I Came to Love Suffering

Chapter One – Youth
My father was a Catholic, and extremely devout. He attended church services regularily and spent long periods of time in prayer at home. Father had an incredibly pure soul and never saw the bad in anyone, trusting everybody, in spite of being surrounded by dishonest people as a part of his work. As a Catholic in our Orthodox family, he found himself somewhat left out.
My mother prayed fervently at home, though it seems she never went to church. This was the result of her indignation at the greed and quarrelling she had witnessed between priests. Neither of my two brothers – both lawyers – showed any inclination towards religion. However, they were always at church when the epitaphios was brought out, which they venerated, and they also always attended Paschal Matins. My older sister, a student, shaken up by the tragic events at Khodynka, suffered a mental breakdown and jumped out of a third floor window, resulting in serious breaks in her hip and humerus, as well as the rupture of her kidneys. That led to the development of kidney stones, from which she died, having lived to be only twenty five. My younger sister, who is alive and in good health, is a wonderful and very pious woman.
I did not receive a religious upbringing from my family, and if I were to speak of any inherited religiousness, then I would have to say that I inherited it from my very devout father.
I had been passionate about drawing since childhood, and along with high school I also graduated from the Kiev School of Art, where it became obvious that I was not without talent. One of my pictures, a not too large representation of an ageing beggar standing with outstretched hand, even took part in an exhibition of the Independent Artists Association. My inclination to painting was so strong that upon completion of high school I made the decision to enter the Petersburg Academy of Arts.
However, while taking the entrance exams I came seriously to doubt whether or not I was choosing the correct path for my life. That brief hesitation ended with the decision that I did not have the right to do what I found pleasing, but rather, I was obligated to do that which would benefit those who were suffering. From the Academy I sent my mother a telegram telling her of my desire to enter the faculty of medicine, though all the openings had already been filled, and I had been offered a place in the faculty of natural sciences, the idea being that I could later transfer to medicine. I turned that down, having a strong dislike for the natural sciences and an obvious bent for the humanitarian: theology, philosophy, and history in particular. And so I chose instead the faculty of law, where I spent a year studying with great interest the history and philosophy of law, political economics and Roman law.
But after a year I was once more irresistibly drawn to painting. I left for Munich, where I entered the private art school of professor Knirr. After only three weeks, however, I was overcome by an irrepressible homesickness and returned to Kiev, where I spent another year rigorously drawing and painting with a group of like-minded people.
It was then that my religiousness showed itself for the first time. I was visiting the Lavra of the Kiev Caves every day, sometimes twice a day, and spending time in the cathedrals of Kiev. Upon returning home from the Lavra and the cathedrals I would draw what I had seen there. I made a lot of sketches and studies of people in prayer, of the pilgrims who had come to the Lavra from a thousand kilometres away, and the direction I would have taken as an artist, had I not decided to give up painting, really took form at that time. I would have gone down the same road as Vasnetsov and Nesterov, the fundamental religious tendencies of my work as a painter already making themselves apparent. By that time I had acquired a clear understanding of the artistic process. Everywhere I happened to be - on the street or in a tram; in the squares and in the markets – I noted all of the expressive, colourful features I saw on the faces and bodies, and in the movements of the people, and when I got home I put it all down on paper. For these sketches of mine I was awarded a prize in an exhibition at the Kiev School of Art.
For a break from my work I would walk each day along the banks of the Dnieper, all the while deep in meditation over the most complicated theological and philosophical questions. Very little came, of course, of these meditations, as I had never received any academic training.
At that time I became enthralled by the ethical teaching of Leo Tolstoy and you could even say that I had become an inveterate Tolstoyan - I slept on a rug on the floor, and in the summertime, leaving for the countryside, I cut the grass and rye alongside the peasants, without falling behind them. However, my days as a Tolstoyan did not continue for long. They continued only until I had read his forbidden piece ‘What I Believe’, published abroad, and which repulsed me with its mockery of the Orthodox faith. I immediately understood that Tolstoy was a heretic, and very far from true Christianity.
I had come to a true understanding of Christ’s teaching not long before that by reading most diligently the entire New Testament, which, according to a good old custom, I had been given by the school principal along with my diploma to see me off into life. Many places in that holy book, which I kept for decades, made a very deep impression on me. I marked them with a red pencil.
But for sheer force of impression nothing could compare to that place in the Gospels where Jesus, turning His disciples’ attention to the fields of ripe wheat says, ‘The harvest truly is plentiful, but the labourers are few. Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into His harvest.’ (Matt. 9:37) My heart literally stopped, and I silently exclaimed, ‘O Lord! Can it really be that you have few labourers?!’ Later, many years after, when the Lord called me to be a worker in His field, I was certain that that gospel passage had been God’s first call to serve Him.
And so that reasonably strange year passed. It would now have been possible to enter the faculty of medicine, but once more I was overtaken by doubts for the sake of the ‘common folk’, and because of the heat of my young blood I decided that I had to start doing something useful for them. I entertained thoughts of becoming a medical orderly or a rural teacher, and in that frame of mind set off to meet with the director of the rural school system for the Kiev school district, to ask to be given a position in one of their schools. The director turned out to be an intelligent and clear-sighted individual – he appreciated my aspirations to do good for the ‘common folk’, but was very energetic in discouraging me from that which I was undertaking, convincing me to enter the faculty of medicine.
That fit in with my desire to be of help to the peasants, who were so poorly provided for medically, but the fact that I fairly loathed the natural sciences stood in the way. In the end I overcame this loathing and entered the faculty of medicine at the University of Kiev.
When I studied physics, chemistry, and mineralogy I had an almost physical feeling that I was forcing my brain to work on something that was completely alien to it. And my brain, like a rubber ball that had been squeezed, was trying to push back against things alien to it. Even so, I received only straight ‘A’s and unexpectedly became very interested in anatomy. I studied bones, drew them, and at home made models of them out of clay, soon attracting the attention of all my colleagues and professors of anatomy with my dissection of corpses. In my second year my colleagues had already decided that I would be an anatomy professor, and their prophecy came to pass. In twenty years I did indeed become a professor of regional anatomy and operative surgery.
In my third year I became enthralled with the study of operations on corpses. And an interesting evolution took place in my abilities – my love for form and my ability to draw in fine detail turned into a love for anatomy and finely detailed work in anatomical dissections and operations on corpses. Having left art behind, I became an artist of anatomy and surgery.
In my third year I was unexpectedly chosen class senior. What happened was this – before a certain lecture l found out that one of our classmates, a Polish student, had slapped another one of our classmates, a Jew. At the end of the lecture I stood up and asked for everyone’s attention. Everyone fell silent. I gave a passionate speech denouncing the polish student’s unacceptable behaviour. I spoke about high moral standards, about enduring insult, I called to mind the great Socrates, and how he calmly bore his quarrelsome wife pouring a pot of dirty water over his head. This speech impressed my fellow classmates so much that they unanimously chose me to be class senior.
I passed all of my government exams brilliantly, getting straight ‘A’s, and at the exam the professor of general surgery said to me, ‘Doctor, now you know much more than I do; you know all facets of medicine thoroughly, whereas I have forgotten much that does not pertain directly to my area of speciality.’
Only on the exam for medical chemistry (which is now called biochemistry) did I receive a ‘C’. I did wonderfully on the theoretical part of the exam, but an analysis of a urine sample also needed to be done. According to what was, unfortunately, common practice, the lab technician had told the students what they were to find in the first flask and test-tube, and I knew that the urine I was supposed to analyze contained sugar. However, because of a small mistake the Trommer’s test didn’t work properly for me, and when the professor asked, without looking at me, what I had found there, I could have said that I had found sugar, but instead said that the Trommer’s test hadn’t found any.
That lone ‘C’ didn’t keep me from receiving my medical degree with honours.
When we had all received our diplomas my classmates asked me what I intended to do. When I answered that I intended to be a general practitioner they looked at me in surprise, ‘What?! You are going to be a general practitioner?! Your calling is to be a scientist!’ I was upset that they didn’t understand me at all. Indeed, I had studied medicine with only one goal in mind – to be a rural doctor, a folk doctor, to help the poor.

