Dear listeners, welcome to another episode of the Borscht for Beginners podcast with Isa, a German with Ukrainian roots, and Jaroslav, a Ukrainian with German roots. And today's guest is Max Hartmann, a Protestant theologian and long-time pastor in a Swiss parish.
Hello Max, thank you for being here.
Thank you for the invitation.
We are very happy that we have finally made it. It's been a bit of a journey, exactly, to finally meet up today: And the way we normally do it for every episode. We ask our guests to introduce themselves, I've already introduced you, but maybe you can add to that.
Yes, even as a teenager I was interested in what was happening behind the Iron Curtain. I was born in 1959 and in my youth I was interested in Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn and all that. I then devoured Solzhenitsyn, which fascinated me. I also listened to propaganda stations on shortwave, Radio Moscow, Radio Prague, Radio Tirana, because I was simply curious about what they were saying. And then finally, when I was at the end of my studies, I went behind the Iron Curtain for the first time. I visited my friend who was an exchange student, studied theology and went to Leipzig for a year to study at Karl Marx University. I visited him and got to know people from the opposition.
Yes, and that continued later, we were in Prague on our honeymoon. I had to go to the Czech embassy the day before our wedding because my visa wasn't ready yet. Certain people needed a special security check at the time. There were a lot of cars in Prague that had been left behind by East Germans who climbed over the walls of the western embassy walls and were then able to leave for the West by train. On October 17, 1989, when we got married, Berlin was celebrating 40 years of the GDR. And on November 9, the Wall came down.
In other words, you have just given us a brief insight and a very quick ride into the fact that the topic has always been with you in some way and that you have also experienced this part of East Germany's history. From your youth and probably to this day, you have always had a great interest and made connections in this direction. Did I understand that correctly?
Exactly. Some people saw it as dangerous. But then I thought to myself, I'm Swiss and nothing much can happen to me.
The Swiss are neutral...
Yes, they are neutral. That can have good advantages. It would be a topic in itself.
Exactly, but we met here today. It should be mentioned that we are once again at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation Academy today, for which we are very grateful to be here.
Jaroslaw said a bit at the beginning in the intro that it was a long way until we were sitting here together today, because we actually wanted to meet in front of Café Kyiv and talk to each other, but then it was a bit difficult for various reasons.
Deutsche Bahn.
Deutsche Bahn also played along. I think, as I understood it, the Swiss train carried you safely and well across the border and or drove you and then when it was time to continue in Germany, I think you had to make a stopover, where was that in Mannheim or where was it?
In Karlsruhe.
Then you had to spend the night in Karlsruhe.
Nothing worked anymore. All the power had gone.
So perhaps Switzerland, with its neutrality and its ability to operate railroads, can still help the Germans a little. That would be nice. No, but we had arranged to meet at the time because we wanted to talk to you about it and you also spoke about it in a panel at Café Kyiv, about the church and war, religious content in the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, that was the title.
And we want to talk to you about this again today in a different form, namely in a slightly smaller group of three here, not in this large group, and perhaps also give the listeners who were unable to be here the opportunity to hear it again.
As I was thinking about today, preparing for the interview, it occurred to me that Easter had just taken place. And we had just been talking about who still reads newspapers, who still consumes the old media. I am the one who consumes my news via social media and I stumbled across a video or a podcast, a post, I think it was Fox News. There was Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow and he just held a service there. Fox News wrote at the bottom, Kyiv, or in other words, Moscow, or Kyiv? For them, Kyiv was Russia. And I found that somehow exciting, this image of Fox News, this channel that broadcasts to the world that Kyiv is Russian territory, which fortunately it is not de facto and hopefully never will be. But it gives a deep insight into the way some people think. And now I come to my topic for today.
Russia instrumentalizes religion as part of its propaganda machinery, its war propaganda, especially through the Russian Orthodox Church, um, this patriarchate. Can you tell us exactly how this works, i.e. what topics are addressed, how is this war practically legitimized? And above all on a religious-theological level, what is it?
