Before My Trip to Russia

Hi my beautiful students, today I would like to share one interesting article with you, written by my student Jason and called “Before my trip to Russia”. I split this article into 2 parts. This is the first part!

Recently I was asked to write down a few ideas of what I assume, my first trip to Russia will be like. What I’m expecting to see and experience while I’m there.

It’s not possible to express a perspective without at least a little background of the writer. I should say first, that I grew up in America during the Cold War era, so It goes without saying both countries were very different back then, in many ways. Every American news source reported on the evils of the Soviet Union. Hollywood profited as much as the Defense department from having the Soviet Union as an enemy as well. Today’s younger generation can not imagine, just how close we thought these two countries were to nuclear war. What little insight made it out of the Soviet Union for sure confirmed its sad reality. Tens of Millions lost there lives to the chaos and terror of the Soviets. One most notable writing that influenced me is Alexander’s Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago, for which I would suggest for everyone to read.

Now let’s fast forward to 2019. Since my youth many things have changed between the two countries and for myself as well. A number of years ago I sought a new beginning in life. For this I knew I needed a spiritual life of some kind. Being raised in the Southern region of America, I started with what was available. Having exhausted my efforts with the multitude of Protestant denominations, and other spiritual flirtations, I started looking at Christian Church history and discovered the ancient Orthodox Church.

I discovered that not only was the Orthodox Church the ancient original Christian Church of the East, but that Russia had sought and learned Orthodox Christianity from the Greeks in the 900’s.

I had also learned that Communism did not come from Russia, but from current day Germany. Technically it came from a particular atheistic branch of one of the many protestant Anabaptist movements of 1523. I also learned of the millions of Orthodox Christians who lost their lives defending The Faith against Communism. So as it turns out, the vast majority of the Russian people and other Eastern Europe countries have been a victim of one of the most destructive ideologies to have been released upon the world from the West.

To be continued…

Jason

p.s.If you need to learn Russian online, the courses are here.