By Iz.ru
February 24, 2003 Anno Domini

Kabbalah is one of the most mysterious magical teachings. There are many legends about ancient Kabbalah. The head of the world school of Kabbalists, Michael Laitman, arrived in Moscow, who is a student of Baruch Ashlag, the son of the most famous Kabbalist of the twentieth century, Judah Ashlag, known as Baal HaSulam. Kabbalists believe that it was Baal HaSulam who was inhabited by the soul that lived first in Moses and then in Abraham. You can guess who the soul of the Old Testament prophets resides in now. Rabbi Laitman is the heir to a chain of famous Kabbalists of the past, and now he is the only one who is allowed to teach publicly

A person wants to live happily. This is perhaps the first law of life. And the second – a person is afraid of loneliness. But how to fulfill these aspirations? The first way is to change the environment for the better and find a creature close in spirit and mind. The second is to change yourself for the better and again get away from loneliness. As in economics – an extensive path and an intensive one. Civilization has come up with countless routes to follow these paths. Like a vinaigrette, a person, in pursuit of the blue bird of happiness, mixes all possible methods – rational and irrational, earthly and astral, majestic and funny. You can, for example, organize an interplanetary dating club and directly contact your brothers in mind, who, you believe, will relieve you of oppressive loneliness. This is what Ukrainian astronomers did, calling on colleagues from other countries as companions. You can do otherwise – try to improve yourself to such an extent that your spiritual virtues will allow you to become equal to His Majesty the Creator. This recipe is professed by Kabbalists who study the ancient and secret Kabbalah. Has a person come even one iota closer to happiness, has he escaped loneliness? As the great sage Kant said, there are two things inaccessible to understanding: the starry sky above us and the moral law within us. Our today’s page is about these eternal mysteries.

Kabbalah is one of the most mysterious magical teachings. There are many legends about ancient Kabbalah. Where is the truth and where is the speculation? The head of the world school of Kabbalists, Michael Laitman, arrived in Moscow, who is a student of Baruch Ashlag, the son of the most famous Kabbalist of the twentieth century, Judah Ashlag, known as Baal HaSulam. Kabbalists believe that it was Baal HaSulam who was inhabited by the soul that lived first in Moses and then in Abraham. You can guess who the soul of the Old Testament prophets resides in now. Rabbi Laitman is the heir to a chain of famous Kabbalists of the past, and now he is the only one who is allowed to teach publicly. In Moscow, he gave a lecture at the Russian State Library. The night before the lecture, Rabbi Michael LIGHTMAN spoke with Izvestia columnist Sergei LESKOV. – If you, Rav Laitman, had to give a brief definition of Kabbalah, how would you formulate it? – Was this definition in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia? – Was. There was no chapter about love, but there was one about Kabbalah. – Some kind of stupidity.

Kabbalah is a method of revealing the complete universe to man. Man has five senses, but there is a volume of the universe that is hidden from him. And Kabbalah reveals this volume. This is a purely practical method, accessible to everyone. Although it is very difficult – you have to go through 125 steps. When a Kabbalist enters into a sense of the higher world, ordinary ideas about time and space disappear. The world appears in its entirety of cause-and-effect relationships. A person at another level of existence acquires qualities that allow him to see what is beneficial and what is harmful. The border between life and death disappears, and a person begins to identify himself with eternity. – Do such abilities imply special morality? – We are not talking about this category. Can a technique have morality? It’s just that a person has a new sense organ, which takes him to a different level of perception of the universe. – What about all sorts of Tarot cards, cryptograms, manipulations with numbers? – Nonsense and fairy tales! Kabbalah is the science of the sixth sense organ.

I could say that this is the science of the soul, if everyone did not put their own meaning into the concept of “soul”. – Such outstanding personalities as Jan Potocki, Borges, Thornton Wilder wrote about Kabbalah. Is there truth in their writings? – I haven’t read any of this, although I’ve heard it. I only read books by Kabbalists. – If Kabbalah is a science, then it must have strict signs of science – repeatability of the result, its predictability, changes in methodology when new knowledge is accumulated. – The Kabbalist records his condition in strict quantitative parameters. Kabbalah textbooks contain diagrams, tables, formulas. Following the calculated path, the Kabbalist comes to the desired point, where another Kabbalist will come in the same way. It’s like a city guide. – Last year, at the Russian Philosophical Society, which operates within the Academy of Sciences, a section on the theory and history of Kabbalah was created, and the first dissertation in Russia on this issue was defended. But for well-known reasons, scientists have a cautious, distrustful attitude towards philosophy. – The fundamental achievements of natural science coincide with what was written many centuries ago in books on Kabbalah. Physicists repeat what the Kabbalists have revealed in the spiritual world. This applies, for example, to the origin of the Universe due to the Big Bang. In Kabbalah there was never any doubt about the heliocentric system of the world.

The books of Ari, written in the 16th century, give a detailed description of human anatomy, the cardiovascular system, and talk about the importance of bone marrow. The number 137 itself, one of the fundamental constants of the Universe (Planck’s constant multiplied by the speed of light divided by the square of the electron charge), is the encrypted meaning of the word “Kabbalah.” – But if Kabbalah knows everything, then can’t it help science? – For what? – So that scientists don’t suffer. And so that a person can quickly take advantage of the fruits of the teaching. – It’s not clear that progress will add happiness. The Kabbalist Baal HaSulam burned most of his books so that his students themselves would reach the truths they needed. – Where the soul is, there is God. I don’t want to have conversations on the bench about breakfasts with Kant and proofs of the existence of God, but… – I prefer not to talk about the Creator for the same reason that I avoid mentioning the soul. The Creator is nothing more than the general law of the entire universe. – How are your relations with world religions? – Jewish Orthodox are persecuting us. Kabbalah is hostile to any religion because it deprives it of a piece of bread.

