The Last Man in Russia: The Struggle to Save a Dying Nation (38 page)

prosecution for the publication of

work abroad that diverted the Soviet

youth movement on to a new track.

‘The lack of opportunity to

struggle for the Cause discouraged

the most ardent Communists among

the young,’ wrote one friend of

Sinyavsky’s. ‘Can a thirty-year-old

writer be expected to wait like a

good boy for the censor to show a

little magnanimity in ten or twenty

years’ time, if then? Sinyavsky had

not that degree of patience.’

It is noteworthy how many of the

Soviet dissidents did not begin as

rebels. Sakharov was a physicist.

Zhores Medvedev was a biologist.

Father Dmitry was a priest. In an

ordinary society, they would have

continued their activities unhindered.

However, the state’s ideology kept

intruding into their lives in ways

they could not tolerate.

Sinyavsky and Daniel’s trial was

publicized by four of their friends,

who were then themselves arrested

and prosecuted. Alexander Ginzburg

only wrote up a transcript of a legal

hearing and passed it to journalists,

but that was enough to earn him five

years in a labour camp. When he

came out, he was of course a

committed opponent of the regime.

Whereas young Germans and

Frenchmen waved the red flag and

demanded a general improvement of

the world, starting now, young

Russians fought for the most basic

of

human

rights. The

state’s

oppression distorted the cultural

movement. It started with poetry and

writing, but it could not develop into

the mass-market rebellion of the

Western baby-boomers, because it

never got out of the basements.

It was as if the police in Britain

and America had arrested Buddy

Holly and Cliff Richard, given them

six years of hard labour and then

kept arresting any of their friends

who spoke out in their defence. It is

hard to imagine how Bob Dylan’s

protest songs or the Rolling Stones’

poseur rebelliousness would have

then made it to number one.

In 1968, when Jean-Luc Godard

filmed Keith and the rest of the

Rolling Stones and intercut them

with staged footage of actors

pretending to be Black Panthers,

eight real rebels showed astonishing

bravery by gathering on Red Square

to protest against the Soviet invasion

of Czechoslovakia. Assaulted by the

crowd, who shouted ‘scum’, ‘dirty

Yids’

and

–

to

Natalya

Gorbanevskaya who had come with

her baby – ‘The tart’s got herself a

child, now she comes to Red Square’

– they were arrested.

Gorbanevskaya, because of the

baby, was released, and she told

Western journalists about the protest.

The Western papers and radio

stations splashed with it. It was rare

to see any kind of crack in the

monolith of the Soviet Union. But

their protest simply heightened the

division between dissidents and

mainstream society, which mostly

approved

of the

invasion

of

Czechoslovakia and thought the

Czechs should be more grateful for

the Soviet Union’s defeat of Nazi

Germany.

‘It

was

very

strange,’

Gorbanevskaya told me. ‘My name

became famous and there was this

big noise about me, and it was like

they

could

send

troops

into

Czechoslovakia but they could not

arrest me.’

At that time, the Kremlin was still

embarrassed by unfavourable media

coverage. That kept Gorbanevskaya

safe, although she was eventually

thrown

out

of

the

country.

Dissidents like Sakharov became

skilled at using the Western radio

stations and newspapers to their own

advantage, and a group of brave

activists kept the protest movement

alive for a decade. It was under

cover of that embarrassment that

Father Dmitry’s free community

developed. The Soviet government

no longer had the heart to kill

thousands, tens of thousands, of

people to squash an idea, and any

other technique was less effective.

It took the K G B more than a

decade to penetrate and demoralize

and finally crush the dissidents,

culminating of course with the

arrests of Sakharov and Father

Dmitry.

As I sat and listened to Keith

describing Swinging London, a long

line of snow along a telephone wire

slipped and fell. At first, it dropped

as one long cylinder, but it broke up

as it accelerated, so, by the time it hit

the snow beneath, it was just a cloud

of powder. Mammal footprints

trotted through the forest beneath the

wire. A little later we mounted a

bluff, and I could see for kilometres

over the snow and trees. No one

lived there.

Father Dmitry was not sent to the

camps in 1980. Instead, they kept

him in the relative comfort of a cell

in Moscow’s Lefortovo prison.

Within its high walls, he was free to

contemplate his future during the

days of inactivity, interrupted only

by occasional interrogation. He

knew, as he lay there, that his fate

was in his own hands. He must have

dwelled on the potential misery of a

fresh term in the camps, back in the

cold, stripped of the church where

he served and the love of his

children. In 1980, he would turn

fifty-eight. Imprisonment would be a

heavy burden for him to bear. He

had no idea when he would see his

friends again.

