The Orthodox Revival in Russia
AS AN INSPIRATION FOR AMERICAN ORTHODOXY
A talk given on September 1, 1980, at the
University
of California, Santa Cruz, during the West Coast
Conference held in preparation for the thousandth
anniversary of the baptism of Russia.
1. INTRODUCTION
2. THE COLLAPSE OF
IDEOLOGY
3. THE DEAD-END OF
CIVILIZATION
4. THE SEARCH FOR FAITH
5. A TYPICAL CONVERSION
6. ALEXANDER
SOLZHENITSYN AND THE GULAG
7. FATHER DIMITRY DUDKO
8. THE MESSAGE OF FATHER
DIMITRY
9. OTHER REPRESENTATIVES
OF THE ORTHODOX REVIVAL
1. INTRODUCTION
IN CHOOSING such a topic, my intention is not in the
least "nationalistic" or "cultural." What is happening in Russia
today is of interest to us in America not specifically as something
"Russian," but as something that concerns the human soul, no matter
what kind of blood or cultural background a man might have. And we in
America and the free world in general have much to learn from what is
happening to the human soul in Russia today. This is true both
because the situation of the human soul in Russia and the West is
really quite similar in basic respects, because the same historical
process is occurring there as here; and because there are also basic
differences in our situation, and an awareness of these differences can
help to strengthen us—and specifically, to strengthen us in Christian
faith.
I will speak first of the similarities.
2. THE COLLAPSE OF IDEOLOGY
First of all, we are seeing in Russia the collapse
of a generally-believed ideology that underlies society and keeps it
going. The beginning of religious awakening in Russia is
invariably accompanied by a loss of trust and faith in
Communism—Communism not first of all as a political and economic
system, but as a faith.
This is natural, because the first article of Communist faith is atheism, the "state religion" of
the USSR, which makes sense only as a substitute for faith in
God. Belief in God naturally is bound up with disbelief in
atheism and Communism, and that is why the religious awakening in
Russia today is not merely something personal,
but takes on the character of a national
movement.
In the West, our situation is really not so
different from this as it might seem at first sight. In the West
we are also seeing the collapse of the generally-believed ideology of
progress, democracy, and so-called "enlightenment"—a secular religion
which until the mid-20th century was accepted without question by
almost everyone in America and Western Europe. The "Beat" and
"Hippie" movements of the '50's and '60's were only the beginning of an
attitude of disillusionment that is now widespread in Western
society—so much so that a spokesman like Solzhenitsyn can freely tell
the West that we have lost the will to fight Communism, not having deep
enough faith in our own system.
3. THE DEAD-END OF CIVILIZATION
Together with the loss of confidence in a
generally-accepted ideology, both in Russia and the West there is a
sense that civilization has come to a dead-end. In Russia there
is the feeling that Communism is finished as a power that can inspire
any but a small group of merciless fanatics, that it remains in power
solely by naked force—the army and secret police. In the West,
the failure of will which Solzhenitsyn has rightly diagnosed is a
direct result of the feeling that the West no longer has an ideology
worth dying for.
4. THE SEARCH FOR FAITH
And finally, the collapse of a
generally-accepted ideology and the sense of dead-end that this brings
has led, both in Russia and the West, to a search for a way out in the
form of religious belief. This is the motive power behind the
"religious revival" in Russia, and also in the West. There is
undoubtedly more interest in religion, more conversions (both to
Christianity and to non-Christian religions) both in Russia and the
free world than at any time in centuries. Of these conversions,
probably the majority in Russia are to Orthodoxy; a much smaller but
growing percentage in the West is to the same Orthodoxy. It is
this movement of religious revival that I would now like to direct out
attention to—looking first to Russia, and then to how the experience of
Russia affects us in the West.
5. A TYPICAL CONVERSION
Let us look first in detail at one man's conversion
in Russia. We who are converts to Orthodoxy in the West can
compare and contrast our own experience of coming to the faith with
this typical conversion experience in Soviet Russia; and those of you
who were "born Orthodox" can learn the more to treasure you faith when
you see through what torments a man often comes to find it. This
is the experience of Yury Mashkov,[1] an emigrant from Russia just three years ago, who was
invited to speak at the Russian Orthodox Labor-Day conference in New
Jersey in 1978, just three months after he arrived in America. I
will quote part of his talk at this gathering and make comments on it
as I go along.
He begins by saying that when he was invited to give
a talk, "I was disturbed. It seemed to me that I had nothing to
tell you. The first half of my life I was a student, and the
second half I spent in prisons and the political concentration camps of
the Gulag. Indeed, what can I say to people who are more educated
than I, more erudite, and even better informed about events in the
Soviet Union?"
Here there is already a striking contrast with the
experience of us Western converts to Orthodoxy, and of most young
Russians in the West as well. Usually (if we are very interested
in our faith) we have read many books on Orthodoxy and have a broad
theoretical knowledge of it; and we have had a secure childhood and no
experience of repression or prison. But here is a man who is
going to speak, unwillingly, not out of books and a secure past, but
simply out of his own experience of suffering.
Here already we can learn something.