In Kabbalah you don’t have to believe in anything. You just need to ask one childish question – what is the meaning of life? – Kabbalah has always been a closed area. But you, Rav Laitman, give lectures and have a website on the Internet. Has something changed in the world? How many Kabbalists are there now? – Many books say that at the end of the twentieth century, the development of the world will reach such a height that people will strive to understand the meaning of life. Not all people, of course, but a critical mass will arise. And we see how people’s aspirations are changing. There are several levels for a person. The first is food, sex, family. The second is wealth and money. The third is honor and glory. The fourth is knowledge. It was only in the twentieth century that a massive desire to understand the meaning of life appeared. The time has come to reveal Kabbalah to the world, which is the search for the meaning of life. Previously, people were not ready for this, and Kabbalah was the lot of the chosen few. And now in the USA about 12 thousand people practice Kabbalah, in Israel – 3 thousand. The East is completely immune to Kabbalah. – What is the social status of Kabbalists? Are they rich or poor? – Among my students there are both billionaires and unemployed people. What does the contents of a wallet matter if the soul equally feels empty?- What about Russia’s place? Russia always has a special place. Moreover, we are talking about the soul. – Russia has been assigned a central role. In this country, unlike the frozen West, spirituality has always played a special role. The sensual fullness of the Russian person makes him inclined to comprehend Kabbalah. The structure of the Russian soul is such that here it is easy for teaching to find the right response. I think it may be that Russia will attract high society and abundance will arise here, excellent relations will develop between people. – It’s nice, but still Kabbalah is a Jewish teaching. – Who are the Jews? There is no such nation. Genetically they are no different from other peoples. The Jews are the group that was chosen to preserve knowledge until the time came to reveal it to the world. The ancient books precisely indicate 1975, when you can start studying, as the Kabbalist Gaon from Vilna wrote, for example, in the 16th century.

Since we are about to become Kabbalists, it is interesting to know whether this teaching imposes any restrictions? – None. Not in food, not in clothes, not in lifestyle. The main thing is to have fun. Pleasure – the central category of Kabbalah is achieved in merging with nature and the universe. But if pleasure is associated with the satisfaction of only one’s own desires, then it is quickly exhausted. Egoism is hostile to itself and meaningless. It is necessary to divide pleasure and the desire for it in time and space. That is, we must strive for the pleasure of another person. This is the state of the Creator, his highest pleasure is not in receiving, but in bestowing. – Why are we born egoists? The creator could have immediately made something better. – That is, create yourself? Man must independently come to the highest law. This is the purpose of the Creator. – Apparently, he also suffers from loneliness.

At what age can you learn Kabbalah? – You can start learning as soon as a person begins to ask himself the question: “Why am I living?” That is, at any age. – Do men and women perceive Kabbalah differently? – Men are more inclined to give, women – to receive. Therefore, the teaching methods are different. The most enlightened Kabbalists are necessarily men. – A Kabbalist, like a monk, should not think about women? – Why? On the contrary, the Kabbalist radiates so much energy that he begins to attract people. The Kabbalist, like an eternal boy, stops aging; he longs to know everything in this world in order to better understand the Upper World. The Kabbalist becomes a more active person. – Does this activity also concern women Kabbalists? – Don’t know. In this regard, a woman does not have physical needs, but more spiritual ones.

If a Kabbalist becomes wiser, does this help him achieve conventional success? He can, for example, become a consultant to the oligarchs… – That is, “let’s do something”? Hardly. Kabbalah takes you to the higher world, lifts you above the desires that lead to ordinary success in life. When you think about your soul, you inevitably begin to worry less about money. I always warn my billionaire students not to forget about business and surround themselves with dedicated helpers. Kabbalah, perhaps, can only have a utilitarian meaning in raising children and in art. For example, Madonna is actively involved in Kabbalah.

Kabbalists understand the upper world, but how do they relate to the real world? Are they trying to turn it over? – The Kabbalist is loyal to the authorities and leads an ordinary life. But to some extent, he cannot help but lose interest in the real world, which no longer has the same value. – Do you have children? – Three. The son lives in Canada. One daughter in Israel is writing a dissertation in biology. The youngest serves in the army. -Are you afraid of war? Wars in the real world… – Man is ready for self-destruction. I believe that only Kabbalah can save the world. Nothing else, this is already clear, can save the world. Marxism-Leninism prepared us for Kabbalah, Corresponding Member of the RAS Piama GAIDENKO: In the 16th century, during the Renaissance, interest in Kabbalah suddenly arose, many books were translated into European languages, and they were read in society. Are there any parallels with today?

Historians and sociologists should think about this. In principle, a person can become better through occult knowledge. Why not? It seems to me that today the rise of interest in secret teachings is natural: when the previous firm guidelines are lost and a person does not know who he is, where he comes from and where he is going, the search for support outside the rational field begins. In a traditional society with a solid, established way of life, occult knowledge usually does not spread. In the era of the triumph of Marxism-Leninism, occult knowledge was persecuted, people were brought up in the spirit of worship of rational knowledge. Although, you must agree, Marxism-Leninism itself is difficult to classify as rational knowledge. In short, in all areas in Russia the ground for Kabbalah is well prepared. Doctor of Philosophy Evgeny Balagushkin: Kabbalists should have come to Russia.Traditional religious movements are increasingly less consistent with the psychology of modern man. They are built on the fundamental gap between Heaven and Earth, on the assertion that Man is a fallen being and must subdue his desires. But modern man in real life sees his power, he believes in his own strength and does not understand why he must refuse what Nature has given him and deliberately put himself in a downtrodden, dependent position. He cannot understand why his body created by God is sinful and only his soul is capable of carrying the highest meaning. Hence many of the neuroses and complexes of our contemporary people.

