Solovki is the mystical capital of the universal Gulag. Here the Second Calvary took place, on which Christ was crucified in the face of millions of martyrs. The secret of Solovki lies in the fact that they were the center of ancient Hyperborea, its theopolis. In the era of Christianity, holy sketes and monasteries were founded here. During the time of the Moscow-Byzantine kingdom, the Solovetsky monastery was turned into a prison, Solovki became the place of the crucifixion of Holy Russia. From them will come her great resurrection. For the last 500 years, according to the revelation of the Mother of God, the Bridal Odr of the Most High has been stretched over Solovki, and the hosts of martyrs have known the sweetness of divine marriage.

In the grace of the transforming Solar Virgin, the territory of the Gulag surrounded by barbed wire seemed like a breathing oasis of peace, a place of the quietest peace and eternal bliss... At midnight, according to the time of Jerusalem above, the faces of those involved shone with an indescribable light - the Mother of God came. Some were on their knees, others were lying on the bunk with crossed arms and listened to Her words...

Solovki... Today it is one of the most mysterious places on earth, associated not only with the bloody history of Stalinism, but also called the mystical capital of the Gulag. Tradition says that as far back as the 18th century, the Mother of God appeared to the monk Jesus, who lived on the island of Anzer in the Solovetsky Archipelago, in a dream and told that this place would be called the Second Golgotha: rivers of blood would be shed here, thousands of innocent souls would die ... The glorification of Solovki will change almost instantly the fate of Russia. In the shortest possible time, it will be possible to achieve what would take many years of earthly labors. Russia will become a treasury of new paths and images, which the world needs so much today. This book is a prophetic voice, an apocalyptic alarm on the eve of the universal transfiguration. Those who seek the ultimate truth, who rush into the wilderness of knowledge of God, will find in the person of the author a secret interlocutor and a mysterious guide.

In a unique, new spiritual key, the author comprehends the martyrdom of millions of innocent victims during the years of the Stalinist Gulag. In inhuman suffering, many of them acquired incorruptible and myrrh-streaming relics. In equal sorrows, equal Love was revealed to them. The hitherto hidden sources of man's inexhaustible potential gushed forth.

One of the secrets of Solovki is the story of Seraphim of Solovetsky, perhaps the most mysterious person in the history of the 20th century. In fact, no one knows about his fate. God kept him until the time. And he himself did not open his mouth. And this is understandable. After spending thirty-nine years in the dungeons of the Stalinist Gulag, he was used to keeping his mouth silent, even to his closest children he did not say anything about himself. There is evidence that Mikhail II Romanov (Seraphim Solovetsky) spent thirty-nine years in the dungeons of Stalin's concentration camps. The sky gave him a spiritual name: Seraphim Tender - Patriarch of Solovetsky. Seraphim Solovetsky is a phenomenal personality. Neither a shooting bullet, nor the torture of a sadistic executioner, nor the bayonet of a vokhrovets took him ...

The Solovetsky fathers redeemed mankind by the martyrdom of love. From Solovki - the revival of our fatherland and the flowering of the true faith. Solovki is the golden treasury not only of Russia, but of all mankind. Sekirnaya Hill on the Solovetsky Islands is known for its legendary staircase. During the years of the Gulag, the victim was tied into a bag, tied to a log and thrown down an almost sheer ladder. To this day, the steps of the ax ladder soaked in martyr's blood are fragrant.

The Solovetsky martyrs, leaving this mortal world, asked with tears: will our descendants, our children, know what kind of love we knew on Solovki. collected everything that the Solovetsky Fathers wanted to reveal to mankind.

The fourth book from the cycle dedicated to the phenomenon of Solovetsky Calvary combines articles of Blessed John from different years and personal revelations given to him by the great saint of the 20th century, the solar hierarch of the Second Calvary - Seraphim (Romanov). The experience of the revelation of Christ among the infernal machine of the Stalinist concentration camps. Experience of victory over fear and death. The experience of ascending to heaven in spite of circumstances, time, human conventions. The Church, which went to Solovki, not only withstood - it ascended to the heights of holiness and knowledge of God, which it did not even imagine for all the previous two Christian millennia. How did this become possible? The answer lies in the personality and path of St. Seraphim, an apocalyptic figure in the literal sense of the word, a patriarch, miracle worker, mystic and martyr who defeated the horrors of the Gulag with courage and faith. Behind the barbed wire in the prison barracks, Seraphim reached the highest level of holiness possible on earth. By the power of Christ's unspeakable love, Seraphim defeated the Gulag, death, and the red dragon.

Completely unexpected - in the depths quivering and tender, from the Loving Heart of the Father to the hearts of those who are thirsty and suffering, who are in places of deprivation of liberty ...

Myrrh streams continue, its manifestations to many and healing. Mother's school begins to triumph in Croatia, Japan and America, as if she were here in the flesh or passed away in her second term. Years of wandering. That will refuse to vote - and young police cadets practice on it during interrogations. Ordeals - hospitals, arrests, cells, hunger, poverty. She went to Pochaev to Abbot Amphilochius, a famous chiropractor. I read in her heart the thirst for the Lord - he accepted the orphan. Euphrosyne conquers immediately. Instantly captivates the heart of his student. Her irresistible boldness about perfect holiness captivates the follower. The highest spirituality transcends the most brilliant instructions from book models. In front of everyone, it stretches out an invisible spiritual ladder to Heaven and highlights the fiery steps of ascent. The unsurpassed mystery of the path. Loving mother, kind, sensitive. Everything is awe, fiery jealousy, a burning heart. And outwardly - a beggar woman, a homeless woman, oppressed and despised. She wore a demi-season coat for ten years. In it, she was buried in a simple, wooden coffin. In it, and froze ...

