The Last Man in Russia: The Struggle to Save a Dying Nation (9 page)

flee the city all summer, head out at

weekends. This Saturday morning,

my carriage was packed with them

and

sweltering.

Temperatures

reached 39 degrees in late July 2010.

In a few weeks’ time, fires in the

forests and in dried peat bogs around

Moscow would choke the city.

As the train set off with a rattle, I

sweated against the plastic seat back

and resented the couple opposite me

whose legs were trespassing into my

space.

I had been at a dreadful party

hosted by a British diplomat the

night before and had, in a fit of

revenge against everyone in the

world, got drunk and boorish. This

morning I was still irritable. My eyes

itched and my brain ached. As we

rumbled out of the Kursk station, a

procession of hawkers entered our

carriage and loudly failed to interest

us in the items they had for sale:

nylon socks, potato peelers, radios.

A gypsy boy came and played the

accordion so badly I was tempted to

pay him to go away.

The sun shone on the forest as

we left the city behind.

The seminary at Zagorsk did not

open

immediately

after

the

restoration of the Orthodox Church.

At first instruction was given in

Moscow. The first time that Father

Dmitry and his classmates got to see

the ancient seminary buildings was

in May 1947, when they took this

same railway line to celebrate mass

in

the

glorious

Assumption

Cathedral, built under Ivan the

Terrible and the centrepiece of

Russia’s holiest monastery.

That was where I was going on

that baking-hot train. The trees

flicked past the window. The grass

beneath them was dry and sparse.

There was a lot of summer still to

come, and it was already the hottest

since records began. In a couple of

weeks, Russia would ban wheat

exports

in

anticipation

of

a

disastrous harvest and the world’s

food prices would soar in response.

The couple opposite me whose

legs I had resented were now asleep.

They were middle aged and heavy

set. He wore a light-blue shirt and

flat cap, while she wore a flowery

dress and looked hot and flustered

even with her eyes closed.

I too tried to doze, but I kept

being knocked by other passengers.

They were fare-dodgers, pushing up

the train in the hope we would stop

soon and they could run down the

platform around behind the ticket

inspectors to the already checked

rear of the train. Their chances were

slim. The inspectors worked in a

team of four: two women and two

burly men to keep order.

The woman opposite had tucked

her arm through her husband’s. She

did not remove it even when asked

to show her ticket, as if she were

worried he might be stolen. Their

tickets checked, she closed her eyes

and laid her head back on his

shoulder. He did not wake up, and

slept with a slight smile. Their

fondness for each other improved

my mood considerably.

After an hour and a half of slow

rattling we pulled into Sergiev

Posad, a little town with factory

chimneys and apartment blocks. I

could not face walking far in the

heat, so I asked a taxi to drive me to

the great walled fortress of the

monastery complex, then felt stupid

for paying 150 roubles when the

journey took less than a minute.

The monastery was founded here

more than six centuries ago, when a

young man built a wooden chapel.

He was St Sergei, after whom the

town was named. His asceticism did

not stop him networking with

princes, however. They asked him to

bless their armies, and he secured a

reputation as a national religious

leader.

The complex has come a long

way since Sergei’s day, having been

ruled by a succession of equally

canny hierarchs and thus endowed

with land and wealth by generations

of tsars and aristocrats.

Today, it is a perfect fairy-tale

mix of heavy white walls – to guard

the monks against the threats of the

world, such as a Tatar attack in 1408

and a Polish siege 200 years later –

then, soaring above them, the elegant

gold bulb of the Assumption

Cathedral, topped by a cross so

heavy it needs guy wires. Either side

of the entrance gate, which is as

weighty as any castle’s, the icons are

sheathed in clear plastic marked by

hundreds of lipstick smears where

women on pilgrimage stop to kiss

them. As I walked in, thousands of

pigeons strutted among the feet of

the faithful, occasionally flying up to

their roosts in the arrow slits of the

high walls.

I had asked Oleg Sukhanov,

press officer at the seminary, to

show me around and was already

late. He was large and moustached

and wore black. He did not seem to

mind my lateness, however, and

bustled me through the crowd

flowing into this perfect little city of

Orthodox architecture.

The seminary was off to our

right, through a garden. Inside, stairs

stretched up to the first floor. The

stairwell was screened by heavy

mesh, like in a prison, as if to

prevent suicides. It struck a jarring

note, but I had no time to ask about

it, since at the first landing Sukhanov

strode left down a dark corridor

lined with photographs of the

seminary’s alumni.

