The Image of the “Coming Tsar” and the Mythologemes of Modern Eschatological Monarchism

Abstract

 This article presents a hermeneutic analysis of the key concept of eschatological monarchism, i.e. the image of the coming eschatological tsar, whose accession to the throne is expected at the end of the world’s existence, shortly before the onset of the last apocalyptic events. Such mythologemes are particularly popular among Orthodox fundamentalists, the movement of tsarebozhniki (tsar worshippers), who endow the monarch and monarchy with a special sacred religious status. They commonly hold the idea that the modern Russian Federation is an illegitimate state. The author starts with analysing the modern Russian monarchical discourse, in which two varieties are distinguished: legitimism and eschatological monarchism. The latter consists of Orthodox-like subcultures, characterized by radical antiglobalism; Satanist Masonic conspiracy mythologemes; apostasy of the hierarchy of the Moscow Patriarchate; fight against ecumenism, modernism, crypto-Catholics, information technology, bank cards, documents, methods of encoding information, and modern technology. This phenomenon is based on the nostalgic mythologemеs of the Golden Age, idealizing the Russian Empire and the tsardom of Ivan the Terrible, as well as on the mythologemes of the heroic myth about the tsar as an invincible warrior hero defeating evil forces, and conspiracy mythologemes about the tsar as the only force capable of resisting powerful enemies-conspirators. The sources of monarchical eschatological mythologemes are mainly prophecies attributed, with varying degrees of certainty, to canonized saints or to non-canonized, but widely revered persons, as well as anonymous, pseudonymous and apocryphal texts. The coming eschatological tsar is not considered by the adherents as a successor to the Russian emperors: he is the first and only in his ranks. The nature of his use of monarchical power contains a mythological reference to the image of Ivan the Terrible. The image of the coming tsar is formed by a set of messianic ideologemes and mythologemes, such as “the coming tsar is an invincible military leader”, “the coming tsar will be feared by the antichrist himself”, “the tsar will cleanse the church of apostate hierarchs and various heretics”, “the form of government will be authoritarian and totalitarian”, “under the tsar’s rule, Russia will become the most powerful state in the world” or “under the tsar’s rule, Russia will be a materially poor, but spiritually rich state”.