Putin Says Communism Comes From the Bible, Compares Lenin to a Saint
Source: Newsweek Magazine
BY DAMIEN SHARKOV ON 1/15/18 AT 6:44 AM
Russian President Vladimir Putin has compared Vladimir Lenin to a saint and declared that Soviet communist ideas come from the Bible.
Putin was speaking during a documentary about the recently-restored Valaam Monastery on state-funded channel Rossiya 1, which tells the story of the buildinglocated near the border with Finlandover the years.
A major point of discussion is the October Revolution of 1917, which led to the execution of the staunchly Christian royal family, the formation of the Soviet Union and a new chapter of atheistic and anti-religious policies by the Kremlin.
Ever sinceand particularly after the opening of the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev in the early 1990sthe role of the church in Russian society has been a dividing issue.
But Putin, who has often backed the church, tells the documentary makers that he does not believe the ideals of communism and Christianity are incompatible.
Maybe I am about to say something that some people will not like, but I will say what I think, he says.
Firstly, faith has always accompanied us. It strengthened when things were hard for our peoples country. There have been harsh, godfighting years when clerics were destroyed and churches were ruined. But at the same time (Soviets) created a new religion. Indeed, communist ideology is very similar to Christianity.
Lenin, an atheist who espoused the Marxist view that religion was "the opium of the people," inspired an active campaign to confiscate church property, while his successor, Joseph Stalin, demolished Moscows biggest cathedral in 1931. In its place he planned a public swimming pool compete with a giant statue of Lenin. Stalin ran out of money for the project but it was later built by Stalin's successor, Nikita Krushchev.
But Putin argues that like Christianity, communism preaches freedom, brotherhood, equality. He called the Moral Code of the Builder of Communism, a pamphlet of guiding principles for all party members, a primitive excerpt from the Bible.
In ritual too, Putin argued, Lenin and his cohorts borrowed from church practices, though it was unclear if he thought this was a conscious or intuitive effort.
"Lenin was laid down in a mausoleum, Putin reminded his interviewer. How does this differ to the remains of saints for the Orthodox or even for Christians in general?
Ironically, the issue of Lenin's mausoleum is one of the main sources of discord between the church and the Communist Party, which are the countrys second largest presence in parliament.
Church officials have long sought to have Leninwhose mausoleum has stood outside the Kremilin since 1924buried, arguing that it is improper. Communists argue that the casket sits below ground level, fulfilling the criteria for burial.
Putin has long refused to be drawn either way about the mausoleum, but told Rossiya 1 that the monument was similar to how saints are displayed in the Orthodox tradition.
I am often told: Nowhere in the Christian world is there such a tradition. How can that be? Go to Athos and see how there are remains of saints and here also there are the sacred remains of Sergius and Herman," he says.
"So it seems that the authorities at the time did not invent anything new, but merely adopted under its own ideology something that humankind invented a long time ago.
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Read more: http://www.newsweek.com/putin-says-communism-comes-bible-compares-lenin-saint-781328
Full article posted with the permission of Newsweek -- Don
janterry
(4,429 posts)what does he care about the bible, in the first place. He's a murderer.
Fred Sanders
(23,946 posts)90% plus white AND Christian and mainly one sect, Russian Orthodox.
Kissy, kissy some cleric ass.
getagrip_already
(14,757 posts)He is correct. Oh, not in the practical, just the theoretical.
The key tenants of christ's actual teachings (some of which are surprisingly in the bible), point towards the ideals of love thy neighbor, people being equal in the eyes of god, helping others, heck, even the powerful serving the powerless (as exemplified by washing their feet).
That is diametrically the opposite of capitalism and facism. Of course, in theory, democracy also shares many of those ideals. Capitalism ruins them though.
So yeah, many of communism's ideals may be biblical. So what. It was implemented under a dictatorship of cruelty and barbarism. It failed because it was corrupt and failed to serve the needs of those it purportedly existed for. The result was an oligarchy run by a dictator.
Putin proclaiming links to the bible and it's teachings is about as absurd as trump doing it.
Democracy should be viewed critically towards the failure of soviet communism. It could also fail, and for many of the same reasons.
DetlefK
(16,423 posts)DetlefK
(16,423 posts)When confronted with the many failures and mistakes of communist countries to live up to communist ideals, the go-to excuse is to point out that they didn't implement Communism properly.
Communism is great... in theory. The problem is, Communism only works with a a population of perfect humans who are neither selfish nor irrational.
There was an east-german poet who wrote a sarcastic warning to his fellow citizens: They better appreciate the socialist leadership, or else it will leave them behind and look for new people to rule over.
yurbud
(39,405 posts)snooper2
(30,151 posts)That is why the bible says you are supposed to kill your neighbor if you see him working on Sunday
Bernardo de La Paz
(49,002 posts)DetlefK
(16,423 posts)nycbos
(6,034 posts)Freedom is slavery.
Liberalagogo
(1,770 posts)people that wrap themselves up in the Bible and their flag again?
RhodeIslandOne
(5,042 posts)World is fucked.
better
(884 posts)The fundamental principles of Communism, common ownership of the means of production, and the absence of social classes, money and the state, I think are indeed rather compatible with Christianity. The problem with Communism is not the underlying philosophy, but the inherent corruption of man in its implementation.
Personally, I find that Capitalism is the more incompatible with the essence of Christianity, particularly when it is practiced as a combination of religion and system of government, as we have devolved into. I, for one, am frequently struck by the cognitive dissonance of those who angrily proclaim how this is a CHRISTIAN NATION, and then in the same discussion will rail against their taxes going to things like feeding the hungry and sheltering foreigners. For as much as they love to cite Leviticus 20:13 to justify their bigotry toward homosexuals, they sure do seem to miss the rather clear point of Leviticus 23:22...
