Russia's Hermitage Museum denounces blasphemy investigation

There will always be human beings who attempt to foist and even enforce, their likes and dislikes on other people.

Imagine if no one was allowed to listen to Jazz or Rock and Roll because some individuals hate those music forms.

The solution is so simple even a child knows the answer. If you do not care for a certain type of music- then don’t listen to it.

And if you do not care for a certain type of visual Artistic expression, then don’t look at it.

It is not as if the Hemitage placed this exhibit containing Nazi themes in the same gallery as paintings of Christ painted by Rembrandt, Titian and Rubens, so that one was forced to avert his eyes from that which offended his “infinite sensibilities”.

I am amazed and surprised the Director of the Hermitage did not make this clear with a simple statement such as:

“No one is forced or required to visit the new Exhibit from England.
By all means, stay away and allow more room for those who are curious”.

That would apply to the writer of this comment who is strictly interested in Classical Art and the Old Masters. That said, my disinterest and even occasional disgust for what often attempts to pass itself off as Art, does not incline me to wish to stop others from viewing such offensive to some, attempts at self expression.

I would draw the line at a parade of uniformed Nazis marching through a neighborhood filled with Holocaust Survivors on the Sabbath.
But this exhibit can hardly be compared to such an event.

The Director of the Hermitage needs to learn how to deal with the public. He has no reason to feel defensive. The days of “thought police” seem to be getting replaced with “visual Arts police”.

What’s next ? Food tasting police in the local supermarket ?

Ladies and gentlemen, recall from your high school history that the Russian Orthodox Church inside the USSR was thoroughly infiltrated by the KGB. The infiltration was so complete that by the 1970s KGB officers posing as priest were listening to confessions!

Well, when the “collapse” of the USSR took place in December 1991, guess what didn’t happen. The Russian Orthodox Church was never cleansed of the Communist agents that controlled it! I bet you never thought about that, did you? Yeah…those Soviet-era Communist agents are still in control of the Russian Orthodox Church, which is proof that the collapse of the USSR was a strategic ruse as warned by KGB defector Major Anatoliy Golitsyn, the only Soviet era defector to still be under protective custody in the West.

Patriarch Alexy II, acknowledged that “compromises” were made with the Soviet government by bishops of the Moscow Patriarchate, himself included, and publicly “repented” (note: Alexy II didn’t resign, nor was he forced to resign, which would have happened if the “collapse” of the USSR was real) of these compromises. Yet Patriarch Alexy II remained Patriarch of Moscow and all the Russia until his death in 2008, and no investigations were conducted to ferret out Soviet era Communist agents still inside the Russian Orthodox Church who also “cooperated” with the evil Communist regime that persecuted not just Christians, but all others who weren’t Communist Party members!

Of course, after the “collapse” of the USSR, a de-Communization program would also have been necessary to ferret out Communist agents still in power within the various levels of government, otherwise the “collapse” would be merely a clever Communist ruse. Such a program also never took place!!

It does not matter whether the Russian Orthodox Church was cleansed of former
KGB agents or not, because Russian Constitution maintains in article 14 that RF is secular state and in article 29 the Constitution grants the freedom of thought and speech. What matters is who rules the State. Putin himself is former KGB officer and a communist, which is common knowledge in Russia. Another common knowledge in Russia is that in last decades of the USSR many people became members of the party because that was the only way to make career, which makes Putin and his goals even more obscure.
Russia has never had democratic traditions and civil society. This is why declared freedoms have always been subject to interpretation by those who ruled.