Russia’s celebration of the recent “Old New Year” is at the same time a reminder of both the pre–revolutionary Imperial times and the Western reforms of Peter the Great. It was Tsar Peter who established the January New Year celebration in 1700 (although before the Bolshevik calendar reform of 1918 it was done according to the old Julian style calendar). That is to say it wasn’t only Bolshevik radicalism that created the double new year phenomenon.

Recognizing Peter the Great’s great achievements in strengthening the Russian State, it is worth recalling the negative aspects of his reign. Sadly, they were many in number. But his most famous policy known across the world was his blunt Europeanization of the country. And a major part of this process concerned church-state relations. This is how Konstantin Malofeev describes the situation in his book “Empire”.:

“… In Amsterdam and London, the tsar not only studied shipbuilding. Succumbing to European temptations, he decisively changed his Orthodox childhood… [He] attended the Royal Society of London, a nest of occultists, where he communicated with Isaac Newton, and also became friends with Bishop Gilbert Burnet of Salisbury. The bishop was an ardent fighter against Catholicism and an apologist for the Anglican monarchy, in which the king is “God’s locum tenens on earth, obligated to punish unholy acts against him.” Burnet’s views on the relationship between the Church and the monarch would later become the basis of Peter’s anti-church policy.

After returning from the Great Embassy, Tsar Peter Alekseevich began to unrestrainedly reform Russia in the spirit of radical Europeanization. The third Rome was reformed in the image and likeness of its eternal enemy, the new Canaan… On the one hand, the growth of Russia’s state greatness could be seen in the wars won, the rapidly expanding territory, the foundation of St. Petersburg, and the strengthening of the army. On the other hand, Peter’s Third Rome was undergoing a dramatic decline in morals along the lines of Ancient Rome, infected by Carthage. The spirit of Protestant Europe, the spirit of the new Canaan, received a powerful adept in the person of Peter. Paradoxically, the Russian Tsar began to destroy the Church, the spiritual foundation of his Kingdom, with his own hands…

The tsar ordered to replace the sole [church] administration with a collegial one, placing the Holy Synod at the head of the Church, with the status of a simple collegium, or ministry. The head of the Synod was appointed by a secular person, an official. In other words, in the new Petrine Russia, the Church, whose head is the Lord God Jesus Christ Himself, was reduced to the level of an ordinary government department. The symphony of authorities in the Third Rome was abolished…”

Very often history books portray resistance to Peter I’s reforms as the wealthier of the hillbillies refusing to shave their beards, when in fact many of his reforms had deep spiritual meaning and tried to push Russia down the exact same “highway to hell” that Europe today continues to gleefully ride upon. Remember, Peter I is referred to as “the great” far more often in English and in Russian, which is very telling.