The Last Man in Russia: The Struggle to Save a Dying Nation (18 page)

Union. Ogorodnikov was not having

that. ‘So I go up to this group of

people, and they think I’m joking,

and they laugh. And I then, I knock

one of them so badly that I put him

on his knees and make him promise

that he will never come to this

eternal flame again, or use bad

language or anything.’

Ogorodnikov was enjoying his

tale, and the effect it was having on

me. I had come to meet a religious

dissident and was listening to a

fervent communist. His flow was

broken, however, when Andrei, still

not wearing any trousers, trotted into

the kitchen, presented me with a toy

pirate, hesitated and trotted out

again. Ogorodnikov laughed, and

promised to hurry his tale along.

He

had

been

unusually

committed, he said, but he insisted

that he had not been totally

abnormal. Cynicism had not yet set

in by the late 1960s, and everyone

he knew believed in communism. In

that, they were not alone. Even the

dissidents were communists. They

might have disagreed with their

government’s tactics, but that did not

m e a n they objected to its goal of

establishing

a

society

where

everyone lived equally.

‘I regard communism as the only

goal that can be put forward by the

modern mind; the West has been

unable to put forward anything like

it,’ said dissident Andrei Sinyavsky

at his trial in 1966. The government

was about to jail him simply because

he had written something it did not

like, but he still supported its

ideology.

There is purity and naivety in

this kind of dissidence. Soviet

officials saw CIA plots and foreign

intervention

in

the

dissident

movement, but most of these young

people were simply idealists who

wanted everything to be better for

everyone, not only for themselves. If

people like Sinyavsky criticized the

authorities,

or

people

like

Ogorodnikov beat up cold people

for warming their feet, they did so

honestly, because they wanted to

improve the system, not for money

or advancement. It is a crucial

distinction. They saw problems and

they tried to correct them, and they

met their friends and debated how

best to do so. It did not occur to

them that the state did not want their

help, and they had to be forcibly

shown the error in their doctrine.

By the time Ogorodnikov went

to university, a lot of officials were

no doubt thinking it was time he

learned to shut up. For the Soviet

hierarchs, the revolution had been

won. That meant Ogorodnikov was

a revolutionary without a revolution,

and that is a dangerous breed. The

government had no need for such as

him.

It

needed

passive,

non-

complaining workers to run the

machine that supported the top

officials.

‘Life was cynical. The leaders

understood it was all a lie; it was

money and a career. Public service

was for their good, not for the good

of society. The holiday homes of the

Young Communist League had

already

become

brothels,

you

understand,’ said Ogorodnikov.

He lasted two months studying

philosophy at the university in

Sverdlovsk before being expelled. It

was a disillusioning experience. He

had got to university to find that the

Young Communist League was

dominated not by tireless strivers

such as himself, but by mini-

politicians, people using the system

to climb the ladder of party and state,

people who wanted wealth and

power.

Bureaucrats, secure in control of

their empires, began to divide up the

system, to morph into mafia groups.

Organized

crime

spread,

and

disillusionment with it. Ogorodnikov

was out of step with the times. He

was not the man to work patiently at

politics behind closed doors, to swap

favours and to pay bribes. He

needed crowds and applause and

action. He had created a discussion

club at university, where they read

poems by authors who were already

dissidents, or who had never been

rehabilitated. That was unacceptable,

even for a rising star such as himself,

and he was thrown out of the Young

Communists as well as out of

university.

He

was

back

in

Chistopol, with the K G B watching

him. They found unofficial literature

during a search of his house, and

opened a criminal case. It was

looking grim.

He still wanted to go to

university, however. Theoretically

this should have been impossible,

but there were chinks in the Soviet

system’s armour if you knew where

to stab. It was slow and lumbering,

whereas he was quick and decisive.

He worked out a plan to outwit the

authorities. He wanted to get into

university in Siberia, which was

probably far enough away for the

security services to lose track of him.

In order to be sure, however, he

decided to distract their attention. He

went to Moscow first, where he

made as much noise as he could.

Playing for the highest stakes, he

applied to V G I K, the Soviet

Union’s film school and one of its

most prestigious centres of higher

education. He knew he would be

refused entry. He just wanted to

distract the K G B from his real plan.

Bizarrely, and in testament both to

his charm and to the K G B’s

incompetence, he got in.

‘It was a miracle,’ he said

simply, describing how he was one

of the lucky people picked out of the

hundreds of applicants. And his life

became

something

wonderful.