Because the basis of Russian propaganda, so to speak, you mentioned the keyword Kyiv, is Kyiv and its relationship with Moscow. Putin had already dealt with this topic in the years before and also shortly before the war in his famous history lessons, in his essays.
Yes, in his speeches, where he repeatedly emphasizes that Ukraine belongs to Russia.
The topic of Ukraine belonging to Russia is about the baptism of Volodymyr, the first baptism of a Slav and thus the emergence of Christianity in this area from Byzantium. Orthodoxy began to spread after this baptism. That was around 900, and Russia didn't actually exist at that time. Kyiv belonged to the Viking empire.
And if we are already talking about Kyiv being the first place where the Slavs converted to Christianity, then we must ask ourselves today: isn't Kyiv the mother of Slavic Orthodoxy?
But Putin turns this around with one of his famous tricks: the historical fact is reversed. Kyiv must belong to Moscow, to the Russian Church. That is certainly one of the points of this historical distortion.
You could say a lot about this, but the other ideological point is the ideology of the "Russki Mir", that there is such a thing as a Russian special world, and that Ukrainians must belong to this world. For him, they are not independent Slavs, but actually Russian Slavs. Or they should be. Their culture is then subordinated accordingly as their resistance is suppressed. They are seen as nationalistic. And all Ukrainians should speak Russian, Ukrainian would simply be a peasant dialect of Russian. Ukrainian was banned again and again in the history of Ukraine under Russian rule. Ukraine was Russified, but the Ukrainians remained Ukrainians.
And then there's the story about the brothers, we are brothers, the Russians and Ukrainians.
We're brothers, aren't we?
Actually, we are all brothers, if anything, we are all brothers and sisters, I agree.
But then you use violence against your brother. The Ukrainians respond to this with the story of Cain and Abel. What happens there is that Cain kills Abel. That is part of the Russian thing.
And the third thing that must be mentioned again and again is the instrumentalization of the church for Putin's ideology, when he repeatedly appears in the great church in Moscow, the largest church of Orthodoxy there is.
I've also been there and you're not actually allowed to take photos there, but of course there's a photo with Putin and Kirill. Putin lights a candle and stands there reverently.
And one aspect is certainly, perhaps we are talking about this in particular, questions of morality, which is supposed to be special in Russia and where you can also use it to make propaganda in the West, as if Russia is morally superior to us and the West is decadent, which may sometimes be the case. It's a popular thing that comes up again and again.
In addition, Putin was already a friend of Kirill's during his time in St. Petersburg, when Putin worked there as a KGB officer. Kirill was his informant about the Russian church. He was actually someone who made sure that the Christian faith, the church and the priests were monitored. And we must not forget how many people in Russia have ended up in prison for suppressing the faith.
Putin has never shown remorse for what he did back then, and neither did Kirill when he became Patriarch, the head of the Russian Church. He never said anything about it or did anything to ensure that it was all dealt with in the Russian church. This whole collaboration and the betrayal of his own people is a chapter that is often forgotten.
So when I listen to you, for me it's ... I even find it difficult to call it the Russian Orthodox Church, because it sounds much more like an instrument of a state of the Russian state and not at all like a religious association that really practices the faith. So it may well be that there are people who really and honestly want to do this. But at first it sounds as if it is actually an instrument of Russia, of the Russian state, of Putin, of those in power. It's about control over the population, over the believers. That's how I would summarize it.
Yes, this holy alliance between church and altar, between tsars and church, is historically the case. This is certainly also a certain problem in other Orthodox churches, because it is an ideal that there should be an alliance, an alliance between church and state, that the two belong together.
If we look at history, it was once like that in the West too. Many unholy things have always happened because of this close connection between the throne and the altar. Wars have also been waged in this name, supposedly holy wars.
But if we look at the message of the Christian faith, Christ and his message, the Gospels, we do not find this idea. On the contrary, the church is something of a contrast society. Christians should not only be involved in their own church, not only live in their own bubble. But the church, that would be the reformed idea, also has something of a guardian function, it has to maintain a certain distance from the state. It can also say what is not good.
