THE ERROR OF RUSSIA

Russia and its ugly shadow

by Cemil Kerimoglu

In October 1917, three shepherd children in Fatima, Portugal, claimed to witness a series of apparitions of the Virgin Mary. Among the messages delivered was a warning: if not prevented, Russia would “spread its errors throughout the world”, and for peace to reign, “Russia must be converted”. At the time, this statement was striking, even cryptic. But within weeks of the final apparition, the Bolshevik Revolution erupted in Russia, and a new age began – an age of ideological conquest, spiritual inversion, and geopolitical upheaval.

Traditionally, this prophecy has been understood solely with reference to the Bolshevik Revolution. The vision was interpreted to mean that if this revolution were not averted, Russia would disseminate communist ideology across the globe. And indeed, that is precisely what occurred. During the Soviet era, Russia became the chief exporter not only of communism but more importantly of anti-Western, Third-Worldist ideology throughout the world. As Oswald Spengler foresaw, the Soviet Union positioned itself at the forefront of cultivating ressentiment among the global South toward Western Civilization.

Yet the prophecy of Fátima has been understood far too narrowly. When the communist regime collapsed and Orthodox Christianity experienced a renewal in Russia, many concluded that Russia had been “converted” and would no longer “spread errors throughout the world”. Even today, many right-wing circles in the West assume that the fall of communism restored Russia to its rightful place in Western Civilization. According to this view, the Bolshevik Revolution and the Soviet period were aberrations – and with communism gone, Russia is now harmless, a normal country once more.

This assumption is profoundly mistaken. In the context of Fátima especially, the prediction is still being interpreted far too narrowly. The error was not merely the Bolshevik Revolution or the rise of communism. The error is Russia itself. In other words, what must be confronted is not a particular episode in Russian history, but Russia as a grand-historical Error. The error is the very existence of Russia as a political-civilizational form. The error is its imperial, unitary nature.

Rejecting communism and nominally embracing Christianity did not make Russia better. It was not converted, nor did it cease to be the adversary of the West. The truth is that the Bolshevik Revolution was not an isolated anomaly in Russia’s history; it was its natural progression. What was anomalous – what was historically out of place – was actually the “Europeanized” Petrine Russia, the very condition Spengler described as a Pseudomorphosis. Yet popular Western consciousness still equates Russia with the Romanov era of the 18th and 19th centuries, as if that brief imitation of Europe represents Russia’s true nature.

This is a serious illusion. The “Europeanization” imposed by Peter I – and initiated even earlier by his father, Aleksey Mikhaylovich – was cosmetic. It was rejected by ordinary Russians and never penetrated the deeper cultural core of Muscovy. Russia has never been part of European Civilization. Even during its “Europeanized” phase in the 18th and 19th centuries, it remained fundamentally hostile to Europe and persistently sought to undermine it.

The Bolshevik Revolution was, in essence, a revolt against this artificial European façade. Through it, Russia shed its imposed mask and reasserted its pre-Romanov self. The horrors of communism – the Red Terror, the NKVD, Stalin’s purges, and the unfathomable brutality with which these crimes were committed – cannot be regarded as “errors” in the sense of deviations. They fit seamlessly into the long-standing patterns of Russian-Muscovite history: Ivan III’s brutal destruction of Novgorod in the 15th century, Ivan IV’s Oprichnina in the 16th century, and countless similar episodes. In each case, the same behavioral patterns reappeared – patterns later manifested in the Red Terror, Stalinism, and the Red Army’s rampage across Europe in 1944–45: a kind of wanton brutality and perverse sadism that lies beyond the comprehension of the European mind.

Geopolitically as well, the Bolsheviks simply continued the old Russian-Muscovite trajectory. In the wake of the revolution, numerous nations declared independence from the collapsing empire – among them Ukraine – or sought autonomy within it. The Bolsheviks re-conquered virtually all of these states, except Poland, Finland, and the Baltic countries, which they also attempted but initially failed to subjugate. In effect, they rebuilt the Russian Empire, albeit under a different name and a different ideological banner.

Thus, the Bolshevik Revolution, communism, and everything that followed were not really “errors” of Russia. They were the natural outgrowth of the far deeper and more comprehensive historical Error that is Russia itself. Today’s Russia under Vladimir Putin is simply the continuation of the Soviet Union – a continuation of the processes initiated by the Bolsheviks: imperial expansion, hostility toward the West, and ceaseless attempts to undermine it from within.

The fall of communism did not convert Russia. Like the Soviet Union before it, today’s Russia is driven by imperial ambition. It exists as a unitary-imperial state defined by its opposition to the West. It is animated by an almost apocalyptic hatred of Western Civilization. And, as before, it spreads confusion, demoralization, and division within Western societies, promoting asinine narratives and exploiting every fissure it can find. Even its Orthodox Christianity – the supposed evidence of its moral renewal – is at odds with much of the wider Eastern Orthodox Christian world. Russia is Christian in name only. Russian Orthodoxy functions essentially as a civilizational weapon: not something that shapes the Russian psyche, but something shaped by it, a tool of its anti-Western identity and self-perception.

Russia is therefore still spreading “errors throughout the world”, as predicted in Fátima – only these are not errors within Russia. Russia itself is the Error.

The true conversion of Russia would mean nothing less than the dismantling of Russia as an idea. It would mean the deconstruction of Russianness itself. Conversion would require abandoning the unitary-imperial identity that has dominated that vast Eurasian expanse and replacing it with the multitude of national and regional identities long suppressed by centuries of coercion and violence. The true conversion of Russia will come when the people of that territory cease to think of themselves as “Russians” and begin to see themselves as Ingrians, Novgorodians, Uralians, Siberians, Bashkirs, Tatars, Chechens, and many others. Only when Russia is disintegrated into dozens of independent states – each with its own unique regional/national identity – will “Russians”, whether voluntarily or by necessity, lose the ability to spread their historical Error to the world.

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