A series of inspired essays dedicated to the secret life story of Maria Veniaminovna Yudina (1899-1970), a great pianist and teacher... and at the same time a catacomb schema nun, ascetic and holy fool who was not afraid to challenge Stalin himself. Yudina's revelation to Blessed John outwardly began with piano sonatas for four hands, with concertos by Beethoven and Mozart ... and one day a story emerged that was phenomenal in itself, similar to a Greek myth or a tragedy by Sophocles: an episode with her playing for Stalin. (This apocalyptic duel of hers with a tyrant has become a byword and is mentioned in all biographies. You will find the spiritual dimension of the piano duel with the Kremlin Goliath in the essay of Blessed John “Playing for Stalin”, which is included in this book). However, for Father John, oddly enough, the musical meeting with Yudina was not the first. A long time ago, long before his conversion to faith, in a Moscow church he once met her personally, eye to eye. “I had a mystical connection with this woman for at least 40 years. All these years I remembered her, and she remained a mystery to me. The unexpressed Logos lurked in her. At the mention of her name, something began to happen to me. I felt in her one of those unusually kindred souls, but I knew nothing about her and was afraid to approach this secret. I actually saw her. I even remember the moment when our eyes crossed, exchanged burning glances...” “Holy Heavenly Maria Yudina”, p.19-22

First Martyr of the Church of the Third Millennium. Like the Savior, he ascended Golgotha. He defeated the devil and world hypocrisy, for which he was named the king of the Holy Spirit. Like the Baptist, the last prophet of the New Testament church and the first prophet and forerunner of the church to come. As befits a Melchizedek priest, he uncompromisingly and fearlessly testified to the living faith. He denounced the lies and dishonor of the Josephite inquisitors. Pierced by the bayonet of a drunken Red Army soldier, he passed through the gates of death, defeated death, resurrected and continued to live for several years with the bloody stigma of a perforated heart. Before the eyes of thousands, he was lifted up in a pillar of fire to heaven. His life, death, ascension and miraculous phenomena stagger any imagination. “They, the Solovetsky martyrs, were threatened with complete oblivion. Anonymous and nameless, with the last dying groan, they left this world, doomed to the dull unconsciousness of their descendants. But God raised up new heavenly chroniclers. They descended from above as prophets of the last days on the eve of the great Transfiguration, the change of eras and civilizations. They came to tell the people the truth. Reveal the lie. To open to the world the lamps that hold life on earth. St. Innocent of Balta is royally great among them. He will soon, together with Seraphim of Solovetsky and Nicholas II the myrrh-streaming, lead the triumphal procession of the anointed of the Second Golgotha ​​of Christ the Holy Spirit. They will be called the crowned conquerors. And they will be glorified as the saviors of the world.”

God brought to the surface an island, a piece of land (if you measure it by the scale of other islands), striking with unexpected harsh beauty, over which a living sky spreads. It has an inexhaustible depth, the Most Holy Theotokos, angels and saints descend from there. Heaven saves Patriarch Seraphim from death on Solovki. He must survive for the sake of the future of the Church, he must survive in order to tell the truth about Solovetsky Golgotha. About that Golgotha ​​that contained the entire Gulag, the entire martyr army, the entire color of the nation, faithful servants and fearless spiritual warriors of their beloved God. And He, the Judge and the generous Father, strengthened His army for the future Russia.

The Greatest Crime Committed Against Him

(Sovereign Emperor NicholasII) should be smoothed out

ardent veneration of Him and glorification of His feat

Saint John

Archbishop of Shanghai and San Francisco (Maximovich).

It has already been ninety years since the day of the “Repudiation” of Emperor Nicholas II from the All-Russian Throne, and we have come to the ninetieth anniversary of a terrible tragedy in the life of the Russian people and state - the bloody inhuman massacre of the entire August family. Seven years after the glorification by the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate of the holy royal martyrs-passion-bearers in the guise of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, we would like to turn again to their unparalleled feat.

As you know, the Holy Scriptures, and, above all, the Gospel, can not immediately be understood after the first reading. Each time, rereading the seemingly familiar and previously read lines of the sacred text, you find something new. And there is nothing surprising in this, since the Gospel enters the human heart, begins to be understood and realized when a person tries to live as God the Word, Christ, who came into the world, spoke. The life of a Christian according to the Gospel is the revelation of the depth of his falling away from God through sinful habits, inclinations, passions and intensified work on uprooting them from the soul with the help of the grace of God. Step by step, the soul is invisibly transformed, the image of God is purified in it. Gradually, a person begins to see, understand and realize what was previously invisible and incomprehensible to him.

This applies not only to the reading of Holy Scripture, but also to the lives and deeds of the saints, who in their lives showed the power and effectiveness of the Gospel. The grace of God worked abundantly in their souls, and Christ Himself dwelt. Trying to delve into their lives is also one of the tasks of a Christian. The habit of perceiving everything superficially, from the position of one's own rational sinful judgment about everything, is a feature of our time. What does not fit into the scheme of my logic, I do not accept, a position quite often encountered in the church environment. However, such an actually Protestant attitude towards patristic tradition is not acceptable for an Orthodox Christian, it is not salvific. To cultivate in oneself a patristic approach to everything in the spirit of grace-filled humility of wisdom is the greatest task of Christian achievement. In the same way as the theology of the greatest hierarchs of the Church is comprehensible only under the condition of striving to imitate their way of life.

It is the absence of a feat in personal life that leads a person to completely false opinions and ideas, to the desire for reformism. And if the task of the Church is the inner transformation of a person, and this rebirth is accomplished not mechanically, but by the grace of God through personal achievement, then this task of Divine Providence remains impossible with the resistance of a person to live and think as the saints of the Church lived and thought.

