/

To see how the Bolsheviks undermined and distorted Russian culture, I recommend you read Professor Philip Jenkins' extraordinary perceptive article "Remembering the Old Russia"

"This Fall marks the centennial of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.  Although few commentators today are likely to glorify that event or its aftermath, most will assume that the revolution was a regrettable necessity, which swept away a repressive and stagnant ancient regime.  Such a view is false.  Culturally and spiritually, that lost pre-revolutionary Russia was a treasure house, and indeed a birthplace of the modern West.  The grim view we hold of Russia’s old Christian world is one of the last triumphs of Soviet propaganda", says Jenkins.
http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/2017/September/41/9/magazine/article/10840736/

I found Jenkins' article so consonant with RAGA's philosophy that I immediately translated it into Russian for the benefit of Russian readers who may not be so knowlegeable about Russia's contribution to world culture as the author is. Вспоминая Царскую Россию (Remembering the Old Russia).  http://perevodika.ru/articles/1196068.html

Speaking of modern art, on July 9, 2017, the outstading Russian painter Ilya Glazunov passed away. As I have known him since 1957 when he clandestinately showed his art to dissident students of Moscow State University, I wrote an article in his memory focused on the prophetic thrust of his art. To those who read Russian, here it is http://www.litrossia.ru/item/10268-vladislav-krasnov-fenomen-geroicheskogo-vyzhivaniya-russkogo-khudozhnika

My main source for the Russian article was in English:
Vladislav Krasnov, “Il’ia Glazunov's Russian Nationalism: Notes from Two Exhibits”, Acta Slavica Iaponica. 1985.
https://www.academia.edu/26799477/Ilia_Glazunovs_Russian_Nationalism_Notes_from_Two_Exhibits

In that article I reviewed what regular Soviet visitors wrote about Glazunov's "Russian nationalism" art when the government reluctantly allowed two huge exhibits of his art in Moscow (1978) and Leningrad (1979). After analysing the two books of visitors' comments that were smuggled to the West, I came to the conclusion that a huge majority admired Glazunov's non-Communist art, found his nationalism benign and fully justified in stressing the need for Russia to come back to its Christian roots. This message was roundly ignored in the West, so in 1991, before the collapse of the USSR, I wrote "Russia Beyond Communism: A Chronicle of National Rebirth". The process of building a nation-state in Russia has been going on ever since despite all US efforts to suborn it to New World Order.

Below are other remarkable items waiting for your attention:

• Intel Vets Challenge ‘Russia Hack’ Evidence By VIPS.July 25, 2017
• "Information Clearing House" 
• MEMORANDUM FOR: The President (Donald Trump)
• FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
• SUBJECT: Was the “Russian Hack” an Inside Job?
• Executive Summary
• Forensic studies of “Russian hacking” into Democratic National Committee computers last year reveal that on July 5, 2016, data was leaked (not hacked) by a person with physical access to DNC computers, and then doctored to incriminate Russia.
• After examining metadata from the “Guccifer 2.0” July 5, 2016 intrusion into the DNC server, independent cyber investigators have concluded that an insider copied DNC data onto an external storage device, and that “telltale signs” implicating Russia were then inserted.http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/47516.htm#.WXf6ey-aqCE.email
• The Saker of The Unz Review sees the main source of trouble in the Neo-Con influence. Read his Place the Empire on suicide watch – By The Saker (The Unz Review) Sun, 12 Mar 2017  Political suicide: the Neocons’ refusal to accept the election of Donald Trump has resulted in a massive campaign to de-legitimize him. What the Neocons clearly fail to see, or don’t care about, is that by de-legitimizing Trump they are also de-legitimizing the entire political process which brought Trump to power and upon which the United States is built as a society. https://winstonclose.me/2017/03/14/place-the-empire-on-suicide-watch-by-the-saker-the-unz-review/
• Threat to American National Security. By Stephen F. Cohen. President Trump is right, relations with Russia are “at an all-time & very dangerous low,” and the US political-media establishment is making them worse.https://www.thenation.com/article/unverified-russiagate-allegations-promoted-by-an-irresponsible-congress-and-media-have-become-a-grave-threat-to-american-national-security/
  
