The Last Man in Russia: The Struggle to Save a Dying Nation (39 page)

hooliganism, moral decay, for the

strengthening of the family . . . but

you are not being blamed for this,

the Soviet government is fighting

this too.’ He had always said the

reason he did not work with the state

was because it was spreading

distrust, profiting from the sales of

alcohol, encouraging abortion. Now,

he had changed his mind.

And he apologized to the bishops

too. He said he had been wrong to

lecture them when he should have

been listening and obeying. By

publishing books abroad, he had

given ammunition to the state’s

enemies. ‘Do you really think that in

the West they understand us better

than we understand ourselves? Even

the ethnic Russians who live there,

they long ago lost touch with their

homeland and what is happening

here.’

He rejected his self-published

newspaper. He rejected the books he

had written. He named specific

foreigners – a journalist from the

New York Times
, an American

professor, a Belgian bishop – who

had helped him, at significant risk to

themselves,

by

smuggling

his

writings out the country. He named

foreigners who had tried to bring

foreign-published works into the

country and who campaigned for

believers’ rights. And he rejected

them all. ‘I now understand that

foreigners who interfere in our

internal affairs will bring us nothing

but harm.’ He banned the further

publication of his books. He wanted

to make a clean break with the past,

and to start again with a new

message. There would be no more

talk of boycotts, of resistance.

‘We live on Soviet land,’ he

wrote in conclusion.

And we must obey the laws

of

our

country.

Disobedience to its laws will

above all bring harm to our

country,

disperse

our

internal strength, and bring

unnecessary suffering. We

must think not just of

ourselves,

but

of

our

families, of those who travel

with us . . . now, when there

is an external danger, we

need all to unite and work

together

with

our

government and our people,

which were given us by

God and before whom we

are all responsible.

On my return from the Arctic, I

visited

Tanya

Podrabinek,

the

Muscovite I had befriended in the

north the previous summer, at her

home in the Moscow suburb of

Elektrostal. There her husband Kirill

told me how Father Dmitry’s

Izvestia
article sped through the

camps system, and was used by

prison guards to assault dissidents’

morale. By summer 1980, Kirill was

close to the end of a three-year

sentence he had received after he and

his brother Alexander refused to

abandon their investigations into

military

hazing

and

punitive

psychiatry.

‘It was three weeks before the

end of my term, and the prosecutor

came to talk to me. This was in

1980, in June, and he brought me

that

copy

of
Izvestia
,

the

newspaper,’ Kirill said.

I had a spare photocopy of the

article and handed one to Kirill, and

we sat and read it through together.

It was the first time Kirill had seen it

since that June day in 1980 when he

was

anticipating

his

imminent

release. He finished and handed it

back. He seemed keen to get rid of it

as quickly as he could.

‘The prosecutor gave it to me,

and he said: “Look, what your

friends are saying,”’ Kirill said. ‘I

told this prosecutor that Dudko was

a priest and not a fighter. Perhaps I

was not fair because among those

priests there were tough ones too,

but

I

think

the

prosecutor

understood.’

It is obvious why the prosecutor

showed the article to Kirill. This was

a

propaganda

coup

for

the

government of almost unparalleled

magnitude. A senior dissident was

calling on anyone who opposed the

government to give up the struggle

and obey its orders. All over the

country, political prisoners were

being shown the article and offered a

deal: surrender and be released.

Kirill refused to surrender, however,

and retribution was swift. A new

court case was quickly arranged, and

he received three more years under

the law that criminalized any

comments deemed to be anti-Soviet.

He had been careless in whom he

spoke to.

Although

Father

Dmitry’s

betrayal of his ideals did not work

on Kirill, the Soviet government

expected it to have a major effect on

society at large. It was better even

than a show trial, with the staged

humiliation and then execution of an

opponent. By breaking a dissident,

parading them and releasing them,

you showed that the reward for

submission was a new life, rather

than death. Previously, in the 1930s,

the state had just wielded its power

to crush opponents. Now, it had

learned finesse.

Father Dmitry also addressed a

letter to the patriarch, dated the same

day as the
Izvestia
article, which was

published

with

presumably

deliberate understatement on page 40

of the Patriarchate’s official journal.

‘My first words are: forgive me,’

Father Dmitry wrote. He signed off

with the words: ‘the humble novice

of Your Holiness, who is not worthy

of calling himself a priest but, if you

will allow it, I will dare to sign

myself, the unworthy priest D.

Dudko’.