The ideology generated by modern reality - to live without a charitable feat, has such a pernicious effect on the human spirit that it becomes incapable of seeing and perceiving holiness. Therefore, the picture of stubborn controversy around the Royal Family before canonization is quite understandable. The saints of the Church saw and recognized in the August family the holy saints of God, and the rationalists poured mud on them like the Bolsheviks who destroyed Russia.

To understand the full depth of the feat they accomplished, perhaps human words are not enough. This feat must be felt with one's own heart.

But since the feat of the Holy Royal Martyrs is undoubtedly a feat of martyrdom, martyrdom and suffering for their people and country, then it is in the context of the teaching of the Church of Christ about this feat that their feat should be considered.

“Remembering the victories of the glorious martyrs over the devil and his servants and the suffering deeds of the ascetics of Christ means proclaiming the glory of Christ our God and preaching His power, manifested in the good deeds of the martyrs who suffered for the glory of His most holy name. Christ Himself was victorious in everything, according to His word: dare, like Az won the world (In. 16, 33), and at first One for All fought the enemy. The holy martyrs who suffer after Him, being members of His Body (1 Cor. 12:27), fulfill according to the apostolic word, deprivation of the sorrows of Christ in the flesh his own (Col. 1:24); and since they, striving for His most holy name, die undefeated, Christ is the victor in them, for in them He suffers as in the members of His body, in them He manifests His triumph over the adversary and, being glorified, together with Him glorifies His members, those who suffered for Him, that is, the holy martyrs, who are as nearer to Him in glory as they imitated Him in suffering. Therefore, it is fitting for us to glorify and bless the good soldiers of Christ, whose teachings and example of courageous deeds the Church of Christ shines throughout the world; they themselves, under the altar, dressed in white clothes, stained with their own blood, but whitened with Christ, rest in bliss. This is how the Holy Orthodox Church perceives and sees the meaning of the podvig of the holy martyrs.

If we carefully examine the content of the liturgical following of our Church to the holy martyrs, we will see that the Church of Christ has always seen in these valiant soldiers of Christ and perceived them as a sacrifice offered to God not so much for their sins, but for the liberation of other people from slavery to the devil, consecration of this place. So, for example, the Great Martyr Theodore Stratilates, as his life tells about it, specifically calls the emperor Licinius to Heraclea in order to consecrate this city with his sufferings. Many cases are known from the lives of the martyrs, such as, for example, from the sufferings of the Hieromartyr Charalambius, Bishop of Magnesia, when, thanks to the miracles that accompanied the martyrs, many turned from paganism to the Living and True God.

The very idea of ​​sacrificing oneself for the sake of others pervades all Christian doctrine. After all, it is not by chance that the Lord Himself, having given us an example of limitless self-sacrifice for the sake of saving others, says in the Gospel: there is no more that love, if someone lays down his life for his friends (John 15, 13).

And not only in the martyrdom of the early Christian centuries do we find examples of self-sacrifice, but also in our times. Thus, for example, the well-known doer of noetic prayer, Archbishop Anthony, revealing the significance of the suffering of many New Martyrs of Russia, writes: “The suffering of our generation has set aside the suffering of other people for decades. Their sacrifice liberated us for a while from external suffering, as if they took it upon themselves. They suffered for us, but the Lord spares us for the blood they shed.”

In the lives of our great contemporary ascetics, we find many examples of amazing self-sacrifice for the sake of saving our neighbors.

One of the brightest, in our opinion, is the example from the life of the same Archbishop Anthony, who accepted the greatest suffering for deliverance from hellish torments of a recently deceased hieromonk, who fell into the mortal sin of adultery before his death. Dying, he asked the woman with whom he fell into sin: "You repent for me." She went to the then already dying Vladyka and asked for permission from sin, shedding tears of deep repentance. To this, Vladyka replied: “How can I allow it, because then I have to bear penance. And how can I carry a sick, dying man? After much persuasion, Vladyka released this woman from the burden of sin, but he said to his cell attendant: “Do you understand what happened? After all, now my soul must go to hell ... ". And as soon as Vladyka said this, the temperature rose sharply - over forty, terrible bleeding began, convulsions. And from the mouth was blood, and from below was blood. Everything was covered in blood. But there was not a single groan. He only whispered: “Glory to you, God! Glory to you, God! He forbade sedative injections, did not take any medication. The bleeding lasted all day.

In the biographies of Elder Paisios of Athos, the late Archimandrite Haralampios, hegumen of the Svyatogorsk monastery of Dionysias, we also find quite a few examples of self-sacrifice for the sake of loved ones. Archimandrite Charalampy performed numerous exhausting night vigils and nightly liturgies for healing and liberation from the demon, imposed fasts and prostrations, after which people got rid of their ailments. Elder Paisios recommended that parents impose feats on themselves in order to heal their children. And all this was of great help to the suffering. Here is another interesting story of Elder Haralampy about his teacher, Elder Joseph the Hesychast. “In the world, Geronda (i.e. Elder Joseph the Hesychast) had a cousin ... She died badly: she constantly grimaced, grimaced, spoke very badly and died in such a terrible state. Upon learning of this, the Elder began to cry. I was very surprised and thought: “What a thin person Geronda ... cries so much.” As if catching my thought, father Joseph said: “My child, I am crying not because she died, but because her soul went to torment.”

Nevertheless, from that day on, the Elder imposed a fast on himself and began to pray for his deceased sister. Once, after some time, I noticed that Father Joseph was literally beaming with joy. “What happened, Geronda?” I asked. “Now I will tell you, my child. All these days I have been constantly praying and staying vigilant, fasting and crying for my little sister, and today I have been granted a joyful and amazing vision. While praying, I saw my sister alive before me. With great joy she told me, “Today is the day for me to be saved. I got rid of torment, and I'm going to heaven.

