The Last Man in Russia: The Struggle to Save a Dying Nation (40 page)

have love for each other. Forget

your personal grievances, forget

your ethnicity. Now we need to unite

like never before in the face of this

danger,’ he wrote, in words that he

could have written a year earlier.

But how could they trust him, let

alone unite around him, when he had

named their closest foreign allies in

print? The obvious question they

would all be asking would be: who

else did he betray? He had had

months of interrogations and plenty

of time to list every single one of his

friends for the K G B files. Then, the

second thought would have been

even more worrying still. If the

group’s leader could crumble, then

so could anyone. And if anyone

could collapse and give their secrets

away, then how could anyone trust

anyone at all? The group of friends

had held together in his absence by

campaigning for his release, and by

keeping his plight in the headlines.

Now, they did not even have that to

unite them.

They were stunned by one still

more enormous question: why did

he do it? How had a man who had

been so brave for so long surrender

so willingly? It is a question that still

divides his old friends.

Alexander, Zoya junior’s father,

was possibly the only one of his

spiritual children who did not desert

him and he refused to admit that

Father Dmitry had done anything

wrong: ‘I was not sad, I was pleased.

He showed he was a true son of his

homeland and his Church. It was not

a fall, it was a confirmation. By

shaming himself before pagans and

non-believers he told the whole

world he was a believer.’

But he was speaking three

decades after the event. In Lefortovo

itself, Father Dmitry had been

subject to the whole range of K G B

tricks to make him change his mind.

He had a cellmate accused of

currency speculation. This was one

of the K G B’s favourite ploys.

Currency speculation was a crime,

but one that no one had moral

qualms about. That meant anyone

would happily chat to a black-market

moneychanger. The man played on

Father

Dmitry’s

fears

of

imprisonment, and urged him to co-

operate. What harm could co-

operation do?

He also had an extremely

convincing

interrogator

called

Vladimir Sorokin. Once the cellmate

had persuaded Father Dmitry to at

least talk to his interrogator, which

took six weeks or so, then Sorokin

enlarged the chink to gain access to

his soul.

Sorokin produced writings by a

theologian called Yevgeny Divnich,

who had been imprisoned first by

the Gestapo and then by the K G B.

He had been a friend of Father

Dmitry’s in the camps, but had not

been released after Stalin died.

Divnich held out against the K G B

for more than two decades. He once

told Father Dmitry that if a day went

by without him somehow harming

the Soviet state, then he considered

the day wasted.

But he too surrendered in the

end, ground down by the system and

by decades in the camps. ‘My Christ

supports the Soviet government,’

Divnich wrote in words that Father

Dmitry later quoted approvingly. ‘It

is impossible to defeat the Soviet

government

with

one’s

own

primitive powers. Opposition is a

primitive power, and obliges you to

unite with foreigners and that is

treachery, you must betray your

homeland.’

That was the choice that Father

Dmitry was given. As a Russian, he

wanted to support Russia. As a

Christian, he wanted to oppose the

Soviet Union. But, if he opposed the

Soviet Union, he was allying with

foreigners and thus fighting against

Russia. He had to choose, therefore,

between his religion and his country

and he chose his country. That was

how he himself justified his choice.

‘I am all the same a patriot’ was

one of the things that the television

showed him as saying. But his

resolve collapsed on the outside,

when he understood what he had

done.

On fleeing Moscow, he was

stuck miserable in the village of

Baydino in the Tula region, where

he had a house. I went to find it.

The Tula bus station was bitterly

cold. Minibuses stood in ranks in a

yard of compacted snow, more grey

than white. Bus information was

hard to get hold of. I could get to

Arsenevo, which was most of the

way to Baydino. From there, the

woman at the enquiries window told

me, there might be a bus or I might

have to make my own way. It was

minus 32 when I left the hotel. I had

donned two sets of long underpants,

as well as my usual vest/T-

shirt/jumper/jacket combination on

top. As I waited for the Arsenevo

bus to edge out of line and come

forward for passengers, I mused on

the strange disconnect between my

face, which was pinched and sharp

with cold, and my legs, which were

slightly too warm.

I had reading material in my bag.

Father Dmitry, when he hid away in

Baydino, wanted to reach out to his

disciples. So he started publishing

his newspaper once more. He would

have to send it out by the mail,

which meant it could be intercepted

and would have little effect, but it

was important to his self-respect that

he did something. So, on 9

November 1980, after almost a

year’s gap in publication, his
In the

Light of the Transfiguration
came

hammering off his typewriter again.

And I had it with me.

The minibus finally admitted the

handful of us heading for Arsenevo.

