A Russian Orthodox priest has harshly denounced a car window sticker that cast Soviet dictator Josef Stalin and Russian President Vladimir Putin as the country's patriotic rulers, Orthodox news portal Blagovest-Info reported Monday.
The sticker, covering the rear windshield of a car spotted in the Siberian Kemerovo region, featured the likenesses of Tsar Alexander III, Stalin and Putin, and a quote from the Book of Psalms: “Not to us, Lord, not to us, but to your name be the glory,” according to a photo published by local news site VSE42.
The portraits floated above a black-and-orange St. George ribbon — Russia's traditional symbol of military valor that has emerged in recent years as a sign of Kremlin loyalists.
Russian Orthodox archpriest Artemy Kozin said the quote was particularly inapplicable to Stalin, ?€?who destroyed half the Church,?€? VSE42 reported.
?€?Only an ignorant person, who has poor knowledge of history and is looking for holiness where there has never been any, can justify him [Stalin],?€? Kozin was quoted as saying.
The archpriest used a couple of Russian slang terms to denounce the rising popularity of Stalin – which, he said, was due to the ?€?orthodoxization of the brain,?€? suffered by many Russians, to ?€?zombification?€? and to the ?€?unwillingness to read serious books,?€? VSE42 reported.
Kozin declined to comment on Putin, saying the Russian president's priest would be in a better position to judge his spiritual state, the report said.