The first new Orthodox church to be built in Warsaw for over 100 years opened yesterday. It is now the third in Poland’s capital, serving a growing number of Orthodox believers.

Both its name – Hagia Sophia – and its outer appearance refer to its famous namesake in Istanbul, which was originally built as a Byzantine cathedral, converted to a mosque by the Ottoman Turks, then deconsecrated into a museum in 1934 – and finally again turned into a mosque in July this year.

The church is located in southern Warsaw, near the Ursynów and Wilanów districts. Its location will save nearby worshippers from longer trips to the city’s other two Orthodox churches: the 19th-century Metropolitan Cathedral of St Mary Magdalene in the Praga district, and the church of Saint John Climacus in Wola, built in 1905. There are also several smaller chapels dispersed around the capital.

The last Orthodox church to be built in Warsaw was opened in 1912, when the city was part of the Russian Empire.

The Alexander Nevsky cathedral – which was then Warsaw’s tallest building and located at the heart of the city in what is today Piłsudski Square – was demolished in the 1920s after Poland regained its independence, along with many other Orthodox places of worship.

At the opening of the new building, Archbishop Sawa – the head of the Polish Orthodox Church – said that it would be dedicated to Polish Orthodox believers “over the centuries” and “especially those who died in camps in the east and west, and those who, strong in faith, gave their lives during the Warsaw Uprising”.

The parish priest, Adam Siemieniuk, says that the new church should “be a tribute to the cradle of Christianity, which is the Hagia Sophia [in Istanbul],” reports Radio Plus.

The temple’s construction began in 2015. Earlier this year, its western bell tower and nine bells were consecrated, but services took place in a temporary wooden chapel near the building site. Now the church itself is open for services, with only final touches being made to the interior.

The building was designed by Andrzej Markowski, who died last year. It is 35 metres wide, with a dome limited to being only 22 metres high, as it stands on the approach path for planes landing at the nearby Chopin airport.

The new church was funded entirely from collections among Orthodox believers. “We did not receive any funds from the state budget, so we can say that the whole thing was financed by our Orthodox community,” said Siemieniuk, quoted by Nasze Miasto, a local news site.

The church will also function as the venue for a Sunday school for Orthodox children.

The current Polish Orthodox Church was established in 1924, and has been headed by Archbishop Sawa since 1998. It claims to have around 500,000 members, although exact figures are difficult to come by.

According to data from the 2011 census, membership stood at 150,000, including 40,000 in Warsaw. However, an estimate for 2019, published earlier this year by Statistics Poland (GUS), a government agency, put the church’s membership at just over 500,000.

A separate recent report by GUS estimates the number of all Orthodox believers in Poland at 0.9% of the population (up from 0.7% in 2016), which would mean around 400,000.

One reason for growing numbers of Orthodox faithful in recent years has been the unprecedented influx of Ukrainian immigrants, an estimated 1.35 million of whom now live in Poland.

Having been battered, bullied, burned and bombed so many times in the past it’s perhaps surprising that possibly the grandest pre-war structure in Warsaw was actually torn down by the locals, no less than 14 years after it was completed.

Commissioned by the Governor General of Poland, Joseph Vladimirovich Gourko, work commenced on St. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in 1893 and continued until 1914. Earmarked to serve as place of worship for Warsaw’s ruling Russian community the building was the work of the architect Leontij Benois, a professor in The Tsarist Academy of Fine Arts in St Petersburg.

The site, on what is today Pl. Piłsudskiego was not chosen by accident; in 1840 the same patch of land was occupied by an obelisk commemorating Polish generals who had collaborated with the Russians during the 1830 November Uprising. It was financed by huge taxes levied by the insufferable Gourko, as well as a collection of funds ordered by Tsar Alexander III, though Russia’s looming economic crisis meant that construction took 18 years.

The results though were staggering. Consisting of five gold plated domes, and a 70 metre bell tower (then the tallest building in Warsaw), the cathedral proved even more dazzling on the inside. Raising comparisons to St. Mark’s in Venice, copper and oak main doors led to an interior dripping with oil paintings and icons. Sixteen mosaic panels were designed by Viktor Asnetsov, and the building was heavily adorned with precious stones. The cathedral operated as a Russian shrine until 1915 when Warsaw was captured by German forces. The next three years saw it function as a German military church, though the moment Poland gained independence plans were floated to demolish this symbol of Russian hegemony. The debate on what to do with it reigned for years, with arguments including that the building had no artistic value, that the square needed to be freed up for military parades and that the foundations were already sinking.

