Waiting for Russia's ‘White Tsar’

According tolatest data, Russians interest i the occult public and esoteric literature is growing rapidly in the shadow of the Ukraine war. And on local web platforms are spreading colourful prophecies about the advent of a new mythological figure who is supposed to ‘reunite and raise Holy Rus’.

Moscow (AsiaNews) - Against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine, more and more Russians are turning to fortune tellers and necromancers, especially to search for their relatives missing at the front. The audience for these occult services has increased 20-fold, and interest in esoteric literature has more than doubled. YouTube clips offer an endless series of predictions, with dozens of daily videos on the issues stirring the conscience of Russians, on when the war will end and what the future fate of Russia will be, all the way to the Last Judgment.

The Bulgarian prophetess Baba Vanga, the Polish-Soviet illusionist and mentalist Wolf Messing, Nostradamus and Stalin, Saint Matrona and the blessed Pelageja, and even the recently deceased politician Vladimir Žirinovsky are invoked as ‘experts’, along with a plethora of lesser-known runic soothsayers and tarot spirits, ready to predict anything to the public in order to collect the precious digital smiles, or the even more coveted donations.

In this climate of boundless neo-spiritualism, colourful prophecies about the advent of the so-called ‘White Tsar’, who is to ‘reunite and uplift Holy Rus’, preparing all mankind for the Second Coming of the Redeemer', are increasingly spreading on Russian internet platforms. Adherents of this mythological figure draw on the holy scriptures of the various religions, from the Bible to the Koran and the Upanisads, but also on the sacred traditions of the Church Fathers or mystical writers, as in the Legend of Tsarevič Svetomir by the symbolist Vjačeslav Ivanov, to science fiction films such as the Matrix and Buratino.

The ‘free Adventist and theologian’ Oleg Žigankov holds an ‘Open Seminar’ on Yandex.Dzen with 135,000 followers, describing the mission of the tsar to come who will be installed ‘directly by God’. He will be a great reformer, who will first of all put order in the Orthodox Church itself, driving out all the ‘false hierarchs, heretisers and hot-bloodedness’. With the White Tsar ‘Russia will rise from the dead, and the whole world will be astonished’; first of all ‘Siberia will be transfigured, but this Russia will not last long before the Apocalypse’. Quoting Greek and Russian saints, from Leo the Wise to Theophanes of Poltava and the monk Abel, Žigankov rereads the history of the imperial dynasties of the Rajurikids and the Romanovs, specifying that the new ruler will re-establish Russia ‘within the borders of the Soviet Union’, where instead of the communist system there will be ‘a society similar to the communes of the early Christians of the Apostolic Church’.

Other ‘exegetes’ of the future confirm the theses of the free theologian, such as the popular blogger Tatiana Arensburg, according to whom the future kingdom will also go beyond the borders of the USSR, ‘reuniting the Slavic peoples scattered all over the earth like the tribes of Israel’. Tatiana guarantees that the new ‘spiritual leader will give a new interpretation of the doctrine of Christ, using the intellect of today's new sciences, to arrive at a completely new type of society’. Already three years ago, the actress Maria Šukšina shocked the public by announcing from the stage that in 2024, exactly during the feast of the Nativity of Mary that Russians celebrate on 11 September, the White Tsar would appear, according to the prophecies of the Orthodox starets.

Some believe that salvation will come from the house of Romanov according to the female line, a figure currently hidden from everyone, but ‘all Russian people will recognise her immediately with their hearts’, Žigankov assures. Thus, the reinterpretations of the family tree descending from the last Tsar Nicholas II, whose assassination over a century ago by the Soviets in July 1918 is being commemorated these days. The cry Nie molči, Tsaria kliči! (‘Do not be silent, invoke the Tsar!’), and Vladimir Putin is warned: despite all his efforts, not even his war will be enough to stop the advent of the new Tsar of apocalyptic Russia.

• Russia
• esotericism
• occult
• war