He goes on: "Therefore I decided not to write
down my talk, but to say whatever God would place in my soul. And
then, as we were hurrying away from Bridgeport, Connecticut, in a
splendid automobile along the astonishing freeway in the midst of a
luxuriant nature, I understood that all my spiritually tormenting life
in the Communist 'paradise,' my path from atheism and Marxism to
Orthodox faith and Russian nationalism, is the only valuable
information that can be of interest to you. My life is of
interest only inasmuch as it is a drop in the ocean of the Russian
religious and national rebirth."
Here again we in the West can sense a great
difference from our own experience. Some of these points may seem
like small details, but they are very revealing of our spiritual
state. We in the West have learned to take for granted splendid
automobiles, freeways, beautiful nature—we would not even comment on
these things. But such things, which represent the ease of life
in our America, are unheard of in the Soviet Union. Recently I
spoke with a recent emigrant from the USSR, and she spoke of one form
of dishonesty and crime in Russia today which is almost
incomprehensible to us in the free world: when a poet can speak
beautifully about flower in a field and be silent about the fact that
this field was a place for the torture and murder of innocent
people. The whole of Russia is covered with such places
today. At one such place, the former concentration camp of
Solovki, the tourists are warned to "stay on the paths"—because some
have wandered off of them and unexpectedly found human bones sticking
out of the earth—remnants of the thousands who perished there.
When this is the experience of your country, you cannot feel at ease
with beautiful cars and freeways and nature; there is a pain in your
soul that is seeking for something deeper.
"I was born (he continues) in the bloody year of
1937 in the village of Klishev, thirty miles from Moscow (on the side
of Ryazan). My father, a blacksmith by profession, died in the
war, and I do not remember him; my mother, who worked at various jobs,
was, I think, indifferent to religion. My grandmother, it is
true, was religious, but she had no authority in my eyes because she
was totally illiterate. Of course I was baptized as a child, but
in my school years I took off my cross and until the age of 25 was a
convinced atheist. After finishing the seven-year (primary)
school, I had the good fortune to enter the Moscow Higher School of Art
and Industry (the former Stroganov School), and I studied there five
years out of the seven. Thus, outwardly my life had begun very
successfully… In time, I should have received the diploma of an
artist and would be able to work anywhere I wanted."
This is a typical Soviet life—but how sobering when
compared to our sheltered life in America! Born in the "bloody"
years, not of war with an outside enemy, but of Stalin's purges and
liquidations, he lost his father in the war, grew up in an atmosphere
of atheism (although with reminders of the Orthodox past, especially
his Baptism), and had a good future in store in the highly competitive
Soviet school system. All this is a far different experience from
that of the youth of our Western world. But then something
happened to him.
"But the boring Soviet life and spiritual
dissatisfaction gave me no peace, and somewhere at the end of 1955, in
my 19th year, there occurred an event, outwardly unnoticeable, which
however overturned my life and (finally) brought me here. This
event occurred in my soul and consisted of the fact that I understood in what kind of society
I was living. Despite all the naked Soviet propaganda, I understood that I was living under
a regime of absolute rightlessness and absolute cruelty. Very
many students came to the same conclusion at this time, and in time
there appeared those who thought as I did, and we all considered it our
duty to tell the people of our discovery and to somehow act against the
triumph of evil."
Here, of course, there is something akin to the
idealistic youth of the West, and the awakening of an awareness of
truth and higher values which is universally experienced at this
age—with the important exception that the background of this experience
in Russia is a difficult life, suffering, and terror, while in the West
it is usually a full stomach, an easy life, and plenty of spare
time. In the free West, this youthful experience has led to the
numerous demonstrations in the past decades for various causes, some of
them very low and unworthy ones. In the USSR, however, the result
is very different.
"But the KGB very carefully looks after all the
citizens of the USSR, and when on November 7, 1958 (when he was just 21
years old) we gathered at an organizational meeting to decide the
question of an underground samizdat, six of us were arrested and all
who did not repent were given the highest punishment for anti-Soviet
agitation—seven years each in concentration camp. Thus began a
new path in my life."
It should be noted that there is nothing said yet
about any religious
conversion; this is still only youthful idealism, about to be tested in
the Gulag.
"All of us ten were atheists and Marxists of the
'Euro-Communist' camp. That is, we believed that Marxism in
itself was a true teaching which lead the people to a bright future, to
the kingdom of freedom and justice, and the Moscow criminals for some
reason did not want to realize this teaching in life. In the
concentration camp this idea completely and forever died in all of us."
And now begins his spiritual
rebirth.
"I would like to reveal a little of the process of
spiritual rebirth so that you can see how unfailingly it is proceeding
in the Russian people. It is not only I and those who were with
me who have gone through the spiritual path from Marxism to religious
faith… This is a typical manifestation for the Soviet political
concentration camps." (He mentions Vladimir Osipov and Deacon
Barsanufy Haibulin as examples of those who entered the camps as
atheists and left as Orthodox believers.) "What is happening with
the Russian people? The process of spiritual rebirth has two
stages. At first we discern the essence of Marxism and are freed
from any illusions with regard to it. Under a profound and
thoughtful analysis we discover that Marxism in its essence is a
complete teaching of totalitarianism, that is, an absolute Communist
slavery, and any Communist Party in any country, once having undertaken
the realization of the Marxist program, will be compelled to repeat
what the Moscow Communists have done and are doing, or else renounce
Marxism and liquidate themselves. Having understood this simple
truth, we lose the ideological basis on which we had opposed Marxist
slavery. We fall into a spiritual vacuum which draws after it an
ever profounder crisis."