Chapter Two – Work in Country Hospitals
I didn’t immediately become a country doctor, as my graduation from university took place in the fall of 1903, right before the beginning of the war with Japan, and the beginning of my career in medicine saw me doing surgery in a field hospital of the Kiev Red Cross near the city of Chita.
There were two surgical departments in our hospital - one was headed by an experienced surgeon from Odessa, while our detachment’s head doctor entrusted the other to me, despite the fact that there were two other surgeons in our detachment who were considerably older than I was. I immediately began doing a great amount of surgical work, operating on the wounded, and, although I had not received any special surgical training, immediately began doing large, serious operations on bones, joints, and the skull. The outcome of my work was quite good, no mishaps took place. I was helped greatly by the wonderful book written by the French surgeon Lejar ‘Emergency Surgery’, which had only recently come out, and which I had studied thoroughly before leaving for the Far East.
I was not a conscripted medical corps officer and at no time did I wear a uniform.
In Chita I married a sister of mercy who had previously worked in the Kiev Military Hospital, where everyone called her ‘holy sister’. It was not so much her beauty that conquered me as the exceptional kindness and meekness of her character. Two doctors there had asked for her hand in marriage, but she had taken an oath of chastity. She broke that oath by marrying me, and on the night before our wedding in the church - a church which had been built by Decembrists – while praying before an icon of the Saviour suddenly it appeared to her that Christ had turned His face away, His image disappearing from the icon case. Evidently she was being reminded of her oath; for breaking it she was punished severely with an unbearable, pathological jealousy.
We left Chita before the end of the war and I became doctor for the country council of Ardatov, in the province of Simberia. There I was put in charge of the town hospital. In unseemly and challenging conditions I began operating at once on all surgical and ophthalmological cases. However, after a few months I was forced to resign from work in Ardatov as a result of its unbearable difficulty.
It should be noted that at the hospital in Ardatov I immediately encountered the great difficulties and dangers that arise when general anaesthetic is applied with the help of incompetent assistants, and at that time already began to ponder on the necessity of avoiding the use of general anaesthetic whenever possible and replacing it, as circumstances might allow, with local. I decided it would be best to take a position in a small hospital, which I found in the village of Verkhny Lyubazh in the Fatyezh district of the province of Kursk. However, things were no easier there, for not long after beginning to operate in the small district hospital of ten beds I achieved such fame that people started coming to me from all over, including from other districts of the province of Kursk as well as the neighbouring province of Oryol.
One amusing instance comes to mind of a young beggar, blind from birth, who had regained his sight after an operation. About two months later he collected a great multitude of the blind from across the entire district, leading each other with their walking sticks in a long line, all making their way to me in search of healing.
At this time the first edition of Professor Braun’s book ‘Regional Anaesthetic - its scientific basis and practical use’ appeared. I devoured it greedily, learning of regional anaesthetic for the first time, some methods of which had been published only very recently. I made a note of the fact, I might add, that Braun considered the regional anaesthetizing of the sciatic nerve practically impossible. Regional anaesthesia began to fascinate me and I set myself the task of developing new methods for its use.
In Lyubazh I came across a few rare and altogether fascinating surgical cases, and it was there I wrote my first two articles, ‘Elephantiasis of the face, plexiform neuroma’ as well as another, ‘Retrograde strangulated inguinal hernia.’
Excessive fame made my situation in Lyubazh unbearable. I was receiving out-patients who came in great number, and operating in the hospital from nine in the morning until evening; covering quite a large district when making rounds, spending the night studying samples taken during operations, and making drawings of microscopic specimens for my articles. Soon even my youthful energy began to flag.
It is worth mentioning my first tracheotomy, which took place under highly unusual conditions. I had come to a small village not far from Lyubazh in order to examine a country school. Classes had already finished when suddenly a small girl ran into the school carrying a child who was gasping for breath. He was choking on a small piece of sugar which had got caught in his larynx. I had only a pen knife with me, some cotton wadding and a bit of corrosive sublimate solution. Nonetheless I decided to perform a tracheotomy and asked a teacher to assist me. She, however, covered her eyes and ran away. The old lady who worked as janitor proved to be a little braver, though she too left me all alone when I began to operate. I placed the swaddled child on my knees and quickly performed a tracheotomy on him, which proceeded very successfully; in place of a tracheotomy tube I inserted a goose feather, which had been prepared earlier by the old woman, into the trachea. Unfortunately, the operation didn’t help, as the piece of sugar had got caught further down – in the bronchia, it seems.
The head of the country council transferred me to the Fatyezh district hospital, though I wasn’t there for long either. Fatyezh district was a stronghold of the rarest sort of diehard ‘black-hundred’ men. And the most extreme of them all was the chairman of the country council Batezatul, famous long before the war for his bill in favour of the forced emigration of Chinese peasants to Russia with the intent of handing them over to landowners as slaves.
Batezatul saw me as a revolutionary for not dropping everything and setting off at once to see the district police officer when he became ill and I was dismissed from service by order of the council. This did not, however, go down well. On market day one of the blind men whom I had cured climbed onto a barrel, delivered an inflammatory speech apropos my dismissal, and under his command a throng of people set off to raid the country council, whose building was located on the market square. Only one member of the council was present there, and he climbed under a table out of fear. I, of course, had to leave Fatyezh as quickly as possible. That was in 1909.
In 1907 my first child, Misha, was born. And in the next year, 1908, my daughter Helen was born. I ended up having to perform the job of midwife myself.
I left Fatyezh for Moscow and spent a little less than a year there as an external doctor in the surgical clinic of professor Diakonov. According to the rules of the clinic all external doctors had to write a doctoral dissertation and I was offered the topic ‘tuberculosis of the knee-joint’. After two or three weeks had passed professor Diakonov called me in and asked me how work was going on the dissertation. I answered that I had read all of the material but that the topic did not interest me. The professor was a man of sense and regarded my reply with attention and upon learning that I had my own topic began to inquire about it with interest. It turned out that he knew nothing about regional anaesthetic and I had to tell him about Braun’s book. To my delight he proposed that I continue my work on regional anaesthetic and abandon the topic I had been offered.
Because my topic called for anatomical research and experience with injections of coloured gelatin on corpses I had to transfer to the Institute of topographical anatomy and operative surgery, which had as its director Professor Rein, the chairman of the Moscow surgical society. It turned out, however, that he too had neither heard nor read anything about regional anaesthetic.
Soon I was able to find a simple and reliable way of making injections into the sciatic nerve at the place it exits the pelvic cavity, a task Heinrich Braun considered practically impossible. I also found a way to make an injection into the median nerve for the regional anaesthetisation of the entire hand. I gave a lecture on my discoveries in the Moscow surgical society, and it aroused quite a bit of interest.
But I had nothing to live on in Moscow with a wife and two little children, and so I was forced to leave for the village of Romanovka, in the Balashovskoy district of the province of Saratov to work in a hospital with twenty five beds, where I undertook serious surgical work, an account of which I published in a separate book modelled after the accounts of professor Diakonov ‘s clinic. I continued work on regional anaesthesia during my annual month-long holidays in Moscow, working from morning till night in the Institute of professor Rein and professor Karuzin in the department of descriptive anatomy. There I examined three hundred craniums and found a very valuable way of making injections to the second branch of the trifacial nerve at the place where it exits the foramen rotundum. As that work neared its end I was no longer in Romanovka, being head doctor and surgeon of the fifty bed district Hospital in Pereslavl-Zalesskiy.
Not long before our departure from Romanovka my son Alyosha was born, accompanied by a big adventure. Though the time for the birth to take place was approaching, I took a chance and went to Balashov for a meeting of the Sanitary Council, in the hope that I would soon return. Not waiting for the end of the council meeting, I rushed to the station and saw the train, which was already sounding the second whistle. Not having time to get a ticket, I got onto the train and soon noticed that it was full of Tatars, which is something unheard of for the train to Romanovka. It turned out that I had landed not on my train, but on the one headed for Kharkov, and I had to return to Balashov from the nearest station. But God helped us and in Romanovka I found my son newly born, delivered by a woman doctor who had returned from the Sanitary Council before me and dropped in on the way back to her medical district.
