The Last Man in Russia: The Struggle to Save a Dying Nation (43 page)

of the crimes that he had been

accusing the state of committing for

so long. Perhaps he had been wrong

about them? And, if he was wrong

about them, who else was he wrong

about?

Distrusted by his friends, after

his release from detention he began

to sympathize with his persecutors. It

was a coup for Sorokin – the

investigator – who shared the first

name and patronymic of Father

Dmitry’s brother. Father Dmitry

later wrote that he came to regard

Sorokin as his second brother.

The K G B could control who

came to see him at Baydino. They

knew the community he had lived in,

and they recognized its fault-line

between Jews and Russians, that

there had always been mutual

distrust no matter how Father Dmitry

tried to contain it and, without him

realizing it, they exploited that.

‘At last the Jews came to me. At

first a young man from Kiev. He

said that people are still reading my

books, and he asked nothing, he just

looked at me. I came to life a bit.

The Russians just pester me all the

time, but the Jews sympathize,’

Father Dmitry wrote.

Who was this mysterious Jew

from Kiev? And who were the

others who came later and showed

him documents printed in his

defence? He was glad that they had

come

and

grateful

for

their

sympathy. When

they

brought

statements for him to sign, he signed

them ‘mechanically’, he wrote later,

hardly reading them.

Father Dmitry was turning back

and forth, grateful first to his K G B

friends, then to his anti-Soviet

Jewish friends, and he wanted to

please them all. His attempt to

excuse himself to the foreign bishop

he had incriminated in his
Izvestia

article, and then the statements he

gave to the Jews – which were

inevitably found in a raid on a flat in

Moscow, although he had not

intended them to be published –

angered the security services, who

called him in once more. Although

they had released him, they had not

closed his case. He was still at risk of

prosecution.

‘We have made a mistake, we

thought about closing the case, but

now these new statements,’ his

investigator Sorokin said. ‘But well,

how can you write this? Who will

believe you anyway? One day he’s

like that, another day, he’s different.

And anyway we don’t mean you any

harm, why did you write this?’

Lacking the mechanical process

of serving in church to fill his time,

or the discussions with the faithful

that he had enjoyed so much, his

hours were empty. There were only

so many statements he could write,

and his newspaper only came round

once a week. He wanted to work, to

chant the holy mysteries of Russian

Orthodoxy, to light the incense, to

process behind the icon screen and

to dispense the ritual bread and wine.

This was the K G B’s trump

card, and they did not wait long to

play it. Sorokin and another senior

agent drove out to Baydino to see

him.

‘I’m going to take a holiday and

come here to relax, it’s so good

here,’ said the other agent, Anatoly

Trofimov.

‘You’re welcome, we’ll holiday

together,’ said Father Dmitry. They

took chairs and went to sit under an

apple tree. That was in late summer,

a time unimaginable as I sat in

frozen Tula, and the trees I had seen

as skeletons that morning would

have been heavy with fruit.

‘We have already seen the

church in which you will serve, we

have photos,’ Trofimov said. The

conversation moved on, but the dart

went straight to Father Dmitry’s

heart. The K G B were the

gatekeepers to a future for him, a

chance to escape the unchanging

misery he was in.

The misery worsened because,

while he was sitting under apple

trees in Baydino, his old friend and

fellow priest Gleb Yakunin was on

trial in Moscow. He expected to be

called as a witness, and worried and

worried about how he would speak.

Would

he

admit

to

meeting

foreigners? Or would he defend his

comrade? Then the trial ended.

Yakunin got five years. Father

Dmitry had not been summoned,

and the worrying had been for

nothing. And he did not come out of

the contrast well. Yakunin had not

appeared on television to recant his

views, but had endured his ordeal

and stayed true to his ideals. That

was almost worse for Father Dmitry

than having to speak against him in

court.

Rumours churned in Moscow.

People said that he had refused to go

to the court to defend Yakunin, and

he could hardly bear it. He and his

wife decided to go to see Ira,

Yakunin’s wife, to sympathize and

to explain. But on the way he

changed his mind.

‘Go on your own,’ he told his

wife.

‘What, are you scared?’ she

asked.

‘No, but go alone anyway.’

He was summoned to the K G B

once more to talk to Sorokin. He had

asked for books at Baydino, and

they had sent him a pile of atheist

brochures, books about Rasputin,

the mad monk who advised the last

tsar and his family, books by priests

who had given up the faith and

turned atheist. He was angry,

accusing them of promising him a

church and not giving it to him.

‘How long have I been at

liberty? And you don’t let me serve

for a single day, and you said you

would give me a church straight

away,’ he said. ‘I am ready to do

anything. Prison is as scary to me

now as my situation. Being shot

would be better.’