This experience is not too different from what
happens in the West when a young person becomes thoroughly
disillusioned with the ideals of democracy and progress, although this
is usually a less extreme experience than what happens in Russia, where
Communism is virtually the "state religion." But the next stage
of "spiritual rebirth" occurs in Russia under quite different
circumstances.
"Coming to camp, we Russians are surrounded by
enemies, because the nationalists of all colors (Ukrainians, those from
the Baltic countries, Armenians, Uzbekis, and others), not
understanding the historical uniqueness of the Marxist dictatorship
have gone the way of least mental effort and identify the international
power (of Communism) with the Orthodox Monarchy and accuse us Russians
of chauvinism. Thus, there is no salvation anywhere: on one side
the Communists annihilate us, on the other the nationalists prepare the
same thing for us. After being freed from camp, our outlook is
one that we could not wish for an enemy: either to go back to camp and
remain there for the rest of our lives, or dies in a psychiatric
prison, or be murdered by Chekists without trial or investigation.
"In these conditions of spiritual crises, with no
way out, there inevitably comes up the chief question of a world-view:
what am I living for if there is no salvation? And when this
frightful moment comes, each of us feels that death has really caught
him by the throat: if some kind of a spiritual answer does not come,
life comes to an end, because without God not only is 'everything
permitted,' but life itself has no value and no meaning. I saw in
the camp how people went out of their minds or ended with
suicide. And I myself clearly felt that if, after all, I came to
the firm and final conclusion that there is no God, I would simply be
obliged to end with suicide, since it is shameful and belittling for a
rational creature to drag out a senseless and tormenting life.
Thus, at the second stage of spiritual rebirth we discover that
atheism, thought out to its logical end, inevitably brings a man to
perdition, because it is a complete teaching of immorality, evil, and
death."
This experience is also similar to what some Western
converts have experienced; but the urgency of the life-or-death
situation in which he found himself, face to face with the Soviet
apparatus of terror, is on a deeper level than most of us here have
experienced.
"A tragic end (suicide or madness) would have been
my lot too it, to my good fortune, there had not occurred on September
1, 1962, the greatest miracle in my life. No event occurred on
that day, there were no suggestions from outside; in solitude I was
reflecting on my problem: 'to be or not to be?' At this time I
already realized thoroughly the savingness of faith in God. I
very much wanted to believe in Him; but I could not deceive myself: I
had no faith.
"And suddenly there came a second, when somehow for
the first time I saw (as if a door had opened from a dark room into the
sunny street), and in the next second I already knew for sure that God
exists and that God is the Jesus Christ of Orthodoxy, and not some kind
of Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, or other God. I call this moment the
greatest miracle because this precise knowledge came to me not through
reason (I know this for sure) but by some other way, and I am unable to
explain this moment rationally… And so by such a miracle my new
spiritual life began, which has helped me to endure another thirteen
years of life in concentration camps and prisons, a forced emigration,
and, I hope, will help me to endure all the difficulties of emigrant
life.
"And this 'moment of faith,' this greatest miracle,
is being experienced now in Russia by thousands of people, and not only
in the concentration camps and prisons. Igor Ogurtsov, the
founder of the Social-Christian Union, came to faith not in the camps
but in the university. Religious rebirth is a typical phenomenon
of contemporary Russia. Everything spiritually alive inevitably
returns to God. And it is absolutely evident that such a saving
miracle, despite the whole might of Communist politics, can be
performed only by the Almighty God, Who has not left the Russian people
in terrible sufferings and in a seemingly complete defenselessness
before many enemies."[2]
This detailed look at one main's spiritual
experience gives us something of a feel for what is happening in Russia
today. Let us look now at the more general picture of the
Orthodox revival in Russia today, in particular through the
observations of two of its best-known representatives, in order to see
what specifically we can learn from this phenomenon for our own
Orthodox life.
6. ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN AND THE GULAG
I will speak first of Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
His is a typical Soviet life. Born one year after the Revolution,
he lost his father in World War I, studied mathematics in order to get
a job, served as a soldier in World War II, was with the Soviet army in
Germany, then was arrested in 1945 for writing disrespectful remarks
about Stalin in private letters and received a "mild" sentence for
this—eight years. At the end of his sentence in 1953 he was
further sentenced to exile for life in southern Kazakhstan, at the edge
of the desert. He contracted cancer there and nearly died from
it, but was healed in a cancer clinic. In exile he taught math
and physics in primary school and wrote prose in secret. He was
rehabilitated in the de-Stalinization era and his first book was
published in Russia in 1961. His other books were not published
in Russia, but their publication outside Russia made him a troublesome
celebrity for the Soviet authorities. In 1970 he received the
Nobel Prize for literature, and in 1975 was forcibly exiled to the
West, where until now he has continued to write novels and speak to the
West about the meaning of the Soviet experience in Russia. In the
course of his sufferings and imprisonment he came to Christian faith
and is an Orthodox believer.
Now living outside of Russia (in Vermont),
Solzhenitsyn in one sense is almost a symbol of the contemporary
Orthodox revival in Russia. Born with the Revolution, he
underwent the sixty years of suffering of the Russian people and
emerged a victor, with a strong Christian faith and a message for the
world based on his experience. Most of what Russia has to tell s today
in the free world can be seen in Solzhenitsyn. Here I will try to
speak of the main points of this message, drawn not from his fiction,
but from his public addresses and articles.