9

The unworthy priest

Every one of Father Dmitry’s

friends remembered the next time

they saw him, however. Father

Vladimir’s shoulders fell slightly

when he told the story. He looked

down at his hands on his lap.

‘Yes, I saw him on television,’

he said. ‘Someone rang to say they

were showing him on television, so I

turned it on. There were a few of us

and we watched. It was a shock.’

It was an experience he shared

with citizens of the whole Soviet

Union. Moscow at that time only had

three television channels. Other

regions had fewer. That meant tens

of millions of people would have

seen
Time
, the most popular daily

television programme in the country,

on 20 June 1980. Most of them

probably heard of Father Dmitry for

the first time that evening. Although

he was famous among dissidents,

and among religious believers, this

was his first appearance on a

national media channel. The vast

majority of Soviet citizens would

have had no idea who he was.

They would have seen a plump

man with a beard, a stereotypical

Russian priest, happily reading out a

prepared statement, then answering

questions from a man off-camera

called Sergei Dmitryievich. What

Father Dmitry said would have

satisfied the most hawkish Soviet

Cold War warrior, because he

rejected everything he had ever

stood

for.

He

admitted

the

‘systematic

fabrication

and

dissemination abroad of anti-Soviet

materials’. He admitted being a tool

of the West working to destroy the

Soviet state. This was not like the

show trials of the 1930s. He did not

look traumatized, thin, pale or

disoriented. On the contrary, the

most shocking thing was that he

looked himself.

Throughout the conversation, he

smiled and appeared entirely content

with what he had done. He looked

well fed. Dissidents watching said it

would have been better if he had

been bloodied and bruised. At least it

would have made sense. He was

admitting to crimes that could bear a

prison sentence of seven years, yet

he seemed happy. His appearance

was so at variance with what he was

saying that observers wondered if he

had

been

given

a

euphoria-

producing drug.

The
Washington Post
’s reporter,

trying to explain what he had seen,

called this ‘one of the heaviest blows

to be struck in recent years against

the struggling Soviet human rights

movement’. ‘Dudko occupied a

unique and important place in the

spectrum of influential dissidents

who have risked jail to speak out for

individual freedoms within this

authoritarian system,’ the article said.

‘Unlike the wooden and forced

performances

given

by

other

dissidents who have recanted in

recent years, Dudko looked and

sounded both eager and intent upon

recanting his crimes.’

Keston College, a UK-based

organization

researching

the

oppression of Soviet believers,

refused to draw any conclusions

from the appearance, apparently

reluctant to confront the possibility

that he might have been speaking

voluntarily. Keston had been at the

forefront of keeping Father Dmitry’s

fate in the world’s eye, and its

publicity had helped have him

praised in Britain’s House of

Commons by a Foreign Office

minister, as well as in the United

States and elsewhere.

‘Father Dmitry’s “confession” is,

perhaps, the greatest body-blow

suffered by the Orthodox Church

since . . . 1971,’ Keston said.

The propaganda advantages

to the Soviet authorities are

obvious. A trial in court

would have only reinforced

Father

Dmitry’s

unique

position among believers.

There is also considerable

mileage to be gained in the

international

relations

sphere. The ‘confession’,

whether genuine or not, is a

slap in the face to the West,

which has been vocal in

protesting the arrest of

Father Dmitry. It is also a

direct

blow

at

Father

Dmitry’s

individual

supporters in the Soviet

Union and the Christian

Committee for the Defence

of Believers’ Rights in the U

S S R, who have stressed

that

Father

Dmitry’s

activities were of a purely

spiritual, and not political

nature. Prometheus has been

bound, and his terrible

punishment appears to be

just beginning.

And that night, while
Time
was

showing him rejecting his life’s

work, printing presses all over the

Soviet Union were churning out

copies

of
Izvestia
, the country’s

second newspaper after
Pravda
. The

article he wrote for that only took up

a quarter of a page, but it resonated

around the world. It was proof of

Father Dmitry’s surrender.

Under the banner headline ‘The

West Wants Sensations’, Father

Dmitry calmly and methodically

destroyed himself. ‘In January 1980

I was arrested by the organs of state

security for anti-Soviet activity. At

first I denied my guilt, and

announced that I had not spoken

against the Soviet government, and

that as a priest I am fighting against

Godlessness. But then I understood,

I was arrested not for my faith in

God,

but

for

a

crime.’

He

acknowledged that he had done

harm to his country, and thanked the

government for the patience it had

shown towards him over the years.

He should, he now realized, have

been working with the state and not

against it.

He wrote that he had told

himself, ‘You are fighting against all

criminality:

drunkenness,