In 1916, while living in Pereslavl, I defended my doctoral dissertation on regional anaesthetic in Moscow. My opponents were professor Martynov; the assistant professor of topographic anatomy and operational surgery, whose name I don’t remember; and professor Karuzin.
Professor Martynov made an interesting comment. He said, ‘we are used to seeing doctoral dissertations written on the topics assigned with the goal of receiving good career placements, and their scientific value is not great. But when I read your book, it was as if I had heard the singing of a bird that could not help but sing, and I was very impressed.’ And professor Karuzin, extremely excited, ran up to me and, shaking my hand, earnestly begged my forgiveness for not paying more attention to my work in the attic, where the skulls are kept, and not suspecting that such brilliant work was being done there.
My dissertation earned me a major award from the University of Warsaw worth 900 Rubles in gold, the Hojnacki Prize which was designated for ‘the best works blazing new trails in the field of medicine.’ However, I was never to see the money on account of the small number of copies printed of my book, only 750, which were quickly bought up from the book stores I had so carelessly distributed them to, making it impossible for me to supply the required number of copies to the University.
For a country doctor, which I had been for 13 years, Sundays and holidays are the busiest days, and filled with enormous amounts of work. So I wasn’t able to attend church in Lyubazh, or Romanovka, or Pereslavl-Zalesskiy and hadn’t fasted for many years. In the final years of my life in Pereslavl, however, I was able, with the greatest effort, to make it to the Cathedral, where I had my own spot, and this caused great joy amongst the believers of Pereslavl.
There was one other great event in my life which the Lord laid the foundation for in Pereslavl.
From the very beginning of my work as a surgeon in Chita, Lyubazh, and Romanovka I understood clearly the great importance of the surgery treatment of purulent wounds and the great imperfection of the knowledge I had taken from university on the subject. I made it my mission to study the diagnosis and treatment of purulent illnesses more deeply on my own. At the end of my stay in Pereslavl the thought of recounting my experience in a special book entitled ‘Notes on the Surgical Treatment of Purulent Wounds’ occurred to me. I put together a plan for the book and wrote an introduction to it. It was then that I had, much to my surprise, a very strange thought which would not leave me: ‘when this book is finished it will bear the name of a bishop.’
Being a clergyman is something I had never thought of even in my wildest imaginings, to say nothing of being a bishop. But the ways of our lives, unknown to us, are quite clearly known to the All-Seeing God while we are still in our mother’s womb. As you will see further on, in a few years that thought which would not leave me: ‘when this is written it will bear the name of a bishop,’ was to become a reality.
We spent six and a half years in Pereslavl-Zalesskiy. My youngest son Valentine was born there.
In the municipal and factory hospitals I undertook surgery of the most varied sorts, doing pioneering work in what were, at that time, new major operations on the biliary tracts, stomach, spleen, and even on the brain. Moreover, in 1915-1916 I was also in charge of a small hospital for the wounded.
At the beginning 1917 we were visited by my wife’s older sister, who had just buried her young daughter in Crimea, a victim of galloping consumption. To our great misfortune she brought with her a quilt under which her sick daughter had lain. I told my wife Anna that death had been brought to us in that quilt. And so it was: Anna’s sister spent only two weeks with us and soon after her departure I detected obvious signs of pulmonary tuberculosis in Anna.
As that was taking place I received an invitation to work in the Tashkent municipal hospital as surgeon and head doctor, a position that I had applied for through an ad in the paper, and which had drawn stiff competition. We were accompanied by a maidservant who had very recently given birth. Half way between Pereslavl and Moscow we were forced to spend a week in the hospice at Holy Trinity-Sergiev Lavra monastery on account of Anna having a high fever. The remainder of the journey by train to Moscow and then on to Tashkent, made with small children, was very difficult, as rail travel had already been seriously disrupted by that point in time.
In Tashkent we were given an excellent apartment, provided for the hospital’s head doctor, with five rooms, the floors of which, however, I myself was often forced to wash as a result of the unavoidable disturbances that accompanied revolution. In 1919 Tashkent was engulfed in civil war between the garrison of the city’s fortress and a regiment of Turkmen soldiers under the leadership of a military commander who had betrayed the revolution. Great quantities of shells flew across the entire city and over the hospital itself, and I had to walk to work beneath them.
The insurrection of the Turkmen regiment was put down and the punishment of the counter-revolutionaries began. In relation to that the hospital caretaker and I were also forced to experience some terrible hours. We were arrested by a certain Andrey, a hospital morgue attendant who nursed a hatred for me as a complaint I made had led to him being punished by the city chief. The caretaker and I were taken to the railway workshop, where the Turkmen regiment was being tried. As we were crossing the railway bridge some workers standing on the tracks below yelled something up to Andrey. I later found out that they were advising Andrey not to mess about with us but to shoot us under the bridge.
The enormous room was full of soldiers from the insurgent regiment, who were being called one at a time in to a separate room, where almost all of them received a cross beside their names on the list. Andrey was a part of the tribunal, along with another worker from the hospital, who managed to warn the other members of the court that the caretaker and I had been arrested by Andrey on account of a personal grudge. Our names were not marked with crosses and we were quickly released. As we were being escorted back to the hospital the workers we met along the way showed great surprise at our being released from the workshop.
Later we found out that that very evening the enormous workshop space was turned into a slaughter-house, where the Turkmen soldiers and many people from the city were killed.
And my poor sick Anna knew that I had been arrested, and where I had been taken, and she had a horrible time of it until I returned. The severe mental shock affected her health most negatively and her illness began to progress very quickly. She entered the final days of her life. She was feverish, completely lost her ability to sleep and suffered terribly. I spent the final twelve nights by her deathbed and worked at the hospital during the day. The final frightening night came. In order to ease her suffering I gave her an injection and she became noticeably calmer. About twenty minutes later I heard, ‘inject some more.’ After half an hour this was repeated, and over the course of 2 or 3 hours I gave her many injections of morphine, surpassing the permissible dose by many times, though I did not detect its poisonous effect. All of a sudden Anna quickly sat up and said quite loudly, ‘call the children.’ The children came and she made the sign of the cross over all of them, though she did not kiss them, no doubt afraid of infecting them. Saying goodbye to the children, she lay down, calmly lying with her eyes closed, her breathing becoming less and less frequent.... And she took her final breath.
The coffin had been prepared beforehand. In the morning my operating assistants came and washed and clothed the body, placing it in the coffin. Anna died at 38 years of age, at the end of October, 1919, leaving me with four children, the oldest of whom was 12 and the youngest 6.
For two nights I read the Psalter over the coffin myself, standing at the feet of the deceased in complete solitude. At about 3 o’clock on the second night I was reading the 112th Psalm, the beginning of which is sung at the meeting of a hierarch in the church: ‘From the rising of the sun unto the going down of the same’(Ps. 112:3), and the final words of the Psalm amazed and shook me, for without the slightest doubt I took them as the words of God Himself, directed to me: ‘the barren woman to dwell in a house and be a mother rejoicing over children.’(Ps. 112:9)
The Lord God saw what a difficult, thorny path awaited me, and immediately following the death of the mother of my children He Himself attended to them, easing my difficult situation. For some reason I felt no doubt whatsoever that the words of the Psalm which had so shaken me were God directing me to my operating assistant Sophia Sergeevna Beletskaya, about whom I knew only that she had recently been widowed and was without children, and my entire acquaintance with her had been limited to conversations relating to business, ie, operations. And even so the words ‘the barren woman to dwell in a house and be a mother rejoicing over children,’ I accepted without any doubt as God directing me to place the care of my children and their upbringing upon her.
I barely managed to wait until seven o’clock in the morning before going to see Sophia Sergeevna, who lived in the surgical department. I knocked on the door. Opening the door, she took a step back in amazement at seeing her stern boss at such an early hour, and listened to what had happened that night over my wife’s grave, deeply moved.
I asked her only if she believed in God and if she wanted to carry out God’s command and be a mother to my children in place of their deceased mother. Sophia Sergeevna joyfully accepted.
She said that it had been very painful for her to watch from a distance how my wife suffered and that she had very much wanted to help, though she hadn’t dared make the offer herself. From a distance she was very fond of my younger children, though she was concerned that she and Misha, my oldest son, would not get along because of the way he mistreated the younger ones. And so it was. She loved the three young ones very much, especially the youngest of all, Valya, who was always in her lap. Misha, however, she would have to re-educate.
