"The commission made detailed analyses of all arguments offered by partisans of Ivan the Terrible's canonisation to conclude that there are no grounds to canonise him nor sufficient evidence to disprove reliable and universally recognised historical research precepts. The same can be said concerning a campaign to canonise Grigori Rasputin," Metropolitan Juvenalis says in a paper offered to the Council.
As he sums up a propaganda campaign to canonise Ivan the Terrible, the Metropolitan points out:
"First, proponents of his canonisation failed to offer a single hitherto unknown source relying on which one can put to doubt an established historical research tradition, according to which the personality and the reign of Ivan the Terrible have a disapproving portrayal."
Second, no historical studies have appeared for today to convincingly disprove the heinous facts of his reign. Thus, in 1565-72, Tsar Ivan established the notorious oprichnina, an administrative elite plus crack punitive troops to eradicate dissent and sedition he was paranoidally alleging in the aristocratic milieu. The oprichniks steeped Russia in terror, with many thousands of innocent victims, blood-curdling public executions, cruel reprisals and murders of priests and monks, many of them later canonised. The atrocious domestic and headlong foreign policies Ivan perpetrated throughout the latter half of his reign undermined the country for many years after his death. Lecher and polygamist, Ivan the Terrible was excommunicated for the last ten years of his life. No reliable evidence of his spontaneous worship at the grassroots was found, either.
As for Grigori Rasputin, favourite of Russia's last Royal family,"the few written works ascribed to Rasputin (real surname, Novykh) reveal not merely profound theological ignorance of the allegedly 'holy' peasant man of Siberia but his closeness to religious convictions characteristic of charismatic mystical sectarians," the Canonisation Commission says in its conclusion.
"His contemporaries were impressed by Grigori Rasputin's hypnotic gift. Toward the end of the St. Petersburg period of his life, he was perfecting that gift under instruction of a professional hypnotist. That gift does not necessarily testify to heavenly blessing. On the contrary, he might owe it to an impact of ecstatic pseudo-worship practised by mystical cults," reasoned Metropolitan Juvenalis.
Ever since the early 1990s, proponents of their canonisation have been extolling Ivan the Terrible and Rasputin as personified instances of a unique popular piety they are contrasting to the "official piety" of the established Church. "Enthusiasts of that canonisation cannot fail to see that sheer debates round it may sow sedition among Orthodox Christians-and have sown it, for that matter. Full of temptation, it discredits the very idea of canonising true saints," said the Metropolitan.
The International Foundation of Slav Writing and Culture convened a conference of Church and secular experts two years ago, sharp-October 4, 2002. It gathered historians, archive scholars and fiction authors under the motto, "Historical Myths vs. Reality". By way of summing up the event, the conferees forwarded a written appeal to Alexis II, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia-Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church. They called him to ponder prospects to canonise Ivan the Terrible and Grigori Rasputin.