Expulsion from Sverdlovsk had

been a blessing. He was a handsome

student at one of the country’s top

universities. He had a generous

stipend. Women wanted him, and

their mothers encouraged them. He

had so much money that he could fly

off to a Black Sea resort for a break,

fly home for an exam, then fly off

on holiday again.

‘I had a mass of girlfriends. V G

I K was like a key to every door. In

the Soviet Union, cinema was

everything, and when you said you

were at V G I K, and had good

clothes, and so on, well, mothers

really wanted you to marry their

daughters. In hotels where there

were no rooms, they would find a

room for you, and so on. When

there were no plane tickets, they

found them for me.’

He no longer believed in the

communist ideals of his teenage

years. Who would after seeing the

corruption,

inefficiency

and

cynicism he had encountered? But

who cared? He was young, rich and

clever, living it up in the capital of a

superpower.

These trainee Soviet aristocrats

needed to learn how to produce

high-quality films that would satisfy

the ideological requirements of the

old men at the top of the party. They

also needed to know what the Soviet

Union was up against, propaganda-

wise. That meant they had special

viewing rooms for Western films

that the general public never saw.

One day in spring 1973, they sat

down to a treat: Pier Paolo Pasolini’s

The

Gospel

According

to

St

Matthew
, a version of the Bible story

by a gay communist Italian, and a

modern classic. It is a stunning

production,

full

of

genuine

landscape,

and

broken

faces.

Pasolini’s Christ, played by a

Spanish student, is a pretty boy, a

gentle revolutionary, railing against

hypocrisy, begging for a return to

spiritual values and honesty.

The music alone must have been

a revelation. Ogorodnikov would

have already known the Prokofiev,

Mozart and Bach. But Odetta’s

‘Motherless Child’ cuts the soul like

a saw, while Blind Willie Johnson’s

slide guitar mends the wounds.

‘Gloria’ by a Congolese choir adds

drama to the scenes of rapture. The

screening was supposed to warn

Ogorodnikov, to demonstrate the

West’s propaganda techniques and

show him how to counter them.

Instead, it converted him.

Christ, as presented by Pasolini,

is a young dissident, with pure

revolutionary yearnings, no matter

how hard the cynics around him

tried to burn them out. It is hardly

surprising it inspired the young man

who watched it. It was a blueprint

for action, and the parallels between

the Holy Land and the Soviet Union

were there for all to see. The

Pharisees were the communists,

claiming to be motivated by higher

values but really stuffing their

pockets.

They

even

had

the

ridiculous hats.

Watching the film, Ogorodnikov

decided that he too could be a man

who overturned the tables of the

moneylenders, who held up to them

a mirror showing what a true

believer looked like. He came out of

the cinema a committed Christian,

and his life began.

‘But I was in a vacuum. I was

outside the Church, I did not know

what the Church was, I had no

knowledge. What does it mean to be

a Christian? How do I live in this

totalitarian society, which is pressing

on our freedoms, on our spirits?’

He smiled at the memory.

‘We were the first swallows of a

new spring. Before us the Church

was all old people, old people, and

we were the first swallows. One

time, I went into a church in one of

the provinces, and the old women

tried to force me out of the church.

“We won’t let you close the church,

we won’t allow you, we won’t let

you,” they said. In the understanding

of these old women, a young man

could go into a church with only one

aim, to smash things up, to close the

church. It was only when I went up

at the end of the liturgy to receive

communion that the old women

understood. All the church was

crying, they were crying. I was a

new generation, you understand?’

The trouble was that he did not

know how. Books on Christianity

were hard to find. Khrushchev, in

one of his spasmodic attempts to

keep communism alive and fresh

after he had denounced Stalin,

closed more than half the churches

in the country. Those that operated

were largely a formality, where old

women attended sterile services

rushed through by ignorant priests.

The Orthodox hierarchy was

completely subordinate to the state.

Priests were answerable to local

committees controlled by atheists.

Bishops made no efforts to rein in

the

government’s

anti-religious

campaign. In fact, they defended it if

ever challenged by foreigners.

One such bishop, Metropolitan

Yuvenali, during a visit to Britain in

1975, used an interview with the B B

C to attack ‘some circles in England’

who present ‘a biased and one-sided

picture of Russian Orthodox Church

life’. There was a ‘spiritual revival’,

he insisted.

If there was such a revival, it was

no thanks to Yuvenali and his

fellows. The Church printed almost

no official literature on the faith.

Believers received no support from

the Church hierarchy, were forced to

discuss religion in their own homes,

and were on their own when it came