Gulag
First of all, Solzhenitsyn has told us about Gulag.
Of course, many spoke of the Soviet slave system
before Solzhenitsyn, but the world did not listen. Only in recent
years has the world been ready to hear of this frightful reality which
Solzhenitsyn has described with tremendous power.
He speaks of Gulag not merely as the prison system
of one modern country, but as the logical end of the whole of modern
history once God has been removed from men's lives. This is not
merely a "Russian" experiment—it is the end of all peoples who remove
God from the center of life. And Gulag is an essential part of
atheist society—if you remove it, the Soviet system itself will
crumble. Atheism is based on the evil in man's nature, and Gulag
is only the natural expression of this. Russia's experience with
Gulag is for the whole of humanity, and no one should presume to
comment on the nature and meaning of modern history until he has read
this book.
Spiritual Rebirth
But most of all I want to speak about an almost
paradoxical second aspect of Gulag: it reveals the evil of man's nature
and the folly of the modern dream of earthly happiness—but at the same
time it is also a starting place for man's spiritual rebirth, the
condition which makes the spiritual rebirth of Russia so much more
profound than the various "spiritual revivals" of the free world.
Solzhenitsyn himself describes this in Part II of The Gulag Archipelago:
"It has granted me to carry away from my prison
years on my bent back, which nearly broke beneath its load, this
essential experience: how a
human being becomes evil and how
good. In the intoxication of my youthful successes I had felt
myself to be infallible, and I was therefore cruel. In the
surfeit of power I was a murderer, and an oppressor. In my most
evil moments I was convinced that I was doing good, and I was well
supplied with systematic arguments. And it was only wen I lay
there on rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first
strivings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line
separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between
classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every
human heart—and then all human hearts… And even within hearts
overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained.
And even in the best of all hearts, there remains… an unuprooted small
corner of evil."[3]
How much deeper is this observation than anything we
in the West could say based on our own experience. And why is it
deeper? —Because it is based on suffering,
and that is the reality of the human condition and the beginning of
true spiritual life. Christ came to a life of suffering and the
Cross, and the experience in Russia enables those who undergo it to see
this profoundly. That is why the Christian revival in Russia is
so deep.
And what of us in the West, and particularly in
America? Do we have any image that explains our situation as well
as Gulag does that of Russia? I am afraid there is an image, most
unflattering to us, which is almost
our equivalent of Gulag. It is "Disneyland"—an image which
exemplifies our carefree love of "fun" (a most un-Christian word!), our
lack of seriousness, our living in a literal fool's paradise, unaware
or barely aware of the real meaning and seriousness of life.
Anyone who has met or read the writings of people
who come from the USSR and other Communist countries, cannot but notice
how serious—sometimes to the
point of grimness—these people are. I am not saying that we
should be grim like that—that would be fakery on our part—but only that
we should realize that our experience in freedom and prosperity has to
a great extent crippled us spiritually, and that therefore we must
expose ourselves to and take deeply to heart the message of men like
Solzhenitsyn. We must study the Gulag and make it, to the extent
we can, a part of our own experience.
Don't Live by Lies!
Another part of Solzhenitsyn's message to us is
contained in the title of one of his essays written in the Soviet
Union: "Don't Live by Lies!"
This is his answer to the Gulag and to the dead-end of Soviet society
in general: a new revolution will not save Russia—only a spiritual
change now in each person can
hope to do this. The single most difficult thing to bear in the
Soviet State, as many have testified, is the lie of it all—not just the daily
propaganda or the constant falsification of history, but the daily
dishonesty and lack of sincerity produced by fear of the all-powerful
State and by cooperation (willing or unwilling) with the lie (the
working for a socialist "paradise") that is the basis of the whole
Soviet system.
In the West we also have some experience of this
phenomenon of the daily lie, when our relationships with others are
governed more by our need to get ahead or put something over on
someone. This is a product of the growing cold of
Christianity. For us also a big part of our Christian life is the
restoration of truthfulness in daily life. But probably we do not
love the truth as much as people do in Russia—because we have not
experienced the enormity of the lie which is the Soviet system.
Back to the Earth
Still another part of Solzhenitsyn's message is
often interpreted by his critics as "romanticism," and it is probably
the least understood of all that he has to say. He wishes to
restore a human element to
modern life, which has produced inhuman cities in the name of
"progress." In his Letter to
the Soviet Leaders he speaks eloquently against the "poisoned
zone of asphalt and gasoline" in Russian cities, the imitation Western
skyscrapers, the "contaminated belts of wasteland around our industrial
centers," and urges a return to a "non-progressive economy," to
old-fashioned "towns made for people, horses, dogs," and a return to
the "supreme asset of all peoples"—the earth.
Of course, all this is not romanticism at all, but
common sense which becomes more evident with each day, as the
exhaustion of the world's resources and the contamination of the
environment with industrial wastes becomes ever more disastrous.