And today, this system of unity between church and state no longer exists in the West due to secularization, and this model never actually corresponded to the origins of the Christian faith. And I think it's good that the new Ukraine has finally decided not to adopt the old system of the alliance of church and state.
Max, I just listen and you open my eyes to certain things that I should have experienced in my life, in my childhood, in my youth in Ukraine, because I lived in Ukraine.
There was the Ukrainian Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, and it still exists. They are fighting against it, but it used to be much more present, that is, I personally knew some people, relatives, who were in this church. And the ideas that they spread, I just mean in everyday life, it's not about that, I was never that religious or somehow in certain bubbles, so to speak, but when you talk to someone, you hear certain ideas, world views and so on, which also came from the people who went to this church. For me, they were always so questionable or very outdated.
What you're telling us now actually seems to me to be a structure from the past, so as you said, yes, there used to be this idea that church and state somehow belong together, that they should somehow belong together. But yes, other churches were then actually reformed. And when you were speaking, I remembered a sentence that sounds something like this in German: every power or every government is given by God. I heard that at the time and some people in Ukraine also used it to explain the existence of our then government of Yanukovych, of the pro-Russian president, in other words, when the Revolution of Dignity began, there were people who were in favor of change, in favor of the EU, in favor of European values, but there were also other Ukrainians and they were quite often very devout people who said, well, you have to understand that if we have a president like that, then we also deserve this power. Somehow this government and all power are God-given. And that's how the whole thing was justified in Russia. But here in Ukraine, there were enough people who didn't agree with this and who wanted these changes and actually brought them about. So what you're telling me now actually gives me a broader perspective on individual pieces of the puzzle that I was able to experience myself.
And it has to be said that your example has just shown this well. In Ukraine, however, there are people who see things differently, who think critically and also express themselves critically and don't simply see everything as God-given. I believe that Ukrainians really do have a different culture, a different way of doing things than the majority of the population in Russia. I have also been to Russia and I know someone who worked there for many years, also in the theological field. In contrast, we don't encounter this fear of thinking critically and saying it openly among Ukrainians. This was also one of the reasons why there were always a particularly large number of Ukrainians in the Soviet Union's prison camps compared to the population as a whole. They dared to have an independent opinion.
As a theologian, I also have to say that I find it one-sided with regard to the biblical message if we only quote the letter to the Romans: "We should obey the authorities." There is also the other sentence from the Acts of the Apostles: "We should obey God rather than men." And also, um, these apocalyptic messages in the Bible that show us that there are also anti-Christian powers in this world that we have to fight against, even if they appear to be Christian. Incidentally, I often encounter such thoughts among Christians in Ukraine.
I am an absolute liberal when it comes to religion and, er, theological issues. But what I imagine is that faith and spirituality and the secular are two different worlds, so to speak. I understand politics, for example, as something very worldly that is happening here now. But what you say is a bit different. But I have understood that you can't separate the two. Of course, there are always connections, so it's not a clear, razor-sharp separation, so that's possible.
No, because it is something that cannot be legitimized by either side. Religion cannot simply dictate to the state how it should function, nor can the state dictate to religion how it should function. Too much power is not good for the church either, nor is it good for the state.
Exactly, but that basically means that neither side should exert too much power on the other. As in so many things, I guess it comes down to a certain balance.
We see the same problem in the relationship between church Christians in the Third Reich. This abuse of the church and also the fact that most of them took part. Not everyone was like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who died a martyr in the end. But we are very grateful today that there were some who spoke plainly. The Swiss theologian Karl Barth, for example, who as a professor in Germany refused to swear an oath to Hitler. He therefore went back to his homeland, to Basel.
Because you just mentioned it, you would say that there is a connection, a repeating pattern of what happened in the Third Reich, in Nazi Germany, with religion and with what is happening in Russia today, in which the Russian church is trying to justify the war of aggression on Ukraine.
