Musings from the New Russia: The Taliban Russian Orthodox Church Subverts History

Head executioner Patriarch Kirill turns the history of Peter the Great upside-down

If you have never been to St. Peterburg, trust me when I tell you that the above photo is real, even though it looks like a painting. The city, ever in the grip of some form of spastic expression of art, is an indescribable alloy of human aspiration that inevitably runs full stop into one of the most inhospitable places on the earth to place a city.

A vast, mosquito-infested swamp, Peter the Great, upon setting his foot on the right bank of the Neva River, looked across the seeping nothingness and declared, “Okh, ti! (Ох, ты!). And so that part of the future St. Petersburg would be called “Okhta” (Охта). Okh, ti pretty much means “holy sh**, man!”

If you don’t know anything about me, then I have to let it be known that for 30 years, I resided in this magical but troubled spot on earth. When I say “troubled,” I don’t mean in a typically modern, human way with ghettos, crime, and other ailments of human weaknesses; I mean that St. Petersburg is a city that chooses its residents. It then gives every one of them a role, which must be played precisely as the city wants. If you resist or stray from that role, you find yourself…