The Last Man in Russia: The Struggle to Save a Dying Nation (49 page)

published in Paris. They asked me

whether there was any anti-Semitism

in the Church. I said that I hadn’t

come across any, not on a mass

scale. Fifteen years later and the

picture has completely changed. I

wouldn’t say the same thing now.

Anti-Semitism

has

become,

unfortunately,

one

of

the

distinguishing

features

of

the

Church,’ he told an interlocutor,

who then asked if he himself had

been a target.

‘Of course, that goes without

saying. I feel it. I have been a priest

for a long time, thirty or so years,

but this has only started to happen

now. I feel it in the way people

behave towards me, in the way they

talk to me, in everything . . . There

has to be a category of people who

are held responsible for the sins of

society. They are the personification

of society’s own sins.’

Men pointed out that, even if the

anti-Semites were right and that it

was Jews who had ordered that

churches be dynamited and believers

killed, nothing would have happened

had Russians refused to obey.

Obeying orders, he was saying, is

not a defence.

‘That means people are to blame.

But it’s a very difficult thing to

admit and so you have to find

someone else to blame. It’s easy to

swear at the Jews. A coward will

always

pick

on

someone

defenceless.’

That was an austere message to

give to the Russians, a nation that

had been obeying unpalatable orders

for seven decades.

‘Make a comparative analysis of

denazification in Germany and

destalinization

here

and

you’ll

understand.’

That interview seems as relevant

now as it did when he gave it,

perhaps even more so considering

the Kremlin’s current campaign

against historians who publish works

‘to

the

detriment

of

Russia’s

interests’. But he never got to see

how prophetic he was. He was

struck down from behind with an

axe four days later while walking

from his home to the train station.

He was aged just fifty-five. His

murder has never been solved, but it

is easy to see a link between the

racism he had suffered and his tragic

end.

Yakunin rambled a lot during

our conversation. It was hard to keep

him on the topic of the 1980s. He

preferred to skip through current

events – Egypt, a new law in Russia,

the unexpected cold, an album of

chants he wanted to record – but he

would come back to the 1980s in the

end.

‘In our camp there were fifty

political prisoners and 250 guards.

And we only had three real

dissidents. Of the others, some had

tried to cross the border, or to blow

something up. They were not actual

dissidents.

Us

dissidents

were

necessary to the K G B though, you

see, and when they imprisoned us all

they had no one left to fight.

‘The thing that interests me is

why they were so scared of us.

When our information got to the

West, they were scared. But look

now, look at the things people write,

and they don’t care. They spit on it.

That is the single big difference

between now and then. They don’t

care any more.’

In 1990, after his release from

the camps, Yakunin was elected to

the Russian parliament. He was part

of the liberal wing pushing for

reforms

and,

when

hardliners

launched a coup to try to preserve

the Soviet Union in 1991, it was

natural that he should be part of the

commission set up to investigate it.

That gave him access to the K G B

archives. It is hard to believe now,

but in that brief window of reform,

an uncompromising dissident priest

was allowed free access to the

deepest secrets of the state.

‘They asked me which bit I

wanted

to

see.

I

said

Fifth

Directorate, fourth section, which

was the section devoted to the

Orthodox Church. I wrote out all the

most important facts for three

months. I should have kept my

mouth shut and worked more, but I

could not.’

In

January

1992,

Yakunin

publicly revealed the extent to which

top Church figures had helped the K

G B. He published their codenames,

giving them a chance to own up to

their identities: A B B A T (that was

Metropolitan Pitirim); A N T O N O

V (that was Metropolitan Filaret);

and A D A M A N T (that was

Metropolitan

Yuvenali,

Father

Dmitry’s bishop and the one who

had moved him from parish to

parish at the K G B’s request). They

refused to identify themselves, and

their outraged boss, the patriarch,

went to top officials demanding that

Yakunin’s access be ended.

Yakunin protested and wrote to

the patriarch. ‘If the Church is not

cleansed of the taint of the spy and

informer, it cannot be reborn,’ he

told him. He listed the codenames

again, and singled out one unknown

hierarch for particular attention.

‘The most prominent agents of

the past include D R O Z D O V –

the only one of the churchmen to be

officially honoured with an award

by the K G B,’ he wrote. The

patriarch was right to panic about the

damage Yakunin could do, since D

R O Z D O V was in fact himself.

The K G B’s penetration had gone to

the very top, and it is hardly

surprising that the Church did not

want to rid itself of the spies. If it

did, there would be hardly anyone

left. It was not just the odd rogue

priest who had informed on his

flock, but almost everyone. The

rogues were the ones who had

refused to help the K G B.