So you have already mentioned many things, such as the fact that the Ukrainians are not seen as equal by the Russians in comparison to them, that the Russian world somehow sees itself as morally superior to the West. It all reminds me very much of the Third Reich, of Nazi Germany, which started out with a similar ideology, i.e. they also said that we were superior to others because of our race, because of the characteristics of our bodies and so on. Do you see any other overlaps, i.e. is this something that can be seen today in the Russian Orthodox Church, so to speak, in relation to this war of aggression against Ukraine, which looks similar?
I read some of Kirill's sermons that were published in the magazine Osteuropa. If you read what Kirill says there, the head of this church, this war is declared to be a holy cause and ultimately a cause that is directed against the entire West in its decadence. The decadence that is happening in the West is closely observed and gladly accepted, but it is above all an exaggeration. There is something to it, but it is completely exaggerated. I see what is happening in the Russian Orthodox Church today as the greatest relapse in recent decades as far as Christianity is concerned. I believed that these things, that wars are justified in Christian terms, had finally been overcome. But today a church is once again declaring a war of aggression to be holy.
Kirill promises the soldiers complete forgiveness and a safe place in heaven even in the event of their death. This teaching is theologically more than questionable. I thought that as Christians we had finally overcome this false doctrine and recognized it as wrong. Today, however, we also see that Christians in the West are adopting these things from Putin.
You've just touched on the next topic, which I have a few questions about, and that is, you've just mentioned that, as I understand it, Russian propaganda also uses religious narratives to gain influence in the West. How exactly are Christian groups in the West, including here in Germany or in Switzerland or in the USA, influenced by Russian propaganda?
It is mainly about moral issues, such as the question of homosexuality, gender and also the significance of the Covid virus. We encounter all these things in the conspiracy theories that are still very widespread. But also the complaint that the West has become so secular, that people no longer go to church, that the value of the family is no longer recognized, that there are hardly any more children, that abortions have been completely liberalized. Putin's propaganda goes down well with the very conservative Christians. Russia would be different, not as morally degenerate as the West. This development began in the USA, and here we are with those who voted for Trump. It started in the USA and then we are with Trump.
This brings up another question for me. Do religious people here in the West understand that what is said and shown from the Russian side rarely corresponds to reality, I mean now, as far as abortions and so on are concerned, that it's all just a Potemkin village, often just a façade of a Christian paradise, as if Russia were something like that, I don't think so.
For example, with a divorce rate of 70% in Russia.
Exactly. So I mean, the real situation is so far removed from what is being manifested, it's actually propaganda, it's actually propaganda, it's actually lies, what is being said.
This makes me think of Myroslaw Marynowytsch, a Soviet Ukrainian dissident and co-founder of the Catholic University in Lviv, whose memoirs I was able to publish in German. A theological paper published jointly by the Ukrainian churches is entitled: "What is truth?" It deals with the question: Is there even such a thing as truth in the postmodern age?
The document also contains a certain criticism of the West, that we can no longer distinguish between truth and lies, that everyone formulates their own truth and that there can no longer be a commonly recognized universal truth.
I also see this spirit in some Christians. These people often no longer read the current titles in the press or watch the news programs on ARD or ZDF. They inform themselves in so-called "alternative ways". This development also promotes the spread of the Internet and the opportunities to obtain information in a different way. They only read what they want to read and hear, and I believe that Russian propaganda has worked very well in this area in recent years. Certainly also in connection with the Covid crisis. I don't mean that our governments have simply done everything right during this time, but Russia has certainly also used this crisis to weaken the West and to further the division of our societies.
What you are talking about now are actually the main characteristics of Russian propaganda. I recently read an article from a Ukrainian publishing house, a text about the basic rules of Russian propaganda. And it was actually about the fact that you should take the existing problems that actually exist in the respective countries, I mean the Western countries, including Germany and so on, and make them much bigger than they are.