It was the K G B’s moment.

Sorokin took him aside and they

went to Trofimov, the big boss.

Trofimov shook his head over all

these statement he had signed and

given to the Jews who came to see

him.

Those had complicated the

case. Without them, everything

would

be

fine.

Nonetheless,

Trofimov was prepared to take him

into his confidence.

‘Do you really not understand

that the Jews want to put you in

prison, but with our hands? And we

don’t want to imprison you. God

grant that you reconsider,’ he said.

‘It’s interesting that an atheist K

G B man should say “God grant”,’

said Father Dmitry.

‘God grant,’ repeated Trofimov,

the clever man. ‘Go and reconsider.’

Sorokin left him to stew on that

for a while. Father Dmitry was still

trying to make up with his spiritual

children.

Eight

of

the

ethnic

Russians among them came to tell

him

their

complaints.

Their

complaints were about Jews, and the

weakened Father Dmitry was less

able to rein in their prejudice.

‘You cannot even stand next to a

Jew,’ one of his disciples spat out.

‘I don’t know much about

theology,’ said another, ‘but what

upset me the most is that you tried to

make us embrace the Jews.’

The next morning he felt so

weak that he could not get up, and

he had to say his morning prayers in

bed.

A while later, the K G B

summoned him back. He was to

speak to Trofimov again. This was a

conversation so secret even Sorokin

was not allowed in on it. The K G B

were finally taking Father Dmitry

completely into their hearts, and here

was an even higher boss, Sergei

Sokolov, to do it. A young woman

brought tea and cake, and the two

agents appeared to sit patiently while

Father Dmitry said grace, then to

business.

In the novel
Nineteen Eighty-

Four
, George Orwell created Room

101, which contains the ‘worst thing

in the world’. The room’s contents

were different for every individual

and, when they were unleashed, that

individual’s

resistance

finally

crumbled away and they became a

pliable servant of the state. Father

Dmitry’s Room 101 contained anti-

Semitism. He had tried for decades

to banish hatred of the Jews from his

mind, but the K G B summoned it

back and, in conversation after

conversation, they destroyed him

with it.

‘You are surrounded by Jews,

and they have no love for Russia.

And, you know, we would never

have interfered with you if you had

not had around you people who then

go abroad and raise anti-Soviet

hysteria,’ said Sokolov. He was

talking about Jews who were

emigrating to Israel, Europe and

America

and

buttressing

the

increasingly hardline political stance

being taken by Ronald Reagan in

Washington

and

the

likes

of

Margaret Thatcher in Europe. He

was telling Father Dmitry that it was

the Jews, not the K G B, who were

to blame for his suffering.

Father Dmitry tried to oppose

this logic, saying that among those

who left the country were patriots.

He mentioned Vladimir Maximov, a

dissident writer who was forced to

emigrate after spending time in a

psychiatric hospital, saying that he

had written good poems full of love

for Russia. Vladimir Maximov, it

should be noted, could hardly have

had a more ethnically Russian name.

‘Did you know Maximov was a

Jew?’ Sokolov shot back.

Father Dmitry said that, no,

Maximov was a Russian, that he was

one of his spiritual children.

‘He’s a Jew,’ said Sokolov. ‘I

knew his mother well.’

Father Dmitry was near the end

of his resistance now. He had

resisted the anti-Semitism and hate

he had been brought up with, the

hate under Stalin, the hate under

Hitler, and the prejudice from his

spiritual children. But this was too

much. He had already been lured

into

humiliating

himself

on

television by an appeal to his

patriotism. Once he had given in to

that, it was a short step to join the K

G B’s paranoia and start seeing the

plots they saw.

Father Dmitry mused. ‘Yes, we

all need to unite now to defend the

honour of Russia. We have many

enemies.’ One of the K G B men

asked him what united them, what

they had in common. He thought

about it and replied: ‘We are all

Russian.’

In the Russian language there are

two words that we translate as

‘Russian’. One is
rossiyanin
or, its

adjective,
rossiisskiy
, which means

‘someone from Russia’ or ‘of the

Russian state’. The other is
russkiy
,

which is used as both a noun and an

adjective, meaning ‘ethnic Russian’,

or ‘of the Russian language’. He

u s e d
russkiy
. A Russian Jew is a

rossiyanin
, while Father Dmitry was

russkiy
. This was what Father

Dmitry decided he had in common

with the K G B men.

They brought up the possibility

of him finally getting a new church

again, and what he would do if he

got one. He said he would fight

alcoholism, he would uphold the

spirit of the people. In short, he was

saying he would act just as he had

done before his arrest. But then he

tailed off. He realized that was not

the answer they were looking for.

‘Well, you will see yourselves.

Facts will show. If it’s not to your