My apartment as head doctor consisted of 5 rooms, which were laid out in such a fortunate way that Sophia Sergeevna was able to have her own room, completely isolated from my quarters. She spent many years in my family, but was a second mother only to my children, as the Almighty God knows that my relationship with her was completely pure. I will stop here for now and say something later on about the great benefactions my children received from God through Sophia Sergeevna.
Chapter Three – Priesthood
I soon learned that there was a church community active in Tashkent and attended one of its meetings. I made a rather big speech in relation to one of the topics being discussed and the speech made a deep impression on those present. The impression became joy when they found out that I was the head doctor of the municipal hospital.
The eminent archpriest Michael Andreev, rector of the church at the train station, held meetings in the church on Sunday evenings, at which either he or someone else from amongst those gathered together gave a talk on different topics from the Holy Scriptures, after which everyone sang spiritual songs. I often attended the meetings and frequently gave serious talks. I had no idea, of course, that they were just the beginning of the enormous work I would do in the future as a preacher.
When the ‘living church’ of cursed memory appeared, then, as we all know, the activity of the episcopacy came under discussion at diocesan conventions of clergy and laymen all over the place, some bishops being removed from their office. And so the ‘trial’ of the Bishop of Tashkent and Turkmenistan took place in Tashkent in the large choir room very close to the cathedral. I was present, in the capacity of a guest, and I made a long, fiery speech in relation to some important issue.
No attacks were made at the convention and the work of the Right Reverend Innocent (Pustinsky) was assessed favourably. When the convention ended and everyone was parting ways I unexpectedly ran into Vladika Innocent in the doorway. He grabbed me by the arm and led me to the platform surrounding the cathedral. We walked around the cathedral twice, Vladika telling me that my speech had made a deep impression on him and then, stopping suddenly, he told me, ‘Doctor, you need to be a priest!’
As I already mentioned earlier, the thought of becoming a priest had never even occurred to me, but I took the words of the Right Reverend Innocent as an appeal from God, through the lips of a hierarch, and without further thought answered, ‘Ok, Vladika! I will be a priest, if that is what God wants!’
I spoke with Vladika later, though, about the fact that my operating assistant Veletskaya was living in my house and about how she had come to be there through an obvious and miraculous injunction of God to take ‘the barren woman to dwell in a house and be a mother rejoicing over children,’ and that a priest cannot live in the same house with another woman. But Vladika disregarded this objection, saying that he had no doubts about my adherence to the seventh commandment.
Already next Sunday, during the reading of the hours, accompanied by two deacons and wearing a borrowed cassock, I came out to the hierarch standing on the cathedra and was ordained reader, singer, and subdeacon, and then during the Liturgy I was ordained to the rank of deacon.
Naturally, the unusual occurrence of such a popular professor being ordained deacon caused a great sensation in Tashkent, and I was approached by a large group of students from the faculty of medicine, led by one professor. Naturally, they couldn’t understand or appreciate what I had done, for they themselves were very far from religion. What would they have thought, had I told them that, at the sight of the blasphemous carnivals, and the mockeries made of Our Lord Jesus Christ, my heart called out loudly, ‘I cannot remain silent!’ And I felt that it was my duty to speak up in defence of our Saviour, who had been insulted, and to praise His immeasurable compassion towards the human race.
A week after being ordained a deacon, on the feast day of the Presentation of Our Lord in 1921, I was ordained a priest by Bishop Innocent.
I forgot to mention earlier that I played a key role in the opening of the University in Tashkent. Most of the departments were headed by doctors from Tashkent, and for some reason I alone was chosen in Moscow to head up the department of topographic anatomy and operative surgery.
My service as a priest was combined with the reading of lectures for the faculty of medicine – lectures which were attended in great numbers even by students from different classes. I read my lectures in a cassock and with a cross on my chest. Such a thing, impossible today, was still possible at that time. I remained head surgeon of the Tashkent Municipal Hospital, which made it possible for me to serve in the cathedral on Sundays only.
Bishop Innocent, who rarely gave sermons, appointed me the fourth priest in the cathedral and entrusted me with the business of preaching. This he did while speaking to me the words of the apostle Paul, ‘Your business is not to baptize, but to preach the gospel’ (1 Cor. 1:17). He had a deep understanding of what he was saying, his words almost prophetic, and now, after 36 years in the priesthood and 34 as a hierarch, it is perfectly clear to me that my calling was specifically to preach and witness to the name of Christ. Over the long course of my service as a priest I performed almost no rites - I never even once performed a baptism according to the full baptismal service. Besides the sermons given at services by either Bishop Innocent or myself, I also spent each Sunday in the cathedral after Vespers giving long talks on important and difficult theological topics, which attracted many listeners. An entire cycle of these talks was dedicated to the criticism of materialism. I didn’t have a degree in theology, but with God’s help easily overcame the difficulties of such talks.
What’s more, over the course of the next two years I often found myself taking part in public debates, in front of large numbers of listeners, with the archpriest Lomakin, a former missionary from the Kursk diocese who had renounced God, and was now in charge of anti-religious propaganda in Central Asia.
The debates ended, as a rule, with the disgrace of the apostate, the believers not letting him pass, bombarding him with the question, ‘tell us, when were you lying – when you were a priest, or are you lying now?’ The unfortunate blasphemer came to fear me, and asked those who were holding the debates to deliver him from ‘that philosopher’.
Once, unbeknownst to him, railwaymen invited me to their club to take part in a debate about religion. Pending the beginning of the debate, I was sitting on the stage, the curtain down, when suddenly I saw, coming up onto the stage, my usual adversary. Upon seeing me he became very confused, muttered, ‘not the doctor again,’ bowed, and went down. He spoke first at the debate, though, as always, my speech completely destroyed his arguments, and I was rewarded by the workers with loud applause.
The words of the psalmist David ‘the death of sinners is evil,’ came to pass on the unfortunate blasphemer of the Holy Spirit most terrifyingly. He developed rectal cancer and during surgery it was found that the tumour had spread to the bladder. Soon a deep, extremely foul-smelling cavity formed in the pelvis, filled with pus, faeces and urine, and a teeming multitude of worms. The enemy of God became extremely embittered as a result of his sufferings until even the party nurses who had been appointed to look after him couldn’t bear his malignance and cursing, and refused to look after him.
At this difficult time, while I was combining my service and preaching in the cathedral with the management of the department of topographic anatomy and operative surgery and reading lectures, I also found myself needing to hastily study theology. In this matter the Lord God helped me by way of one of the people who attended my talks and debates - a second-hand book seller and believer who brought me so many theology books that I soon had a decent sized library.
But that wasn’t everything: I continued to work as head doctor at the hospital, operating on a wide scale every day and even into the night, and couldn’t but work out everything I had observed there scientifically. For this reason I often had to do research on corpses in the hospital morgue, which received wagon loads piled high with corpses every day from the Volga regions, where famine and epidemics of infectious diseases were running rampant. In order to work on the corpses I had to begin by cleaning them up and delousing them myself. Much of the research done on these corpses went into the foundation of my book "Notes on the Surgical Treatment of Purulent Wounds", running into three editions and 60 000 copies. For this book I was awarded with the Stalin Prize in the first order.
However, my work on lice covered corpses didn’t come without a price. I was infected with a very serious form of recurring typhoid, though, by God’s grace, the illness passed with one serious attack and a second minor one.
In the spring of 1923, not long before the schism and the appearance of the ‘living’ church, Bishop Innocent called a convention of the clergy of the Tashkent and Turkestan diocese, at which two candidates were to be chosen for elevation to the hierarchy. The choice fell upon archimandrite Vissarion and me.
Soon after this the priests from Moscow and Petrograd led by archpriest Alexander Vedensky rose up against Patriach Tikhon. All over Russia the clergy was divided into two groups – those who were steadfast and strong in spirit, true to the Orthodox Church and Patriarch Tikhon, and those who were cowardly, unfaithful, or unable to understand the tumultuous events taking place in the Church, who became part of the ‘living’ church, led by Vedensky and a few of his accomplices, whose names I can no longer remember.