So what you also said, yes, of course, as in every country, there are always certain difficult questions, certain problems, but what Russian propaganda does, they take these problems and see them and magnify them and make them much bigger than the problems, and yes, the aim is, as you mentioned, to divide our societies. That's the aim, to weaken us so that we don't believe each other, that we tend to feed off uh questionable sources that perhaps spread conspiracy theories and so on and these sources are often enough created and controlled by Russia itself. It's more or less clear how this works, but how can we counteract these mechanisms?
That's difficult, I often experience in conversations that opinions are formed and it's clear to the other person what they believe to be the truth. People who didn't get vaccinated and took to the streets during the Covid crisis are all pro-Russian And if you tell them how Putin himself dealt with it, how he completely isolated himself from the virus, my arguments don't get through. It is very difficult today to convince someone with facts that their opinion cannot be correct. Nevertheless, we should try and not simply accept it.
Here in the West, at least in Switzerland, I am still discovering a great deal of ignorance about Ukraine and Ukrainians. We very often hear the same buzzwords used against the innocence of Ukraine, such as civil war, oppression of the Russian-speaking population, Ukrainian corruption, that the USA or the West organized the revolution on the Maidan and so on. It's always the same keywords. But in order to say something, you can't just use a keyword, you have to talk longer, explain things.
Half-truths and not the obvious lies are particularly difficult. Russian propaganda works very well at this level, but I think it is our task to show solidarity with Ukraine, which is being unjustly invaded. It is also very important to do our own research, to inform ourselves, to read a lot of good literature about Ukraine. The opportunities to stay well informed have changed since the war. Before, hardly anyone was interested in Ukraine, today we all have to deal with it. It is in the spotlight today. What particularly concerns me as a Christian is the fact that people are mainly talking about Ukraine, the Ukrainians, but not with them. It is mainly about Russia and the USA.
That bothers me too.
The voices of those who are affected by this war themselves are rarely or never heard. I think it is very important that Ukraine is given a voice again and again, especially through people and their personal experiences. Ultimately, that was also the aim of my book project, to give a voice to a Ukrainian and his perception of the war.
I believe that the personal things are more touching than all the political opinions and speculation.
The book that you published, or that you helped publish, is a cry of despair. Can you tell us a bit about this book and about the author, what's in it? What can we expect to see in there when we open this book, what do we get to see?
It is part of the Ukrainian Voices series, so it really is a voice of Ukraine. The aim was to be that voice. I knew Danylo Movchan before the war, but only through Facebook, because I was interested in the new art scene, the "Nowa Ikona", the largest contemporary art scene making sacred art in Europe, and I got to know Danylo. I also bought some works from him and his wife. When the war broke out, I thought I should write him something that wasn't cheap. But then after three days I saw that Danylo was suddenly painting quite differently. He started painting watercolors about the war. When the war broke out, he initially tried to continue with his usual work, sacred art, but he felt inside himself: I can't do this anymore, there's something completely different in me now. This war is hovering over our country, I am living in a completely different reality.
And then he found a way to express what he couldn't put into words through his art. His wife told me in conversation that Danylo then became calmer. It was like a kind of self-therapy for him. He simply had to do something that helped him to show his feelings and his inner struggles. His watercolors about the war are also an art with which he wants to tell the world what this war looks like, the events of the war and his personal perception, which cannot be put into words. And I soon had the thought: these pictures are so good that they should be shown here. Should I contribute to this?
And I then wrote to him asking if he would take part. And he said yes straight away. I knew that if I did it, I would have to travel to Ukraine, despite the war. I went there a year ago and we talked for a long time. He also showed me a lot about cultural life in Ukraine and we visited his brother's grave at the military cemetery in Lviv together. That was a very moving experience for me. His brother fell in the fighting in Bachmut. His cap, which he wore during the war, was also on the grave. This visit made me realize the result of every war: death. There were already over 500 graves in this cemetery at the time. And a small excavator was digging a new grave field. I saw a lot of people visiting the graves.
Danylo later painted a watercolor as a dedication to his brother, which can also be seen on the cover of the book.
My encounters with him, his wife and other friends in Ukraine touched me deeply. I think we should never forget what this war really means for the people in Ukraine. And as Christians, it would actually be our duty to take an interest and stand up for these people.
