ORTHODOX THINKING AS DISSENT

Opinion

Nezavisimaia gazeta, 26 July 1997 (full text)

by Olesia Alexandrovna Nikolaeva, poet, member of the PEN-Center executive committee

On the feast day of All Russian Saints, 29 June, before the divine liturgy in the church of the Dormition of the Mother of God in Pechtniki, the priest Mikhail Dubovitsky was beaten in the sanctuary. His cross was torn from him as well as his priestly vestments and his cassock was torn.

The people who committed this transgression against him were not the Chekists of the twenties or the KGB of the seventies. They were the young altar boys of the church.

When they ripped off his vestments, broke his arms, and threw him to the floor Father Mikhail cried out: "Orthodox people! Save me! They are killing me!" But who of the laity standing in the nave and hearing this cry would dare enter the sanctuary and save the priest? They ran for ordained persons from the neighboring monastery and they summoned the police.

In response to investigation the chief of the Eighteenth police precinct, Senior Lieutenant Rimsky, testified: "Having arrived at the scene a squad of rapid response officers found a fight in the sanctuary between priests, one of whom, as it later turned out Mikhail Vladimirovich Dubovitsky, had marks of beatings and had torn ecclesiastical vestments. . . One of the priests involved in the fight, named Kochetkov, explained that Dubovitsky was a psychiatrically abnormal person."

Thus, the word was pronounced. The diagnosis was established. It was established by the rector of the church, Georgi Kochetkov. The psychiatric ambulance was called and the priest with bound hands was thrust into it. The monastic priest who came from the Presentation monastery, seeing that he could not protect his brother, lay down under the wheels of the vehicle in which they prepared to take Father Mikhail away. They pulled him out of the way.

At the Fourteenth psychiatric hospital to which the poor priest was taken under arrest he received an unknown dosage of an unknown medicine. However after a few hours he was examined by a commission of three psychiatrists which found in Father Mikhail not psychiatric disorders which they also certified in writing. After this the psychologically well and healthy man was finally set free. However on the next day Father Mikhail began to have convulsions throughout his body that threatened to cut off his breating and he was taken by First Aid to the city hospital. The doctors made the diagnosis that these symptoms could have been caused by injections of some powerful psychotropic drug. The victim was brought out of this condition only by the application of a strong antidote.

While Father Mikhail, having been examined and declared well, was lying on the hospital gurney and recovering from the physical and moral distress, including the beating delivered by the fearless youths in vestments, other no less fearless youths have continued the humiliate him on the pages of the "free press" fully in the spirit of bolshevik activists of "The Militant Atheist" magazine. A cheap independent vaudeville titled "Orthodox Murderers," which was cooked up by the shorthand of Sergei Bychkov (Moskovskii komsomolets, 2 July) had the goal of misinforming public opinion on this tragedy that happened in the parish of the Dormition church. According to Bychkov, Father Mikhail suddenly started shouting "Save me, they are killing me" just like that, for no reason. Some kind of nut! But according to Bychkov people already were used to his nuttiness. And he repeats the diagnosis of "acute psychosis."

In a brief article with the excessive title "Crisis of Medieval Worldview as Human Tragedy" Ivan Chernov also interprets the tragedy that happened as if the "young Orthodox zealot from Kursk," Father Mikhail, was sent two months ago to minister in this church and was unable "to stand for long the intellectual pressure. This Sunday he cried out in the sanctuary at full voice: 'they are killing me!' The altar boys ran up to him and tried to console (that's what they call it now). He was just singing." Really, in Ivan Chernov's description this was some kind of priest. Thus they "took the poor man away and diagnosed him as 'acute psychosis."" Which is what Chernov was supposed to prove.

The declaration that a psychologicall healthy man was insane was, of course, the culmination of the drama, but it is more interesting to trace the whole plot with its hidden causes, concealed forces, twists, and motives. Why, for what reason, in the name of what goals was it necessary to make out an Orthodox priest as a psychologically abnormal person and in a most lawless manner by violence to take him off to the mental hospital, and then when he was released on the same day because there was no sign of psychiatric disorder to slander him as if he had not had his sacral vestments and cross torn from him nor been beaten nor humiliated and the whole ugly criminality of the "intellectual pressure" had not happened, after which, incidentally, it was necessary for the dean of the Central Region to reconsecrate the desecrated sanctuary? Why is the key that makes all of this plausible?

"Oh, well of course they took Father Mikhail to the bin because he was possessed," the kindly old lady from the book stall of the church of the Virgin in Pechatniki said to me with a wave of her hand and without the least sign of any concern or regret.

"In what sense possessed?" I probed.

