28 June 2012
In this photo taken in 1992, a young man attends Divine Liturgy at a Russian Orthodox church in Moscow. (photo: Richard Lord)
In the November 1993 issue of the magazine, Michael J.L. La Civita, CNEWA’s Vice President for Communications, wrote about his first experience visiting Moscow and his impressions about a city confronting its troubled past and discovering its future:
As my departure for Moscow approached, I thought my visit would answer some questions and confirm a few opinions. I was certain I would have much to write about Moscow, and Russia by extension. I thought wrongly. Instead I am baffled by a city and a nation confused about its past, present and future.
In a land where great numbers of saints once walked on pilgrimage, where writers and philosophers discussed how to improve the peasants’ lot, where revolutionaries gathered to plan an earthly paradise, the victims of corruption, greed and fear now wander. Poverty, political instability and moral and spiritual apathy have generated a loss of self-knowledge. “Holy Russia has lost her soul,” lament her cultural, religious and social leaders.
References to the Russian “soul” abound in this nation’s history, literature and religious philosophy. Today, after more than 70 years of communism, the now-proverbial search for the Russian soul is nothing else than the search for what is authentically Russian.
For more, read This Year, Moscow.
Tags: Russia Communism/Communist
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