The Last Man in Russia: The Struggle to Save a Dying Nation (23 page)

and Lev Regelson gained a splash of

their own with a report to the World

Christian Council on the persecution

of believers.

In

response,

the

Soviet

authorities unleashed the heavy

weapons

of

their

propaganda

arsenal.
Izvestia
, one of their two

largest newspapers, went on the

attack. In January 1976, Vladimir

Kuroyedov, the government’s most

senior religious official, took over

almost a whole page to detail how in

fact Soviet religious laws were the

most ‘humane and democratic in the

world’, and that anyone saying

otherwise was lying to harm the

country’s international prestige.

There were, he continued with

sadness, a few malcontents, but

religious believers themselves could

be trusted to drive them out.

Although, in fact, a hundred of

Father Dmitry’s parishioners – at

considerable risk to themselves –

had signed a petition protesting

against his sacking, Kuroyedov

insisted they had expelled him

because of his ‘sermons of an anti-

social content’.

‘For this same reason his

parishioners have thrown him out of

two other churches,’ Kuroyedov

added. That was a lie. Father Dmitry

lost his first position because the

church was dynamited and his

second because he was sacked by the

bishop – neither of them things

Kuroyedov could admit without

fatally

undermining

his

own

argument that believers were free

and unhindered. Instead he linked

Father Dmitry to the state’s enemies.

‘This

“shepherd”,

previously

convicted of a crime, has been

declared by reactionary propaganda

in the West to be a “genuine fighter

for the faith, suffering for Christ”,’

Kuroyedov’s article concluded with

heavy

Russian

irony,

naturally

without mentioning the nature of

Father Dmitry’s criminal offence –

writing a poem – or his subsequent

rehabilitation.

It was a warning to his

parishioners and friends to shun

him, to leave him alone, but they did

not heed it. Father Dmitry had taught

them to trust each other, and that

meant defending each other too.

‘To tear a priest away from his

flock is like a doctor leaving his

patients, or a teacher his pupils. But

these comparisons are weak. It

would be nearer the truth to say it is

like tearing a mother away from her

children,’ said Igor Shafarevich, a

mathematician

and

prominent

dissident, in a statement on Father

Dmitry’s dismissal.

‘Father Dmitry’s living, free,

Christian word went into the hearts

of listeners and fanned their faith; it

also gripped those who were

seeking,

those

who

doubted,

unbelievers. Father Dmitry attracted

young people – this was his main

crime,’ said an appeal by Father

Dmitry’s

friends

Yakunin

and

Regelson to the B B C.

Not everyone agreed with them,

of

course.

Father

Dmitry’s

notebooks include a conversation

with a fellow priest who told him he

liked the sermon, but would have

taken out ‘the sharpness’.

‘And if a sword isn’t sharp, if a

sabre isn’t sharp, how do you fight?

With a blunt blade? The sharpness is

the point,’ replied Father Dmitry.

The priest was not so sure: ‘If we

are tough, they will shut the

churches. As it is we are preserving

something.’

But Father Dmitry was an old

campaigner, and refused to change.

He said the fight to save his nation

was urgent, and could not be put off

for tactical reasons.

‘In the camps we used to say

“You should eat today what you

could eat tomorrow.” And I am

doing today what I could do

tomorrow, since otherwise tomorrow

might not come,’ he said. ‘How

many people were shot, how many

were killed in the camps, how many

died at the front with a meaningless

scream? They died, and for what? So

their children could suffer?’

6

They behaved like free men

I met Father Vladimir Sedov

between the platforms of a metro

station in western Moscow. Cheerful

and lean in his black robes, he

looked like a wolf with a sense of

humour. His flat was chaotic, full of

books and icons and bunk beds and

living things. His cats regularly

interrupted our conversation. One

was bald and as friendly as a dog,

one more cautious, despite its

spangly collar. There was also a

parrot, and several sons.

Father Vladimir is straight-

backed and dignified with the

bearing of a man in early middle

age, but he shared his memories of

Father Dmitry with the eagerness of

a schoolboy rushing for lunch. He

was born in Baku, but grew up in

the Moscow region where his father

was an engineer. He studied in the

mathematics

department

of

his

university, and a distinguished career

beckoned when this happened:

‘There were these rumours about an

unusual priest who held question-

and-answer sessions. My friends had

been, and I heard about him, and I

wanted to go too.’

This was in 1976, just a few

months after
Izvestia
’s assault on

Father Dmitry and his dismissal

from the church in Kabanovo. It is

clear from Father Dmitry’s sacking,

and from the criticism of him in the

national press, that the authorities

considered him a significant threat

by this stage. Nonetheless, in April

1976, he got a new parish. Perhaps

the Church authorities calculated that

he would, after having been sacked

twice, not behave so unorthodoxly

another

time.