Many sensitive people in the West, including small communities of
Orthodox Christians, have already seen the necessity for a
slower-paced, more human life outside the big cities with their
artificial atmosphere which is a hindrance to Christian warmheartedness
and truthfulness. The situation of our own American farmers—who
also feed many people abroad—with the declining number of farmers and
the fact that farms are becoming less and less humanly attractive, could well give
us cause to worry that we also are not using wisely the resources of
our own American earth.
Gulag is Coming Here
And a final part of Solzhenitsyn's message to us:
What has happened in Russia is coming to the West. America and
the free West must also face this universal anti-Christian phenomenon
of state atheism and its Gulag. This is the message Solzhenitsyn
has given in his American addresses, such as that at the Harvard
commencement in 1978, where he castigated America for its loss of
will, its love of pleasure, its satisfaction with legalism in human
relations. Let me quote here a few passages from another address
he gave in 1975, before the meeting of the AFL-CIO in New York City:
"Is it possible or impossible to transmit the
experience of those who have suffered to those who have yet to
suffer? Can one part of humanity learn from the bitter experience
of another or can it not? Is it possible or impossible to warn
someone of danger?… The proud skyscrapers stand on, point to the
sky and say: it will never happen here. This will never come to
us. It's not possible here… Humanity acts in such a way is
if it didn't understand what Communism is, and doesn't want to
understand, is not capable of understanding… The essence of Communism
is quite beyond the limits of human understanding. Its hard to
believe that people could actually plan such things and carry them out…
"Communism has infected the whole world with the
belief in the relativity of good and evil… Among enlightened
people it is considered rather awkward to use seriously such words as
'good' and 'evil.' Communism has managed to instill in all of us
that these concepts are old-fashioned concepts and laughable. But
if we are to be deprived of the concepts of good and evil, what will be
left? Nothing but the manipulation of one another. We will
decline to the status of animals.
"That which is against Communism is for
humanity. To reject this inhuman Communist ideology is simply to
be a human being… It's a protest of our souls against those who
tell us to forget the concepts of good a evil…
"I understand that you love freedom, but in our
crowded world you have to pay a tax for freedom. You cannot love
freedom just for yourself and quietly agree to a situation where the
majority of humanity over the greater part of the globe is being
subjected to violence and oppression.
"Yet when one travels in your country and sees your
free and independent life, all the dangers which I talked about today
indeed seem imaginary. I've come a talked to people, and I see
this is so. In your wide open spaces even I get a little
infected. The dangers seem a little imaginary. On this
continent it is hard to believe all the things that are happening in
the world. But gentlemen, this carefree life cannot continue in
your country or in ours. The fates of our two countries are going
to be extremely difficult, and it is better to prepare for this
beforehand…
"Two processes are occurring in the world
today. One is a process of spiritual liberation in the USSR and
the other Communist countries. The second is the assistance being
extended by the West to the Communist rulers, a process of concessions,
of détente, of yielding whole countries.
"We are slaves there from birth, but we are striving
for freedom. You however, were born free. If so, then why
do you help our slave owners?"[4]
The message of Solzhenitsyn, then, is addressed
directly to America: wake up, learn from those who have suffered,
return to the religious and moral roots of humanity, stand firmly in
the good and against evil. This is all very correct and very
important, but it is not yet the heart of what contemporary Orthodox
Russia has to say to the Orthodox of America and the West. To get
to this heart of the matter, I will now turn to another central figure
of Russia's Orthodox revival.
7. FATHER DIMITRY DUDKO
Father Dimitry Dudko is an Orthodox pastor placed in
the middle of the frightful Communist reality which Solzhenitsyn has
described so eloquently. His attitude is not philosophical or
literary, as is Solzhenitsyn's in his writings; his concern is only
immediate and down-to-earth: how do I survive right now, this minute,
in the jaws of the anti-Christian society which has all the weapons it
wants to fight against Christian faith? And how do I help my
fellow men to do this, and above all my spiritual children?
For six or seven years now, Fr. Dimitry has been
crying out his answer in the form of sermons, articles, and even a
weekly "newspaper" (actually a parish newsletter), all addressed to his
growing flock of converts (he has baptized over 5,000 adults himself)
and to anyone who will listen.
He has done this against tremendous odds, right in
the jaws of the atheist beast, as it were. His truthfulness and
fiery faith have made many enemies—sadly enough, even among Orthodox
Christians. Some have found him too emotional, too apocalyptic,
too messianic—and it is true that such a fiery, urgent, Orthodox
preaching hasn't been heard in Russia and probably the whole Orthodox
world since the days of St. John of Kronstadt; many Orthodox people
have become self-satisfied with their "correct and proper" Orthodoxy
and are somehow offended when Orthodoxy is preached and communicated so
warmly to everyone who will listen. Others are infected by the
tragic suspiciousness of our times, largely inspired by the Communist
spy system, and simply do not trust him, some even suspecting him of
being a KGB agent. Still others miss his message because they
want to check each of his words for possible "heresies," and some of
such ones have thought that he is an "ecumenist" because he has no
hostility towards non-Orthodox Christians, even though he quite clearly
distinguishes Orthodoxy from their teachings.
Against these tremendous odds, both from outside—the
atheists—and inside—his own fellow Orthodox Christians—Fr. Dimitry
apparently has "broken." Everyone now knows of his famous
"confession" on Soviet television in June when, after five months in
prison and pressures we can scarcely imagine, he publicly repudiated
his articles and sermons and announced that "I assess my so-called
struggle against godlessness as a struggle against Soviet authority."