In the sacred space, modern man is looking for a teaching that will allow him to feel like a collaborator, an ally of the Creator. The following construction is becoming more and more common: God cries alone, and only relying on the help of Man can they together, God and Man, save the world. The rapprochement of Earth and Heaven, Man and God – this line genetically leads to atheism. By the way, Bolshevism with its leader is one of the latest manifestations of secular religiosity. In Russia, the hunger for God is felt especially acutely. Look how many Western preachers have appeared in the Russian provinces! And Kabbalah, which hundreds of thousands of people practice in the United States, can certainly spread even more widely here. In the ideas of Kabbalah, with its sacralization of hedonistic happiness, one can find much in common with what Plato expressed, and he was, you see, not the last thinker. Kabbalah, among other things, is attractive to modern man because it does not burden him with the burden of sinfulness. This, it seems to me, makes Kabbalah similar to Buddhism and Krishnaism. Is this why Kabbalah cannot find its niche in the East? Kabbalah (in Hebrew – tradition) is part of Jewish theology, the doctrine of the knowledge of God.

It is believed that God imparted Kabbalah to Moses during the last 40 days of their meetings on Mount Sinai. Kabbalah means secret traditions, or unwritten law, and, according to the ancient rabbis, was transmitted to man so that he could understand the universe around him and the universe within him (as writes occult scholar Manly Hall). Those who have penetrated into Kabbalah are believed to discover a logical and comprehensive doctrine of the world order and master methods of influencing Nature. Kabbalah came to Europe in the 13th century thanks to Spanish Jews. It became especially widespread among Christians during the Renaissance. The influence of Kabbalah was felt by Agrippa, Paracelsus, Hegel, V. Solovyov, Berdyaev, Jung, Buber. Like any mystical teaching, it contains intellectual and ritual components. Kabbalah is considered the key to the later Masonic esotericism.

(Editor’s note: the following call for a Eurasian proclamation seems to fill in the missing gap between the old Jewish kingdom of Khazaria and the Jewish world imperium of today, with its true seat of power residing in the far east rather than in New York, London, or Tel Aviv. It seems probable that the Khazar Khaganate was absorbed by the Kievan-Rus/Russian Empire, eventually becoming more and more Judaised but without losing harmony with its Islamic and Eastern Orthodox constituents. One still wonders though if Eastern Orthodoxy all this time was helped along by the Jewish hidden hand as a counter to Christ’s Roman Catholic Church. It seems that the more we dig, the more harmony we find between Judaism, Slavic lands, Eastern Orthodoxy, and anti-Westernism/Catholicism.)

“The Khazar Khaganate is the first and successful edition of the Eurasian project.”

Source unknown
Noahid.ru
Translated from the Russian

RUSSIA NEEDS A NON-STANDARD MOVEMENT  

“And who knows, is it not for such a time that you have reached the dignity of a king”, Russia?

Everyone knows the expression of the sages of the Talmud “Eisav hates Jacob”, and Israel can be saved from this hatred only in the G-d G-d, in His Torah. But there is another, less well-known expression, “Eisav hates Esav.” And in order to be saved from Esav, Esav will also have to turn to the Torah, to the God of Israel through Jacob. Esav has no other choice. Now our fatherland is in such a position that it is forced, simply obliged to make a non-standard move that will change not only the geopolitical, but also the metaphysical situation in the world.  

For centuries, the Russian Empire was the protector of the Orthodox peoples who fell under the Ottoman yoke. This was the idea of ​​the Russian Empire, for this idea the Russians massively went to war, liberated the peoples of the Balkan Peninsula and Transcaucasia. Unfortunately, they did not manage to fully liberate Armenia, Anatolia, Cappadocia and Syria, which turned out to be a tragedy for the Christian peoples of these territories. Today, thanks to Russia, there are such peoples as Armenians, Bulgarians, Georgians, Serbs. If not for the fraternal help of the Russian Empire, they would have been exterminated and expelled from their ancestral lands.

These peoples, except for the Serbs, turned out to be ungrateful, betrayed Russia, at the first opportunity they plunged a knife into our backs, they did worse to us than Amalek and Israel, and we will never forgive them for this. But we have fulfilled our mission, the peoples live. Every Russian is overwhelmed with pride for this, and every Russian feels remorse for not being able to avoid the genocide of Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians in the First World War. Although if we won freedom to them, then they would sell us out and, at the first suitable opportunity, they would shoot us in the back, unite with the West in a coalition against us and hate us with every fiber of their soul.  

We do not have the right to forget the meanness and betrayal of the peoples we saved (Deuteronomy 23:3-6): “Do not wish them peace and prosperity all your days, forever,” because in this case we ourselves become traitors to the memory of our ancestors. Meanness and betrayal must certainly be punished. The scripture says about this: “Therefore, when the LORD your Gd calms you from all your enemies on all sides, blot out the land that the LORD, your Gd gives you as an inheritance to take possession of it. the memory of Amalek (vile traitor brother) from under heaven; forget not” (Deuteronomy 25:17-19).  

The attitude of the Russian state towards the people of Israel was different. As a result of the three divisions of the Commonwealth, Russia turned out to have the largest Jewish population. Instead of becoming its protector and patroness, Russia did not make sure that the Jews felt like full-fledged citizens of this country.