Perhaps

some

individuals in the Church hierarchy

secretly admired his stance. They

were all believers after all, and a few

bishops may deep down have been

proud that one of their fellows was

doing his job as they were all

supposed to. Perhaps top officials

were sensitive to foreign opinion,

and did not want to give Westerners

an opening to criticize the Soviet

Union by depriving Father Dmitry

of a post, no matter how irritating he

was for the old men in the Kremlin.

Besides, the security organs were

no doubt hoping that, after the very

public warning of the
Izvestia
article,

ordinary churchgoers would shun

Father Dmitry’s services. It was well

known

that

association

with

dissidents could lead to a summons,

to questioning, to unemployment

and, potentially, to prison. And

prison was a place to be dreaded.

Dissidents like Anatoly Marchenko

had written prison diaries and

circulated them in typewritten and

carbon-copied

manuscripts,

so

everyone knew that the Soviet jails

were brutal, diseased and cruel. At

one point, Marchenko, who was

jailed for illegally attempting to leave

the country, described seeing a

fellow inmate chop off his penis and

throw it out the window at a female

guard. The other prisoners barely

flinched, so accustomed were they to

human degradation.

But,

in

many

ways

the

authorities’

approach

proved

counterproductive.

The

young

people coming to Father Dmitry’s

church knew the risk they were

running. But, for many of them, that

was the point.

Father Vladimir was at that time

a gangly young man, barely out of

his teens, and felt stultified by the

official culture dished up to Soviet

citizens like prison slop on a tray. He

had looked at yoga, at progressive

rock, at Buddhism and at all the

other bits and pieces of other

people’s cultures that drifted through

Moscow in those days. They did not

appeal. He wanted something he

could feel part of, something

Russian.

He was intrigued therefore by the

thought of a Russian priest who

refused to walk the official path, so

he took the train to Grebnevo, Father

Dmitry’s new parish. As he told me

about it, he turned to his computer

and called up a satellite image from

the internet. He zoomed us in, click

after click. First we saw the whole of

Russia, then Moscow appeared,

before it vanished to the left of the

screen as he magnified a spot to its

east. The word ‘Grebnevo’ appeared

and the village itself filled more of

the screen until we could see the

church too, in a wood on the shores

of a reservoir.

‘He asked everyone who went to

the church whether they were

christened, and there were a lot of

people who weren’t christened. But I

told him I was christened, even

though I wasn’t, and he blessed me.

My friends knew I was lying, and

told me they knew, but I insisted that

I had been christened secretly,’

Father Vladimir said, smiling at the

knots his younger self had tied

himself into.

‘I felt ashamed of having lied to

them, and to him, so when I got

back to university, I went to the

church

near

Moscow

State

University and I got christened. I did

not know the creed or anything, so

the priest was cross with me, but I

insisted and my happiness was so

great afterwards that I ran back to

the university like I was running on

air.’

At that time, getting christened

was a risky step. Many priests took

lists of these new-believers and

shared them with the authorities.

That meant being christened could

hurt your employment prospects, or

lead to attention from the security

services. Father Dmitry, to avoid

this, often christened people in his

own home and deliberately did not

write down their names. He later said

he christened thousands of adults,

sometimes a dozen a day. His rebel

attitude captivated Father Vladimir.

‘It is hard to fight a totalitarian

system. People who were scared,

who needed support, they went to

him. There were poets, artists. They

had heard of this priest that you

could talk freely to. A lot of people

sensed what I sensed, that Father

Dmitry was the most life-loving and

optimistic man we ever met, and he

was a man who had lived the hardest

life.’

His friends were surprised by

Father Vladimir’s passion. After all,

they had been the believers, not him.

His sudden conversion took them by

surprise. He caught the train to

Grebnevo the next time Father

Dmitry was speaking, then the next

time also. He devoured every word

the priest spoke, as well as those of

the older believers – Ogorodnikov

was there, of course, so were his

friends Yakunin and Regelson – and

decided to follow the priest as a

disciple: a spiritual child in the

language of Russian Orthodoxy.

‘I was a student, and I had a

room in the halls, but after that I

mainly stayed in Grebnevo. I wanted

to stop university, but Father Dmitry

thought people had to try not just to

swim with the current, but to make

something

of

themselves.

He

thought believers should not be

marginalized, but should be part of

society, so I stayed at university.’

Father Dmitry already had a son

and daughter, but he took his

spiritual children into his home as if