philosophy

What they teach in our schools is enough to drive you crazy. They say anything but the truth. Before Peter the Great, all the necessary conditions for the progressive development of the country had been laid. But Peter went down the path of direct copying, which never ends well. He simply split the nation into two parts – the Europeanized elite and the main population of the country. With each generation, the gap widened, and by the beginning of the 20th century, it had become so large that ordinary people considered the nobility to be foreigners. This is how the national revolution against the anti-national monarchy took place.
As for the Patriarch, his power has never been secular. According to Orthodox tradition, the clergy are exclusively concerned with saving souls, and not with seeking power, unlike the Pope.