Pogroms and discrimination accompanied the centuries of our coexistence with God’s chosen people. At the time when Alexander II was liberating the Slavs, the Zionist movement was gaining strength. If by this time the tsarist government had developed partnerships with the Jewish diaspora, then Russia could use Jewish influence to advance its interests in the West and in the East. Alexander II could organize a military campaign to restore the state of Israel, freeing along the way the Christian peoples of the Middle East and Asia Minor. But this was not done, the Christian peoples were exterminated, and the salvation of the Jews came at a different time and from the other side, although it is not worth minimizing the role of the USSR and personally Comrade Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin in restoring the state of Israel. But then relations between the USSR and the state of Israel developed almost exclusively in a negative way. To annoy the United States, we supported the reactionary Arab regimes in the fight against Israel, and as a result received the aggression of Islamic terrorism on our territory. As if it was said about us (Psalm 9:16): “The nations fell into the pit that they dug; in the net which they hid, their feet were entangled.” although it is not worth minimizing the role of the USSR and personally Comrade Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin in the restoration of the state of Israel. But then relations between the USSR and the state of Israel developed almost exclusively in a negative way. To annoy the United States, we supported the reactionary Arab regimes in the fight against Israel, and as a result received the aggression of Islamic terrorism on our territory. As if it was said about us (Psalm 9:16): “The nations fell into the pit that they dug; in the net which they hid, their feet were entangled.” although it is not worth minimizing the role of the USSR and personally Comrade Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin in the restoration of the state of Israel. But then relations between the USSR and the state of Israel developed almost exclusively in a negative way. To annoy the United States, we supported the reactionary Arab regimes in the fight against Israel, and as a result received the aggression of Islamic terrorism on our territory. As if it was said about us (Psalm 9:16): “The nations fell into the pit that they dug; in the net which they hid, their feet were entangled.” and as a result received the aggression of Islamic terrorism on their territory. As if it was said about us (Psalm 9:16): “The nations fell into the pit that they dug; in the net which they hid, their feet were entangled.” and as a result received the aggression of Islamic terrorism on their territory. As if it was said about us (Psalm 9:16): “The nations fell into the pit that they dug; in the net which they hid, their feet were entangled.”

And although after the restoration of the state the possibilities of the Jewish people have grown many times, they are still not able to fully fulfill the function of light for the peoples of the world. It hinders the need to compete in a rigid capitalist system, to defend their right to exist among aggressive neighbors. Until now, the Temple has not been restored and worship has not begun, and this does not give Israel the opportunity to fully fulfill all the commandments given by Gd. Israel needs help, and the fate of our people will depend on whether we give it this help. Taking spiritual things from Israel, we are obliged to give them material things. At the moment, Israel faces the Palestinian problem. The leaders of the Palestinians, working off the capital invested by the reactionary Arab and not only Arab regimes, are inciting their population to many of whose representatives have Jewish roots to enmity with their Jewish brothers, with the goal of crucifying Israel again, destroying it physically and spiritually. God gave Russia many territories, riches and strength. With the help of Russia, Israel will be able to return its Arab brothers to true Islam (to submission to the Almighty), which can only be based on the Torah, but not on its substitutes. For this, God will give us even more land. Russia will receive the moral right to return Ukraine and northern Kazakhstan to its composition. At the first opportunity, we will secure access to the Baltic Sea by identifying the peoples of the Baltic states in their rightful place – in Europe. Having carried out a civilizational reboot in the Torah system, we will expand the limits of our expansion to the whole world, to the entire Universe. If Russia does not intervene and come to the aid of Israel, then “freedom and deliverance will come for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows, is it not for such a time that you have reached the dignity of a king? (Esther 4:14).

Russia missed its chance to revive Israel in the 1870s, participated in the restoration of Israeli statehood in 1948, but now there is an opportunity to help Israel survive, having received in return the spiritual basis of its existence, to become the subject of sacred history. We, Russians, are strangers, both in the West and in the East, and only in the G-d Gd of Israel can we find our place and consolation. We do not need to seem good to everyone, there is no need to get out and strive to please everyone, everyone will hate us anyway. Those who believe that this hatred is the result of purposeful anti-Russian propaganda that Western ideologists have been conducting for more than eight hundred years are very mistaken. This is far from being the case – it comes from the very depths of the subconscious of the European peoples, including our Orthodox “brother Slavs”, and has deeply mystical roots. Even when we surpass other nations in terms of socio-economic and cultural development, they will not begin to respect us, on the contrary, they will hate us even more. Only the Almighty, if it is his will, can be our ally, friend and comforter. Only He will pity and understand us, if it is His Will and, therefore, to receive favor in His eyes, to help His people, and, consequently, Himself, since the people of Israel, the Torah and Gd are one in their essence, is our task and our only hope of salvation. Otherwise, we will perish – the whole world is now up in arms against Russia and predatory looks at our expanses and our wealth. The whole of Edom, the whole post-Christian world from the Dnieper to Alaska united against us, wanting to destroy and wipe it off the face of the earth. He has allies inside our country – liberals, democrats, nationalists, Black Hundreds, jingoistic patriots, sectarians and pagans, individual representatives of small nations, many of whom themselves do not know what they are doing and whom they serve, but this does not make them any less dangerous. An invisible war is going on against us on all fronts, and only the right, life-giving idea, the idea of ​​everyday service to G-d, can mobilize our people and help them survive in this confrontation.

