The Last Man in Russia: The Struggle to Save a Dying Nation (48 page)

his government’s policies for it. But

most of that increase was really just

an echo of the anti-alcohol campaign

of the 1980s. The birth rate

increased under Gorbachev, and that

baby boom meant a bulge in the

number of parents two decades later

and thus more children. But the

effect will be temporary. Soon the

parenting generation will be those

born after 1991, when the number of

Russians born halved. To stabilize

the population, those women would

have to start having heroic numbers

of children, and there is no sign of

that happening.

The government needs to restrict

alcohol sales but, mindful of what

happened to Gorbachev when he

tried to do so with vastly greater

state resources behind him, it is

cautious in doing so.

‘We hope in God and for a

miracle because nothing good now

comes from our own brains. The

government really does nothing, no

one in the country believes in the

government. I look at the future with

pessimism.’

12

They don’t care any more

So, did Father Dmitry have a choice?

Could he have refused to surrender

to the K G B? The question is an

important one because, as I have

thought almost ever since I first

heard

of

him,

his

personal

experience closely mirrors that of his

whole nation. When he betrayed his

own conscience, he did irreparable

damage to his soul. Before, he was a

happy

and

confident

man.

Afterwards he was a miserable racist.

The transformation was total and

was a result of that moment when he

decided to stop struggling, to seek

compromise

with

people

who

wanted nothing but his destruction.

Everything that followed – the

sadness and the hatred – was a result

of that moment. It is important to

understand that his misery was a

result of his own choice, because it

takes us back to the misery of his

whole nation. If he could have acted

differently, if he had a choice, it

means every Russian had a choice.

That means that the depression of

individuals is not inevitable. If every

Russian had a choice, there is hope

that some people took another path,

and will continue to do so.

The simple answer to the

question of whether he had a choice

is: yes, he did. And the proof for that

is his old friend Gleb Yakunin, who

was arrested a few months before

Father Dmitry on similar charges,

but who did not recant in 1980 and

who won himself a five-year prison

term and five years in exile as a

result. The life stories of the two

men could almost be a science-

fiction story, in which someone

faces an important binary choice and

we get to see all the consequences

that follow from both available

decisions. Father Dmitry went one

way; Father Gleb went the other.

Father Gleb and I arranged to

meet in the office of For Human

Rights, a pressure group, in central

Moscow. I was early and sat in the

lobby, surveying the chaos of a

place

where

new-generation

Russians scurried around while

grizzled veterans of the Soviet-era

struggle tapped away one-fingered at

their keyboards.

Brown boxes were piled along

the corridor, those on the bottom

sagging under the weight of those

above and slowly oozing their

papers on to the floor. Wires ran

along the walls and floor, linking

extension cord to extension cord.

Heaps of newspapers were covered

in drifts of dust. One headline –

‘How much of an armed force does

Russia need?’ – was all but illegible

through the dirt. An alcove was full

of a precarious heap of ring binders.

If you had wanted to access the one

labelled

‘Outgoing

2008’,

you

would have had to remove about a

dozen others first or else risk them

all collapsing on the floor. Some

tinsel decorated a doorway. New

Year’s Eve had been just a few

weeks previously, but the tinsel

looked like it had been there far

longer than that.

Yakunin arrived fifteen minutes

late, bustling in off the street and

greeting everyone boisterously. He

led me downstairs, where the

basement office was if anything

more chaotic than the one above. We

found space on a Formica-topped

desk piled with broken electronic

equipment, and he unloaded bread,

pork, garlic, tea bags, sugar and

more from a paper bag.

‘There,’ he said, when the kettle

had boiled and my notebook was on

my knee, ‘let’s talk.’

When he said ‘let’s talk’, he

meant that he would talk. He had a

story to tell and did not intend to be

interrupted. He and Father Dmitry

met in the 1960s when, in the

temporary liberal interlude that

followed

Stalin’s

death,

they

opposed changes to the governance

of the Orthodox Church that made

priests into employees of their

parishioners – that is, of the local

government – and thus increased

state control over them.

In the end, only Yakunin and

one other agreed to put their names

to the letter of protest, and Yakunin

lost his parish as a result.

Despite Father Dmitry’s last-

minute decision to keep his signature

off the letter, the two men remained

close. They were priests, they were

neighbours, their wives got on; they

had a lot in common. When Yakunin

founded the Christian Committee for

the Defence of Believers’ Rights in

1976, Father Dmitry republished its

statements

in

his

self-typed

newspaper.

