Epilogue …
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/51206
Here is what Mr Putin has just said, as published on the Kremlin’s website:
“I have always liked communist and socialist ideas. If we consider the Code of the Builder of Communism that was widely published in the Soviet Union, it strongly resembles the Bible. This is not a joke; it was actually an excerpt from the Bible. It spoke of good things: equality, fraternity, happiness. However, the practical implementation of these ideals in this country had little in common with what the utopian socialists Saint-Simon or Owen spoke about. This country had little resemblance to their Sun City.”
Why make such a statement, why stir up so many hard feelings of so many? This was said in a meeting of Russian Popular Front, not under pressure from journalists or anything like that. What would be the reason to continue to link the future of Russia to its past? It makes no sense. There is literally nothing more left to say, nothing more left to add … than perhaps this last statement: if Communism would not had tried to de-spiritualize man, but in fact try to exploit his spirituality, maybe the result would had been different …
Of course, repentance can always occur, but for a public figure the process is that much more complicated. A public figure is not only responsible for himself but for all those who believed and followed him – are all those millions and millions of souls going understand what repentance is? Orthodoxy teaches that if someone manages to help save at least one soul will save himself too. What if one dragged a single soul (not to say many) into the darkness, what happens then?
Other references:
https://www.rt.com/news/331194-putin-meets-friend-kissinger
https://www.rt.com/op-edge/331440-pope-francis-patriarch-kirill-meeting
Remember this?