In this way, the Church was a

true reflection of the whole of

Russian society. The K G B and the

Russian people had penetrated each

other to such an extent that they

could not be separated. The culture

of betrayal and suspicion and

distrust that the K G B relied on had

become part of the national culture,

poisoning politics in the 1990s and

beyond: decades of corruption,

murder and sordid sex scandals. If it

cannot purge itself, however, the

Russian nation will never rid itself of

the illness that has driven people to

alcohol. Russians need to trust each

other again.

Amid the furore of the emerging

truth of how far the K G B had

penetrated the Church, Patriarch

Alexy attempted to explain why he

had decided to work for the security

services. Like informers everywhere,

he clearly knew deep down that he

had acted wrongly, but he could not

bring himself to do the honourable

thing and resign. Instead, he told an

audience in America that he had no

choice but to cooperate, since

otherwise the churchgoers would

have had no priests, which would

have been a disaster.

‘I still now think with terror of

what might have happened to my

flock if by my “decisive” actions I

had left it without the Eucharist,

without being able to attend church,

if I had left their children without

Baptism and the dying without their

final parting words. I would have

committed a great, indelible sin, and

out of concern for my own moral

reputation I would have left the

running of the diocese and betrayed

my flock,’ he said. In short, he had

had to betray the Church in order to

save it.

Yakunin

continued

his

campaign. Eventually, therefore, in

October 1993, he was defrocked.

Even the Soviet Union had not

disqualified him as a priest. It had

taken his parish, but not his title. It

took the spite of an Orthodox

hierarchy on the defensive to throw

him

out.

He

maintained

his

campaign for a full inquiry into the

Church, however, and in February

1997 the Church took the last

remaining step open to it. He was

officially excommunicated, a step

usually reserved for someone who

has committed acts of serious and

unrepentant heresy. ‘Let him be

anathema before the whole people,’

the Church said in a statement issued

after a full synod.

It is a sign of how far the

Church’s values and those of the

liberals had diverged that, while

Yakunin was being thrown out, a

priest called Ioann could remain

metropolitan of St Petersburg despite

anti-Semitism so virulent that he

considered
The Protocols of the

Elders of Zion
to be ‘already in

action’. A racist was a bishop. A K

G B agent was patriarch. In a way, it

is hardly surprising that Yakunin

should be thrown out for being an

honest man.

Western liberals who had praised

Father Dmitry in the past were so

disgusted by the change in him and

the Church that they dropped any

further interest. In a study of the

modern Russian Orthodox Church

published in Britain in 1986, Dudko

had the second highest number of

entries in the index: more than

Stalin, or Solzhenitsyn, more even

than Ukraine. In another study by

the same author published ten years

later, he was not mentioned once.

I asked Yakunin whether he

regretted never having made up with

Father Dmitry.

‘You know, my mother and

father are buried at the Friday

Cemetery,’ he began, and I worried

he had headed off on another

tangent. Then I remembered that

Father Dmitry is buried in the Friday

Cemetery, so I listened closely. ‘I

regularly go there to pray. One time,

when I had finished, I needed a pee,

so I went over to the wall, and I was

peeing, and I looked up, and there

was Dmitry Dudko, and I was

pissing on him.’

He laughed.

‘No, I never saw him again. It

would have been like talking to a

deaf mute. There would have been

no point.’

As I walked away, I mused on

what Yakunin had said, and I

realized something I had not noticed

before. I had spoken to almost all the

people who had been closest to

Father Dmitry, the core members of

his

old

community,

over

the

previous year or so. And almost

none of them now had any contact

with each other at all.

Yakunin

never

saw

Father

Dmitry

after

their

arrest.

Ogorodnikov never saw Yakunin,

and asked me for his phone number.

It was me who broke the news to

Ogorodnikov that his old friend

Sergei Fedotov had died the year

before.

‘What? Sergei? Tell me you’re

mistaken, tell me you’re mistaken,’

he said again and again, breaking off

our talk to come back to it.

Father Vladimir never saw Father

Alexander, and neither of them saw

Yakunin.

Father

Dmitry’s

son

Mikhail, when he heard I had seen

Yakunin, who is his godfather, said:

‘Well, I don’t expect you’ll hear

much from him.’ And so it went on.

The K G B’s destruction of the

community had been so successful

that now they just swapped gossip

about how far the others had fallen.

‘You know, apparently, he’s

involved in group sex,’ one former

disciple said about another I had