‘He was a pure Church person

and said what he wanted. I was

banned and only Dudko could speak

so openly. Naturally, that meant

Western journalists went to him, and

when the K G B decided to crush the

human rights movement, they added

him too,’ Yakunin said.

The K G B linked them together,

and

the

K

G

B’s

favourite

newspaper,

the
Literary Gazette
,

lambasted them both, along with

Ogorodnikov, in 1977. Yakunin’s

arrest in November 1979 preceded

Dudko’s by a couple of months, and

they were held in the same detention

centre. It was there that Yakunin got

the first hint that Father Dmitry

might not endure. While his own

interrogator attempted to break him

down, Yakunin could hear voices

coming through the wall.

Yakunin’s interrogator noticed

and said: ‘So? Do you hear how

your friend Dudko is talking to his

investigator?’

At the time, Yakunin thought

Father Dmitry was holding out, since

the voices were loud and angry, but

he was wrong. He was deeply

disappointed by Dudko’s recantation

and television appearance, and by

the subsequent changes to his

character.

‘There were always people who

gave up, because they were scared.

But with Dmitry Dudko, it was like a

rebirth. He could have asked for

forgiveness for his cowardice, but he

didn’t.

Instead,

he

created

a

construction to explain it. It was like

a

psychological

rebuilding

of

himself. He went on and on about

how much he loved the K G B. It

was almost as if he fell into a

psychological hole.’

Yakunin was tried and convicted.

He was under no illusions about the

official Church’s attitude to him. At

his trial, two priests who represented

the Orthodox Patriarchate abroad

testified

that

his

‘antipatriotic

activity’ had turned the Christians of

the world against the Soviet Union.

Another witness said Yakunin could

drink two bottles of vodka (Yakunin

asked

in

return:

‘Over

what

period?’),

while

another

said

Yakunin

was

an

agent

of

imperialism, an opponent of peace,

and deserved to be on trial. On

hearing his sentence, Yakunin said:

‘I thank God for the destiny I have

been given.’

He was therefore in prison when

Father Dmitry suffered the guilt and

loneliness that allowed the K G B to

remodel his character, and he was

away in exile for the whole long

process that changed his old friend

from a believer in humanity to an

anti-Semite. This is not to say that all

was well in prison. Yakunin and

others

suffered

torments.

Ogorodnikov later wrote that he had

attempted suicide three times, in full

knowledge of the fact that it was a

mortal sin.

And their tormentors knew how

to keep them twisting. In 1986,

Ogorodnikov was tried again and

forced to confront the world’s

indifference. ‘An empty courtroom

during my trial, where besides the K

G B there were only the two of you,’

he wrote to his mother, ‘is

symptomatic evidence of the loss of

interest in my cause and the

weakening of Christian activity.’

It is a testament to the strength of

both Yakunin’s and Ogorodnikov’s

characters that they survived. At last

they

heard

that

things

were

changing. A colonel in the K G B

flew all the way to Yakutia to see

Yakunin in exile, and they got drunk

together. Yakutia was about as

remote as you could get in the Soviet

Union,

so

Yakunin

realized

something was up.

‘He said they knew I was honest,

and they did not need me to sign any

papers. I could go back to Moscow

and be a priest if only I stopped my

political and human rights activities.

I told them I had already been so

long in prison I didn’t mind staying

a little longer,’ he said, smiling.

‘Then a couple of months passed

and all political prisoners were

amnestied.’

He was given a parish, but it was

a different world that he had come

back to. The dissidents had always

hoped that, given the chance,

everyone in Russia would be just

like them: idealistic, democratic,

honest. It did not turn out that way.

The new freedoms did not spark a

reckoning of the betrayals of the past

as the dissidents had hoped, or an

examination of the Russians’ own

sins, but rather an orgy of blaming

minorities

and

foreigners.

The

change wrought in Father Dmitry

had been visited on millions of other

Russians, who shared his distrust of

outsiders and his self-loathing.

Among the little group of

believers who had discussed the

reforms to the Church with Father

Dmitry and Yakunin in the early

1960s was a priest called Alexander

Men. Unlike them, however, he had

stayed out of trouble. He had not felt

the need to advertise himself, so the

Soviet government had not bothered

him, instead leaving him to inspire

those around him with his gentle

faith and unflinching honesty.

He was born a Jew, but had

never felt any kind of discrimination

from ethnic Russians in the 1970s,

the time when Father Dmitry was

preaching inclusiveness and urging

everyone to stand together to oppose

the collapse of Russian society. By

September 1990, however, that had

all gone.

‘In 1975, fifteen years ago, I

gave an interview which was