Russia must proclaim itself the successor not only of the USSR, Tsarist Russia, Kievan Rus, but also the empire of Genghis Khan, and first of all, the Jewish Khazar Khaganate, which united various Slavic, Finno-Ugric, Caucasian and Turkic-speaking peoples. This, from a historical and cultural point of view, legitimizes our presence on the territory of the CIS countries, will allow the Turkic-speaking and other peoples to feel like state-forming nations. The proclamation of succession from Khazaria will contribute to the adoption of the Talmudic tradition, to restart the religions of the peoples of our country based on it. This, in turn, will allow, from a moral, religious, political point of view, to justify the expansion of Russia not only in the territory of the countries of the former USSR, but also in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the Israeli tribes of the northern kingdom, Iran, Iraq, the Arabian Peninsula, up to Ghana and Ethiopia, where Jewish states and autonomies once existed, as well as to Eastern Europe, where the Khazar tribe of Kavars, who professed primitive Judaism, moved along with the Hungarians, and even to the Iberian Peninsula. The Khazar idea will be able to unite the peoples of Russia and neighboring countries, which today are held together only by pragmatism and the strength of Russian weapons. The Khazar idea, the idea of ​​religious Eurasianism, based on the Talmudic tradition, will become our Russian Monroe Doctrine, into which socialism, communism, pan-Slavism, pan-Turkism, and Vernadsky’s doctrine of the noosphere can be inscribed. It is only necessary to legitimize it in the religious circles of the Jewish people by organizing the liberation of Eretz Israel and the Palestinian people from terrorist occupation.

Undoubtedly, many Palestinians are descendants of ancient Jews, many know about their origin from Jews and Samaritans. But they are under severe pressure from their religious-criminal-political elites, and their return to Judaism at the moment is not possible. But it is likely that the catastrophe they experienced in the future in the form of exile and the correct education system in the new place will help them return to the bosom of Judaism, and this will be another merit of Russia before G-d and Israel.  

Summary:

Russia must proclaim itself the successor not only of the USSR, Tsarist Russia, Kievan Rus, but also the empire of Genghis Khan, and first of all, the Jewish Khazar Khaganate, which united various Slavic, Finno-Ugric, Caucasian, and Turkic-speaking peoples. The Khazar Khaganate is the first and successful edition of the Eurasian project.

*Editor’s note: This is not an endorsement of Lyndon H. LaRouche. Jr. or his publication Executive Intelligence Review (EIR).

By Konstantin George/EIR
August 5, 1994 Anno Domini

The Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn arrived by train in Moscow on July 21, completing a 55-day journey across the breadth of Russia which had begun in the Far Eastern port of Vladivostok. Solzhenitsyn, returning home after a 20-year exile abroad, has profiled himself as the “conscience of Russia” in its modem-day “Time of Troubles,” attacking the disastrous and criminal shock therapy policies of the Russian leadership in the past three years. The numerous speeches and remarks he delivered at each rail stop on the way to Moscow were subject to a nearly total blackout by the state­ run media.

At his arrival in Moscow, this abruptly changed. Re­flecting a decision by the Russian elite, above the level of Boris Yeltsin, Solzhenitsyn’s arrival was a highly celebrated media event. Covered live on Russian television were Sol­zhenitsyn’s scathing attacks on the regime’s shock therapy policies, and on the demographic and moral destruction these have brought to Russia. This media about-face marked the beginning of a shift in the Russian political-cultural realm, which will become more visible through the second half of this year.

Timed with this electronic media prominence was the publication in the July issue of the multimillion-circulation magazine Novy Mir, of an essay by Solzhenitsyn, “The Rus­sian Question at the End of the 20th Century”.

The real issue here behind the policy shift is not Solzhen­itsyn himself, but the breakdown of the Russian physical economy, and the accompanying moral breakdown and de­mographic holocaust. According to the Russian Economics Ministry, during the first six months of 1994, industrial pro­duction fell by 26 per cent. Since 1989, it has fallen by one-half, and there is no end in sight. In industrial plants all over Russia, production has ground to a total halt this summer. The workforce has been sent on forced “vacations” for July and August, and told to report back to work on Sept.

The Third Rome tendency

A large part of the Russian elite has, after collaborating with the austerity demands of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and enriching itself at the expense of the popula tion, decided that, to preserve their own capacity as ruling caste of a new Russian Empire, Russia must move away from shock therapy. The shift is toward a break with western influences, toward Moscow re-emerging as the centre of a Slavic empire, in a modem-day version of Russia’s historic “Third Rome” imperial ideology. Solzhenitsyn, a critic of both the corrupt leadership of the Bolshevik era and of the nomenklatura that has ruled since 1992, and the clear exponent of a new Slavic empire based on what he calls “tradition­al Russian moral values,” has become extremely useful to the elite.

Nomenklatura figures who in the past couldn’t have cared less about Solzhenitsyn, suddenly came forward to be seen in his company. This was shown at the welcome prepared for him in Moscow by Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, a man who exemplifies the “nouveau riche class of thieves” that Sol­zhenitsyn has been denouncing for their “dollar onslaught” on the people of Russia. Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gor­bachov, once again showing himself as an opportunist par excellence, was present in the front row, applauding Solzhen­itsyn.

According to Moscow sources, Luzhkov, following in the footsteps of his predecessor Gavriil Popov, is reputed to have amassed a huge personal fortune over the past two years. In his courtship of Solzhenitsyn, Luzhkov went be­yond appearing on the reception podium with the writer. Luzhkov presented Solzhenitsyn with a large, comfortable apartment in the center of Moscow, a generous gift from the nomenklatura which Solzhenitsyn accepted.

The scramble to be associated with Solzhenitsyn extend­ed beyond the arrival ceremonies. President Yeltsin, through his press spokesman, let it be known that he desired to meet with the writer “soon.” The day before Solzhenitsyn’s arrival in Moscow, the daily Izvestia printed an interview Yeltsin had given to the news agency Interfax, in which he declared that his goal is “to have Russia belong to the leading world powers.” He called the return of Solzhenitsyn “a sign for the coming renewal” of Russia, and added, “I look forward to the arrival of Solzhenitsyn”.

On the same day, Yeltsin suddenly recovered from a five­-day cold to tour a Moscow art exhibition of painter Ilya Glazunov, a notorious exponent of Russia’s Third Rome identity. In a further sign of the shift, the Russian elite lifted the ban on the film “The Great Criminal Revolution” by Stanislav Govorukhin, an adviser to the opposition grouped around former Vice President Aleksandr Rutksoy. The film is a trenchant portrayal of how Russia during the Gorbachov and Yeltsin years has come under the rule of a corrupt nomen­klatura-mafia alliance (see EIR, July 15, 1994).