I arranged myself carefully, wedged

up against the wall of the cabin, coat

zipped up to the top, hat pulled

down, scarf tightened. Both gloves –

the thin inner and the padded outer –

were on my left hand, but only the

thin inner one was on my right, so I

could hold the pen and take notes.

I

blackened

everything

honest, direct and brave. I

provoked

irritation

in

people’s souls, maybe even

curses. I have cut off my

own support, the bough I

was sitting on, as the

popular saying goes. I have

opened the door wide to all

illegality, to the spread of

Godlessness in our land. By

the example of my failure, I

have as a priest blessed the

existence of Godlessness in

our land, and I have refused

Christ. That is how it is, and

I need to address it directly.

You can serve only Christ,

it is impossible to serve

anyone else in any way

[Father Dmitry wrote in a

‘confession’]. I am a priest,

I answer not only for

myself, but I answer above

all for my spiritual children,

I answer for my fellow

countrymen, I answer for

the whole world, since God

gave me the right to speak

to the whole world.

But no one was listening.

‘Those who were around me,

they are all gone,’ he wrote in the

first edition of his newspaper. ‘Now,

when I am summoned, only my wife

goes with me. And one other, who

they

say

doesn’t

understand

anything anyway.’

The language of crucifixion that

he used before to describe the fate of

his country, that was now used for

himself. He was on the cross, as

Jesus was. This was his personal

Golgotha,

the

site

of

Jesus’

crucifixion.

Is it not Golgotha in your

opinion, when people throw

words at me like stones, and

say ‘tell him that I now have

a different spiritual father’?

At least they could come

and say it themselves, they

could at least say goodbye.

Is it not Golgotha when

I hear on the telephone ‘I

don’t want to talk to you,

forget my number’?

I huddled tighter into my coat. As

we drove south-west out of the city,

the sun rose off to our left, casting

orange tendrils over the snowfields.

A woman stopped the bus to get off,

letting a gust of cold into our

warmer cabin, and the four other

passengers pulled their scarves

tighter around their faces. My

clumsy fingers, made thicker by cold

and gloves, struggled to turn the

pages. As

we

drove

towards

Arsenevo, Father Dmitry’s torment

deepened.

‘Spiritual children, my friends,

where are you? Answer me. Let us

unite to do God’s work around

Christ. If you think I fell then, when

we unite, you can raise me. Surely

you will not trample on me with

your feet when I lie at the foot of

Golgotha?’

It is clear from his words in the

next week’s edition that no one

replied. He keeps admitting his guilt,

saying that everyone is guilty,

admitting his own guilt again. ‘I

begin to understand how people,

unable to withstand disgrace, end

their own lives. This was how Judas,

presumably, could not withstand his

disgrace. And people feel sorry for

Judas. How unhappy he was, who

could be unhappier than him?’

We pulled into a little village and

stopped to fill up with diesel. As the

fumes crept into the cabin, I began to

feel sick. I do not normally get travel

sick, but this seemed to be an

exception, so, as we drove out, I

looked at the road. We crept up a

hill, and rounded a roundabout

adorned with a large globe. The sun

was a glowing orange hub in the

sky, but so low I could still look at it

without my eyes hurting.

The sickness faded, but returned

as soon as I plunged back into

Father Dmitry’s world. I realized

then that this was not travel sickness

at all, but intense shame. His guilt

was so huge that it seeped off the

page. It was the feeling you had as a

child when you had done something

wrong and felt dreadful. You want

your mother to hug you and make

everything better, but you know that

is impossible because it is you that is

to blame. It was the torment

described by Father Dmitry, and his

knowledge that he had betrayed

everyone and everything he loved,

that was making me feel sick in

sympathy.

‘I have stopped getting letters.

It’s true, at the beginning I received

a few letters, but they have stopped.

Have I been forgotten or are my

letters being intercepted?’

The fingers of my right hand, the

hand with only the thin inner glove

on it, were stiff with cold and would

barely unbend. I tried to massage

them and dropped my pen, which

evaded my clumsy attempt to catch

it. It fell on to the floor of the cabin

and into the slight gap left by the

sliding door. I felt still sicker as I

tried and failed to coax it out.

Without a pen to take notes, I sat and

watched the road. The sunlight was

less orange now, more buttery, as we

drove on a bleak empty road

through a forest, the colours stripped

out of the landscape.

We crept to the top of a hill and

met a huge view: white and khaki,

forest and fields stretching far away.

Father Dmitry was desperate to

confess, and to rid himself of his

feeling of guilt, but there was no one

to confess to. He tried issuing a few

statements, reaffirming his pre-arrest

convictions, but that just tied him in

knots with the K G B, who then

threatened him with rearrest. Each