• THE THREAT. Pew has an international survey out asking about leading security threats. The following NATO members name US power as a greater threat than Russian or Chinese: Canada, Germany, Greece, Spain and Turkey. USA is named first by 19 countries, China by 9, Russia by 7. This is a competition the US has won every time out of the gate. https://patrickarmstrong.ca/2017/08/10/russian-federation-sitrep-10-august-2017/
• MICHAEL BRENDAN DOUGHERTY August 4, 2017 4:00 AM @MICHAELBD It’s a tempting way to stick a finger in the Kremlin’s eye, but it would be a foolish and costly mistake.http://www.nationalreview.com/article/450140/arming-ukraine-bad-idea#_=_
  
• RUSSIA INC. “The Russian economy is increasingly becoming self-sufficient and less oil-price dependent.” Sanctions do work! (Not necessarily as intended,however.) https://patrickarmstrong.ca/2017/07/13/russian-federation-sitrep-13-july-2017/
  
• CrossTalking with Edward Lozansky, Mark Sleboda, and Vladimir Golstein. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4vX7RECzG8 Published on Jul 31, 2017. It is time to speak the obvious: Cold War 2.0 is officially on. Though this Cold War is different and possibly far more dangerous. The world is in uncharted waters as the Trump White House attempts to find its footing.
  
• FULL INTERVIEW WITH RAY MCGOVERN OF VETERANS INTELLIGENCE PROFESSIONALS FOR SANITY.    "THERE WAS NO RUSSIAN HACK."       WATCH THIS AND SEND OUT TO YOUR WHOLE LIST  AND ALSO THEN CONTACT ALL FRIENDS, ELECTED OFFICIALS , RADIO SHOWS, ETC       
  
• Send any reports or comment or questions on this to: Gerald Pechenuk at cities12345678@gmail.com
  
• Robert Parry is explains the media manipulation. How Russia-gate Met the Magnitsky Myth. By Robert Parry. July 16, 2017  "Information Clearing House" Over the past year, we have seen a growing hysteria about “Russian propaganda” and “fake news” with The New York Times and other major news outlets eagerly awaiting algorithms that can be unleashed on the Internet to eradicate information that groups like Google’s First Draft Coalition deem “false.” Frst Draft consists of the Times, the Post, other mainstream outlets, and establishment-approved online news sites, such as Bellingcat with links to the pro-NATO think tank, Atlantic Council. First Draft’s job will be to serve as a kind of Ministry of Truth and thus shield the public from information that is deemed propaganda or untrue. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/47444.htm#.WWzjtddpD0I.email
  
• Speaking of the new era of internet censorship, I got a very disturbing letter from a RAGA associate and my good friend William Fox whose web site was recently shut down. He writes to the lawyer who sent him the verdict: <<In response to the very recent shutdown of my web site and the email sent from your office reproduced below, I consider myself a staunch pro-First Amendment free speech advocate who believes strongly in the “free market place of ideas” as a necessary prerequisite for fully informed, scientific analysis. I also believe that even if certain web sites might be regarded as “Neo-Nazi” (or conversely even  “Neo-Communist,” “Neo-Zionist,” “Neo-Anarchist,” “Neo-Black Nationalist,” “Neo-Racist,” or Neo-anything else) they should not be blocked  based upon their ideological content.  In fact, at my web site amfirstbooks.com I created a “Reconciling Opposing Ideologies” series at http://tinyurl.com/5stgv6 >> If any RAGA reader has a word of sympathy, encouragement and advice to Mr. Fox, please write him at  <wthefox-01@yahoo.com>
  
• Russian president Vladimir Putin paid a surprise visit to one of Russia’s best known human rights campaigners, Lyudmila Alekseyeva. The occasion was her 90th birthday. Alekseyeva started exposing human rights violations in the USSR in 1968. To this day, she remains an active critic of the Kremlin. As a personally met Lyudmila in New York around 1980, I was glad to see President Putin visiting her on her 90th birthday and myself wish her healthy and productive life to the benefit of human rights everywhere. http://russiafeed.com/vladimir-putins-touching-visit-90-year-old-russian-human-rights-champion/
  