I think it is not too difficult to understand, in
general terms, what happened to him: he was "broken," not in his
Orthodox Christian faith (which he was perhaps not even asked to give
up) but in his sense of mission.
Even before his arrest he wrote of his "sleepless nights" wen he read
of how his own Orthodox Russians abroad were attacking him and
spreading innuendoes about him: Why can he speak so openly? How
can he have such contacts abroad? Why do they let him print a
"newspaper"?
How petty we can sometimes become when face to face
with such an evident miracle as Fr. Dimitry's words in these past
years! His atheist torturers undoubtedly played to the full the
doubts and suspicions and accusations of his fellow Orthodox in order,
finally, to make Fr. Dimitry, cut off from contact with even his own
family, doubt his own mission to speak the saving Orthodox word when everyone seemed to be against him.
I think we in the free world who did not
sufficiently value and support Fr. Dimitry are at least partly to blame
for his tragedy. As far as we know, no one has been able to get
into contact with Fr. Dimitry yet, but one person who was able to speak
briefly to his Matushka reports that she could only say: "What have
they done to him!?"
8. THE MESSAGE OF FATHER DIMITRY
But even if Fr. Dimitry's voice has now been
silenced—which was obviously the aim of the atheists—his message
remains for us. Let us look now at some of its main points.
The Spiritual Battle of
Our Times
First of all, he looks realistically at the world
and sees a tremendous battle going on: atheism is trying to swallow
faith. He sees this first-hand in the world's first atheist
state, which placed constant pressure against believers of a kind that
we can scarcely imagine, a pressure that often erupts into crude
violence.
Father Dimitry describes this battle in his Paschal
sermon in 1977: "We are in the front lines, and this front line is
everywhere. We are surrounded by atheists on all sides.
There is no place where this is no shooting going on. The press,
art, theater, schools, institutions—everything has been occupied by the
atheists. The laws are all directed towards our
suffocation." As results of the influence of atheism, Fr. Dimitry
notes the low level of morals in the Soviet Union, the destruction of
the family, people's denseness to religious influence.
"Throughout the whole of Russia, one sees only the ruins of our
people's inheritance, even though they try to cover up the ruins with
the boxes of standardized houses."
Fr. Dimitry himself suffered eight-and-a-half years
of imprisonment in a concentration camp in his youth for writing a
religious poem, and in 1975 he was involved in a planned automobile
"accident" that broke both his legs and barely left him alive. He
has felt the constant pressure both of the Soviet State and the Moscow
Patriarchate to stop his religious activity. We in the free
world, although we can sense the godless air about us, are still left
free to do whatever we want with regard to religious faith. Fr.
Dimitry faces this godless spirit of the times much more directly than
we do.
His answer to this battle is not a weak one, like
ours is: we are satisfied with the freedom to worship as we wish, we
easily mix a few hours weekly devoted to church matters with an
overwhelming preponderance of worldly things in our lives; few of us
are really transformed by
Orthodox Christianity. But Fr. Dimitry calls on Orthodox
Christians to counter-attack.
He says: "Christianity must become the content of the whole life…
We must illuminate all questions with Christianity; it cannot be
limited within strict bounds. The Church at the present time must
include also the club and the workers' assembly. We must bring
the Church to the life which is outside the church building… The
Christian cannot close himself up in some kind of shell; he must be
pained over the pains of others." "Everyone who can respond must
respond… Atheism is a plague. It must be stopped—otherwise
it will spread over everyone, devouring everything." He concludes
his 1977 Paschal sermon with this cry: "Hear you, all you who can
hear! We are alive! After all the frightful bombardments,
we are alive! But we need help. In whatever way you can,
help us. Do not remain indifferent. Indifference in our
days is perdition, not only for us. There should begin a
decisive, final war for the liberation from captivity, for the
salvation of all alive, a universal sacred war." And he signs
this sermon: "Priest Dimitry Dudko, soldier of the Russian army."
Seeing reality in this way—that is, being really aware of what is happening
in the world, and not closing his eyes to it as we in the free world so
often do, insulated by our temporary freedom and prosperity, Fr.
Dimitry speaks in a tone that is urgent and full of crisis. He is
constantly saying: Russia is perishing, the whole world is
perishing—let us act, let us start being Christians right now!
The tone of spiritual crisis is what has "turned
off" some people in the West, even Orthodox people, from Fr. Dimitry—he
is too "emotional," too "apocalyptic," too "messianic". How blind
and insensitive we are! This is precisely the tone of true,
Apostolic Christianity—the tone of St. John of Kronstadt, St. Cosmas of
Aitolia, and all who are on fire with Christ's message of
salvation. This is precisely the tone of the Catacomb Church in
Russia—the tone of crisis and urgency in the face of overwhelming
evil—and one can well say that in Fr. Dimitry this aspect of the
message of the Catacomb Church has surfaced in contemporary Russia—a
message that is absent, not only in the Moscow Patriarchate, but in
most of the Orthodox of the free world as well. Our "Disneyland"
experience in America has not equipped us to understand this sense of
urgency, but Fr. Dimitry has begun to awaken us.
And the situation is even worse than we might think;
not only is the enemy outside, he is even within our own ranks.