The schism extended to the diocese in Tashkent as well. Archbishop Innocent, who preached very rarely, gave a courageous, forceful sermon about the fact that a rebellion was taking place in the Church and that it was essential to remain faithful to the Orthodox Church and Patriarch Tikhon and not to have anything to do with the ‘living’ church bishop, whose arrival was anticipated.
Unexpectedly to all, two prominent archpriests, in whom much hope had been put, switched over to the schismatics. They were then joined by others, and only a few faithful remained.
Bishop Innocent was quick to consecrate archimandrite Vissarion. Together with Bishop Sergius (Lavrov), who had recently been transferred to Tashkent from exile in Ashkhabad, he performed the full service of nomination to bishop over archimandrite Vissarion. But on the very next day the nominated bishop was arrested and sent away from Tashkent. Later he joined the Gregorian schism and achieved the rank of metropolitan.
Bishop Innocent was very frightened and at night, in secret, left for Moscow, hoping to make it from there to the monastery of Balaam. That, of course, did not work out, and only after a long period of time did he succeed in making it to his hometown Pustinka.
The bishop had left. There was rebellion in the Church. And so archpriest Michael Andreev and I united all those priests and churchwardens who remained faithful, organized a convention of them, and notified the GPU, requesting permission and that they send an observer. Archpriest Andreev and I assumed the management of the diocese and summoned priests and church council members who had rejected the ‘living’ church to a diocesan meeting in Tashkent. We requested that the GPU send representatives , though they didn’t attend even once. Everything seemed to have been done properly, though it was for that, for the most part, that I was sent into exile for the first time.
At that time a very prominent hierarch came to Tashkent – Bishop Andrew (I can’t remember his last name). Learning of the state of affairs he appointed me rector of the Cathedral and declared me an archpriest.
Soon after that, another exile, Bishop Andrew of Ufa (prince Ukhtomsky), was transferred to Tashkent from Ashkhabad. Not long before his arrest and exile to Central Asia he had been in Moscow where Patriarch Tikhon, under house arrest, empowered him to choose candidates for elevation to the rank of bishop and to consecrate them secretly.
Upon arrival in Tashkent, Bishop Andrew approved my selection as a candidate for consecration as bishop by the council of Tashkent clergy and secretly tonsured me a monk in my bedroom. He told me that he had wanted to name me for the healer Panteliemon, but when he was present as I served the Liturgy, and he heard the sermon I gave it struck him that the name of the apostle-evangelist, doctor and icon painter Luke suited me much better.
Bishop Andrew sent me to the Tajik city of Penjikent, located 90 versts from Samarkand. There were two exiled bishops living in Penjikent: Daniel of Volkhov and Vasily of Suzdal; Bishop Andrew sent a letter for them with me in which he requested that they consecrate me as a Bishop.
As I wrote above, I had been junior priest in the cathedral in Tashkent for two years and four months, while continuing to work as head doctor and surgeon at the municipal hospital. My departure for Samarkand had to be a secret, and for that reason I scheduled four operations for the following day, while myself leaving on the train in the evening accompanied by a hieromonk, deacon, and my oldest son Michael, aged sixteen.
In the morning we arrived in Samarkand, but finding a two-horse cab in Penjikent to take us farther turned out to be nearly impossible: no one would agree for fear of being attacked by Basmatches. Finally, a brave soul was found who agreed to take us. We were on the road for a long time. Halfway there we stopped at a tearoom to rest and feed the horses. For two days I hadn’t slept a wink and the second I lay down on the wooden dais where the Uzbeks drink their tea, I immediately collapsed into a deep sleep. I slept for only ¾ of an hour, but that sleep renewed me, and I felt completely rested. With God’s help we made it to our destination.
Bishops Daniel and Vasily met us with love. Upon reading the letter from Bishop Andrew Ukhtomsky they decided to serve the Liturgy for the consecration tomorrow, and to serve Vespers and Matins without delay in the small church of Saint Nicholas of Myra and Lycia, without ringing the bells and with the doors locked. A Moscow priest was also living in exile with the bishops, a famous church writer, archpriest Sventsitsky, and he was present at my consecration. My travelling companions sang and read at the Vigil and Liturgy along with archpriest Sventsitsky.
Bishop Daniel and Vasily were concerned about the fact that I was only a hieromonk and not an archimandrite, and because I hadn’t been nominated to the rank of bishop. However, they didn’t hesitate for long, remembered a number of cases in which hieromonks had been consecrated to bishop and were satisfied. On the following morning we all went to the church. We locked the doors, didn’t ring the bells, and immediately began the service, with the consecration taking place at the beginning of the Liturgy.
During the consecration, the one being consecrated inclines over the altar and a bishop holds the Gospel open over his head. At this important moment of the consecration, while they were reading the prayer of ordination for the Sacrament of the Priesthood, I was so deeply affected that my whole body shook, and afterwards the bishops told me that they had never seen such emotion before. Bishops Daniel and Vasily and the archpriest Sventsitsky returned home a little earlier than I did, and met me with the greeting for hierarchs: ‘Ton despotin kai archierea imon...’ I become a hierarch on 18/31 May 1923. On the next day we returned to Tashkent quite satisfactorily.
When His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon was informed of my consecration, he approved and acknowledged its legitimacy without a moment’s hesitation.
I set my first hierarchical service for Sunday, 21 May, the feast day of the equal-to-the-apostles Constantine and Helena. Bishop Innocent had already left. All the priests of the cathedral had run away like rats from a sinking ship, and there was only the archpriest Michael Andreev to serve my first Sunday Vigil and Liturgy with.
Bishop Andrew of Ufa was present in the altar during my first service. He was nervous that I wouldn’t be able to serve without mistakes. But, by God’s grace, there were none.
The next week passed quietly, and I served my second Sunday Vigil in peace. Upon returning home I read the order of preparation for Holy Communion. At 11 o’clock in the evening there was a knock at the outside door, a search, and my first arrest. I bid farewell to my children and Sophia Sergeevna and for the first time got into a ‘black raven’, as they called the cars used by GPU. And so began the 11 years I was to spend in prison and exile. My four children were left in the care of Sophia Sergeevna. She and the children were kicked out of the apartment I had been given as head doctor and relocated to a tiny closet, which they could only fit into by making bunks for the children, turning the place into a two-floor closet. However, Sophia Sergeevna did not lose her job, and on the twenty rubles she received per month fed herself and the children.
I was imprisoned in the basement at GPU. The first interrogation was completely absurd. I was asked about my acquaintance with people completely unknown to me, and about my association with the Orenburg Cossacks, about whom, of course, I knew nothing.
One night I was taken to an interrogation which lasted for about two hours. The interrogator was a very important chekist, who subsequently came to hold a very prominent position in the Moscow GPU. He interrogated me about my political views and my relationship to the soviet authorities. Upon hearing that I had always been a democrat, he asked me point blank who I was – a friend or an enemy? I answered him that I was a friend and an enemy, that if I weren’t a Christian I would likely have become a communist, but that they had undertaken the persecution of Christianity, and therefore I was, of course, no friend.
They left me alone for a while and I was transferred from the basement to another, freer room. I was kept in a large courtyard that had been hastily reequipped as a prison for GPU along with the buildings surrounding. In subsequent interrogations absurd chargers were brought forth accusing me of having dealings with the Orenburg Cossacks as well as other fabricated accusations.
During the years I had served as a priest and worked as head doctor in the hospital in Tashkent I hadn’t ceased writing "Notes on the Surgical Treatment of Purulent Wounds", which I wanted to publish in two parts and was ready to do shortly – all that remained was to write the final essay for the first edition - "On the Purulent Inflammation of the Eardrum and Complications Related Thereto”.
I appealed to the director of the prison department in which I was located with the request that I be given the opportunity to write that chapter. He was so obliging as to let me write in his office after he had finished work. I soon finished the first edition of my book. On the title page I wrote: “Bishop Luke. Professor Voino-Yasenetsky. Notes on the Surgical Treatment of Purulent Wounds".
And so God’s mysterious and incomprehensible prophecy for this book, which I had received while still in Pereslavl-Zalesskiy some years ago, came to pass: when this book is finished, it will bear the name of a bishop.
Publishing the book in two parts proved impossible, and it was only after my first exile that the first, by no means complete, edition was printed. The title ‘bishop’ had, of course, been omitted.
