A Perfidious Blow to Athonite Autonomy

 The outrageous mistreatment of Professor Alexander Dugin at Tessaloniki airport a few days ago would be unacceptable under any circumstances. However, it raises a particularly strong alarm because of the destination of Dugin’s pilgrimage – the autonomous Orthodox monastic community of Mount Athos.

The initial refusal of the Greek authorities to allow Prof. Dugin to continue his journey to Athos was motivated by a dubious request, supposedly by the Hungarian government, to deny him entry to EU territory. The entry ban was later rescinded, but the bare fact that on Greek territory a pilgrim’s progress was interrupted on such a flimsy pretext sets a  precedent that the Orthodox world disregards only at its grave peril.

Mount Athos is not a tourist destination, nor is it an integral part of Greece (and by extension, of the European Union) in the same sense as Tessaloniki or some other portion of sovereign Greek territory. While legally it is linked to Greece, the specific modalities of that linkage are  regulated by international treaties, of which the monastic community is a distinct and recognized subject. Those international agreements unambiguouly concede to Athonite monks broad self-government rights and exclude their domain from the  unrestricted application of Greek (or EU) legal standards and provisions.

The fact that after the cessation of Turkish rule, at the conclusion of the Balkan Wars (1912 – 1913), the status of Athos was the topic of extensive international diplomatic negotiations makes it clear that, beginning with the Ottoman withdrawal, the monastic peninsula was not regarded as subject to Greek sovereignty analogously to the other liberated Greek territories.  With the subsequent signing of multilateral treaties of Neuilly (1919), Sevres (1920) and Lausanne (1923),  restrictions to Greek sovereignty over Mount Athos were officially enshrined in international law. 

Understanding  the special legal position of Athos (essentially, that it is not  unrestrictedly a sovereign part of Greece) and the nunaces by which that position is expressed and sustained is indispensable to appreciating the ultimate ramifications of what occurred at Tessaloniki airport. Some of these nuances are set forth by Prof. Ch. G. Patrinellis of Aristotle University in Tessalonici. “It should be noted,” Prof. Patrinellis points some of them out, “that [on Athos] disciplinary matters and minor disputes between monks or monasteries are adjudicated initially by the individual monastic authorities, in the second instance by the Holy Community and in the third by the Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Misdemeanours and minor infractions are settled by the local police authorities, while criminal offences and land disputes between monasteries are in the jurisdiction of the competent courts in Thessaloniki.”

 Given that Athos is a distinct legal zone in its own right (an analogy between China and Hong Kong would perhaps not be entirely out of place) the refusal of the Greek authorities to facilitate Prof. Dugin’s progress to his destination is an ominous development of much wider concern and potential scope than would be a simple denial of transit rights to an individual. At stake is the very future of Mount Athos and the fundamental issue is whether or not it would  ultimately be absorbed by the aggressively secular system of social “values” and flawed jurisprudence that is being imposed by submission to the political correctness dictated by Brussels, with the active connivance of the militantly left-wing regime in Athens.

If visitors to the autonomous monastic community on Athos can be denied unfettered access to its territory, an essential and inherent feature of its special status is thus undermined. What will be next? Enforcement of a decision from Brussels that, in the name of equality, women must be allowed notwithstanding the fact that this is prohibited by the community’s constitution? Followed by an order to install transgender toilettes in the monasteries?

The crude abuse suffered by Prof. Dugin at Tessaloniki airport is emblematic of the totalitarian nature of the secular new world order that is in the process of being imposed, whose orchestrators have resolved not to leave even the tiniest space, nook, or cranny, anywhere on the face of the planet, where the “diversity” that they hypocritically preach, and use as a battering ram for the destruction of traditional identities and institutions, might actually be enacted and celebrated. That is why what happened at Tessaloniki airport is ominous and dangerous. Especially when considered in conjunction with the statement of Greece’s unapologetically atheistic prime minister Alexis Tsipras, who already has an unenviable track record of servile submission to the forces which are systematically ruining his country and has not given the slightest hint of affinity for his nation’s spiritual heritage, that “Athos belongs to everybody.”

No, it does not belong to everybody but to the Mother of God who set it aside as her garden. It also belongs to Orthodox believers throughout the world who receive from it the spiritual energy and sobriety that it incessantly generates. But it emphatically does not belong to “this world” or to the “prince” from whom it draws its inspiration.

Where is the reaction of the world of Orthodoxy to the outrage at Tessaloniki airport and its dreadful implications?