Thus, all these examples emphasize the greatness of the Christian feat of self-sacrifice, through which a person becomes like Christ. In such a feat is the perfection of Christian love, which the ascetic acquires on the steps of divine sonship. Having reached this state, the Monk Elder Silouan of Athos spent all his nights in prayer for people. He said: "Praying for people is shedding blood." And his disciple, the ever-memorable elder Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov), emphasizes that “to love Christ with love means to drink His cup, that cup that the Man-Christ himself asked the Father to “pass”.

Sacrificing oneself, one's health, one's strength for the soul of another person, in the context of the biblical understanding of sacrifice, must be called a ransom. And if the sacrifice itself is the price of a ransom, then the deliverance of a person, his soul from an oppressive illness, sin, must be called liberation, deliverance, which is also redemption. And this terminology from the point of view of Christian theology within the framework of Holy Scripture should not confuse anyone, but, on the contrary, help to more accurately and clearly identify the meaning and meaning of the sacrifice, no matter what form and type it is.

It was precisely such a sacrifice that the martyrdom of the August Family, headed by Sovereign Emperor Nikolai Alexandrovich, was. But this was no longer a sacrifice for an individual, but for the entire Russian people, who were so loved by the Holy Royal Martyrs. Reading letters from prison, we meet not with hatred and malice towards our offenders and traitors, but with compassionate love. This is the love that can be inherent in the greatest ascetics who have reached sonhood.

It would be the greatest mistake to consider both the canonization of the Royal Family and their veneration as a phenomenon of a political nature. It must be remembered that the Orthodox monarch, according to the teachings of the Orthodox Church, is not a political figure, but a mystical one. His role in the state, his rights and obligations were outlined by church laws. Building a state on the commandments of the Lord and protecting the Church and Christian principles in public administration, directing the general course of life towards spiritual and moral goals - creating conditions that are most favorable for the salvation of many - is the main mission of royal service.

Today, one can also observe such a phenomenon when there are trends towards the restoration of the monarchy in Russia, but such projects are often based on completely false, secular principles, while ignoring its construction in accordance with Orthodox Tradition. In fact, this step should be regarded only as a continuation of the mockery of Russia, which began with the burial of the false remains of the "royal family" in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg, allegedly as a sign of "repentance." Thus, the atheistic nature of the secular power in Russia, its illegitimacy, was once again witnessed.

The materials of this section are intended to show that the veneration of the holy Royal Martyrs, correct and zealous, is a necessary condition for the restoration of our long-suffering Russia from the ashes. We hope that they will help our compatriots kindle in their hearts the love for the holy Royal Martyrs, move them to a deeper and more zealous veneration.

Attempts to consign their memory to oblivion or localize them to local veneration in Yekaterinburg is a very bitter and sad phenomenon of our time, testifying to a serious and tragic spiritual decline in our society. Even in the church environment, the attitude towards the holy Royal Martyrs is ambiguous. In some temples there are no icons, festive services are not performed. These signs of unhealthy and sinful indifference are a direct consequence of not only ignorance, but also the lack of achievement in personal Christian life. Only the right feat in prayer, fasting, repentance and the eradication of vicious passions from one’s heart elevates a person to God, cleanses the image of God tarnished in a person, gives a blessed feeling to know and see the saints, strive to imitate their God-pleasing life.

On this issue, we recommend reading the remarkable work of Archbishop Seraphim (Sobolev) “On the True Monarchist Worldview”, St. Petersburg, 1994, and “Russian Ideology”, which, in our opinion, sets out a completely correct Orthodox worldview regarding the political structure of Russia and its spiritual Orthodox roots.

“Blessed are you when you are reviled and persecuted
and it is unrighteous to speak evil of me in every possible way.
Rejoice and be glad, for great is your reward
in heaven: so they persecuted the prophets who were before you."

The 20th century is a time of special trials for Christians who lived in the USSR. The Soviet atheistic state elevated the task of destroying the church to the rank of state policy. The persecution of the church reached its greatest intensity in Stalin's time, when the Gulag arose. The word GULAG (Main Directorate of Camps) became a household word to refer to the system of Stalinist terror against its own people, and originally denoted the state structure that controlled the camps, which used the forced labor of millions of our former fellow citizens. Hundreds of thousands of Christians along with them experienced all the horrors of the Gulag.

The Bible says: “Remember your leaders who preached to you the word of God, and, considering the end of their lives, imitate their faith” (Heb. 13:7). And if we remember and honor the names of people who lived many thousands of years before us, the names of the heroes of the faith of the Old and New Testaments, then it would be wrong to forget the names of our grandfathers and fathers who lived quite recently, to forget their thorny path of suffering, confession of faith and martyrdom .

Priest Pavel Florensky.

Classroom hour.

(For students in grades 10-11).
Target: expanding the horizons of students in the field of national history

Educational task: development of moral qualities on the example of the life of an outstanding figure of Russian culture: self-sacrifice.

Facilities: visual, poetry.

Plan:

1. General information about the Gulag

2. Information about the ELEPHANT

3. The fate of Pavel Florensky

This development is intended for students in grades 10 - 11 of secondary educational institutions. It is designed to help the children realize the cruelty of the Soviet regime, namely, its manifestations - the Gulag. Also, this work solves an educational problem, namely, it must develop moral qualities, such as: self-sacrifice, humanism, justice. The work will also make the children think about indifference and moral deafness, insensitivity.

This material can be used in the lessons of history and literature when studying the work of A. Solzhenitsyn "The Gulag Archipelago".

