“Unfortunately, our opponents use the words ‘Russian world’ as a kind of a bogy, a scarecrow, saying that it is a kind of a doctrine that works only for foreign political interests of the Russian Federation,” the Patriarch said at a festival reception in the Holy Trinity – St. Sergius Laura on St. Sergius of Radonezh Day, the patriarchal press service reports on Monday.
The primate stressed that “there is nothing more distant from the truth than to identify the Russian world only with the Russian Federation.”
“The Russian world is also the Ukrainian world and the Byelorussian world. It is the world of the whole Rus. It is the world created through the Baptism in the Dnieper, it is Prince Vladimir’s world, it is the system of values, which has penetrated in culture, in the ordinary life of our people,” he said.
“Despite the fact that even mentioning Russian world has become almost a crime in Ukraine in frames of the acting political doctrine, we will continue – quietly, calmly, but persistently – to witness to this truth, to the truth of Kiev baptistery, to the creation of Eastern Slavic civilization, which we conditionally call the Russian world,” Patriarch Kirill said.
He mentioned the Primary Chronicle which starts from the words: “how the land of Rus had its beginning.”
“There is no mention of Ukraine, Russia, Byelorussia – there is only “Russian land.” Do we have the right to refuse our history, our ideals, our saints, our monasteries, our divine services, our shared language in favor of political moods,” the patriarch said.
He notes that if the role of the Russian language is weakened then communication among Ukrainians, Russians, Byelorussians “will become more complicated as the language is a natural way to develop relations among people belonging to one cultural and spiritual community.”