Patriarch Pimen, the man before

whom he abased himself and whom

he was asking for forgiveness, was

someone who had praised the ‘lofty

spiritual qualities’ of Andropov, the

K G B chairman who locked

Christians

in

mental

hospitals.

Patriarch Pimen had singled out the

‘titanic work in the cause of

international

peace’

done

by

Brezhnev, under whom the Soviet

Union invaded both Czechoslovakia

and Afghanistan. He had won the

Order of the Red Banner for his

‘great patriotic activities’, at a time

when his priests were being arrested.

If anyone needed forgiveness it was

the patriarch, but it was Father

Dmitry who was asking for it.

On 21 June, the day after his

television

appearance,

he

was

released from prison. He had been

inside just over six months. His wife

Nina told foreign journalists that he

was tired and turned them away

when they tried to talk to him. A

couple of days later he released a

statement for them: ‘Leave me in

peace, stop trying to pull me into

some kind of politics, I am just an

Orthodox priest, and one on Russian

soil.’

Tanya’s husband Kirill refused

to judge Father Dmitry for what he

had done, but was ruthless in his

assessment.

‘I just think he was weak. There

are several different elements here. If

you are weak, do not invite attack.

That is the first thing. Secondly, it is

one thing if you just answer for

yourself, it is another if you answer

for others. Around Dudko was a

group of young people that he had

gathered around himself, and his

recantation was a heavy blow to

them.

‘He showed weakness, and that

was far from harmless to those

around him. The prosecutor came

with this statement to me, for

example. And the third element,

which is the most important, is that if

you show weakness, you should

retire from public life afterwards.

You should not shout out again, but

he did live a public life afterwards

and that is not good.’

Father Vladimir’s assessment at

the time was far harsher. When

Father Dmitry, his spiritual father,

had been in detention, he had battled

to keep his plight noticed in the

world’s media at considerable risk to

himself. It had, it seemed, all been

for nothing.

‘I would not say they fooled

him, rather they broke him. I

stopped going to see him then. A lot

of people left and did not come

back, they all said he had been

broken. And if he was broken, then

he was not from God because a

martyr should not be broken,’ he

said, still with his head lowered.

10

The K G B did their business

Inside Father Dmitry’s flat, behind

the

door

closed

against

the

journalists, he faced his family. His

wife, ever understanding, was just

pleased to have him back. But his

son – who would grow up to be a

priest himself, but at the time was a

student who had faced harassment of

his own for his Christian beliefs –

was angry, red in the face. Even his

eyes were red, Father Dmitry wrote

later.

‘What is wrong with you? Have

you gone mad?’ his son demanded.

‘What? Well, you’re still young.

And how would you survive without

me? I haven’t rejected God and the

Church,’ Father Dmitry replied.

‘I don’t know what I will do

now at college. I would like to

vanish off the face of the earth.’

One of Father Dmitry’s spiritual

children expressed the shock and

concern of them all in an open letter:

‘I, Marina Lepeshinskaya, accuse the

organs of the K G B of the murder

of my spiritual father.’ The Western

journalists kept coming to the door,

asking to see him, just to see what he

looked like, just to talk to him, to ask

him to explain himself, but Father

Dmitry stayed in his room.

On the second day, he wrote, he

hid away and cried, as he began to

see quite how enormous a step he

had taken. His wife’s sister, walking

home, was grabbed by a terrified

woman who said that his former

disciples wanted to kill him because

he had sold them out. His sister-in-

law rushed home. He told her that

there was nothing to worry about,

but they still went outside to check,

and he decided never to sleep alone

in case the threat was real.

Perhaps, while he stayed inside,

he re-read the statement he had

written for
Izvestia
, and saw the

names of the people, people who

h

a

d previously

considered

themselves to be his friends, whom

he had accused of wanting to

undermine the state and wanting to

harm the Russian people.

Desperate in his guilt, he wrote

to one of them, Archbishop Vasily

of Brussels. ‘If you had told me that

I would behave like this, then I

would have considered it as slander.

But it appears that I overestimated

my powers, I have fallen so low, like

no one before me,’ he wrote. ‘I have

never suffered such torments as

now. I now know from my own

experience what hell is. I am ready

to do anything to correct the

situation, but I don’t know how.’

He

did

not

want

to

see

journalists, and he did not want to

see accusing faces around him, so he

fled to the countryside, where he

issued a statement for his spiritual

children. He tried to summon up the

old fire, the old arguments, as if

nothing had happened. ‘The first

thing I beg of you is don’t separate,