When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Leave them for the poor and for the foreigner residing among you. I am the LORD your God.
Seems to me that spending our tax dollars (the gleanings of our harvest) caring for the poor and the foreigners residing among us is a pretty clearly appropriate thing for the government of a supposedly Christian nation to do.
ancianita
(36,060 posts)bucolic_frolic
(43,173 posts)from another self-congratulatory whackjob!
Dopers_Greed
(2,640 posts)Or it will make them start liking communism.
We already know how spineless they are.
They'll look at the statement and be able to disagree with it.
Even if it's just, "Nuh-uh!" they won't assume it's true because it's said.
(A key difference that undermines Putin is butt-obvious: While early Xians are said to have held all things in common, it was also voluntary. You could participate or not. There was nothing wrong about not participating.In fact, it was presented that it's better to not participate if you're going to do it wrong or for the wrong reasons. Try that with any governmental system.
(We've a long experience with voluntary communes. In the US, in Israel, elsewhere. They run into resentment, inequality, and after a generation or two self-destruct. Or they expel or encourage deviant members to leave and hope both for new members joining to keep staffed and for new members' wealth to keep solvent. Or they have such a strict, strong, moral code that they teach their kids and in so doing avoid much of the resentment coupled with a strong "us good/them bad" point of view. Most people would consider such a code repressive, at least if they didn't agree with it. The USSR was just a large-scale version of this. They liquidated their wealth and relied on expelling or incarcerating those who didn't play by the new rules. They lived for xenophobia, which started as nationalism, became mostly ideological, but quickly returned to simple nationalism. To avoid self-destruction, they quickly found, by 1925, that they needed a fairly strong, repressive state.)
This is a year old and it would be interesting to see a more recent survey: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/01/10/u-s-public-says-russia-hacked-campaign/ft_17-01-10_russiahacks_adversary3/
FreepFryer
(7,077 posts)Roy Rolling
(6,917 posts)Many so-called Christian leaders declared Trump a great Christian. Christian "leaders" who kiss-ass are no better than Putin, this is the same logic.
Honeycombe8
(37,648 posts)in one aspect of religion. It's not a history book, either.
Maxheader
(4,373 posts)Right wing loons...not just the religious hacks...share
much the same philosophy as putin...when The Bible
doesn't match his 'doctrines' on social restraint..
he makes it up..
Javaman
(62,530 posts)in the gulags, shall we? and see exactly what they have to say.
Igel
(35,317 posts)He's talking to other Russians and trying to heal what some still see as a rift in the population.
Think of it as going to attitudes. The Orthodox did not want to hurt people under tsarism. That wasn't the idea. Jesus didn't say, "Kill thy neighbor, and abuse those that you have opportunity to abuse." They believed themselves to be doing good.
Similarly, most of the actual believers in the Communist Party also thought they were doing something good (remove all the wannabes who joined because without a Party card you couldn't go to college, be a manager, or have a good job).
In the event, though, both screwed up. However, the Communists early on presented the Orthodox as hateful, vindictive, and intentionally bad and abusive. Now, some were, to be sure. But most weren't.
The Orthodox also present the communists as hateful, vindictive, and intentionally bad and abusive. Now, some were, to be sure. But most weren't.
The current problem isn't that things went bad, but that it's assumed that the group on the other side of the fence had only bad motives. Putin's all wet on this--the problem with Soviet-style 'communism' was that it precisely missed the most basic premises of the "they held all things in common" line from Acts. Holding all things in common didn't deny property or the acceptability of owning it, or the individual choice to participate; collective good is presented as what emerges from a group of people with the same goal using the same means. It's merely more efficient.
I think that both of the systems have rather serious problems, one far, far more serious than the other, but "user intent" isn't one of them. I'm still a fairly firm believer in Hanlon's razor, don't attribute to malice what can be explained by mere stupidity.
Javaman
(62,530 posts)was far outside their grasp.
They were still mired in the feudal mindset and hadn't really fully explored the concept of cooperative mentality.
as a result, many old wounds from the Tsars still kept the politburo suspicious of everything.
I think it was doomed from the start. it was pure enertia that kept it going for so long
deminks
(11,014 posts)However he can use it to strengthen his own position and his own power, and keep the opposition in jail (or dead), he will.
tclambert
(11,087 posts)and their brand of corrupt Communism.
Why has he done all the things he's done? Just to get rich? Just to accumulate power? He must have a plan beyond that. "Russians don't take a dump, son, without a plan," according to Admiral Painter in The Hunt for Red October. Putin seems especially schemey.
Eliot Rosewater
(31,112 posts)300 billion he has stolen from the citizens there.
BTW, he is going to take your house and mine next, and trumpers houses, they just dont know it yet.
Thomas Hurt
(13,903 posts)carlpangea78
(1 post)Before or after Stalin murdered 20 million Georgians?
Rhiannon12866
(205,467 posts)Last edited Tue Jan 16, 2018, 08:02 AM - Edit history (1)
Because he murdered so many Russians. That's what I was told when I was there and asked why there were still so many statues of Stalin.
7962
(11,841 posts)And minorities are also treated equally in communist countries. Equally MIStreated.
Oneironaut
(5,500 posts)Elections are rigged so that the same person (or his puppets) wins over and over again, and opponents face potentially lethal harassment campaigns.
Before someone claims that its the same here, though, no it isnt. Its not even close. This country has problems, but Putins kleptocratic stranglehold on Russia is another beast entirely. Try going to Russia and challenging Putins leadership. In the US you might have a smear campaign run against you, while in Russia, you might have a radioactive cocktail poured into your drink.
lagomorph777
(30,613 posts)Grins
(7,217 posts)To America's 'Christian' Evangelicals, maybe. For those others...not so much.