• UN Adopts Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapons Despite US Opposition The treaty is intended to bar countries from developing, testing, manufacturing, acquiring or even possessing any kind of nuclear weapon. Max Greenwood, The Hill,  July 7, 2017
  
• A majority of the world's countries voted at the United Nations on Friday to adopt a global treaty banning nuclear weapons.  The vote marks the first time in history that a majority of countries moved to approve a binding instrument prohibiting nuclear weapons. In all, 122 nations voted in favor of the treaty, while only one, the Netherlands, voted against it. Singapore abstained.  The treaty is intended to bar countries from developing, testing, manufacturing, acquiring or even possessing any kind of nuclear weapon.
  
• Not part of the treaty negotiations, however, were the world's nuclear powers, including the United States, France, the United Kingdom and Russia — all permanent members of the U.N. Security Council — who argued that the treaty was unrealistic and that countries like North Korea would not cooperate. The vote was celebrated by arms control groups as a first step for eliminating nuclear arms. http://portside.org/2017-07-08/un-adopts-treaty-banning-nuclear-weapons-despite-us-opposition

About which, Sharon Tennison, a veteran peace fighter, writes:
"What can wake us up? What can we do even at this late moment with 15,000 nuclear weapons between us and Russia––with Democrat and Republican Congress members urging to “Get Tough on Russia." Our planet is loaded with these mega-weapons that can destroy us in an instant, and all life on our planet in a year or so. Without doubt any left living would envy those who had died. Does this make the urgings of both Republican and Democrat Congress members to “get tough” on Russia seem like the height of insanity?"

Sharon has an impressive group travel experience. Here is one of her observations:  The noticeable thing obvious on Russian streets today is men, women, youth, and even the elderly people carry themselves with a “sense of pride.” This is visible and pervasive, whether it’s Sevastopol, Krasnodar, Moscow, StPetersburg or elsewhere. It appears that Russians have quietly been reborn in this 21st century. After all of the dreariness and degradation of the Soviet period, the 80s and the 90s under Yeltsin, today's Russians have become proud of their country––and proud to be Russians. If you want to travel with her, here the address: Sharon Tennison <sharon@ccisf.org>

Reflect on Russia's nostalgy for the pre-1917 past
90,000 people go on the Crusade on the night of the Romanovs’ murder
http://russiafeed.com/crusade-on-the-night-of-the-murder-of-the-romanovs-90000-people-participate/

As always, I am glad to forward a report from my colleague from Tulane university, William Brumfield: Photographer at the end of the earth. This one concerns my native Perm.

July 06, 2017 2:45 PM  |  William C. Brumfield brumfiel@tulane.edu   Print to PDF

A number of other lectures followed, not only in Moscow but also the Urals cities of Perm and Yekaterinburg, where I gave two lectures at the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Center. Russian audiences seemed especially interested in my descriptions of growing up in the South and the role of Russian literature in my early education.

Gratified by the warm Russian response, I am convinced that culture serves as a bridge between our two great countries. http://news.tulane.edu/news/photographer-end-earth

Sincerely,
W George Krasnow (http://wiki-org.ru/wiki/Краснов,_Владислав_Георгиевич)
President, RAGA

All statements in this report are an opinion of the author. Act at your own risk. Russia & America Goodwill Association (RAGA) is not responsible for the content of the article. Any views or opinions presented in this report are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RAGA. Any liability in respect to this communication remain with the author.

RAGA News
www.RAGA.org​

This Fall marks the centennial of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.  Although few commentators today are likely to glorify that event or its aftermath, most will assume that the revolution was a regrettable necessity, which swept away a repressive and stagnant ancient regime.  Such a view is false.  Culturally and spiritually, that lost pre-revolutionary Russia was a treasure house, and indeed a birthplace of the modern West.  The grim view we hold of Russia’s old Christian world is one of the last triumphs of Soviet propaganda.

That is nowhere more true than in the case of the Russian Orthodox Church, which is so often portrayed as a haven of obscurantism and anti-Jewish hatred.  In fact, most of the episcopate strove to discredit and suppress antisemitic propaganda.  Meanwhile, the country was in the midst of a general spiritual revival, with rising levels of literacy among peasants and a publishing boom in devotional literature.  The church made serious inroads among industrial workers through a series of charismatically led reform movements preaching a kind of social-gospel activism.  The legendary St. John of Kronstadt was only the most celebrated of many locally famous holy men and women.