Finally in 1922 the tower was taken down, and between 1924-1926 some 15,000 detonations were set off to rid Warsaw of the cathedral. Not one to miss a mark, the Warsaw magistrate sold public bonds so as to allow every Pole the chance to take part in the iconoclasm. The resulting rubble was used to strengthen the banks of the Wisła and the rescued Finnish granite put to effect in many Warsaw churches.

Of the surviving decorations a few of the mosaics can now be viewed at the St. Mary Magdalene Church in Praga (one of only two Warsaw orthodox churches to survive the 20s), pulpit and altar pieces in the Sts. Peter and Paul Church in Pyry and icons in the Pokrovy Orthodox Church in Baranowicze, Belarus.

Leroy Fletcher Prouty (January 24, 1917 – June 5, 2001) served as Chief of Special Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President John F. Kennedy. A former colonel in the United States Air Force, he retired from military service to become a bank executive, and subsequently became a critic of U.S. foreign policy, particularly the covert activities of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) about which he had considerable inside knowledge. Prouty was the inspiration for the character “Mr. X” in Oliver Stone’s movie JFK.

Being a fan of the Dead Space series, I couldn’t help but pre-order the game (getting the free upgrade to the Limited Edition in the process) and making sure we got you the skinny you need as soon as possible. Many necromorph impalements later, we bring you Dead Space 3 in all its glory.

Dead Space 3 is rated “M” for Mature. Also note that, while I will keep spoilers to a minimum, there are a couple of things I will be giving away. I’ll try to make it only things that you will learn within the first ten minutes anyway.

Story:

It’s now two years after the events of Dead Space 2. The Unitology movement is as strong as ever and our hero, Isaac Clarke, has been laying low; trying to forget the markers and everything he’s seen. While we’ve been gone, Clarke has been hiding from the government, from the Unitologists and probably from himself too. All of that is about to change.

Isaac is cornered in his apartment by some soldiers claiming to be part of the last of the government’s military. We soon learn that Jacob Danik, the leader of the Unitology movement, has led a worldwide riot against the government and they are trying to release any and all markers in existence. Danik is played by none other than Simon Templeman, who has been awesome forever and has lent that awesomeness to videogames for years now. Some examples include Absalom in Darksiders II, Admiral Han’Gerrel vas Neema in Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3, General Threnoldt in Star Wars: The Old Republic and the voice of Kain in the Legacy of Kain series (which I personally wish was still ongoing).

Gunner Wright and Sonita Henry both return to their roles as Isaac Clarke and Ellie Langford and Ricardo Chavira is the voice of Sgt. John Carver, who is the character the second player can use for cooperative play, which I also think is awesome. Coming from a guy who’s girlfriend is a Zombie Apocalypse Geek, being able to shoot space zombies (necromorphs, for purists out there) together is always a plus.

Gameplay:

The interface is the same, though the opening menu screen has a darker, grungier look to it. That goes perfectly with the story once you get started though. The rest of the interface is quicker and just as easy to use. Because of the circumstances in the story, it allowed them to change the upgrading of the suits and weapons and they did it in a very modular and interesting way.

Instead of simply having set things you can add to particular guns, they’ve made Dead Space 3 much more customizable. To start, you can create your own weapons with seemingly endless configuration possibilities. My favorite creation was a semi-automatic machine gun with a shotgun attachment, that allowed for fast shots as well as a show stopper if needed or if a necromorph got too close for comfort. Not only is the creation innovative, but you also have improvement slots with circuits you find or create yourself. As you find different kinds of circuits or plans for different gun styles and types, Isaac learns to build different circuits out of spare parts found all over. While I didn’t take advantage of this as much as I would have liked, it was still much more imaginative and far more personalized than we could have expected from previous Dead Space upgrades. I thought it was pretty awesome. You can also create schematics for the weapons you create and then share those schematics with your friends online.

Graphics:

What can I say about the graphics? They are beautiful. Definitely a good notch up from Dead Space 1 and 2, while still retaining the style we have come to love and expect. Isaac is looking a little frayed, with a beard and a little age showing (probably all the stress), but that doesn’t stop him from getting everything done.

The space walks and space flights in zero gravity are still my favorite and they showcase the graphics especially well, but there are a few new twists with things like rappelling up and down cliff faces and fast-paced zero gravity flights with obstacles and enemies to avoid.

The necromorphs are even uglier than I remember and that’s saying something. The details are as beautiful as they are disturbing. For a horror game, I can’t give higher praise.

Music:

The music, as always with the Dead Space series, seems to thrill you, calm you, keep you exactly where you need to be and just when you think you’ve got it all figured out, they throw in some heavier music and you’re ambushed by necromorphs you didn’t know could be that big; Or ugly.