Before the lesson, it is necessary to distribute to the students the material that they will present in the lesson.

The lesson can be conducted as a dramatization. The emphasis should be on the story about the fate of Father Pavel Florensky.

move
Teacher: All of you guys are familiar with the concept of Gulag from the course of National History, but I will remind you what it is again. Camp Management OGPU(ULAG) was organized 25th of April 1930 . Since November 1930 the name GULAG (the Main Directorate of Correctional Labor Camps of the OGPU) began to appear. The Gulag was closed by order MIA No. 020 from The 25th of January 1960 . Often, the term "GULAG" means not the administration itself, but the corrective labor camps (ITL) subordinate to it. The most famous - Berlag in Magadan, Gorlag near Norilsk, Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp(ELEPHANT), and in Kazakhstan – Karlag, ALGERIA(Akmola camp of wives of traitors). That was a terrible time in the history of Russia in the 20th century. A lot of people got hurt. They did not want to change their Christian faith and their convictions. And the 20th century in Russia was the century of militant atheism. All dissidents were sent to camps where people died. The survivors testified about the dead. Among the dead was the priest Pavel Florensky.

I will tell you about the camp in which Father Pavel Florensky was kept, according to the recollections of the surviving prisoners.

Student 1:“And from other Solovki I learned and more terrible than my eyes saw. They told me a disastrous word - Sekirka. It means - Sekirnaya mountain. In the two-story cathedral there are punishment cells. They keep them in the punishment cell like this: from wall to wall, poles as thick as an arm are strengthened and they order the punished prisoners to sit on these poles all day. (They lie on the floor at night, but on top of each other, overflowing). The height of the pole is such that you cannot reach the ground with your feet. It is not so easy to maintain balance, all day long the prisoner struggles to keep himself. If he falls down, the guards jump up and beat him.”

Student 2: Or: they lead outside to a staircase of 365 steep steps (from the cathedral to the lake, the monks built it); they tie a person along his length to a balance (log) for gravity - and push him (not a single platform, and the steps are so steep that a log with a person does not linger on them).

Student 3: Well, yes, you don’t go to Sekirka for perches, they are also in the Kremlin, always crowded, punishment cell. And then they put it on a ribbed boulder, on which you can’t resist either. And in the summer - "on stumps", which means - naked under mosquitoes. But then the punished must be watched; and if they tie a naked man to a tree, then mosquitoes will take care of themselves. Also, they put entire companies in the snow for wrongdoing. Also, they drive a man up to his throat into the lakeside swamp and hold him like that. And here is another way: they harness the horse to empty shafts, tie the legs of the guilty person to the shafts, a guard sits on the horse and drives it through the forest clearing until the groans and screams from behind end.

About father Pavel Florensky remembered associate of his youth priest Sergiy Bulgakov: “He found for himself the promised land at the Trinity of Sergius, loving every corner and plant in it, its summer and winter, spring and autumn. Of course, he knew what he could expect, he could not help but know, the fate of the Motherland spoke too inexorably about this, from top to bottom, from the brutal murder of the royal family to the endless victims of the violence of the authorities. It can be said that life seemed to offer him a choice between Solovki and Paris, but he chose ... his homeland, he wanted to share his fate with his people to the end. Both he himself and his fate are the glory and greatness of Russia, although at the same time its greatest crime.

Father Pavel Florensky was subjected to harsh persecution after the publication in 1922 of the work "Imaginations in Geometry", in which, in particular, he "incorrectly" interprets the theory of relativity. And in 1928, in Sergiev Posad, he was arrested. Without bringing any charges, in 1928 Father Pavel was deported to Nizhny Novgorod. He is soon returned from exile. But in the early thirties, he was again arrested and sentenced to 10 years in labor camps under Article 58, 10 and 11 points - “Propaganda or agitation containing a call to overthrow, undermine or weaken Soviet power ... as well as the dissemination or production of literature of the same content.

He was sent to the Far East to the East Siberian camp "Svobodny" and assigned to work in the research department of the BAMLAG administration. Then, in 1934, he was sent to the city of Skovorodino to an experimental permafrost research station, where he carried out a number of important studies, which later formed the basis of the work of his employees N.I. Bykov and P.N. Kapterev "Permafrost and construction on it" (1940). In 1934, a proposal was received - a petition from the government of Czechoslovakia to release Florensky and move him and his family to Czechoslovakia, but this petition was rejected by the government of the USSR. Then, in the fall of 1934, he was transferred to the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp, where he continued to lead scientific work in the camp plant of the iodine industry, in whose laboratory he was engaged in the development of technology for the extraction and production of iodine and agar-agar from seaweed and made a number of scientific discoveries and inventions.

Student 4: Pavel Florensky has fully realized himself in all three dimensions of perfection: he is a brilliant scientist, he is a loving father of his five children and spiritual children, and he is a Christian martyr, a priest who was shot in the Solovetsky camp. In terms of the abundance of creative ideas, partly ruined, partly realized, he can only be compared with Leonardo da Vinci, with the difference that Leonardo completed his life in honor and glory, and we don’t even know the grave of Father Paul...

Teacher: Evil is rooted in an ineradicable thirst to have the image of the enemy before one's eyes. In those years, the image of the enemy was a man in a cassock, a priest... He reminded of faith in God and His good commandments. If Pavel Florensky had not been a priest, he would probably have managed to fit into the system without merging with it, continuing his scientific research.

After the death of Father Pavel, the family left without him - his wife, their five children, and later their grandchildren, considered it their main family duty and business to preserve the legacy of Pavel Florensky. Despite the fact that in 1933 the Bolsheviks seized and destroyed the entire library of Pavel Florensky, thanks to the efforts of his wife and children, all his personal manuscripts were preserved. Later, when more favorable circumstances occurred, his children and grandchildren prepared for publication and published the bulk of his works, which were never published during his lifetime.