Russian geopolitics

The coming shift in Russia will unfortunately not be con­fined to the long-overdue break with IMF policies. All indica­tions, including the favours suddenly granted to Solzhenitsyn, point to a move to consolidate a new Russian empire, at the expense of at least three currently independent nations: Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. Solzhenitsyn, like nearly all other leading public figures in Russia, whatever other merits they might have, suffers from his own variant of Rus­sian geopolitics, and favours some variant of a new empire.

The high-profile coverage of Solzhenitsyn has served to introduce or re-introduce a debate on exactly what the geo­graphical contours of the new empire should be. Solzhenitsyn himself, as his televised statements affirmed, has emerged as an advocate for the policy that the empire should be confined to a Slavic core. He has attacked the concept of Rutskoy and others in the opposition for their wish to recreate an empire with the geographical scope of the former Soviet Union. Solzhenitsyn has declared that the Caucasus and Central Asia “belong to the Islamic world,” which Russia is “not part of”.

In a television interview, Solzhenitsyn called for creating a Slavic Union out of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakh­stan, run by Moscow. One can see from this the shift from one form of immorality, allowing the rape of Russia by IMF policies, to another one. Solzhenitsyn’s immediate solution to Russia’s historical crisis, including its demographic one, is to annex these three republics, thereby bringing back into the fold about 20 million of the 25 million Russians now living outside the borders of Russia. Beyond that, as Solzhen­itsyn makes no secret of, is the intent of russifying as many of the Ukrainian and Belarusian population as possible, to regenerate the “Great Russian” stock.

His stance on what belongs and what does not belong in the new empire is not only based on considerations of pan­ Slavic ideology—meaning which nationalities are “suitable” for russification and which aren’t.

Solzhenitsyn and others argue that the new empire will fail if it incorporates Central Asia, because it would then have to pour in enormous invest­ments to overcome the results of 70 years of Bolshevik loot­ing, investments which, instead, should be solely directed for the benefit of the Slavic core.

The fate of Ukraine and Belarus

The idea of a Slavic core has become the dominant one in the thinking of the Russian elite, especially in the wake of the recent presidential elections in Ukraine and Belarus, where Leonid Kuchma and Aleksandr Lukashenko, the can­didates who favor union and integration with Russia, were victorious.

But the Russian elite’s addiction to the geopolitics of reconquest has already produced a dichotomy in policy, con­cerning whether or not to break with the IMF. For the near future, such a break, to the extent it comes, will be confined to Russia. For reasons of easing the reconquest policy, the stabilizing benefits of such a break are not to be extended to other republics. Moscow’s reasoning is quite simple and crude: The worse the economic and social situation in Ukraine becomes, the easier a reconquest will be.

The actions of Kuchma in Kiev since his July 10 election victory demonstrate this policy. Kuchma has been loudly de­manding union with Russia, while also calling for an agree­ment with the IMF that will commit Ukraine to a vicious aus­terity policy. Only eight days after his July 19 inauguration, Kuchma met in Kiev with IMF Managing Director Michel Camdessus, to discuss an agreement for more shock therapy.

These negotiations with the IMF are occurring while Ukraine is undergoing the worst production collapse of any industrial nation in modem history. Industrial production has fallen by a staggering 40 per cent in the first six months of 1994. As in Russia, the rate of collapse is accelerating in the summer months. In Lviv and other Ukrainian cities, the workforce of every single industrial plant has been sent off on forced vacation for the summer, with orders not to report back to work until Sept. 1. The patience of the population, nothing short of extraordinary till now, is moving toward the breaking point.

The motive behind Kuchma’s sacrificing what’s left of Ukraine to the IMF is not hard to gauge. It is to enrage most of the population so much against the “West” that they will, with the exception of the staunchly patriotic West Ukraine, accept the Slavic Union alternative being prepared in Moscow.

*Editor’s note: This is not an endorsement of Lyndon H. LaRouche. Jr. or his publication Executive Intelligence Review (EIR).

By Lyndon LaRouche Jr.
June 14, 1983 Anno Domini

Early Russia was a group of Slavic subjects under rule of marauding Normans, and a persisting, endemic military nuis­ance to Byzantium. One of the counter-measures Constanti­nople deployed in the effort to bring these tribes under control was the manufacture of synthetic forms of nominal Christi­anity. According to a more or less credible account, the nominal conversion of a ruler of Kiev, Vladimir, in 988 A.D., brought Kiev Rus under more or less efficient control of Byzantium. The culture of Russia is “genetically ” Byzan­tine to the present day.

Authoritative accounts show that the particular form of Gnostic pseudo-Christianity cooked up for the Russians was manufactured by Hesychastic cults then based at the “Holy Mountain” complex of monasteries in the region of Greece known since ancient times as Mount Athos. [The Hesy­chasts, who have been hegemonic in the Russian Orthodox Church since the 14th century, taught that union with God could only be achieved by complete withdrawal from the world. Their practice included meditating in a bent-over po­sition contemplating their navels and hyperventilating to achieve the appropriate mental state.] The pagan-religious matrix used for this concoction is the most easily recognized by classical scholars as the “Great Mother” cult, of the type associated with Cybele and Dionysius—or with an early form of the Isis-Ishtar cult, the Shakti-Siva phallus cult of pre­ Vedic India. It is of the same general character as the “blood and soil” cult adopted by the Nazis.