The church boasted a thriving cultural life, as most intellectuals and artists were suffused with its imagery and traditions, even if they rejected its political authority. Many proclaimed themselves Bogoiskateli, “God seekers.”  In 1915, Sergei Rachmaninoff produced in his choral “All-Night Vigil” one of the greatest musical accomplishments in modern religious history. Nikolai Berdyaev was a groundbreaking philosopher, a radical pioneer of Christian existentialism.  The Orthodox Russia that entered the war looked as if it were beginning an epoch of cultural achievement equal to any in its storied past.

​Historians commonly draw a sharp division between such achievements of the old order and the dazzling triumphs of modernism, which they commonly associate with the revolutionary world.  In this view, 1917 represents a watershed, a glorious transition to modernity.  Again, that is a pernicious myth.  Well before this date, Russian artists and musicians were already key pioneers of modern literature, art, music, and design, and they drew overwhelmingly on Christian traditions.  However radical it might appear in retrospect, experimental modernity was rooted in a thoroughly Orthodox thought-world of angels, apocalypse, and icons.

Already in 1916, Russia had produced the greatest urban apocalypse of the era.  Andrei Bely’s novel Petersburg resembles the work of Joyce in its daring experimentation, and in its enormous influence on later literature.  The book depicts pre-war St. Petersburg as a society on the verge of explosions, literal and metaphorical, a city living at the end of the world.  It is also a city under the eye of angels, where the devil walks the streets.  The statue of a horseman is a pervasive symbol, obviously suggesting one of the four horsemen of Revelation.  Only in whispers can Bely’s characters discuss the real issue at hand: “the Second Coming of Christ.”

​Although Bely apparently never met the Moscow-born painter Wassily Kandinsky, the work of each man often echoed the other’s interests in angels and imminent judgment.  In 1912, Kandinsky edited the pivotal manifesto Der Blaue Reiter Almanach, which cultural historians regard as an epochal movement in European modernism, bringing together the most innovative German and Russian artists of the day.  But we lose the religious significance of the name when we translate it “The Blue Rider.”  It actually refers to a bluehorseman, and the movement was born as a protest against a gallery’s decision to reject a Kandinsky painting of the Last Judgment.  That Orthodox-framed cosmic finale lay at the heart of European modernism.

​Another angel-obsessed member of the school was Russian painter Natalia Goncharova who in 1910 created her stunning image of the Archangel Michael, the leader of the heavenly hosts.  Although an advanced modernist, her work draws heavily on Russian icon traditions.  In 1915, she designed sets for Sergei Diaghilev’s planned ballet Liturgy, which was to feature such ancient images as the six-winged seraphs, with music based on Orthodox liturgical themes.

Mentioning Diaghilev suggests the enormous Russian contribution to modernist music, as avant-garde Europeans venerated such titanic innovators as Igor Stravinsky and Alexander Scriabin.  But Stravinsky in particular was a devout Orthodox believer, who famously remarked that “Music praises God.  Music is well or better able to praise him than the building of the church and all its decoration; it is the Church’s greatest ornament.”  Obviously, Stravinsky did not return to Bolshevik Russia after 1917, nor did many of the key modernists.  The gullible modernists who did choose Bolshevik rule usually ended up silenced or murdered.

When we struggle past the Bolshevik myths, we must give full credit to that old Christian Russia for inventing the modern West, and the modern mind.      

This article first appeared in the September 2017 issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture (www.chroniclesmagazine.org).

Philip Jenkins is in 2013 the Distinguished Professor of History at Baylor University in the United States, and Co-Director for Baylor's Program on Historical Studies of Religion in the Institute for Studies of Religion

​
All statements in this report are an opinion of the author. Act at your own risk. Russia & America Goodwill Association (RAGA) is not responsible for the content of the article. Any views or opinions presented in this report are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RAGA. Any liability in respect to this communication remain with the author.

RAGA News
www.RAGA.org​