- Recently, there has been an initiative to change the preamble of the Constitution to give credit to the historical role of Orthodox Christianity. How do you feel about that?
Dmitry Smirnov, one of Russia’s most popular priests:
- I'm glad because it's true. It's 26° outside, that's a fact. It is also a fact that our state was created by the RUSSIAN people whose whole life was centered around the church. They were Christians. 86% of the country was Christian. THEY created the state that gave us: Pushkin, Kazakov, Tolstoy, Suvorov, etc. — this incredibly powerful culture. If some European nation had a mere tenth of what Russia has, it would rank among the great nations of European culture.
Russia has everything: starting with military science and ending with amazing architecture. Everything! Art, music — any sphere you can think of! And all this was created by the RUSSIAN people.
It doesn't mean that Anton Rubinstein didn't put his coin into this piggy bank. Vladimir Dal didn't have a drop of Russian blood but he was a great writer, a master of the Russian language, etc. — Russia was, after all, an empire.
But first and foremost it was RUSSIANS, baptized and believing in Christ, whose highest ideal was HOLINESS. There are only two countries in the world who have this ideal: the other one is Israel. Russia’s highest ideal was holiness.
- We'd have to stop after these words because it's a brilliant finale.
