Rewriting the history: On December 2, the film “Maria. Save Moscow" will be released

On December 2, 2021, the “Maria. Save Moscow” film will be released on the country's screens. The script is based on the legend of Stalin's meeting with Matrona on the eve of the battle for Moscow. At that meeting, Matrona advised the head of state to bring a miraculous icon to Moscow - it will help stop the enemy and save the city.

The main character is a Soviet girl named Maria, who must take out the Tikhvin Icon of the Mother of God from the territories occupied by the enemy.

This event did not go unnoticed by social networks. Deacon Andrey Kurayev explains the absurdity of this plot:

“The fact that Tikhvinskaya was during the entire war in the occupied territory and then was taken to the West is not important for fantasies in the style of Medinsky.

"Historians confirm that there was a moment when the city was opened, but for some reason the Germans did not enter it".

This is a story in the style of Patriarch Kirill: since I don’t know something, it means it was a miracle. The front did collapse on October 16, but in the Kalinin-Gzhatsk area, which is quite far from the capital. But then the Germans were dizzy with success: they turned the 4th Panzer Group to the north, towards Vyshny Volochok. By the way, the Germans had no plans to enter Moscow at all. They planned the environment..."

By the way, back in January of this year, MK wrote about the filming of the film, and including about the sources on which its authors relied: "There is evidence, in particular" The Legend of the Life of the Blessed Eldress Matrona "by Zinaida Zhdanova, which describes Stalin's arrival to Matrona Moscow for advice at the time of the threat looming over the city. Allegedly, Matrona predicted to Joseph Vissarionovich that the Russian people would win, and he himself - the only one from the country's leadership - would not leave Moscow. Zhdanova's book was criticized by high-ranking priests, and it was withdrawn from sale. But on the Internet there is an image of Stalin and Matrona, called an icon..."

Publicist Ilya Vaytsman drew attention to another aspect:

"Tell me please, the anti-science fiction religious propaganda film "Maria. Save Moscow" does not fall under the wording of "rewriting history" and "belittling the feat of the Soviet people"? In a sense, it was not Soviet soldiers who overshadowed Moscow with their bodies? The divisions of the "people's volunteer corps" that did not lie down almost completely? They just flew around with the icon and voila, victory ?! Seriously??? "So it is necessary"? Oh well...

I'm not even talking about the absolute antihistorical nature of the plot. Flight of unrestricted religious fantasy..."

Bloggers, especially the older generation, were very critical of this project:

- When our generation dies out, knowing how it was and hearing the people who lived then, who will laugh sadly at these Orthodox mickey mouses of military history?

- It's curious what is being filmed in Khokhlovsky. Before the war, all these mansions were occupied by secret departments of the NKVD, as the old prisoners told me. Matrona lived there or so the creators were drawn there by the call of the heart? The plot with the removal of the icon from the occupied territory is fascinating - otherwise where in Moscow can you find a miraculous icon in 1941? Perhaps at the Lubyanka... but this is all, of course, trifles. I am afraid that the authors decisively do not realize that historical truth (and indeed Truth in general) exists.

- Our merciless domestic fantasy. And yet, for the sake of truth, it would be necessary to add fangs to Stalin, from which blood drips, why should we be trifling on trifles. And then the director says that it does not drip, so, they just killed her grandmother with young children, why drip there. Such a fantasy is rather just a step towards psychosis and the transformation of what happened into a domestic version of the carnival Halloween.

- I think we need to make a series... To reach our days, where Maria, having lived to be 100 years old, conveys in secret what the clairvoyant Matrona told her... The vision of the clairvoyant was such that in 1952, exactly on the future Soviet Constitution, in Leningrad, a boy will be born who will make Russia great and become a great tsar. And then the Russian people will heal richly, to the envy of the whole world.