988 is the year Russia was baptized Orthodox. Every Russian knows it, and every person moving to Russia is required to know it. Five years ago, after my family and I left America, when I took the Russian immigration test, this was one of the questions.
Why is our history so important? Why isn't it enough for us to know that we live in a particular geographical location named "Russia" or "America"? Why do we need to know that Russia became Christian in 988, or that America rebelled against its English king in 1776?
Who we were yesterday partially determines who we are today. It matters who our parents and grandparents were. The religion and culture that formed us is significant. It is important to know our roots.
The godless globalists and propaganda specialists know this. That's why they love a special form of lying called "historical revisionism". They know that if they lie to you about the past, then you will automatically believe a lie about the present. This is how they try to control us.
It happens all the time. The news shows photos of one man running up to another man, pushing him down and punching him. The headline says, "Evil Attacker Viciously Assaults Innocent Pedestrian". What they don't tell you, is that half an hour earlier the first man found out that the second man had been sleeping with his wife. So he had good reason to be angry. The moment you learn the truth about the history behind the event, it changes your entire perspective of what happened. Perhaps the attacker was not so evil after all. Similar examples can be given about Western news reports on Ukraine.
This is why America and Western Europe hate the Russian Church and Russia's traditional Christian values. It's a part of our past, and thus it's a part of who we are. America can't remake us into its image until it can make us forget who our forefathers were, until it can make us forget where we came from. They cannot coerce us into accepting homosexuality (and the entire sordid globalist agenda), until they erase our memories about the 1000-year Orthodox Christian history of Russia.
And this is why we must never forget. We are the children of St. Vladimir, whether we were born here, or whether we freely chose to move here and be adopted by him. All of us benefit from the glorious 1000-year legacy that he has passed down to us. Our past is not perfect, but it is our history, and God has blessed it in many ways. To show our gratitude — and to keep our identity as Russians — we must hold it dear to our hearts, and never, never forget.