Fr. Dimitry writes: "Many of us have fallen into captivity… our whole
front is in captivity. And there is something even worse: There
is an internal corruption of the generals of the army. The will
to resist has become paralyzed. Those who g out to battle are
hindered by their own people in league with the enemy." Let us
not feel smug because we are not in the Moscow Patriarchate, whose
generals (bishops) indeed have been corrupted and are paralyzed.
The Sergianist spirit of legalism and compromise with the spirit of the
world is everywhere in the Orthodox Church today. But we are
called to be soldiers of Christ in spite
of this!
Russia's Golgotha
Solzhenitsyn spoke of Gulag—a secular term; Fr.
Dimitry speaks of Golgotha—the
Christian understanding of the Soviet experience. The central
part of Fr. Dimitry's—and contemporary Russia's—message to us is that
all the sufferings inflicted by atheism have a meaning—we can find
Christ in them… Here are a few passages of Fr. Dimitry's
teaching:
"In our land has occurred Golgotha; the torments of
all the martyrs begin gradually to cleanse the air… The present
crucifixion of Christ in Russia, the persecutions and mockings only
lead to the resurrection of faith in men… This gives us strength,
firmness, makes us better than we are now… Let us imagine the
state of our martyrs. Did the thought of sinning occur to them at
this moment? No matter what kind of sinners they may have been in
this minute they become saints… And those who suffer for those
condemned to death also become better. How many martyrs there
have been in Russia—and therefore, how many holy feelings! Will
these holy feelings really give no fruit? And perhaps we live and
will live only by the feelings of the holy martyrs, being supported by
them… In our country now is Golgotha. Christ is
crucified. Golgotha is not merely sufferings, but such sufferings
as lead to resurrection and enlighten men… Our time can be
compared only with the first three centuries of Christianity, and
perhaps then it was even easier; then they did not yet know all the
refinements of subtle torture… If one compares the religious
state here and in the West, the balance is on our side.
Why? Because here we have Golgotha, and there they don't.
Does an abundance of material goods give a religious rebirth? … Here we
have nothing, but if people believe they are ready to die for their
faith."
Russia's experience is for the whole world: the
martyrs are the seed of Christianity, and Russia's New Martyrs are the
source of new life for Orthodox Christians not only there, but
everywhere. Suffering, Golgotha, martyrdom is what we lack in the
West, and this is why our Christianity is so feeble; but we become
stronger by learning of and participating in Russia's suffering.
The resurrection of Russia is occurring… In fact, Fr.
Dimitry is a chief witness of this resurrection. It is not merely
the fact tat he has baptized so many thousands of people who have found
Christ, or that he inspires his spiritual children to self-sacrificing
Christian life; his own voice is a proof that Orthodox Christianity is
coming back to life in Russia. He is a forerunner of resurrected
Russia, and the fact that he himself now seems to have fallen, that is,
is no longer able to speak out as he did before, is only a proof that
this resurrection is still in process.
It cannot be completed while atheism still reigns in Russia and the
church organization bows down to the commands of the atheists; but it
is presently underway and in
God's time will produce its full fruits, despite the immense odds
against it.
We Must Participate
But Fr. Dimitry, for all his belief and hope in
Russia's resurrection, still warns us that it will not happen without us, that is, each Orthodox
believer. In one of his final letters before his imprisonment he
wrote: "It is precisely now that, not only for those living in Russia,
but for the believers of the whole world also, the most responsible
moment is approaching: when the resurrection that has begun will touch
our souls… One must begin increased prayer for all the persecuted
in Russia… All possible help should be shown to them… If
Russia is not resurrected, Golgotha threatens the whole world, and who
knows whether this Golgotha will lead to resurrection; perhaps it will
only be the Golgotha of the foolish thief. Either resurrection or
the perdition of everything—it is before such a choice that not only
Russia, but the whole world now stands."
And this is his final message to us—and the message
of all of suffering Holy Russia today.[5]
9. OTHER REPRESENTATIVES OF THE
ORTHODOX REVIVAL
I have spoken about the Orthodox revival in Russia,
but I have only mentioned three representatives of it. This is
because I wanted to discuss the quality
of it rather than the quantity. Actually, there are many touching
stories that could be told of the recovery and exercise of Orthodox
faith in Russia today. The writings of Fr. Dimitry contain many
of these stories—I would advise you all to read his book Our Hope, which has now appeared in
English. We know the names of quite a few people in Russia who
have found Orthodox faith and begun to live and suffer for it.
Among these, one could name Vladimir Osipov, who found faith in
a concentration camp after meeting a priest of the Catacomb Church
there; later he started a samizdat Orthodox patriotic publication in
the spirit of the 19th-century Slavophiles, for which he is still
imprisoned.[6]
There is Alexander
Ogorodnikov, who founded a religious discussion seminar which
was persecuted as if it were a political conspiracy; after a year in
prison for "parasitism," he is now awaiting trial for "anti-Soviet
agitation."[7]
Vasily Shipilov
has spent the last 29 years in psychiatric hospitals, where he has been
made a cripple and is constantly beaten for making the sign of the
Cross.[8]
Lev Regelson,
39-year-old father of five children, leader of a Christian seminar and
author of The Tragedy of the Russian
Church, the first book from within Russia to defend the
hierarchs of the Catacomb Church and speak openly against Sergianism;
he is now arrested.[9]
Father Gleb
Yakunin, founder of the Committee for the Defense of Believers'
Rights, a selfless worker for others despite the needs of his own
family of three children—also now in prison.[10]
Igor Ogurtsov,
founder of the Christian Social Union in the 1960's, who has now served
13 of his 20 year term, but, although still only 42, will probably not
live out the rest of the term due to ill treatment.[11]
Archimandrite
Gennady, organizer of missions and monasteries of the Catacomb
Church.