Who am I, Lord?

Who am I, Lord? Only an impostor
Spreading grace.
Every scratch and wound
The world tells me that I am a mother.

Just relying is enough
For one chain of reasons.
Stone, stone, you are the cornerstone,
Founding in the sky every rank.

Lord, Christ is the official,
Involve me among the workers,
To be more responsible and careful
Give me sparks from the fire.

So that not human complacency,
And your treasury of strength
I fight with longing and suffocation,
With an ancient serpent that captivated people.

Mother Mary (Grenoble, France)

Images-icons by Ksenia Krivosheina, 2000-2005

The host of Christian martyrs of the 20th century is countless. The next century has come, but our memory has left written and oral evidence of the sufferings of pious priests, monks and laity from the terrible two systems of totalitarianism of the past century. Today we can boldly put an equal sign between fascism and communism.

Mother Maria (Skobtsova), like many Russian people, left Russia and ended up in a foreign land as a result of the revolutionary upheaval of 1917. She died in the Ravensbrück camp in 1945 as a martyr at the hands of the Nazis. In the death camps, during the last world war, her son Yuri, Fr. Dmitry Klepinin, and next to them are thousands of innocent people and not only Jews. Fascism in Germany lasted only 13 years, and the Bolshevik regime of the USSR for 75 years. Hitler, Himmler, Lenin, Dzerzhinsky, Sverdlov, Stalin managed to turn the past century into a sea of ​​blood. This blood is not washed away, and human memory is short and ungrateful, but God does not forget anyone, and in due time all His saints will be glorified.

The Bolshevik government in 1917 officially proclaimed freedom of religion. In fact, this freedom turned into a systematic and merciless persecution of the Orthodox faith and the ministers of the Orthodox Church, as well as a complete plunder of church property. It was forbidden to teach the Law of God in schools, icons were removed from schools, the wearing of pectoral and pectoral crosses was punishable by law, mockery of the clergy and clergy became widespread ... The clergy began to be tortured and beaten to death; altars and objects of worship were defiled. So during the period of 1918, the Bolsheviks killed fourteen top representatives of the clergy, and among them: Metropolitan Vladimir of Kyiv, Archbishop Andronik of Perm and former Tobolsk Germogen, then Bishops Macarius and Ephraim, vicar Varsanofii of Novgorod and Vyatka vicars Ambrose and Isidore. Germogen of Tobolsk was sent to trench work in the winter, and then sunk. By 1918, the number of tortured priests could not be counted; they, together with their families, had to be counted in the thousands. Archpriest John Vostorgov, who was sentenced to death along with other persons, forbade blindfolding him and asked to be shot last in order to be able to guide all the other people who were being shot to a new life. And in these tragic months, quite unexpectedly, Patriarch Tikhon, having handed over his fate to God, openly and fearlessly opposes the Bolshevik authorities. On the anniversary of the celebration of the revolutionary upheaval in Russia, he publishes a message to the Councils of People's Commissars, in which he calls for an end to robberies and murders, and also delivers a bright and ardent sermon in the Kazan Cathedral in Moscow. Each word of these messages threatened the Patriarch with death, but he fearlessly sent the message to Lenin and took all measures to disseminate it widely. The patriarch was placed under house arrest. In his canteen, Chinese, Latvians and Russian Red Army soldiers were on duty round the clock, constantly insulting the Patriarch and hosting his house as if it were their own. The Cheka constantly and daily interrogated the Patriarch, and also deprived him of food rations. As a result, in Moscow the Church is subject to an indemnity and the Patriarch is charged 100 thousand rubles, the Trinity Lavra - 17 million, and the Athos Panteleimon Chapel - 100 thousand, etc.

The Novospassky Monastery was turned into a prison, and the first prisoner in it was the rector of this monastery, Bishop Seraphim. In other monasteries throughout Russia, commissars "settled" who oversee everything. Access to the Kremlin was forbidden, church services were canceled, and rumors spread throughout Moscow among believers that the Chudov Monastery had been converted into barracks, and orgies were taking place in the Assumption Monastery ... We now know how many monasteries this godless government turned into prisons and terrible torture chambers, under which monastic cells were allotted. The history of the Solovetsky Monastery is well known to everyone, but how many small and less significant churches were desecrated, defiled, demolished and closed in Russia during the years of Soviet power and even during the “Khrushchev thaw”!

Materials of the Special Commission to Investigate the Atrocities of the Bolsheviks, which is under the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces in the South of Russia A. Denikin (1918-1919)

(Posted on the site with abbreviations)

The higher clergy of the Don diocese attracted the special attention of the Bolsheviks. In November and December 1917, bold speeches were heard from the church pulpit of the cathedral condemning the fratricidal civil war begun by the Bolsheviks. The attitude of the Red Army men towards the clergy was extremely definite and unconditional. The rule included "kill the priest", and even laugh at him. Here, for example, are lines from a letter from a Red Army soldier to his relatives in the village: “... then we advanced and I was wounded in my left hand, this wound was light, two fingers were knocked out. And when we entered Persianovka, we did not spare anyone. They beat everyone. I also had to shoot one of the priests. And now we still continue to catch these devils in Novocherkassk and beat them like dogs ... "

It is terrible to imagine that this letter was written by a simple Russian, illiterate peasant, to his native villagers. Surely the writer himself was Russian, a baptized person, and not a non-Christian.

It is not yet possible to compile a complete list of clergymen killed in the Don region, but the following murders can be noted:

1) In the settlement of Rovenka, after March 1918, Father Nikolai Dobroselsky was sentenced by a senior Red Army soldier "to cut off his hair and shoot him for anti-Bolshevik sermons."

