The Last Man in Russia: The Struggle to Save a Dying Nation (26 page)

Dmitry’s poetry, and then levelled

the allegation that he had, while

living under German occupation,

collaborated with the Nazis by

having his verses printed in an

occupation newspaper. This, the

article implied, was the reason he

had been arrested and sentenced to

the gulag.

‘“Father Dmitry” does not so

much

preach

the

Ten

Commandments as transgress them,

and at the same time the laws of his

country,’ the paper said. That was a

major accusation. In what was

clearly a warning sanctioned from

on high, Father Dmitry was being

told he was breaking the law.

The article ended, however, with

an admission of how the Soviet

government

was

losing

the

propaganda war. It said the article

w as written so as to warn innocent

people away from talking to these

dangerous criminals – or, as it

quoted an unnamed citizen as

saying, to ‘protect those close to us

from the pernicious influence of

these swindlers . . . let everyone

know what is hidden behind their

masks’ – but admitted that the

potential victims would not hear the

warning since it would not be

rebroadcast on foreign radio, which

was the only source of news they

followed.

Father Dmitry understood his

growing celebrity and his own news

value for foreign correspondents. He

called

a

press

conference

in

response, so as to deny the charges.

He had not, he said, had poems

printed in fascist newspapers, nor

was he a traitor. He was just worried

about the fate of the nation.

‘My heart was wounded by the

suffering of the people, and so I

forgot my own well-being and the

well-being of my family and made a

decision: no matter what may

happen, I will bring my mite,

however small, to the treasure-house

of human salvation, and with this

mite I will appear before God

saying, look, Lord, that is all that I

could do,’ he told the assembled

journalists. ‘They can imprison me

again,

they

can

contrive

catastrophes, they can execute me, I

shall know what I am suffering for.’

It was almost like he was

taunting the authorities, laughing at

their inability to halt his growing

fame and influence. In August 1977,

he gave an interview to a journalist

from the
New York Times
. He denied

that he was involved in politics, but

still delved into the politics of his

country, and into its unfolding

demographic catastrophe.

‘Our

nation

has

become

corrupted, the family has fallen

apart, the nation has got drunk,

traitors have betrayed each other, or,

as we call them now, stool-pigeons –

in huge numbers. We say: a third

person could be a traitor, so we try

to speak one on one. People say the

walls are listening, and we are

starting to lie to each other, we do

not trust each other,’ he said. ‘The

poor Russian people. What a

diabolic storm has broken upon it.’

In Grebnevo, we walked through

the gate into the churchyard, a shady

wooded area, where the church’s

cross rose up to catch the afternoon

sun.

Zoya

senior

and

Father

Vladimir were looking around in

delight, while Zoya junior and I

were smiling at every comment they

made and every memory that burst

out of them. To the left of the gate

had been Father Dmitry’s living

quarters, and the hall where the

believers had gathered for their

Sunday discussions.

Zoya senior walked around the

side of the building and was trying

to get her bearings. ‘This was where

the room was, it’s gone now,’ she

said, standing on a patch of lawn.

‘This is where the ambassadors

came. All the great people sat here,

French people, English people,

Americans, they all sat here.’

Father Vladimir was closely

examining the door. ‘This was

where they arrested me,’ he said at

last, with a broad smile. ‘They broke

the second door.’ Father Vladimir

was

arrested

in

Grebnevo

in

November 1978. ‘It is so strange to

be here,’ he said. ‘It is like it is all

living in front of my eyes. I brought

some people here after work on

Friday, then on Saturday some

police cars came from over there.

This was in November. Father

Dmitry came and told us to stay in

bed, that he had a plan to confuse the

police, but I was worried they would

kill him. So I barricaded the door.

All of us were holding the door shut

and the police started to smash it

down with a log.’

Zoya senior had joined us now:

‘I had come up by then, so I was

outside with the police, and someone

said there were terrorists or bandits

inside the building.’

Father Vladimir: ‘They finally

came in and I tried to hang on to the

table, but they took me away.’

Zoya senior, laughing: ‘They

were saying he’s a terrorist, he’s a

bandit, and I was saying it’s just

Vladimir, he’s a student.’

Father Vladimir was dragged

away barefoot, in his underwear, and

held for ten days of detention. His

arrest was the culmination of three

months

of

police

harassment.

Uniformed officers regularly pushed

into the rooms where Father Dmitry

lived and insisted on checking the

number of beds, the number of

chairs, the number of people. In

December, Father Vladimir was

detained again and his friend Georgy

Fedotov

was

taken

off

for

psychiatric assessment, in what

could have been the prelude to the

forced treatment that so many

dissidents had to undergo.