Nun Valeria,
committed to a psychiatric hospital for embroidering the 90th psalm on
belts and selling them for pennies.
The list could go on and on. These are all
people born in the Soviet era, most of them young, who have found
Orthodox faith in the most impossible of conditions, and have kept it
through years of prison and torture.
The Resurrection of
Russia
and
Our Part in It
What do all these examples say to us?
Let us have no illusions—the kind of deep
Christianity they know is not accessible to us. We are the
products of Disneyland and a society of fakery and plastic
everything—including plastic Christianity and plastic Orthodoxy.
Let us be humble enough to recognize it. (I am not saying, by the
way, that one should be forbidden to go to Disneyland or should be
constantly scowling—I am only saying that we should be aware of our
crippled state and the depth of the true Christianity of suffering.)
We can begin to become aware. We can let the
sufferings of our fellow Orthodox in Russia add a new dimension of
seriousness to our life. We must seek to find out more about
them, and we must begin to pray for them. In the early centuries
of Christianity the prayer of Christians for those undergoing
imprisonment, slave-labor, and martyrdom was a tremendous source of
strength not only for those suffering, but for those praying for them
as well. It can be the same for us today. Let us gather
their names and pray for them in church and at home.
The martyrs are the seed of Christianity. As
Father Dimitry has said many times, it cannot be that the New Martyrs
of the much-suffering Russian land will not bring froth fruit, a
blossoming of true Christianity—first of all in Russia, but also in
every place that takes the sufferings of Russian Christians to heart.
That which Russia and other countries have
experienced is coming here—in precisely what form we cannot say, and we
don't need to become hysterical over this prospect; but it is obvious
that our privileged freedom and prosperity cannot last long in a world
that is ever more falling into slavery and poverty. We have been
warned. Let us learn from the example of those who have suffered
before us.
It is a law of the spiritual life that where there
is Golgotha—if it is genuine suffering for Christ—there will be
resurrection. This resurrection first of all occurs in human
hearts, and we do not need to be too concerned what outward from it
might take by God's will. All signs point to the fact that we are
living at the end of the world, and any outward restoration of Holy
Orthodox Russia will be short-lived. But our inward spiritual
resurrection is what we should be striving for, and the events in
Russia give us hope that, in contrast to all the imitation and fake
Christianity and Orthodoxy that abounds today, there will yet be a
resurrection of true, suffering Christianity, not only in Russia, but
wherever hearts have not become entirely frozen. But we must be
ready for the suffering that must precede this…
Are we in the West ready for it? Golgotha does
not mean the incidental sufferings we all go through in this
life. It is something immense and deep, which cannot be relieved
by taking an aspirin or going to a movie. It is what Russia has
gone through and is now trying to communicate to us. Let us not
be deaf to this message. By the prayers of all the New Martyrs,
may God give us the strength to endure the trials coming upon us and to
find in them the resurrection of our souls!
[1] Unknown to Fr. Seraphim and most of the people
present, Yury Mashkov had died of cancer only three days before this
lecture was given. (Ed. note).
[2] La Reniassance Russe, 1978, no. 4, pp. 12 17.
[3] Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago Two
(Harper and Row, New York, 1975), pp. 615 616.
[4] Religion in Communist Dominated Areas, 1975, nos. 10
12.
[5] As recently as October 10. 1987, Fr. Dimitry wrote an
address to the world, entitled "Worse Than Any Imprisonment," which he
concluded as follows:
"May God grant that a new beginning will be blessed in our much
suffering land, and that all will be able to freely take a breath of
fresh air. I believe in the prophecies of St. Seraphim of Sarov, that
Pascha will be sung in an unscheduled time. Russia must say a new
word—I also believe in this prophecy of Dostoyevsky.
"I believe and see that the fate of the whole world also depends on the
fate of Russia. The Millennium of Christianity in Russia is an all
Christian jubilee, a most meaningful date, and it says a lot to the
whole world. May it be so, may it be so! (Ed. note).
[6] Osipov was released some time after Fr. Seraphim gave
this talk. He is now publishing the magazine Zemla in Moscow. (Ed.
note).
[7] Ogorodnikov was released seven years after this, on
February 14, 1987. (Ed. Note).
[8] At last report (May 28, 1987), Shipilov is still in a
psychiatric hospital in the Krasnoyarsk region. (Ed. Note).
[9] Regelson, now age 47, has reportedly been released.
(Ed. Note).
[10] Fr. Gleb was released in March, 1987. In May he was
reinstated as a priest in a parish near Moscow, but he is being closely
monitored. (Ed. Note).
[11] Now 50 years old, Ogurtsov is presently serving a
term of exile. (Ed. Note).
Reprinted from The Orthodox Word
Vol. 24, No. 1 (138) January-Febuary, 1988