Praising Russian culture is not difficult. In his meeting with young Catholics of Russia, the Pope could have exhorted them to feel that they are heirs of a greatness that was expressed in classics of universal literature such as Leo Tolstoy, Maxim Gorky, Anton Chekhov, Fedor Dostoyevsky, Aleksandr Pushkin and Nicolai Gogol. Heirs to the culture that produced great dancers, such as Maya Plisetskaya, Mikhail Barishnikov, Ana Pavlova and Rudolf Nuréyev. Also great scientists, such as Iván Pavlov, Nicolai Gamaleya and Nicolai Semionov, among many others. Also heroes of space research, such as astronaut Yuri Gagarin, as well as virtuoso musicians and painters and chess giants.
The head of the Catholic Church could have drawn on a long list of talents that enriched Russian and universal culture. But Francis did not exhort them to feel like heirs of those geniuses whose works enriched humanity, but of emperors who expanded the map of Russia with their conquests. These conquests mainly include territories where today Vladimir Putin is imposing a catastrophic war.
“Never forget your heritage; They are children of Great Russia. Great Russia of the saints, of the kings. The Great Russia of Peter I and Catherine II. That great, cultured empire of great humanity. Never give up this legacy. “They are heirs of the Great Mother Russia,” he said. Francisco in the teleconference to young Russians.
It may not have been his intention, but the references, images and historical figures that he mentions in that paragraph of his message make up the rhetorical arsenal of pan-Slavist nationalism and Russian ultranationalism.
That this part of his message is objectively questionable is proven by the fact that the Vatican’s dissemination did not include it, which the Russian media did.
Viatoslav Shevchuk, authority of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, adding their questions to the harsh criticism made by the Ukrainian governmentsaid that the Pope’s words refer to “the worst example of Russian imperialism and extreme nationalism” and could be “a stimulus for that nationalist imperialism, which is the true cause of the war” that Ukrainians are suffering.
That paragraph of the speech was equivalent to putting one’s finger in the Ukrainian socket. It happens that his words sounded like praise for the absolutist monarchs who expanded Russian territory through wars of conquest. And he said them just at the moment when the war machine of the current Kremlin despot is invading Ukraine and destroying cities and lives, precisely, to push Russia’s borders to where the two praised figures had taken them in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Following the path marked by Ivan IV Vasilievich, founder of the Russian State in the 16th century, Peter the Great expanded the territory to the coasts of the Baltic Sea in the 17th century, through wars against the Swedish kingdom in which King Charles XII reigned. while in the southwest, their armies attacked the janissaries of the Ottoman Empire, reaching the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.
In its expansionist desire To the north, the emperor praised by Francis had Saint Petersburg built on the estuary of the Neva River, in conditions that cost the lives of more than 200 thousand men who worked in those icy Nordic swamps. In those icy waters, Pedro I had dove to rescue victims of a shipwreck, surviving hypothermia but aggravating the urinary illness that later ended his life. However, this heroic gesture does not compensate for the sea of deaths that the construction of the monumental city that he ordered to be erected cost.
In turn, Catherine II, in her desire for power, went from being a German princess turned Tsarina to Empress of All the Russias, perpetrating a coup d’état against her own husband, the pusillanimous Peter II. In the 18th century, the empress also nicknamed “The Great” launched wars of conquest that added territories taken from Poland, Ukraine, Belarus and what was then Livonia and is currently Lithuania and Estonia.
They were not the only events that discouraged her from being the target of a Pope’s praise. Her prolific reign saw mass crimes, such as the ethnic cleansing that pushed the Ashkenazim against the new frontiers of the West, prohibiting them from living in cities. This anti-Semitic policy stigmatized Jews in Russia and encouraged pogroms that multiplied between the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 20th century.
For the Pope, it is good to urge young Russians to “not renounce the legacy” of the “Great Empire” that Peter I and Catherine II forged, and to feel like “heirs of the Great Mother Russia.” Both monarchs were great statesmen, admirable in many aspects, but praising them when Ukraine suffers a bloody invasion that still keeps the territories east of the Dnieper River occupied, constitutes a disgrace. And if the same pontiff he has had does it anti-imperialist statements In reference to Western powers, it is contradictory.
The Pope endorsed with his words the arguments that the head of the Kremlin uses today to justify the brutal war of aggression against the neighboring country. At the end of the day, Russian nationalists and ultranationalists They consider those territories their own since the wars of conquest that built that “Great Mother Russia” that she exalted in her message to the young Catholics of Russia.
They were the least appropriate words at the least appropriate time. That’s why sparked outrage in Ukraine, as well as in Poland and the Baltic countries. But even if Russia were not imposing a war of conquest on its neighbor, Pope Francis’ message is disturbing.
He was able to speak to them as young people, in the universal sense, which is the sense of the word Catholic. As young members of a species stalked by unprecedented natural dangers, in increasingly complex societies.
But instead of speaking to them as young people of the world, he spoke to them as Russians, that is, as members of a Slavic ethnic group and Orthodox Christianhighlighting in a disconcerting way the national heritage that is supposed to distinguish them from the rest of the world’s youth.
From the head of a church whose name comes from the Greek adjective “katholikos”, which refers to what is universal, what is convenient and justified is not to frame the human group that listens to him in an X, unless the occasion dictates it. Even then, if it was about highlighting Russia, he could have chosen another aspect of that nation’s rich culture.
