The Last Man in Russia: The Struggle to Save a Dying Nation (45 page)

their hands dirty.

The total number of people

living in Russia’s cities shrank by

3.7 million in the decade after 2000.

That is a decline of more than 3 per

cent, and in some places the collapse

has been far worse. In Komi and the

Bryansk

region,

the

urban

population fell by almost a tenth,

while in the Tula region it slumped

further still – by more than 13 per

cent. Moscow had none of that

trouble. In the same period its

population rose from 9.9 to 10.6

million, making it by far the biggest

city in Eastern Europe. And that is

just the official figure. Millions of

illegal immigrants from the former

Soviet republics work here on

building sites and in the markets.

They

are

unregistered

and

uncounted, but they keep the capital

moving and earn crucial roubles to

send back to their families in

Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan or

Armenia.

It was some time before Zoya

junior and I realized that her satnav

was

malfunctioning.

At

every

junction on the ring road, it directed

us to turn off, then threaded us

randomly through the nearby streets

before depositing us back on the

ring road again. It did this three

times before we switched it off and

relied on the map.

The map was almost equally

unhelpful. We drove past our

destination

three

times

without

seeing it, and went down what

appeared to be every backstreet there

was before finding the one we

wanted. When we reached the

church, I wondered what I had come

for. It was just a church: yellow

ochre and white, surrounded by

gardens and trees that probably

looked nice when not covered by a

foot of snow. Inside, the church was

fussy, adorned with modern icons

that have for me no spiritual power,

and guarded by an old woman who

knew nothing of Father Dmitry and

wanted nothing to do with me.

Nonetheless, looked at from

outside, it was a smart and grand

building. More importantly, it was

near Moscow, pretty much as near as

it was possible for Father Dmitry to

get while remaining in the diocese

that surrounds but does not include

the city. It would have been a far

more convenient location for his

discussion group and community

than Grebnevo. But the discussion

group was no more by the time he

was here, the community was

scattered. There was nothing to see

in this church, and we turned around

and drove back towards the city.

Zoya junior was meeting some

friends in the Sretenka monastery, a

lovely building just a few hundred

metres away from the Lubyanka. It

was a Saturday evening and the

regular prayers to welcome in the

Lord’s Day would be read with

incense and chanting, so I happily

accepted her suggestion that I should

come too.

In the 1980s, just a few people

would have attended services at

churches anywhere, and probably

fewer still so close to the K G B’s

headquarters. Now, however, the

church

was

packed.

President

Vladimir Putin, his ministers and the

country’s top businessmen are all

regular churchgoers, as are hundreds

of thousands of ordinary Russians.

It was dark and cold that night,

but the church was warm and fuggy.

It was packed with worshippers,

mostly

women,

who

crossed

themselves and bowed as the

progress of the service demanded.

Priests in hats appropriate to their

clerical rank – black, with and

without veils, and purple for the

most

senior

–

performed

the

mysteries. Back and forth the men

went in the complex ballet of their

faith. Two young men had the task

of tending to the hundreds of

candles, which were thin. They

calmly and patiently straightened any

candle that looked like falling over,

while the heat from the flames

shimmered, and the gold on the vast

wall of icons flickered the light back

into the room.

The gorgeous bass swell of the

choir, which included several of

Zoya junior’s friends, tugged at my

spirit and I stood and lost myself in

the sound for more than an hour.

Russian churchgoers do not sit down

unless they absolutely have to, and

that is only if they are very elderly or

very

sick.

Services,

therefore,

become an exercise in endurance and

eventually, despite the thrill of the

ancient music, my legs were no

longer prepared to tolerate it. I said

goodbye to Zoya junior, and walked

back into the cold.

During the 1980s, Father Dmitry

worked patiently to reassemble a

group of spiritual children. He never

regained his position as a rebel and a

media star, but he retained his

passion for preaching, and a small

group of young men and women

eventually assembled around him

once more.

Among them was Vladimir

Petrovsky. He had none of the

baggage of the heroic days before

the televised confession, and knew a

different spiritual father: quieter,

more private, subdued, depressed,

angry.

We met at the Botanical Garden

metro station, which I know well,

since it was the setting-off point for

one of my favourite weekend walks

when I lived in Moscow. In summer,

the nearby park is a riot of wild

growth, with hidden formal gardens

in a vast expanse of woodland that

reveals new secrets on every visit. In

winter,

however,

it

is

like

everywhere else: a spread of beaten

dirty snow dotted with trash. The

temperature was a little warmer that

day, but it still bit when I stepped out

of the glass and concrete metro

station.