"Well, he flipped his lid. You know, in our parish we are progressive, advanced. We are not like all the rest. We are making reforms. We celebrate in Russian. But he was old fashioned. Who wouldn't flip out. Just imagine, if the authorities (Who? The Lord himself in the pages of the Gospel? Holy Spirit? Church? Holy Fathers? Patriarch? Confessor?) say one thing and then he comes here to our church and they say something entirely different to him? Who wouldn't flip his lid?

"And what was he beaten for?

"Nobody laid a hand on him. He beat himself at the window and he wounded himself.

But we were being overheard. A woman with a stern face and intense gaze signalled to my interlocutor: silence. And she looked at me as a partisan looks at the enemy.

"The church authorities have tried for a long time to straighten out the obstinate parish," Ivan Chernov writes. "They appointed a second priest. That should have been okay but the problem was that there were many intellectuals in the parish of Father Georgi Kochetkov and too many discussions and questions."

It would be interesting to know just which of these "discussions and questions" began to break the arms of the young priest? Or made him insane, like some kind of night moth who injured himself at the window?

Perhaps someone did not like it that he was young? Or that he was Orthodox? Or that he was from Kursk? Or that he celebrated in Church Slavonic like the whole Russian Orthodox church? Or that he is 'not progressive'? Or that he is not 'reforming'? Or finally that he is simply different. He was not like them. Strange. Dissident. "Abnormal."

Several years back when Father Georgi Kochetkov was in the cathedral of the Presentation monastery, a married couple who were some of his fanatical adherents said to me: "Father Georgi is very concerned that a second priest will be appointed. He said to us: 'Brothers and sisters, we will not tolerate it.'"

"In what sense 'not tolerate'? I asked in amazement.

"We just won't tolerate it," they repeated calmly.

"But he won't be some kind of upstart, The patriarch will appoint him."

"Nevertheless we won't tolerate it."

"But suppose he is impressive, modest, meek, a great man of prayer, a comforter, a miracle worker. Suppose he is even better for you that Father Georgi"

"All the same we won't tolerate it," they insisted.

"And what will you do?"

"We will boycott him."

So they began with a boycott. They did not attend his services and did not come to communion. And if they came when he was celebrating then in order to insult him they interrupted during his sermon and made insulting remarks, they wandered around, in a word they expressed their "intellectual" disdain for him. They even published with the rector's blessing a pamphlet containing insults against the new priest. But believers from other churches came to Father Mikhail. And the boycott was broken, lasting less than two months. Then onto the scene came the form out of the recent but not forgotten past, the psychiatric ambulance, the sure guarantee that that Father Kochetkov, this "famous missionary and reformer" would be relieved for a time, if not forever, from this inconvenient "Orthodox" brother. The flock in which there were "too many intellectuals" suddenly forgot all of its "discussions and questions" and obediently swallowed the Chekist-like line about "flipping his lid." It is amazing that it never occurred to these "progressive intellectuals" that there were historical allusions and parallels. Perhaps they are not accustomed to think independently. The psychology of inquest and hate does not simply unite but it also dehumanizes the mass. And individualism is the victim.

So in the final analysis the issue was quite different from Father Mikhail's education or where he was from or who he is, whether a simpleton or a esthete, a mystic or an intellectual, a preacher or a hysicast. Whether he is cold or fervent. Whether he stammers like Moses or is eloquent like Aaron. Whether he limps like Jacob or plays like David. Whether he is bald like Elisha or has hair like Samson. Or is longsuffering like Job, pious or excellent like Joseph, who was sold into slavery by his brothers. Adepts of Father Kochetkov decided that he was "not our kind." Apparently they were told "let's not tolerate it." And they did not tolerate him.

It is obvious that we are dealing here with some kind of totalitarian consciousness which, hiding behind declarations about human freedom, Christian love, and respect for others' opinion, actually uses bolshevik arbitrariness and violence in the struggle with dissent that goes even as far as criminality.

In the context of the tragedy that happened, which directly or indirectly concerns all of Russian society, it is hardly more appropriate now to discuss whether the Orthodox church needs reforms or whether the "soviet cant" has become the language of divine service and the solidity of the iconostasis in the church. We can talk about these interesting topics only when normal people are no longer taken to the psychiatric hospital and priests are not beaten in the sanctuary.

Incidentally, the renovationist bolsheviks of the twenties also initially discussed internal church reforms in an innocent and respectful way, but their reforms ended up in denunciations of their ideological opponents, the Tikhonites, and in the inquisition of the Cheka, the shedding of the blood of Christian martyrs, and psychiatric hospitals and labor camps.

And although, as we know, history teaches us that it teaches us nothing, let us continue to identify bolshevism in the political, social, literary, or ecclesiastical visage, not so much in its declarations, slogans and appeals as in its procedures and tricks. Its face, distorted by hate and suddenly showing up where a priest is abused, should not be ignored. Otherwise none of us, citizens of Russia, will be able to be sure that we will not suddenly be suspected by someone with the "wave of a hand" of having "flipped his lid." Russian text