The Last Man in Russia: The Struggle to Save a Dying Nation (22 page)

gardens,

visible

through chinks in high metal fences.

A teenager at a bus stop pointed me

to the right towards the church. The

dust had coated my shoes light

brown by the time I got there.

I had no one to meet, and no

particular plan worked out for what I

would do here, so I sat down on a

rock in the shade and pulled out

Father Dmitry’s sermons once more.

This one was in the question-and-

answer form that he preferred, and

repeated his core message.

‘How do you relate to Jews?’

someone asked.

‘As sacred friends,’ he replied.

‘And how do you relate to

Russians?’

‘As

sacred

friends,’

he

continued.

‘And how to other ethnicities?’

‘Also as sacred friends,’ he

concluded. But that did not satisfy

his interrogator.

‘You have all sorts of friends.

But let’s be specific. Russians say

that Jews destroyed Russia, planted

atheism here. Do you agree?’

‘We all destroyed Russia and

implanted atheism: one person did in

theory, and another in practice. We

are all people before God, and you

should not divide us up or blame

someone for it.’

Father Dmitry would not be

drawn into prejudice, into the

language of blame used by the state.

He preached tolerance and trust. It

was his weapon against the misery

and distress he saw around him. The

Soviet government’s strategy for

controlling its population – and one

it

inherited

from

its

imperial

predecessor and all other empires

since the beginning of time – was

divide and rule. The fact that he was

asked such questions shows how

divided Soviet citizens had become.

Russians distrusted Jews, and vice

versa. Armenians distrusted Azeris,

and vice versa. Uzbeks distrusted

Tajiks, and so on. Father Dmitry’s

response was the opposite: unite and

resist.

When I looked up from the

sermon, two puppies were observing

me. They barked and scurried

behind a bush. When I read on, they

emerged. When I stopped again,

they vanished. We played the game

for a while, until I became distracted

by a particularly itchy mosquito bite

on my index finger which had

swelled my whole left hand like a

rubber glove filled with water.

A light beige Lada car pulled up

outside the church. It was old but

well cared for. The driver gathered

his belongings. He was aged around

sixty, wore thick spectacles with

cheap frames and a pocketed

waistcoat full of screwdrivers and

tools. He was carrying a bag with a

pair of aluminium valves that

appeared to be part of a heating unit.

I asked if he was local, and he

nodded.

We chatted about the village, and

life there, about jobs (none), the

collective farm (closed), children

(few) and old people who might

remember Father Dmitry.

He shook his head: ‘The people

who knew him are all dead now. I

was a student then so I did not know

him but people still remember him,

and talk about how he was

investigated.’

He was going into the priest’s

quarters to drop off the valves, he

said, and offered to show me

around. Father Dmitry’s room had

been subdivided into two smaller

rooms since he lived here, with the

partition between them decorated

with teddy-bear wallpaper. I tried to

imagine

Ogorodnikov

and

his

friends eating their communal meals

here and discussing their faith.

Father Dmitry might still have

been under suspicion in Moscow,

but he received a warm welcome

from the locals. ‘When the upper

hierarchy threw me and my children

to the mercy of fate and attempted to

make me admit my supposed

slanders, when all these rumours

spread around, the people helped

me. They fed me and did not let me

despair, and did not condemn me.

When people close to the hierarchy

tried to accuse me, saying I had not

obeyed them, that I had broken some

law,

the

people

sympathized.

Sympathy and love, that is what you

need.’

I followed the handyman out of

the room, and he unlocked the door

into the church itself – a simple

structure of brick and tin that had

been rebuilt since Father Dmitry’s

day – then we crossed the road to the

church’s

schoolroom,

with

its

garden full of potatoes.

‘You should not leave land

empty,’

the

handyman

said,

squinting at me for approval through

his lenses.

‘They appear to be doing well,’ I

ventured, although in truth the plants

looked spindly.

‘Ah, how are they doing well?

Our soil is just sand.’

He offered me a lift to the station

and I accepted with pleasure. It was

not as hot as Moscow out here, but it

would still be uncomfortable to walk

far. He had, he said, previously lived

in one of the more remote villages,

but the bus service was cancelled

and he had been forced to move into

Kabanovo. He could not afford to

run his car all the time, but liked to

drive on occasion.

Back on the platform we stood

for a while in silence, watching a

crow, its hands behind its back,

balancing along one of the rails, then

jumping nimbly round and stepping

back.

‘Do you think’, he asked me at

last, ‘someone like me, with the

experience I have, could find a job

in Britain?’

