A favorite bogeyman of the globalist media, Malofeev has stuck to his Christian convictions and activism over the last decade, reaping significant rewards.
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Konstantin Malofeev has emerged as one of the most vocal and influential Russian political activists over the past 10 years, using his wealth to build an influential media organization, a national political profile, and a Christian political organization, the World Russian People’s Council.
Approximately 10 years ago Malofeev, who speaks English fluently, decided to step aside from his career as an investment banker and to devote his considerable talents and billion dollar fortune to Christian advocacy and philanthropy, becoming the largest Christian philanthropist in Russia. Malofeev’s message over this time has been consistent - that Russia should wholeheartedly embrace an overtly Christian ideology, and dispense with democracy in favor of monarchy, as it did for all of its 1000 year history, save for the Soviet interregnum.
Here is an interesting video from April of this year in which Malofeev gives an interview to Sky News in the studios of his TV channel, Tsargrad. Sky ended up using just a few minutes of the interview, which was a predictable hit piece against Malofeev, cherry-picking what they could to portray him negatively. Because Malofeev insisted on recording the interview himself, after the Sky News segment appeared, he published the full interview, which shows him rather decisively putting Sky's Moscow correspondent Diana Magnay in her place as she lobbed one globalist talking point after another at him. The video is in English and is quite entertaining. (Backup link)
As we explained in a recent article, over the past year, Malofeev’s efforts have rather dramatically given fruit, as Russian elites are taking a notable turn towards Christian ideas. This article gives some background on this unusual and multi-faceted Russian activist, businessman, and thinker.
Background on Malofeev
Malofeev got his start as a lawyer and investment banker in the freewheeling business world of the mid-2000s, working for Renaissance Capital, the largest Russian investment bank at the time, before starting his own investment fund, Marshall Capital, focused on Russian telecoms sector, into which he arranged $10s of billions of investment.
An interview with Malofeev about his Christian beliefs on a popular Russian Christian interview program. (In Russian)
Malofeev’s Christian activism began around 2012 when as a newly minted young telecoms billionaire, he announced that he was stepping back from business, and would devote most of his time to philanthropy, supporting Christian charities. He supported dozens of causes, one of them a Christian academy in the Moscow suburbs which has the goal of reviving classical education as it existed in Tsarist Russia, raising a new generation of patriotic Christian men. He also supported the World Congress of Families an international pro-family values movement which began in the US, and has since become active in many countries around the world.
From the start of his activism, Malofeev declared himself a monarchist, which sounded very exotic in the West, but which is taken entirely seriously in Russia, with many Russian Christian conservatives believing that monarchy is the only form of government that adheres to Christian dogma, in this case, Orthodox Christianity.
His big move came in 2014 when he launched Tsargrad TV, an ambitious project requiring large funding. The idea was to create a major Christian conservative news network, modeled on Fox News, but more overtly Christian, specifically Orthodox Christian. Malofeev brought in a longtime ideological ally, the Christian conservative political philosopher Alexander Dugin to be the first managing editor, with whom he has remained close ever since. Malofeev spared no expense in building a world-class TV studio and programming, with studios overlooking Red Square, the latest technologies from the US, and a raft of talented young Christian journalists. Tsargrad grew to become an influential voice in Russia’s media landscape, providing a counterweight to the secular, and often decidedly liberal tone of much of Russia’s mainstream media.
When the first Ukraine conflict erupted in early 2014, Malofeev, along with other Russian conservatives called for a more decisive Russian military intervention. He was close to Russian volunteers who went to the Donbass to fight alongside the Donbass separatists. In July of 2014 he was sanctioned by the EU for allegedly providing financial support to the Donbass separatist republics, which he categorically denies. At the end of 2014 he was sanctioned by the US. Since that time he has been unable to travel in the EU or US.
In early 2019 he was elected deputy head of the World Russian People’s Council, an annual gathering of leading Russians, mostly Christian, from around the world, whose goal was to debate and discuss the future of Russian civilization. It was started by the previous head of the Russian Church, Patriarch Alexey II, and is now led by Patriarch Kirill. It became a leading propagator of the the ‘Russian World’ intellectual movement, which sought to articulate what ‘Russianness’ is, and which countries are considered part of the Russian World. Since that time, Malofeev has actively built up WRPC, starting new chapters across the country, frequently traveling to regional events, and building a national political organization.
A lawyer and a serious intellectual, particularly in the areas of history, politics, philosophy and Christianity, Malofeev has always positioned himself as a man of ideas, a thinker who wants to influence the future of his country. In late 2021 he published a major theoretical work in 3 volumes entitled ‘Empire’, which argues that going back to its founding 1000 years ago, the Russian state has always been an empire, even in its Communist stage, and with that exception, a Christian one, and that this concept of Christian empire is completely different from other historical secular world empires.
He argues that Russia is the Christian Orthodox heir of the Byzantine empire, the Third Rome (a common view in Russia, as it was in Tsarist days, since the fall of Constantinople in 1453), whose mission it is to defend Christianity. He frequently speaks of Russia being ‘The Katechon’, (Restrainer in Greek) which is a biblical concept that as the world approaches end times, there will be a country and political force which will restrain the global conquest of Antichrist. Malofeev argues that Russia should return to Orthodox Christian autocratic monarchy of the Tsars, and completely break with liberal European ideas of democracy, a view not uncommon in Russia.
Malofeev is a favorite bogeyman of the Christ-hating globalist media. Here are a few articles with interesting background on him, mostly a pack of lies and slander, but still interesting. To be read with a grain of salt.
https://www.salon.com/2019/05/04/russias-lasting-grip-on-christian-conservatives_partner/
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