Porfiri Bogolyubov
From IBWiki
| This article is source material
|
Only by gaining the support of the military, the church managed to narrowly hold on. The result was a compromise: the openly militaristic metropolitan of Petrograd, Porfiri Bogolyubov, who had been pushing to succeed Spiridonov as patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, also become the new leader of the SNOR.
In the first years of his rule, Bogolyubov did a bang-up job of it. From the beginning, his policy had been inspired by religious convictions; he claimed God gave him advices directly about how to run the affairs of state. He fought corruption - successfully to some degree - and under the banner "Men are my children, all created equal" he introduced "equality in front of the law" and a certain amount of freedom of speech. Unlike his predecessors, who had always claimed czar Aleksei was still alive but "temporarily indisposed due to a cold", he immediately revealed that the czar had been dead since 1934, and announced that he would be looking out for a legitimate successor. He even contemplated the possibility of free elections, although it never came that far. Simultaneously, he tried to impose a strict religious and moral law reform: no fornication, no booze, etc. Since they are "morally superior", he started appointing clerics to key posts instead of civil servants and military.
But the longer he ruled, the odder his behaviour became. He came to believe that he was an illegitimate son of Grigori Rasputin, and declared him a saint by decree in 1979; in 1980 he did the same to admiral Kolchak. Subsequently, he became convinced that he was a living saint himself, and had himself sanctified as well. He had millions of golden icons made of himself, and they could be found in every church. He forcefully converted entire non-Orthodox populations to Russian Orthodoxy, and under his rule, thousands of musea, libraries, sports halls etc. were turned into churches. Books of non-Russian authors were burned, cafés and restaurants were closed, and musical instruments were forbidden. He created a special police force with the sole purpose of checking the church-going habits of the population. The commands God gave him became stranger and stranger as well: in 1983 he had Russia's entire population of cows slaughtered, because he claimed God had told him: "Thou shalt not eat the flesh of the holy cow, nor shalt thou drink its milk". Bogolyubov had himself crowned czar in 1981.
The last straw was his crusade against all "heathen" nations, non-Orthodox Christian countries included. In 1980 Russia invaded the Moghul National Realm, and in December 1981 it nearly came to a war with the Republic of the Two Crowns. No matter how fanatical, most members of the White Council recognised the folly of all this. In January 1984, he suddenly vanished without a trace. His followers claimed they had seen him spreading his angel's wings and flying up to heaven. Only nine years later, he was found in a monastery near Novgorod, raving all kinds of religious nonsense and his memory completely erased. It was never proven that this man, who died shortly afterwards, was indeed Bogolyubov.
The truth is that Bogolyubov had been removed in a coup. The country was now near bankruptcy, the church had lost all the credits it had ever had, and a popular uprising seemed at hand.
| Preceded by: Dmitri Spiridonov |  Supreme Leader of the Russian People | Succeeded by: Vitali Zeleznev |