2) 1918 On July 2, the priest of the Assumption Church of the Samsonov farm, Pavel Alekseevich Vilkov, was shot by the Red Army. He was shot along with his two sons, officers, after a denunciation of them. The bodies were thrown into the pit. It was forbidden to bury, and only a few days later the family managed to secretly ransom the corpses of the executed. The priest was accused of shooting from the window at the Red Army. After the execution, the headquarters of the Red Army, dismantled the denunciation and issued a written decision that Fr. Vilkov and his sons were shot without guilt.

3) On January 7, 1919, the priest of the Trinity Church in the village of Kalinovsky, Father Nikolai Borisov, was killed. When priest Borisov was returning home that day after the Liturgy, he was met by a detachment of Red Army soldiers and ordered to go to the Khanzhenkovo ​​station. Having received permission to say goodbye to his family, Fr. Borisov was put on a line and taken away. After some time, the horse returned and brought the corpse on the ruler. On the body, in addition to a gunshot wound, several bayonet wounds were found. The inhabitants of the village were so terrorized by the Red Army that no one came to help the family remove the body, they did not dare to enter the house to make a coffin, sell the boards for the coffin and dig a grave.

4) Priest of the Peter and Paul Church at the Zimovniki station, Fr. Mikhail Rukin was killed by the Red Army on July 5, 1918. The funeral of the murdered took place under the noise of insults, ridicule and threats against the widow.

5) May 23, 1918 in the village of Tishanskaya, the Red Army captured the psalmist John Melikhov and taken away from the village. The next day, the completely naked corpse of John Melikhov was found with a mass of bayonet wounds and cut off genitals.

6) On May 10, 1918, the priest of the Church of the Nativity of the Mother of God of the Petrovsky farm, Alexander Ivanov, was shot by the Red Army in broad daylight on the church square, in front of his family and parishioners. He was accused of being a supporter of the Cossacks and an opponent of Bolshevism.

7) The Easter matins of 1818 in the church at the Rakovka station were interrupted by the Red Army soldiers, who arrived with the aim of taking Easter, eggs, etc. from the people and "by the way, to cut the priest's hair."

8) In the Cross Church of the Don Bishop's House, holy myrrh was poured on the floor, particles of relics were scattered and trampled by the Red Army soldiers, who walked around the church in hats and with cigarettes in their teeth.

9) In 1918, in the Novocherkassk Cathedral in the altar, the sailors put on a mourning miter and tried to attach the Red Army cockade to it, under the areal abuse they threw the shroud on the floor. And the seminary church in Novocherkassk, by all indications, served as a drinking place. Cigarette butts, scraps of bread, tin cans, and countless empty bottles were strewn all over the floor of the temple...

10) The population, outraged by the Bolshevik regime, in some areas rebelled against the Soviet regime. The military, who returned from a business trip in the areas of the uprising, brought a message that the Bolsheviks had occupied the village of Migulinskaya. To further intimidate the local population, which was massacred by masses, the Red Army soldiers arranged a "marrying of a priest with a mare" in the local church. A cross was brought to the muzzle of a horse brought to the church, as if giving a kiss. An orchestra of music thundered, the priest and his wife were forced to dance, and in the end they were shot!

The red thread in everything that is described by the witnesses is the desire of the Bolsheviks to shake and offend the religious feeling of the believer, to defile his soul as much as possible. And in all executions, unnecessary and often sadistic cruelty attracts attention. Shooting, destroying a person was considered insufficient. Usually they tortured their victim during life and mocked his body after death. As a general rule, clothes were plundered, forbidden to be buried, and thrown into landfills. It was considered necessary to "remove the priest", "kill the priest like a dog" and "bury like a dog". (Here we do not give all the evidence, there is a whole list of them. All of the above is based on the findings obtained by the Special Commission in the manner prescribed by the Charter of Criminal Procedure Case No. 42.)

According to the leader of the proletariat, Lenin, in the Communist Party there were "one hundred decent people - ninety scoundrels." And in 1905, Ulyanov-Lenin said: "The party is not a boarding school for noble maidens ... Another bastard, perhaps, is useful for us precisely because he is a bastard."

The conclusion from these words was in the affairs of the shoulders of the masters, real "troubadours of the revolution", comrades-in-arms, creators and leaders, Lenin's party comrades. Their work continued even after his death.

Information on the case of the opening by the Bolsheviks of the relics of St. Sergius the Monk (of Radonezh) in the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, near Moscow

In No. 82 of the Pravda newspaper of the Russian Communist Party published in Moscow dated April 16, 1919, a protocol for the autopsy of the relics of Sergius of Radonezh is given. This blasphemous sacrilege took place on April 11, 1919, and the article in Pravda was called "Holy Miracles."

This protocol, it should be noted, judging by the content, is of an official nature and begins with a list of all the persons present at the same time. All these are Bolsheviks, representatives of the Communist Party, members of the “technical commission for the opening of relics”, representatives of volosts, districts and doctors (doctors of medicine Yu. A. Gvozdikov and doctor I. P. Popov), representatives of the clergy, etc.

Exactly at 20 o'clock. 50 min. by order of the chairman of the Sergius executive committee, the Finn Vanhanen, one of the hieromonks (Jonah) and the abbot of the Lavra, were forced at gunpoint to begin the blasphemous act of opening the relics of one of the most revered saints of the Orthodox Church. For two hours they had to disassemble the covers and relics of St. Sergius, who more than five hundred years ago blessed the Russian people to fight the Tatar yoke in the name of saving and uniting Russia. A huge crowd gathered at the walls of the monastery, and in the temple itself the people hurried for the last time to venerate the holy relics, exclamations of “We believed and will continue to believe!” were heard.