The cult is an “earth-goddess” cult of worship of the Holy Soil of Mother Russia, and the collective will of the Russian people as an expression of a population sprung from this Holy Soil. This sort of pagan belief has had nasty consequences wherever it has occurred. It depicts mankind as a “child of nature” in approximately the same terms of reference as did Hesiod; today, we should term it radically Malthusian. What the Hesychasts superimposed upon this was their own con­templative mysticism.

The first recorded inklings of the appearance of the “Third Rome” prophecy appeared in Russia, according to EIR re­searchers, in the aftermath of the ecumenical Council of Florence (1439 A.D.), to which the Russian Orthodox Church responded with hateful rejection of the unification, denounc­ing both Roman Catholicism and Paleologue Constantinople. After the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople, the tendency toward a “Third Rome” doctrine by the Russian Orthodox Church increased, and the first explicit form of the prophecy that the Caesar (Czar) of Holy Rus would rule the Third and Final Roman Empire appeared in 1510, sweeping through Russia during the 16th century.

The title of “Czar” first appeared with the second period of the reign of Ivan IV (“The Terrible “), and was resumed on the orders of the Russian Orthodox Church with the creation of the Romanov dynasty.

Czar Peter I attempted to rid Russia of these Byzantine cults in the process of his ” Westernizing ” of Russia. As Czar, he could control the hierarchy of the Church, but not the hordes of Old Believers (Raskol’niki), who have continued to haunt Russia’s modernizing efforts to the present day (in one guise or the other). The revival of serfdom under Eliza­beth and Catharine, and the unleashing of the Pan-Slavic movement by the Venetian agent-of-influence, Prince Po­temkin, destroyed the greater part of Peter’s accomplish­ments.The fresh, large-scale work of Westenizing, by Czar Alexander II, was slowed by his assassination, and went up in flames in the 1905 Revolution.

Exemplary of the Mother Russia cult’s impact during the 19th century are Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, the Nihilists, the Russian Populists, the Pan-Slavic resurgencies, and much of the strata which went into the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks.

The period of invasions and civil wars after 1917, the virtual civil war of the collectivization, the cordon sanitaire against Bolshevik Russia during the 1920s, the crisis of the Great Purges of the 1930s, the devastation of the new World War, and the postwar environment past the death of Stalin, not only cut Russia off from healthy Westernizing influences, but strengthened the adversary environment reinforcing Rus­sian xenophobia.

The reality, that churches and large sections of the pop­ulation had aided the Nazi invasion, impelled Stalin to make a pact with the Church, at the Moscow Cathedral of St. Basil’s, in 1943. Although the Church hierarchy (such as it was) had been integrated into the Soviet secret-police appa­ratus since 1927-28, Stalin’s program, from 1943 onward, made the Church and the symbology of the Mother Russia cult an instrument of state policy in a new way. From that point on, the war became a “Great Patriotic War” fought against the German transgressor of the soil of Mother Russia.

During the immediate postwar period, Stalin made the first overt effort to exploit the Third Rome mythology, by an effort to move the Patriarch of Constantinople to Moscow,­ an attempt blocked by strenuous efforts of President Harry Truman. On the surface, at least, it appears that this trend was opposed under Khrushchev, although EIR is not yet prepared to offer judgment on this period.

Over the middle 1960s, recognizably “Marxist” philos­ophy lost efficient grip in the shaping of Soviet policies, except as part of the institutions left over from preceding periods. Pragmatism took over, and it appears that the Rus­sian Church began to accelerate its influence over the popu­lation. By 1972, the drift toward a Third Rome policy-para­digm in Soviet foreign policy was sufficiently evident, that the author and his associates elaborated and published a re­view of these features of “detente”, which we entitled “The New Constantinople” hypothesis. During the 1970s, the in­fluence of the Church accelerated, together with increasing relative emphasis on the “cover” of the Church in foreign operations.

We of EIR do not believe that it is the KGB’s hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church which has caused the resurgence of the Old Russia mysticism within the Russian population. Rather, the Church has provided a religious form of socialized political expression for a deep, resurgent By­zantine mysticism transmitted from generation to generation over more than a thousand years. What Church officials of the KGB hierarchy represent as a base today is a portion of the population substantially more than double the numbers of the Soviet Communist Party.

Under the conditions shaped by the back-channel nego­tiations since 1957, this organized expression of the old Mother Russia culture not only increased its significance as a political force but, under conditions produced by back-channel oper­ations, forced the resurgence of Mother Russia ideology into the direction of reviving the Third Rome ideology as well.

Excerpted from Yuri Andropov: ‘Czar of Holy Mother Russia’?

Disclaimer: This is not an endorsement of the Dimond brothers. 

By Jeffrey Steinberg 
June 3, 1988 Anno Domini
EIR Feature

A tightly organized cell of suspected Soviet moles wrote the Reagan administra­tion’s “semi-official” long-term strategy for dealing with the U.S.S.R. and also played a major hand in drafting the disastrous Intermediate-Range Nuclear Force (INF) treaty that a deluded President Reagan now hopes will earn him and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachov the Nobel Peace Prize .

As shocking as this may sound, Dr. Albert Wohlstetter and Dr. Fred Ikle, the two principal authors of the presidential report, Discriminate Deterrence, have been identified to this news service by highly reliable U.S. intelligence sources as prime suspects in a Soviet-Israeli “false flag” spy ring first exposed with the November 1985 arrest of Jonathan Jay Pollard and the December 1987 arrest of Shabtai Kalmanowitch.

On Feb. 19, 1988, Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward published a front-page story detailing the Pentagon and CIA’s futile search for “Mr. X,” the designation for a high-level intelligence community mole who was believed to be providing Pollard with top secret code numbers of classified military documents that Pollard, a counterterrorist analyst at a Naval Investigative Service facility in Suitland, Md., would then pilfer and pass on to Israeli and Soviet intelligence. Shabtai Kalmanowitch, a Russian-born Israeli multi-millionaire, soon to be tried in Israel as a KGB spy, is widely believed to have been one of the Israel-Soviet “back channels” through which the “Mr. X” loot was shared with Moscow.