I will soon be visiting a Protestant theologian and pastor who did his doctorate in Belgium. His brother was also killed and of course he has a lot of questions. What do I say to the people affected by the war at the grave? What does my own hope look like, do I even have it? How do I deal with it all myself?
These personal matters are perhaps even more important than so-called high politics.
Thank you very much for the insight and also for your, yes, I would also say touching words. I've just come back from Lviv a second time and was probably at the same military cemetery. I drove around Lviv with my brother. We drove past a lot of churches and we stopped at some of them and we also went to a lot of cemeteries because I was looking for relatives there. I also visited the graves of my ancestors. But what I've noticed is that people don't understand all this when I think about people here in Berlin or in Germany or in Switzerland or in Austria or in the whole of western Europe. They always think that this war is so incredibly far away. But it is so incredibly close and when you are there and walk through the many graves in your cemetery and see these flags and these Ukrainian colors that signal that someone has died here in this war of aggression. It just touches you and, yes, as you said, it can make you despair and ask all these questions. How can I regain hope, how can I perhaps come back to life and live again and be able to act, so yes. That was just in my head, somehow. I felt similar to you, by your side.
Thank you very much, Max, for talking to us. We still have a few minutes left, but it's slowly coming to an end. It's always so exciting to have these conversations. We always go into the conversations with our guests with questions and then talk about them, but we often leave with even more questions
For me, today was really a conversation in which I left here with many questions that I ask myself, very personally. What is religion for me, what is faith for me, but also very difficult questions, but clear questions.
I kept getting stuck on this point inside, truth and lies. And that somehow reminds me of many other conversations with friends but also with family about this topic. Yes, for us there is truth and there is a lie. And this dissolution of black and white, this blurring, this gray, which can be useful on a philosophical level, is also something that can lead to us no longer knowing where up and down is, where is left and right. So some kind of orientation is recommended. I'm still so incredibly confused because... How do we get back to the point where we as a society, as a German society, as a European society, whatever it may be, can distinguish truth from lies? Because truth is something that describes how something is, so the glass is on the table and the lie would be that the glass is not on the table, but you both see that the glass is on the table, that's the truth. And why do so many people manage to say: "No, the glass isn't there and four eyes are looking at it and believe that the glass isn't there." That's the question I always take away with me and which I never get answered.
For me, the big question is always what peace is. We all want peace, peace in Ukraine, peace in the world and we find ourselves in a very unpeaceful world right now. We all want peace. In the Sermon on the Mount, Christ praises the peacemakers as happy. Pacifist movements advocate the renunciation of violence, reject support with weapons and want to resolve war through negotiations. But there is also a connection between peace and justice. If peace means that I am allowed to defend myself, it is not peace, but only capitulation to the violence of others. Ukraine must be able to defend itself and in doing so it also needs support with weapons. Pacifism is simply unrealistic in this situation. There is a right to defense, a duty to fight against evil, even if we have to use violence.
What I want for Ukraine is not a cheap peace, but a peace that also contains some justice and fairness, even if difficult compromises have to be made.
I think that's what we all want, all people in the free world, dear Max. Thank you for this moving conversation, as Isa said, it's the same for me. I am left with many questions, but you have also taken me to a different level in this conversation than I was before, and I am glad to have somehow arrived at a different place, even if many things don't seem very nice for our listeners.
Nevertheless, we want to end our conversation today with a question that we ask each of our guests. End question. Do you have a favorite dish from Ukrainian cuisine and if so, what is it?
Borscht, specifically this borscht, which is cooked in the "Karpaten" restaurant at the back of Armenian Lane in Lviv's old town. They serve good Ukrainian cuisine there. This borscht nourishes you really well, with lots of vegetables, potatoes, meat and strong spices. Served with chopped fresh peperoncini and good bread.
I will gladly take this recommendation with me the next time I go to Lviv. I like real Ukrainian cuisine myself. Thank you for the interview.
Kommentar schreiben