Petrovsky was slight. His grey

hair was scraped over his scalp, and

his eyes peered at me from behind

thick spectacles. Perhaps it was just

me that day, but he did not seem as

open as the people I had interviewed

about the 1970s, and appeared to be

very suspicious of my intentions.

His questions as to why I was

writing about Father Dmitry at all

were searching. As we walked

through the edges of the park to his

flat, which was up a dark flight of

stairs in a concrete apartment block

identical to thousands of others in

Moscow, I felt myself under

examination. It was not a pleasant

experience, so, by the time we were

in his little kitchen, where he made

tea, and I sat at his oilcloth table, I

was on edge.

He looked at me and waited for

my questions. Perhaps the reason he

looked

so

unenthusiastic

was

because he knew what kind of

questions were coming. When I

asked Father Dmitry’s disciples

about the 1970s, they could focus on

arrests,

and

harassment,

and

comradeship and solidarity. The

years after his humiliation had little

of that, and Petrovsky probably

knew I would ask about the extreme

nationalism and prejudice that the K

G B had kindled in Father Dmitry.

‘I found out about him through

my godfather,’ said Petrovsky. ‘I

came to him in 1987. The first time I

went into his flat was in July, on 1

July, after his wife was buried.’

The loss of his wife Nina after a

long

illness

devastated

Father

Dmitry. She had patiently supported

him through his years of triumph,

then through his humiliation, and

had been one of the few people who

never judged him. He needed new

spiritual children desperately, and

Petrovsky’s arrival was well timed.

At first, their discussions were about

literature, and Petrovsky began to go

to his house regularly, or to his new

church at Cherkizovo – a distant

village he was assigned to after

Vinogradovo.

‘As a priest, he led a person’s

soul. He said that Dostoyevsky and

Tolstoy revealed the soul more than

anyone else. In this time many

young people came to the faith. It is

hard at first to speak of the soul so

he tried to speak to them in their

own language through literature,’

Petrovsky told me, staring at me

directly through his thick glasses. ‘I

became his assistant from 1987 and

stayed with him to the end. I worked

nowhere at first, I just helped him. I

was on my own. I was given a bit of

food but the first years were hard.

That was before I became a priest.’

In the late 1980s, the Soviet

Union was falling apart, but did not

realize it yet. After Leonid Brezhnev

had died, and two more geriatric

general secretaries followed him to

their graves in quick succession, the

country finally had a leader who was

prepared to try to stop the epidemic

of alcoholism. Russians now claim

that Mikhail Gorbachev’s restrictions

on alcohol, which involved grubbing

up vineyards and restricting sales

drastically – 90 per cent of alcohol

shops in Moscow were closed, for

example – were disastrous. The

popular myth today is that people

turned to shoe polish and anti-freeze

in their desperation to get drunk,

with catastrophic effects on the

nation’s health. But that is not true.

This

was,

in

fact,

Russia’s

demographic zenith. In 1986–7, life

expectancy bounced upwards to its

highest ever level, while the birth

rate zipped up too.

Had

the

country

stuck

to

Gorbachev’s alcohol policies, then

perhaps the catastrophic post-Soviet

demographic collapse might not

have been so bad. If the government

wanted the nation to have a future, it

had to curtail alcohol consumption

severely. It had no choice. Sadly,

however, it could not afford to do

so. Revenues collapsed without

alcohol being sold in the state shops.

Some money went to illegal distillers

instead and thus stayed out of

government coffers, some was just

not spent at all and languished in

savings accounts. Public support for

the leadership slumped too, often

because of complaints swapped in

queues at the wine shops. Even

supporters of the measures got bored

of them. There were no consumer

goods to buy with the money people

saved, and what was the fun in that?

‘I always hated drunkenness,’

one woman from Minsk wrote to a

newspaper. ‘But suddenly it seems

that nobody celebrates holidays any

more. We used to make ourselves

new dresses for the festivities. This

year I didn’t feel like making a

single new dress. Why bother?’

That complaint was itself a sign

of how, under Gorbachev’s policy

of openness, Russians began to be

free to discuss subjects that had been

taboo just a year or two before.

The huge campaign against the

dissidents that culminated with

Sakharov’s

exile

and

Father

Dmitry’s recantation was unwound.

In late 1986, Sakharov had a phone

installed so Gorbachev could call

him and invite him back to Moscow.

Yakunin and Ogorodnikov were

released

in

1987.

Gorbachev,

burnishing

his

image

as

a

modernizer, told the United Nations

in 1988 that there were no political