He showed me the dormitory:

vaulted roof, whitewashed walls,

unvarnished parquet floor. Each bed

had a chair at its foot. They were so

close together only a narrow bedside

cupboard could fit between them. A

handful of students were relaxing,

wearing high-collared jackets like

military cadets. The room did not

look like it had been redecorated

since Father Dmitry’s day. The only

new furniture was a row of cheap

laminated wardrobes, the doors of

which were already hanging askew.

My tour was at high speed, and

next stop was the chapel. According

to legend, when King Vladimir, who

was to become the Russians’ first

Christian ruler after his conversion

in 988, wanted to choose a religion,

he sent emissaries to investigate all

the faiths of his neighbours: Latin

and Greek Christianity, Judaism and

Islam. The embassy that sailed to

Constantinople was so dazzled by

the gold and ritual and incense of

Hagia Sophia that they rushed back

to tell him all about it. Theirs was an

experience that visitors to Orthodox

cathedrals still revel in today.

‘When we stood in the temple,’

they are said to have told him on

their return, ‘we hardly knew

whether or not we were in heaven,

for, in truth, upon earth it is

impossible to behold such glory and

magnificence; we could not tell all

we have seen; there, verily, God has

His dwelling among men, and the

worship of other countries is as

nothing. Never can we forget the

grandeur which we saw. Whoever

has enjoyed so sweet a sight can

never elsewhere be satisfied, nor will

we remain longer as we are.’

That was convincing enough for

Vladimir. He converted to the Greek

version of Christianity in a decision

no doubt helped along by the

Byzantine emperor offering one of

his daughters as a bride. On entering

that chapel in Sergiev Posad, I could

see what those envoys had meant.

Sometimes Orthodox churches are

gaudy and vulgar, but this one was

sublime. A sky-blue vaulted roof

glowed gently in sunlight pouring

through a glazed lantern. Frescoes of

angels and saints sucked my eyes

towards the ranks of gold-framed

icons on the screen. An elegant

chandelier dominated the middle of

the space. Two women bowed in

their whispered prayers. Another

woman

carefully

straightened

narrow yellow candles that were

bending slightly in the warmth of the

day.

Father Dmitry, raised in a village

faith of whispered prayers in

homemade churches, would have

been entranced by the majesty of this

chapel. I craned my neck back and

traced

the

paintings

and

the

structure. It was magnificent: awe-

inspiring and calming all at once.

In

a

classroom

down

the

corridor, trainee priests stared and

giggled at laptops like students all

over the world. A sombre oil

painting of an intense religious

discussion loomed on the wall

behind them, with peasants clustered

around a cross in a dark room. The

students were young, handsome and

in high spirits.

Sukhanov and I returned to the

corridor with the photographs.

Father Dmitry’s year was the first

picture on the left, because they were

the first students to enter the

seminary after it reopened. All the

other years had formal portraits of

the students and teachers gathered

together. This one had eighteen

separate pictures, which had clearly

been gathered after the students had

already left. Some of them were

identified by name but most were

not, and I could not find Father

Dmitry among them.

Later accounts relate how he

always loved talking and debating, a

trait he learned from the father and

grandfather that had introduced him

to Christianity. They had taught him

that religion is a living thing,

something to be discussed and

celebrated. His father had taught him

phrases from the Bible, and they had

explored them, asking what they

meant. He must have been a

rambunctious presence in class, and

that alone was enough to make him

stand out. In 1940s Russia, people

who wanted to survive did not talk

openly to strangers. Even relatives

needed to be treated with caution.

Soviet children were raised on

the story of Pavlik Morozov, a

young boy whose body was found

on the edge of his village in the

Urals in 1932. According to the

story pieced together (some say,

invented) by the police, Pavlik had

informed the authorities that his

father, a poor peasant, was forging

documents allowing kulaks to pass

themselves off as ordinary citizens.

On the basis of the evidence, his

father was exiled. Pavlik was then

murdered. Four of his family

members – his grandparents, a

godfather and a cousin – were

executed for the crime, which was

said to have been a bloody act of

revenge.

The story, which is likely to have

been fabricated but which was

passed off as true, was turned into an

opera, songs, plays and biographies.

School groups visited Morozov’s

grave, and children were encouraged

to believe that snitching on your

own father was valuable if your

father was working against the state.

Martyrdom

in

the

service

of

communism was the highest ideal.

Stories such as this one established a

generation gap between new, young

Soviet people and the old patriarchal

villages of their parents.

As the historian Orlando Figes

put it: ‘for anyone below the age of

thirty, who had only ever known the

Soviet world, or had inherited no

other values from his family, it was

almost impossible to step outside the

propaganda system and question its

political principles’.

Father Dmitry, however, had