At this time, cinema cameras were installed within the temple, cameras began to click and, despite the protests of the people, the blasphemous act of opening the relics was carried out.

At 22 o'clock. 30 min. the shameful case was completed, and the protocol was sealed with 50 signatures. It has a note that the autopsy was accompanied by filming.

We cite only one case of such vandalism and desecration of the shrine, but there are many. At the same time, the relics of St. Tikhon of Zadonsk in Yelets and Mitrofaniya of Voronezh with a large crowd of people. The Red Army soldiers put these relics on bayonets, committed blasphemy and abuse. In Yaroslavl, the relics of the right-believing princes Vasily and Konstantin were opened, and in the Spassky Monastery of Prince Fyodor and his children David and Konstantin. Everything was directed by local commissioners. Soviet Izvestia writes about the extraction of relics in the Cathedral of St. Sofia in Novgorod. The Bolsheviks shot the priests who refused to say that "allegedly the bones had rotted" on the spot.

A refugee from Kyiv tells the following about the blasphemy of the Bolsheviks: “They stole the relics beforehand. And then they forced the priests to publicly open empty shrines ... in order to expose everything in a charlatan form. The blasphemous ceremony was filmed and then shown free of charge to the people, who were driven by force to these views.

(The summary lists 177 names of priests who died at the hands of the Bolsheviks in the USSR, from 1917 to 1928. The list does not include those names of priests who were arrested and exiled.)

The story of the executioners of the Kherson Cheka

(Quoted from the book by S. P. Melgunov "Red Terror in Russia", M., 1990.)

The interrogation of people, according to the description of those who left the emergency, was carried out at night. These terrible interrogations always took place at night and were accompanied by threats of execution, severe beatings in order to confess to uncommitted and fabricated crimes. These confessions were knocked out by their people with ramrods until they lost consciousness. Investigators Miroshnichenko (a former hairdresser) and Jessel Mankin (18-year-old boy) were especially cruel and persistent. The first, at gunpoint, forced the servant Kanisheva "to plead guilty to harboring officers," the second, pointing a browning at the interrogated, said: "your life depends on the correct answer." In the book “The Bloody Hangover of Bolshevism” (author Nilostonsky), compiled on the basis of data from the Rerberg commission, which carried out investigation work immediately after the occupation of Kyiv by the White Volunteer Army in 1919, he says: ) ... In some other emergency rooms, from where the Bolsheviks hastily fled, we found living prisoners, but in what condition! These were the real dead, barely moving and looking at you with a motionless, uncomprehending gaze "..." The entire cement floor of a large garage (we are talking about the human "slaughterhouse" of the provincial Cheka) was no longer flooded with blood that no longer ran as a result of the heat, but stood for several inches, mixed into a terrifying mass with brains, skull bones, tufts of hair and other human remains. All the walls were spattered with blood, brain particles and pieces of head skin stuck to them next to thousands of bullet holes. From the middle of the garage to the next room, where there was an underground drain, a chute led a quarter of a meter wide and deep and about 10 meters long. Next to this place of horrors in the garden of the same house lay 127 hastily buried corpses of the last slaughter: here it was especially striking to us that all the corpses had their skulls crushed, many even had their heads completely flattened. They were probably killed by crushing their heads with some kind of block. Some were completely headless, the heads were not cut off, but torn off: all the corpses were completely naked. Among those killed were women, children, men of all ages and all social strata.

In Poltava and Kremenchuk all the priests were impaled. In Poltava, where "Grishka the prostitute" was atrocious and reigned, in one day he impaled 18 monks. Residents claimed that “here (on the burnt poles) Grishka the prostitute burned especially rebellious peasants, and he himself, sitting on a chair, amused himself with the spectacle.”

In Vologda, the Kedrovs lived in a carriage near the station: in the carriages, nearby, interrogations took place, and near them executions took place. During interrogations, Revvek (Plastinina-Maizel), the wife of the famous Kedrov and a local executioner, beat the accused on the cheeks, yelled, banged her fists, frantically and briefly gave orders: “To be shot, to be shot, to the wall!” (According to E. D. Kuskov, Latest News, No. 731). She was a Bolshevik. This crazy woman, on whose head hundreds of destitute mothers and wives send their curse. In her wickedness she surpassed all men. In the spring and summer of 1920, Plastinina-Meisel leads the massacre, together with her new husband Kedrov, in the Solovetsky Monastery ... She insists on the return of all those arrested by the Eiduk commission from Moscow, and they are all taken away in parts by steamer to Kholmogory, the burial place of Russian youth, where, undressed, killed on barges and drowned in the sea. In Arkhangelsk, Maizel-Kedrova shot 87 officers and 33 civilians with her own hands, sank a barge with 500 refugees and soldiers of Miller's army.

The book by S. P. Melgunov "Red Terror in Russia" contains lists of executioners of women who were sadistically inclined. Terrible stories of eyewitnesses and accidentally surviving witnesses are given about “comrade Lyuba” from Baku, it seems, as a result of being shot for her atrocities. About the female executioner, a Latvian with an animal-like face, the prisoners called her "pug". This woman wore short trousers and always had two revolvers behind her belt. The Odessa “heroine”, a female executioner from the Cheka, Dora Evlinskaya, under 20 years old, can compete with her. In her incomplete 20 years, she executed 400 officers with her own hands. At the head of the Unechenskaya Cheka was a woman "a beast, not a man." One of the unwitting fugitives from Russia recalled: "Unechans spoke about her in a whisper and with hidden horror." Rybinsk also had its own "beast in the guise of a woman - a certain Zina."