The Russian Orthodox Medievalist

“There is not a place left which is free of the disease of sin, all is an ulcer, all a wound, a swelling, all is putrefying, all is hellfire, all is sickness, all is sin, all is a lie, all is deceit, all is cunning, all is treachery, all is guile, all is falsehood, all is illusion, all is a dream, all is vapor, all is smoke, all is bustle, all is vanity, all is delusion.” (St. Ivan Vyshensky of Athos, 1619)

This is an online compilation of the academic essays and lectures of Professor Matthew Raphael Johnson. Given Russia’s extraordinary rebuke to American arrogance since 2000, revisionist work on Russian and Slavic history is sorely needed, especially in conjunction with the critique of globalization. Dr. Johnson was the first among American Orthodox writers to understand Vladimir Putin as a necessary balance to the American empire and the liberal authoritarianism it enforces. In 2009, he created The Orthodox Nationalist, a well-known series of lectures on all facets of Russian and Orthodox history and philosophy.

Professor Johnson’s academic work is dedicated to the delegitimization of the global capitalist system and the demystification of the ideology that justifies it. This is a demonic, serpentine Leviathan spreading the postmodern acid of American-sponsored mass-zombification to the world. The neurotic capitalist “liberated the individual,” only to create the mass-man: a crippled, malformed cipher almost entirely incapable of higher-order thought.

In 1999, Dr. Johnson completed his doctorate at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln as a recipient of the Clare and Marguerite MacPhee Fellowship. He studied in the History, Political Science and Philosophy departments. He focused on anti-modernist social philosophy and defended his dissertation on Michael Oakeshott’s critique of Positivism. In addition, he focused on Comparative Politics, specifically the Russian and Ukrainian responses to globalization. He is a former professor of both History and Political Science at the University of Nebraska (as a graduate student), Penn State University and Mount St. Mary’s University. Since 1999, he has been the editor (and is presently Senior Researcher) at The Barnes Review, the famed renegade journal of European history.

Dr. Johnson’s published books are: Sobornosti: Essays on the Old Faith; Heavenly Serbia and the Medieval Idea; Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality: Lectures on Medieval Russia; The Ancient Orthodox Tradition in Russian Literature, Officially Approved Dissent: Alasdair MacIntyre’s Strategic Ambiguity in His Critique of Modernity, The Third Rome: Holy Russia, Tsarism and Orthodoxy ; ; and Russian Populist: The Political Thought of Vladimir Putin. In 2019, he published The Soviet Experiment: Challenging the Apologists for Soviet Tyranny on the Barnes Review Press. His latest book is Ukrainian Nationalism published with the kind assistance of Russia Insider.

New editions of two books, Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges: Defending Latin America’s Military Governments and The Foreign Policy of Mass Society: The Failure of Western Engagement in the Islamic World are presently available thanks, again, to the staff at Russia Insider.

For 25 years, Dr. Johnson has been a full-time scholar, writer and speaker. The historical, theological, philosophical and political issues detailed here can’t be merely stumbled upon nor taken from any mainstream source. They’re the result of decades of concentrated study in an academic environment. Having been driven from academia as an “eccentric reactionary malcontent,” he depends on the support of his listeners and readers to continue his work. To say the very least, Dr. Johnson’s scholarship is unique, critical and irreplaceable today. It cannot continue without your help and support.