I was not kept in prison for long and was freed for one day so that I could travel to Moscow on my own. All night my former head doctor’s apartment was filled with parishioners from the cathedral who had come to bid me farewell. At this time the office of hierarch in Tashkent had been taken over by ‘living church’ Metropolitan Nicholas, who I called a ferocious boar reclining on the bishop’s throne, and I forbid all fellowship with him, which infuriated the chekists.
In the morning, after saying goodbye to my children, I left for the train station and took up a place in the passenger wagon, not the penal one. After the first, second and third calls, and whistles from the steam engine the train still didn’t move for about twenty minutes. As I later learned, the train couldn’t move because a crowd of people had lain down on the tracks, wanting to keep me in Tashkent, though that, of course, was not possible.
Chapter Four – My First Exile
In Moscow I reported to GPU headquarters where, after a short, meaningless interrogation I was informed that I could spend the week on my own in Moscow, after which I was to report once more to GPU. That week I twice visited Patriarch Tikhon, serving together with him once.
The second time I reported to GPU I was arrested and sent to Butirskaya prison. After spending a week in quarantine I was moved to a criminal cell, where I was actually reasonably treated by the thugs and petty thieves. In the prison hospital I met Metropolitan Arseny of Novgorod for the first time. In the adjacent cell, also a criminal cell, there was a priest who exerted great influence over the thugs and petty thieves. When a hardened old thief, whom the criminals greeted as their leader and with great honour, entered the cell, the priest’s influence suddenly evaporated.
We were taken out to the prison courtyard for a stroll every day. Returning from the courtyard to the second floor, I noticed for the first time that I was short of breath.
Once, to my great surprise, I was paid a visit. Through prison bars I spoke with my oldest son Misha. In search of work he had experienced many misadventures. In Kiev he had had to paint a railroad bridge, hanging over the Dnieper in a swinging platform.
To my great joy, I managed in the Butirskaya prison library to get a copy of the New Testament in German, which I read zealously. Late in autumn a large group of prisoners from Butirskaya prison were driven on foot across the whole of Moscow to Taganskaya prison. I was in the first row and not far from me was that hardened old thief, the master of the riffraff in the cell adjacent to mine in Butirskaya prison.
In Taganskaya prison I was put in a cell with political prisoners and not with the riffraff. All of the prisoners, myself included, received small sheepskin coats from the wife of the writer Maxim Gorky. On my way down the long hall that lead to the facilities, I saw through the lattice doors of an empty single cell a half naked, shivering member of the riffraff sitting against a pillar on the floor ankle deep in water and gave him my sheepskin jacket, which I had no need for. This made a deep impression on the old man, the master of the riffraff, and every time I passed by the criminal cell he greeted me very politely and called me father. Later on, in other prisons, I was to see over and over again how appreciative bandits and thieves were of being treated like normal human beings.
In the Taganskaya prison I came down with a serious case of influenza, most likely viral, and spent about a week in the prison hospital with my temperature around 40 degrees. I received a certificate from the prison doctor stating that I was unable to walk and that I was to be driven on a cart. In Moscow prisons I served time together with the archpriest Michael Andreev, who had come with me from Tashkent. And I left Moscow together with him for my first exile as well, in the winter of 1923.
It was a quiet, moonlit night when the train arrived in the city of Tyumen and I wanted to walk to the prison, though the guards offered to drive me. It was less than a verst to the prison but, to my misfortune, we were forced to go very quickly, and when we arrived at the prison I was severely short of breath. My pulse was weak and rapid, and oedema had appeared on my legs up to the knees.
This was my first manifestation of myocarditis, which was almost certainly a result of the recurring typhoid I had contracted in Tashkent a year after entering the priesthood. We didn’t stay for long in the prison in Tyumen - approximately two weeks - and I spent the whole time without medical attention, receiving my sole phial of digitalis only about twelve days after arriving. In the prison in Tyumen we met the archpriest Hilarion Golubyatnikov for the first time, continuing our journey together with him.
Our second stop under guarded transportation was in the city of Omsk, though no memories of it have remained with me. From Omsk we continued on to Novosibirsk in a ‘Stolypinsky’ wagon for prisoners, which was made up of separate cells with lattice doors and a narrow passageway with small, high-placed windows. The cell assigned to me and my two companions, two archpriests, was also filled by a thug who had killed eight people, and a prostitute who left us at night to ply her trade amongst our guards.
The thug knew that I had given my sheepskin jacket to the shivering member of the riffraff and was very polite to me. He assured me that no member their criminal brotherhood would ever bother me at anytime, anywhere. However, in the prison in Novosibirsk, while washing in the baths, several hundred rubles were stolen from me, and later, in the same prison, my suitcase and possessions were also stolen.
In that prison we were put in a separate cell at first, though soon they transferred us to a large criminal cell, where the riffraff greeted us so hostilely, that I was compelled to save myself by fleeing: I started to bang on the door under the pretext of needing to use the facilities and, leaving the cell, declared to the warden that under no conditions would I return to it.
From Novosibirsk to Krasnoyarsk nothing special happened. In Krasnoyarsk we were imprisoned in the large cellar of the two floor GPU building. The cellar was very dirty and soiled with human feces, which we had to clean up though we were not even given a shovel. Next to our cellar was another, in which a detachment of rebel Cossacks was being held. I don’t remember the name of their leader, but I will never forget the sound of gunfire that carried all the way to us when the Cossacks were executed. We didn’t stay for long in the cellar at GPU before we were sent on along the wintery path to the city of Yeniseysk, 320 kilometres to the north of Krasnoyarsk.
Little of that journey remains in my memory, I remember only an operation I performed on a peasant of about thirty years of age at one of the places we stopped for the night. Following a serious case of osteomyelitis, which had gone untreated, the entire top third of his humerus, including its head, protruded from a gaping wound in the deltoid region. There was nothing to bandage him up with and his shirt and bed were always full of pus. I asked for a pair of pliers and without any difficulty removed an enormous sequestrum.
In Yeniseysk we were given good accommodation in the house of a well-to-do person and stayed there for about two months. We were joined by one other exiled priest, and on Sundays and feast days held Vigil services and the Liturgy together in our apartment, which included a guest room. There were many churches in Yeniseysk , but here, as in Krasnoyarsk, the priests had turned aside and joined the ‘living-church’ schism, and we, of course, could not pray with them. One deacon had remained faithful to Orthodoxy, and I ordained him a presbyter.
On one of the feast days I went into the guest room to begin the Liturgy and unexpectedly saw an unknown old monk standing by the door opposite. Upon seeing me he looked completely dumbfounded and didn’t even bow. Recovering from his shock he told me, in answer to my question, that the people of Krasnoyarsk wanted nothing to do with the unfaithful priests there and so had decided to send him to Minusinsk, roughly 300 versts to the south of Krasnoyarsk, where an Orthodox bishop lived, whose name I have forgotten. But monk Christopher hadn’t gone to him as some unknown force had drawn him to Yeniseysk and me. ‘And why were you so dumbfounded to see me?’ I asked him. ‘How could I not be?!’ He answered. ‘Ten years ago I had a dream which I remember as if it were yesterday. I dreamed that I was in a church and an unknown hierarch was ordaining me a priestmonk. Now, when you came in, I saw that hierarch again!’
The monk bowed to the ground before me and during the Liturgy I ordained him a priestmonk.
Ten years ago, when he saw me, I was a country doctor in Pereslavl-Zalesskiy and the thought of the priesthood or of being a hierarch had never occurred to me. And to God I was already a bishop. Mysterious are the ways of the Lord.
My arrival in Yeniseysk had caused quite a sensation, which reached its height when I extracted congenital cataracts from three little blind brothers, giving them sight. At the request of doctor Vasily Alexandrovich Bashurov, the head of the hospital in Yeniseysk, I began operating for him and managed over the course of two months there to carry out quite a few large surgical and gynaecological operations. At the same time I received many patients in my home, and the number of those wishing to see me was so great that in the first few days it became necessary for patients to make an appointment. The waiting list, begun at the beginning of March, soon extended to Pentecost.
