Sir, – I am shocked and sickened on reading your Editorial (July 31st) in support of “free speech” in Pussy Riot’s protest demonstration on the sacred space of a church altar. Would you be equally supportive of such free speech on the hallowed grounds of The Irish Times offices? What does “free speech” imply? Does it outline the right to verbally slur, revile, profane any person, place or thing in any way, in any place, at any time we so choose? – Yours, etc,
Sir, – Your tolerance of blasphemy as advocated in your second editorial (July 31st) is not new. But such irreverent treatment, or false defamation, of things sacred to many people, myself included, is not alone hurtful but, especially in Russia, socially dangerous.
Your statement that the irate response of the Patriarch (to the angry wild dance on his alter steps) has “disappointingly found widespread support” among society and conservative writers points to an astonishing non-awareness on your part as regards other events since the cathedral was first built when the retreating French revolutionary army burned most of that city in 1812.
For instance, in Moscow 850 by E Zhigailov (1996) one reads at random that “the explosion of the Christ the Saviour Cathedral, a monstrous crime committed by Stalin’s circle, was the starting signal for the total annihilation of monasteries and churches all over Moscow and Russia . . . To bury in its debris not only Russia’s belief in God, but even dreams of Russia’s revival, instead promising the deceived people a bright future and a paradise on earth.
“In the autumn of 1994 Moscow began reconstructing the Christ the Saviour Cathedral for the second time, without borrowing a single rouble from the country’s or the city’s budget: thousands of postal money orders . . . Coming from all over Russia (and from) descendents of Russian emigrants who left the country that blew up its cathedrals and killed innocent people . . . sending their dollars . . . and in April 1996, bells cast by the Moscow smiths tolled. Their divine chimes floated in Moscow’s air, proving again that Good always defeats Evil”.
The destructive Bolshevik revolution, led by Lenin and Stalin in 1917 had some of its more idealistic roots in the works of great writers such as A Pushkin, I Turgenev and A Gorki, portraying the strengths, sufferings and hopes of the common people – this humanist vista most recently reflected in the views of conservative writers such as A Solzhenitsyn some of whose heroes are the imprisoned but undaunted Christians praying in their Gulag bunk beds.
When the Punk dancers castigated the Patriarch for his open support of V Putin in the recent presidential election they also gained some publicity for themselves and for other opponents of Putin. These were mainly the official Communist candidate, Gennady Zyuganov, who won about 20 per cent of the votes, the plutocrat Mikhail Prokhorov and Vladimir Zhirinovsky of the “Liberal Democratic” Party which, in the words of Séamus Martin (World News, February 22nd) “is by no stretch of the imagination either liberal or democratic”.
It is therefore unsurprising that Russian people are largely conservative, not wishing to have their newly restored political and religious freedoms endangered by further desecration of their symbolic cathedral, dedicated to Christ the Saviour. – Is mise,