According to one Pentagon source, the elusive “Mr. X” is actually known to be an entire cell of shared Soviet-Israeli agents, rather than just one well-placed individual. While Woodward’s headline-grabbing revelations about “Mr. x” were aimed at blocking the Department of Justice from shutting down its Pollard inves­tigation altogether, under reported strong pressure from State Department chief counsel Abraham Sofaer and Secretary of State George Shultz himself, Pentagon and CIA officials have been reportedly aware that they are dealing with an “X Committee”, buried deep inside the American national security establishment.

One version of the “X Committee” list, reportedly passed from the office of the general counsel to the Secretary of Defense and on to the FBI early this year, contained such prominent Reagan administration figures as: Ikle, Richard Perle, Steven Bryen, Douglas Feith, Andy Mar­shall, Henry Rowen, and Frank Gaffney, Jr. All were, up until very recently, senior officials at the Pentagon, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and the CIA’s National Intelligence Estimates Board.

For the past month, a team of EIR investigators has con­ducted an extensive background cross-check of these named individuals and others closely associated with them, such as Michael Ledeen, Roy Godson, and Neil Livingstone. This preliminary special report summarizes the findings to date.

Albert Wohlstetter recruits a net
Decades before there was Pollard and Kalmanowitch, Dr. Albert Wohlstetter had already established himself as one of America’s pre-eminent “nuclear strategists”—certainly one of the figures upon whom the early 1960s character “Dr.Strangelove” was based. First at the Rand Corporation and the University of Chicago, and later at his own consulting firm, Pan-Heuristics , Wohlstetter groomed literally scores of proteges for future sensitive government posts.

Using the Senate offices of the late Henry Jackson (D­-Wash.) and Clifford Case (R-N.J.) as stepping stones for placing his epigones into the Washington, D.C. policymak­ing circuit, Wohlstetter had succeeded, by the time the Rea­gan administration entered office, in placing his assets in sensitive and powerful positions at the Pentagon. Dr. Fred Ikle, a Wohlstetter protege from their days together at Rand, became the deputy secretary of defense. Richard Perle, who had come under Wohlstetter’s wing while still a student at Hollywood High School, and who survived a 1970 near­ arrest, reportedly for passing secrets to the Mossad while on Scoop Jackson’s staff, became President Reagan’s most trusted arms control advisor up until his departure from the Pentagon late last year. Perle was the actual author of the disastrous INF treaty proposal jumped on by Soviet boss Gorbachov at Reykjavik. The INF treaty, signed at last De­cember’s Washington summit, has done more in the short term to hasten the decoupling of Western Europe from the United States than any action ever taken by the Russians.

According to one former associate, Wohlstetter carefully avoided ever accepting a formal government post that would have cast him in the spotlight and subjected him to more rigorous security checks. Rather, he cut the seemingly con­tradictory figure of a big spender, purchasing lavish mansions in Los Angeles and Chicago, and hosting dinners with $200 bottles of wine at the most expensive restaurants for prospec­tive proteges.

All the while, Wohlstetter apparently went to great lengths to distance himself from his years of activity as a figure in the American communist movement in the 1930s and 1940s. According to several Wohlstetter contemporaries inter­viewed by EIR, while at City College, Wohlstetter was ac­tively linked to the Communist Left Opposition. That oppo­sition sprang up around the figure of Leon Trotsky following Trotsky’s ouster by Stalin, at the point that Stalin moved to decimate the “Trust” apparatus of “cosmopolitan commu­nists” whom he believed were too anxious to cut a deal with Western financier interests.

By 1983, Wohlstetter and his network had so penetrated the national security apparatus of the Reagan administration that the “father of America’s MAD strategy,” as Wohlstetter was known, was formally appointed—at the same time as Henry Kissinger—to the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, a post he retains today. While not exactly an operational assignment, membership on PFIAB entitles Wohlstetter to access some of America’s most important and operational intelligence secrets.

When the Reagan administration set out to define a long­-term strategy for confronting the Soviet threat going into the early decades of the 21st century, a “private” blue ribbon commission was empaneled by Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger. The co-chairmen of the panel were Wohlstetter and lkle.

The final product of the Wohlstetter-Ikle Commission, once one grasps the implications of the “X Committee” authorship, was predictable. Released at a Pentagon press con­ference on Jan. 12 of this year, Discriminate Deterrence, a Report from the Commission on Integrated Long-Term Strat­egy, made two particular policy pronouncements that were tantamount to treason.

First, the report stated categorically that the United States should formally remove its nuclear umbrella from its Euro­pean NATO allies, thus virtually assuring the Soviets of an unchallenged conventional military takeover of Western Eu­rope at any moment they might choose.

Second, the report called for the abandonment of the President’s Strategic Defense Initiative by refocusing on the more narrow objective of a point defense of America’ s land­ based nuclear arsenal. By abandoning the overall doctrinal shift to Mutually Assured Survival based on a broad defense against all Soviet nuclear weapons, the report called for kill­ing the whole program while at the same time abandoning the postwar doctrine of deterrence by massive retaliation.

As if to remove any doubt as to the intention of the report, co-author Wohlstetter told an EIR journalist at the Pentagon press briefing, ”The SOl will eventually die of embarrass­ment [because] the notion that the Soviet Union would launch a nuclear attack against the population of the United States is absurd.” Emphasizing that Soviet expansionist goals were “narrowly” focused on the Eurasian landmass, Wohlstetter went to the very heart of the Discriminate Deterrence policy by asking EIR, “Why should the U.S. risk self-annihilation for the sake of defending foreign soil?”