Not long before my arrival in Yeniseysk the women’s convent had been closed and two novices from the convent recounted the sacrilege and defilement that accompanied the closing of the church. In the end a female komsomol member who was a part of the group destroying the convent lifted up her skirt and underskirt and sat on the altar. I ordained those two novices nuns, giving them the names of my heavenly patrons – the oldest I named Lukiya, and the youngest, Valentina.
Shortly before the feast of the Annunciation I was sent to the place designated for my exile, a village by the name of Khaya on the river Chunya, a tributary of the Angara. Lukiya and Valentina went on ahead of me with our things, and I travelled with the archpriests Hilarion Golubyatnikov and Michael Andreev to the district settlement of Boguchany. We travelled on horse over the frozen Yenisey and Angara to Boguchany, where we were separated, the archpriests Golubyatnikov and Andreev being sent to a village not far from Boguchany while I was sent to the village of Khaya, 120 versts away. In Boguchany I operated on a patient with a suppurating echinococcus of the liver, and a few months later, returning from Khaya, found him in good health.
In Boguchany it was recommended that I take up residence in the home of a certain pious peasant, though I was also warned that his mother was a wicked old shrew. My nuns were awaiting me in Khaya and had already taken up quarters in the peasant’s house. The old woman met me with great joy. I was given two rooms – in one of these rooms the nuns and I held services, and in the other I slept. The wicked old woman attended the services for the first couple of days only, after which she not only stayed away, but did everything she could to interfere with them.
The wicked old woman became more and more oppressive until it became evident she intended to drive us out completely. At one point the sisters and I carried all of our things outside, sitting down on them against the wall. Seeing that we had been driven from the house, the people were filled with indignation and forced the old woman to take us back into the house.
In Khaya I carried out an operation on an old man with a cataract in a very unique setting. I had a set of ophthalmic instruments and a sterilizer with me. In an abandoned hut I had the old man lie down on a narrow bench under the window and in complete solitude extracted the cataract. The operation was a success. I received 10 squirrel hides worth a ruble each. Together with the sisters I also carried out the burial of a peasant following the Paschal order.
We had spent two months in Khaya when orders were received that I was to return once more to Yeniseysk. We were given two peasants as an escort and two riding horses. The nuns rode horses for the first time. Extremely large gadflies bit the animals so mercilessly that blood streamed down their sides and legs. The horse that sister Lukiya was riding often lay down and rolled around on the ground in an attempt to rid itself of the gadflies, hurting her leg badly.
Halfway to Boguchany we stopped for the night in a forest hut in spite of the demands of our escort that we travel on through the night. Only my threat that they would answer before a judge for the inhumane way they were treating me, a professor, had any effect on them. With only 10 versts remaining to Boguchany our ride came to an end. Never having ridden on horseback before, I was exhausted in the extreme and had to be lifted from the saddle by our escort. We continued on to Boguchany in a cart, and then took a boat along the Angara, passing over dangerous rapids on the way. In the evening, on the banks of the Yenisey, opposite the mouth of the Angara, the nuns and I served an unforgettable Vespers in the open air.
Upon arrival in Yeniseysk I was imprisoned in a single cell. That night I was the victim of an attack from bedbugs such as one could hardly imagine possible. I fell asleep quickly, but awoke soon after, lit the electric lamp, and saw that all of my pillow and bed and the walls of the cell were covered with an almost unbroken layer of bedbugs. I lit a candle and started setting fire to the bedbugs, which began to fall from the walls and the bed to the floor. The effect this had on them was striking. After an hour of setting fire to the bedbugs not a single one remained in the cell. It would appear that they had somehow informed one another of the danger at hand, ‘Save yourselves, brothers! They’re setting us on fire here!’ In the days that followed I didn’t see any more bedbugs, they had all migrated to different cells. I wasn’t held for long in the prison in Yeniseysk before being sent further down the Yenisey with a convoy, which consisted of a small steamship tugging several barges that had come from Krasnoyarsk. I was put on one of the barges together with some social-revolutionaries who were being sent to the Turukhansk region. The nuns Lukiya and Valentina wanted to accompany me but were not allowed.
The journey along the wide Yenisey, flowing through the endless taiga, was dull and monotonous. Halfway to Turukhansk we made a short stop in a reasonably large settlement, the name of which I have forgotten. On the riverbank I was greeted by a large group of exiles, who met each ship in the hope of seeing me, as someone there had heard that I was being sent to Turukhansk. One of the members of that group awaiting my arrival with particular eagerness was a presbyter of the Leningrad Baptist community by the name of Shilov, who approached me and introduced himself. Later on he would visit me in Turukhansk for long discussions.
Standing a little farther off was another group of people, also awaiting my arrival. These were Tungus, all suffering from trachoma. I invited one of them, half blind from entropion, to come to Turukhansk for an operation. He followed my advice soon after and I carried out the grafting of mucous membrane from his lips onto his eyelids.
When I got off the barge in Turukhansk the large crowd of people awaiting my arrival suddenly got down on their knees and asked to be blessed. I was immediately settled in the apartment provided for the hospital’s doctor and offered work. Not long before this the hospital’s doctor, tardily diagnosing lip cancer in himself, had left for Krasnoyarsk, where he was operated on, too late, as it would later turn out. A medical assistant had remained in the hospital, and a nurse from Krasnoyarsk had arrived together with me – a young girl who had recently finished a medical assistant degree and was very nervous at the prospect of working with a professor. With these two helpers I undertook such large operations as the resection of the upper jaw, large laparotomies, gynaecological operations and quite a few operations on the eye.
The ice on the Yenisey had already started to move when, to my surprise, the Leningrad Baptist presbyter Shilov made the 700 verst journey on a boat to see me. Shilov had undertaken this difficult and dangerous voyage all for the sake of having discussions with me. He was beaten to Turukhansk by a frail little Jewish fellow who had travelled to Moscow from America under the guise of being a communist but who had for some reason aroused suspicion and been locked up in the abrogated Solovetsky monastery.
This little Jewish fellow was once present during a discussion with Shilov and at his request I allowed him to be present during our discussions, which continued for about three days, and for several hours each day. Shilov asked me to interpret quite a number of texts from the Holy Scriptures and I, of course, explained in accordance with the teachings of Orthodoxy. In some strange way, though, as we will see further on, Shilov came to believe that I was convinced of the truth of the Baptists. Our discussions came to an end. Shilov managed to return to Krasnoyarsk on some delayed steamship.
In Turukhansk there was a monastery that had been closed and in which an old priest nonetheless served all of the services. He was under the jurisdiction of the ‘living-church’ hierarch and I had to convince him and the whole Turukhansk flock to adhere to the ways of ancient Orthodoxy. This I managed to do by preaching about the great sin of church schism – the priest repented before the people and I was able to attend church services, at which I almost always preached. The peasants in Turukhansk were deeply grateful and took me to the monastery and home again on a sleigh covered with rugs. In the hospital I naturally never refused anyone my blessing, of which the Tungus were greatly appreciative and which they always sought. For this, as well as for my sermons in church, I was to pay dearly.
I had been warned that the chairman of the Turukhansk regional committee had a great hatred for religion. This didn’t stop him, however, from calling out to God for salvation when he found himself amidst a terrible storm in a small boat on the Yenisey. On his orders I was summoned by a representative of the GPU and told that I was strictly forbidden from giving my blessing to the patients of the hospital, preaching in the monastery, and travelling to it on a sleigh covered with rugs. I answered that my duty as a hierarch would not allow me to refuse the people a blessing, and I suggested that he himself hang a notice on the hospital doors forbidding the sick to ask me for a blessing. This, of course, he could not do. As regarded my trips to the monastery, I also suggested that he forbid the peasants offer me a sleigh covered in rugs. This he also did not do.
However, my firmness was not tolerated for long. The building housing GPU was located very near to the hospital. I was summoned there and at the entrance saw a sleigh, two horses in harness and a police officer. The GPU representative greeted me very maliciously and announced that because of my refusal to obey the demands of the executive committee I would have to travel on even further than Turukhansk, and that I was being given half an hour to get my things together. I asked calmly where I was being sent. And received an irritated reply: to the Arctic Ocean.