I said I did not know, but before

he left I asked him his name. He told

me: Father Nikolai. I looked after

him. He was the village priest, and I

had had no idea.

Father Dmitry did not last long at

Kabanovo. The local authorities had

no appetite for groups of bearded

Muscovites

turning

up

and

perverting the locals’ minds with

dangerous

talk

of

trust

and

community and the deficiencies of

the state. All the same, he continued

his single-minded campaign against

alcohol,

abortion,

despair

and

degradation, noting down the talks

as he had before.

A woman came to Father Dmitry

to confess.

‘Do you have any particular

sins?’

‘Yes, abortions.’

‘How many?’

‘Many.’

‘Well, how many?’

‘Thirty,’ she said, and cried.

By 1991, the average Russian

woman had had 3.4 abortions over

the course of her life. Stalin banned

abortions but, after they were

legalized in 1955, they became the

dominant form of birth control.

There were 8.3 million in the Soviet

Union in 1965. In 1992, Russian

women

terminated

3.3

million

pregnancies. The number has fallen

since then, perhaps because the

contraceptive pill is now widely

available, but there are still more

abortions than live births in many

Russian regions, including Komi

(where

Father

Dmitry

was

imprisoned) and Bryansk (where he

was born), and the overall rate is

four times the European average.

Other dissidents did not have

Father Dmitry’s insight into the

health

concerns

of

ordinary

Russians, since they did not really

encounter them. Sakharov, although

a brave and humane man, was still

calling for Russians to have fewer

children in the late 1960s to combat

global over-population.

‘Mankind can develop smoothly

only if it looks upon itself in a

demographic sense as a unit, a single

family without divisions into nations

other than in matters of history and

traditions. Therefore, government

policy, legislation on the family and

marriage, and propaganda should

not encourage an increase in the

birth rates of advanced countries

while demanding that it be curtailed

in underdeveloped countries,’ the

great dissident wrote, in his typically

lofty style. His calls for intellectual

freedom and peaceful coexistence

were very powerful, but they were

also very irrelevant to the kind of

people Father Dmitry was dealing

with.

In 1970, Russia’s homicide rate

was eight times the European

average, but such numbers – with

their

implicit

rebuke

to

the

government – were increasingly

hard to find. In 1972, Brezhnev’s

government stopped publishing life-

expectancy statistics. That same

decade, infant mortality figures

dropped out of the data too, having

risen sharply from 22.9 per thousand

in 1970 to 31.4 in 1976. The

government instead boasted of

having

one

of

the

highest

proportions of doctors in the world,

but hid how little effect they were

having.

Healthcare spending dropped

from 6 per cent of national wealth

when Brezhnev took power to half

of that by the mid-1980s. Over the

same

period,

the

number

of

cigarettes imported doubled to more

than 73 billion a year: that means the

Soviet Union imported a packet of

cigarettes a month for every man,

woman and child in the country. It

made its own cigarettes too.

In

December

1975,

Father

Dmitry was sacked once more. A

letter from his bishop accused him of

the ‘systematic inclusion in his

discussions and sermons of political

material of an anti-social character,

including tendentious criticism of the

life of our state’. The bishop went on

to criticize him for having used the

church buildings for preaching to

groups of people who had gathered

to hear him preach, although it might

be supposed that such was a priest’s

job, before attacking the Western

media that had spoken out in his

defence.

‘I consider it unacceptable that

on some internal question in Church

life, including in relation to Church

discipline, which is regulated by the

canons, laws and traditions of our

Church, anyone at all from abroad

should put pressure on us, in this

case in defence of Father Dmitry, in

the aim of furthering their own

interests,’ he concluded.

That was a nod to the kind of

conspiracy

theorizing

that

was

already consuming the K G B, who

established a special Fifth Directorate

in

1968

to

crack

down

on

intellectuals, students, nationalists,

religious believers, Jews and anyone

else suspected of serving foreign

powers. Even before Father Dmitry

came to Kabanovo, the K G B were

trying to break dissidents through

long interrogation and the planting

of sympathetic agents in their cells as

fake detainees. If they succeeded, the

dissidents were paraded before

Western

journalists.

Foreign

reporters were showing increasing

interest in the dissident story, and

were beginning to write about Father

Dmitry. His sacking from Kabanovo

in December 1975 made the news in

papers across the world.

‘Reds admit ban of rebel priest,’

said the headline in the
Baltimore

Sun
. ‘Soviet priest draws anger of

government’, read the headline on

an Associated Press report picked up

by other U S newspapers. And he

was not the only famous religious

dissident. His friends Gleb Yakunin