Soviet officials began having

dissidents diagnosed as insane back

in the 1960s, and came to appreciate

the value of psychiatric drugs in

social control. These chemicals could

sedate or torture anyone who refused

to obey orders, or who acted

differently.

Pyotr Grigorenko, a general who

disagreed with the policies followed

by

Nikita

Khrushchev’s

government, was among the first to

be treated this way. The Serbsky

Institute in Moscow, supposedly the

country’s

leading

centre

of

psychiatric medicine, proved more

than willing to co-operate with the K

G B in restraining people such as

him. In April 1964, it diagnosed him

as

suffering

from

‘paranoid

development of the personality, with

reformist ideas arising in the

personality,

with

psychopathic

features of the character and the

presence

of

symptoms

of

arteriosclerosis of the brain’.

The report went on:

Reformist ideas have taken

on an obstinate character

and determined the conduct

of the patient; in addition,

the intensity of these ideas is

increasing in connection

with

various

external

circumstances which have

no direct relation to him,

and is accompanied by an

uncritical attitude to his own

utterances and acts . . .

Because

of

his

mental

condition

Grigorenko

requires

compulsory

treatment

in

a

special

psychiatric hospital, as the

paranoid reformist ideas

described above are of

obstinate

character

and

determine the conduct of the

patient.

When his wife Zinaida, genuinely

concerned, asked when he had gone

mad, a K G B official responded:

‘The illness is a subtle one, not

everyone would notice it . . . but his

ideas are socially dangerous.’

Soviet psychiatrists came up with

new diagnoses, such as ‘creeping

schizophrenia’, that only they were

able

to

diagnose.

Criminal

investigators were allowed to request

a psychological evaluation, in which

doctors could almost always be

guaranteed to give the diagnosis the

K G B required.

Gennady Shimanov, a Christian,

wrote of his own experiences

attempting to persuade a doctor that

he was just like everyone else.

‘No, Gennady Mikhailovich,’ the

doctor had replied. ‘If you were like

everyone else, we wouldn’t keep

you here. How many days have you

been here now? Have you seen a

single normal person here? There

you are. Well, all right. Now tell me

please about your “conversion to

God” as you call it.’

When Shimanov tried to find out

what his symptoms were, the doctor

was clear.

‘Your symptoms are a one-sided

fascination with religion. You have

cut yourself off from life. After all,

how do healthy believers behave?

An old dear drops into church,

crosses herself, goes out and carries

on with her affairs, having forgotten

God already. We still have such

people, but in time there will be

fewer and fewer. But it is quite

different with you. That is what

worries us.’

And it was not just the religious

who

were

targeted.

Zhores

Medvedev, a respected scientist, had

become obsessed with disproving

the theories of Trofim Lysenko – a

charlatan biologist whose ideas had

convinced Stalin and thus replaced

orthodox

genetics

as

official

scientific doctrine. This was not just

a subject of academic interest.

Scientists who backed the Mendelian

and Darwinian views of genetics and

natural selection had been sacked

and jailed. After Stalin’s death, the

ideas of Lysenko had been gradually

allowed to fall into disrepute, but

Medvedev wanted acknowledgement

that they were wrong. He wrote up a

history of the affair and published it

abroad.

‘I read it recently – it’s a

polemical work,’ said the doctor

who arrived to examine him. ‘By

now people have forgotten about

Lysenko – the struggle in genetics is

over. And instead of forgetting

about it like everybody else and

getting on with your work, you

recently published this book abroad.

Why?’

The book is a passionate attack

on Lysenko, well sourced and

intelligently argued. For the doctors,

however, the fact that Medvedev was

combining scientific work with

historical research was a sign of

mental illness.

‘As a matter of fact I have

observed that your brother suffers

from a split personality,’ a doctor

told Medvedev’s twin, Roy, a

historian. ‘He is a biologist, but is

also involved with many things that

bear little relation to his immediate

responsibilities. Besides, he is always

dissatisfied about something, always

fighting against something.’

The Soviet state in some ways

existed like a country in the Middle

Ages, when people were punished

for any deviation from the pure

religious line. Officials saw Marxism

as the revealed truth, while the

Soviet Union was the perfect society,

and only insanity or dishonesty

could explain any deviation from

that way of thinking.

Leonid Plyushch, a Ukrainian

dissident and one of the most

famous victims of psychiatric abuse,

said the doctors would explain to

him that, since he had risked his own

freedom and his family’s happiness