Ivan Okhlobystin is a Russian actor, writer, and former priest. He is known for his work in film and television, as well as for his controversial political views.
Okhlobystin has been associated with far-right and nationalist political movements in Russia. He has expressed support for President Vladimir Putin and has been critical of liberal and progressive values. He has also made a number of controversial statements about various groups, including the LGBT community, women, and ethnic minorities. In 2020, Okhlobystin [admitted](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCvnerGtYvY) to gravitating towards fascism.
In 2013, Okhlobystin made headlines when he called for the criminalization of homosexuality in Russia and for gay people to be sent to concentration camps. He later apologized for the comments, but has continued to be associated with far-right and nationalist political movements in Russia.
In addition to his political views, Okhlobystin has also been involved in various religious and spiritual movements. He was ordained as a Russian Orthodox priest in the early 1990s, but was later defrocked due to his participation in a controversial religious group. He has also been involved in various New Age and spiritual movements over the years.
**Political career**
Known in the 1990s as an actor in underground films that won cult status among part of his audience, IOkhlobystin turned to religion in the early 2000s, and was even ordained a priest. However, Okhlobystin did not manage to stay a simple priest for long. After just a few years, he began acting in films again, preferring roles of lunatics, fools and political adventurers, as it was in the films “Conspiracy” (2007) and “The King” (2009). It is noteworthy that in the first film, the authors, against the backdrop of a romantic love story, insistently conveyed a conspiracy message: Rasputin’s murder was organised primarily by the British intelligence to prevent the signing of a separatist peace between Russia and Germany. Soon the acting activities of “Father John” with an apparent bias in the “demonic” role came into final conflict with the service of a priest, and in late 2009, Okhlobystin appealed to Patriarch Kirill with a request to remove him from the priesthood, which was granted in February 2010.
The release from priestly duties was needed not so much for acting, as for social and political activities. Less than a year after the Patriarchate’s decision to suspend him from ministry, Okhlobystin announced his intention to run for president of Russia in 2012 and soon [presented](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0otROwzB1oM) his pre-election “Doctrine 77” to a surprised public – an obvious reference to the neo-Nazi slogan “88”, which is a coded salute to “Heil Hitler!”, since the letter “H” is eighth in the Latin alphabet. The presentation of the Doctrine took the form of a political performance at Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium, during which a frenzied Okhlobystin jumped on top of a giant white pyramid, banged a gong and hysterically shouted his pathetically reactionary slogans. The author himself claimed that Doctrine 77 popularised Russian conservative philosophy, which he also called “aristocratic national patriotism”. The mocking “performance” was repeated in dozens of Russian cities, also in stadiums. At that moment, however, it was decided not to register Okhlobystin as a candidate. He himself attempted another delusional idea – to create the “Coalition Sky” party, which also ended up in nothing without administrative support.
Nevertheless, the nationalist pretentious priest did not give up trying to get into the leadership of a party. An opportunity presented itself when a conflict flared up between the billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov and Vladimir Surkov over the Right Cause party. By the summer of 2012 the control over the party was finally established by a group loyal to Surkov, and Surkov took over. And Okhlobystin was introduced to the public as no less than the Chairman of the Supreme Council. However, a few months later, after a formal decision of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church forbade priests to join political parties, Okhlobystin was nevertheless forced to leave the Right Cause party and he remained its “spiritual leader. After that, Okhlobystin somewhat withdrew from public political activity, but regularly continues to make high-profile public statements, invariably promoting a nationalist and even outright fascist agenda.
At the end of 2016, he wrote an application to the head of the Donetsk people’s republic requesting DNR citizenship and soon received his new passport directly from Aleksandr Zakharchenko. On 30 September 2022, Ivan Okhlobystin performed at a concert celebrating the “annexation” of the DNR, LNR, Kherson and Zaporizhzhya regions to Russia. The pro-Kremlin actor gave a fiery speech in which he called the war in Ukraine “a holy war”. He also suggested introducing the “Old Russian word” goida. An excerpt of Okhlobystin’s speech immediately [went](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygbEqLfKF2Q) viral, and the word became a meme.