Multiplayer:

There are so few truly co-operative games out there that let you go through the storyline together instead of just multiplayer online or capture the flag or things of that nature, that I’m always glad to see them. The only other truly co-op game that was memorable for me this year is Halo 4 and I haven’t even been able to Co-Op through it yet. More Co-Op, I say!

Replayability:

Are you kidding? I finished it and almost hit New Game+ right away. I had to pry my fingers off my own controller just to write this and once I’m done I have to force myself not to start a new game. So on Replayability, this one deinitely gets high marks. Now if I can just stop talking myself into starting the entire series over again…

No figure among the capitalist restorationists in the East has won more adulation from U.S. officials, media pundits, and academics than Vaclav Havel, a playwright who became the first president of post-Communist Czechoslovakia and later president of the Czech Republic. The many left-leaning people who also admire Havel seem to have overlooked some things about him: his reactionary religious obscurantism, his undemocratic suppression of leftist opponents, and his profound dedication to economic inequality and unrestrained free-market capitalism.

Raised by governesses and chauffeurs in a wealthy and fervently anticommunist family, Havel denounced democracy’s “cult of objectivity and statistical average” and the idea that rational, collective social efforts should be applied to solving the environmental crisis. He called for a new breed of political leader who would rely less on “rational, cognitive thinking,” show “humility in the face of the mysterious order of the Being,” and “trust in his own subjectivity as his principal link with the subjectivity of the world.” Apparently, this new breed of leader would be a superior elitist cogitator, not unlike Plato’s philosopher, endowed with a “sense of transcendental responsibility” and “archetypal wisdom.” Havel never explained how this transcendent archetypal wisdom would translate into actual policy decisions, and for whose benefit at whose expense.

Havel called for efforts to preserve the Christian family in the Christian nation. Presenting himself as a man of peace and stating that he would never sell arms to oppressive regimes, he sold weapons to the Philippines and the fascist regime in Thailand. In June 1994, General Pinochet, the man who butchered Chilean democracy, was reported to be arms shopping in Czechoslovakia – with no audible objections from Havel.

Havel joined wholeheartedly in George Bush’s Gulf War, an enterprise that killed over 100,000 Iraqi civilians. In 1991, along with other [e]astern European pro-capitalist leaders, Havel voted with the United States to condemn human rights violations in Cuba. But he has never uttered a word of condemnation of rights violations in El Salvador, Columbia, Indonesia, or any other U.S. client state.

In 1992, while president of Czechoslovakia, Havel, the great democrat, demanded that parliament be suspended and he be allowed to rule by edict, the better to ram through free-market “reforms.” That same year, he signed a law that made the advocacy of communism a felony with a penalty of up to eight years imprisonment. He claimed the Czech constitution required him to sign it. In fact, as he knew, the law violated the Charter of Human Rights which is incorporated into the Czech constitution. In any case, it did not require his signature to become law. In 1995, he supported and signed another undemocratic law barring communists and former communists from employment in public agencies.

The propagation of anticommunism has remained a top priority for Havel. He led “a frantic international campaign” to keep in operation two U.S.-financed, cold war radio stations, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, so they could continue saturating Eastern Europe with their anticommunist propaganda.

Under Havel’s government, a law was passed making it a crime to propagate national, religious, and CLASS hatred. In effect, criticisms of big moneyed interests were now illegal, being unjustifiably lumped with ethnic and religious bigotry. Havel’s government warned labor unions not to involve themselves in politics. Some militant unions had their property taken from them and handed over to compliant company unions.

In 1995, Havel announced that the ‘revolution’ against communism would not be complete until everything was privatized. Havel’s government liquidated the properties of the Socialist Union of Youth – which included camp sites, recreation halls, and cultural and scientific facilities for children – putting the properties under the management of five joint stock companies, at the expense of the youth who were left to roam the streets.

Under Czech privatization and “restitution” programs, factories, shops, estates, homes, and much of the public land was sold at bargain prices to foreign and domestic capitalists. In the Czech and Slovak republics, former aristocrats or their heirs were being given back all lands their families had held before 1918 under the Austro-Hungarian empire, dispossessing the previous occupants and sending many of them into destitution. Havel himself took personal ownership of public properties that had belonged to his family forty years before. While presenting himself as a man dedicated to doing good for others, he did well for himself. For these reasons some of us do not have warm fuzzy feelings toward Vaclav Havel.

From Michael Parenti’s Blackshirts and Reds (1997) pp. 97-99.