I returned to the hospital calmly, followed by the police officer. He whispered in my ear, ‘please, please professor, get your things as quickly as possible, we need to leave here and get to the next village quickly. After that the journey will be quiet.’ Soon we made it to the village Selivanikha, not far from Turukhansk, which had received its name from the head of the Skoptsi sect, Selivanov, who had served his exile there.
My companions in exile, the social-revolutionaries, who had shown great interest in me and with whom I had held long discussions, quickly gathered. They gave me money and a fur blanket that proved very useful. After a night in a hut for travellers we continued our journey.
Our journey over the frozen Yenisey in the severe cold was very difficult for me. However, precisely at this difficult time I felt very clearly, almost tangibly that the Lord God Jesus Christ Himself was beside me, supporting and strengthening me.
Spending the nights in riverside huts for travellers, we arrived at the Arctic Circle, beyond which lay a hamlet, the name of which I cannot remember. Joseph Stalin had lived there in exile.
When we entered a hut the owner offered me his hand. I asked him, ‘Are you not Orthodox? Are you not aware that bishops are asked for a blessing and not offered handshakes?’ As I later found out, this made a deep impression on the police officer who was escorting me. Even before, on the road from Selivanikha to the next travellers’ hut he had told me, ‘I feel like Malyuta Skuratova taking Metropolitan Philip to Otroch monastery.’
Our next night was spent in a travellers’ station that consisted of two courtyards, where a stern old man by the name of Afinogen lived with his four sons like a feudal lord of the Middle Ages. He had assumed the exclusive right to all the fishing on the Yenisey within a forty kilometre radius and no one dared challenge this right. The old man’s youngest son was an extraordinary example of pathological laziness. He refused to do any work and would lie around for days on end. He had been beaten violently, to within an inch of death many times, but nothing did any good. The old man Afinogen considered himself a model Christian and loved to read the Holy Scriptures. I stayed up with him until very late explaining things that he understood incorrectly.
The journey that lay ahead proved even more difficult. One of the next huts had recently burned down. We couldn’t stay there for the night and had trouble even obtaining deer weakened as a result of not having enough feed. These we were forced to ride with to the next station. Travelling for over 70 versts without a stop had weakened me greatly and I was so numb from the cold that I had to be carried into a hut and warmed for a long time. The subsequent journey to the station Plakhino, 230 kilometres from the Arctic Circle, passed quietly. My accompanying officer/komsomol member had been instructed to choose a place for me to serve my exile himself, so he told me, and decided to leave me in Plakhino.
It was quite a small station, consisting of three huts and two large, as it seemed to me, piles of dung and straw, which in actuality were the dwellings of two small families. We entered the main hut and were soon followed by the few inhabitants of Plakhino, who entered in a line. Each person bowed low and the chairman of the station spoke, ‘Your Eminence! You can rest assured we will take care of everything for you.’ He introduced each of the men and women one at a time, all the while saying, ‘you can rest assured we will take care of everything. We’ve already discussed everything. Each man will be responsible for supplying you with a half sazhen of firewood each month. This woman here will prepare your food, and this one will wash your clothes. You can rest assured everything will be taken care of.’ Each person asked for a blessing and I was shown the room prepared for me in another hut that had been divided in half. In one half a young peasant lived with his wife. They had been moved into the other half of the hut, crowding in on those who already lived there. My escort/kosomol member watched very attentively over the whole scene while I got to know the inhabitants of the station. He was supposed to leave immediately to spend the night at a trading outpost located several kilometres from Plakhino. It was clear that he was worried about the impending farewell with me. But I made things easier for him by blessing him and giving him a kiss. As we will see in the narrative ahead, this made a deep impression on him.
I was left alone in my quarters. My half of the hut was quite large and had two windows, which were filled with flat blocks of ice in place of a second frame. The gaps in the windows had not been sealed up and in places daylight was visible through a large gap in the exterior corner. On the floor in the corner lay a pile of snow. A second such pile of snow, which never melted, lay inside the hut along the entrance threshold. For a bed at night and to relax in the day the peasants set up wide plank beds and covered them with reindeer skins. I had a pillow with me. Close to the bed was a small iron stove that I filled and lit before going to bed, and lying on the planks I covered myself with my raccoon skin coat and the fur blanket I had been given in Selivanikha. At night I was frightened by the popping fire, and in the morning, when I got out of bed, I was seized by the freezing cold of the hut, which had caused a thick layer of ice to form in the water bucket.
On the very first day I set to work sealing the gaps in the window with flour paste and thick wrapping paper from purchases made at the trading outpost, and also attempted to stop up the gap in the corner of the hut. I kept the iron stove stoked day and night. When I sat bundled up at the table, I was warm from the waist up, and cold from the waist down. One time I had to wash in the extreme cold. I was brought a wash basin and two buckets of water, one cold, with pieces of ice in it, and the other hot. I don’t know how I managed to wash myself in those conditions. Sometimes at night I was awakened by what sounded like a loud peal of thunder, though it wasn’t thunder, it was the ice cracking along the whole of the wide Yenisey river.
I didn’t receive food from the woman whose responsibility it was to cook for me for long – she had a fight with her lover and refused to make me food. For the first time in my life I was forced to try and cook for myself, something I hadn’t the faintest understanding of. The peasants brought me fish, and other groceries were bought at the trading outpost. I have already forgotten what unbelievable concoction resulted from my attempt to fry the fish, but I remember very well how I boiled kissel. I boiled some cranberries and started to add in liquid starch; no matter how much I added it seemed that the kissel was still too watery. I continued to pour in starch until the kissel had turned into a solid lump. The fiasco that resulted from my attempts at cooking forced me to capitulate; a different old peasant woman took pity on me and made me food.
I had a copy of the New Testament with me, which I never parted with even in exile. In Plakhino I offered to read to the peasants and explain the Gospel to them. They seemed to receive this suggestion with joy, though the joy was short-lived. With each reading the number of people coming to listen grew smaller and smaller until soon the readings and sermons came to an end.
I would like to mention one more work for God that I undertook in Plakhino. Now, as I write these memoirs, I have been a priest for over 37 years and a bishop for over 35 and, as strange as it may seem, I have only baptised three children: one who was close to death, using a shortened form of the Baptismal service, and another two in an altogether singular way.
And thus at the place of my farthest exile, 230 versts beyond the Arctic Circle in the station of Plakhino, I came to baptise two small children in very unusual conditions. As I already said, there were in the station, besides the three huts, two human dwellings, one of which I took for a stack of hay, and the other for a pile of dung. In the later I undertook the baptism. I had nothing with me – no vestments, no Book of Needs, and because of the absence of the later I made up the prayers myself, making a likeness of an epitrachelion from a towel. The squalid human dwelling was so low to the ground that I could stand only when bent over. A wooden tub served as baptismal font, and I was hampered for the duration of the Sacrament by a calf hovering around it.
Now, as a bishop, I don’t carry out baptisms, for this is work carried out by my priests.
It is often very cold in Plakhino, and there are no crows or sparrows there because in such severe frost they could freeze in mid-flight and drop to the earth like rocks. In my two months in Plakhino I only once saw a bird – it was sitting on a bush, and looked like a pink ball of fluff. One time I experienced an extremely severe frost when, for several days in a row, the wind blew from the north in what the locals called a ‘northerly’. This is a calm, ice cold wind that doesn’t stop day or night, which the horses and cows can barely endure. The poor animals stand still day and night, their hinds facing to the north.
Fishing nets and large wooden floats hung in the loft of my hut. When the ‘northerly’ blew, the floats knocked incessantly, reminding me of Greig’s ‘Dance of the Dead’. I had to go outside, of course, during the day and at night for natural reasons, in the snow and frost. It was extremely difficult at the best of times, and when the ‘northerly’ was blowing the situation became desperate. I had spent a little over two months in Plakhino, until the beginning of March, and no travellers had visited the station.
Only at the beginning of March did the Lord unexpectedly send me deliverance. At the beginning of Great Lent a special courier from Turukhansk arrived with a letter for me in which the GPU representative politely invited me to return to Turukhansk. I couldn’t understand what had happened, why they were sending me back to Turukhansk, and I found out only upon returning. It turned out that in the Turukhansk hospital a peasant who needed an emergency operation had died because they had been unable to perform the operation without me. The peasants of Turukhansk had become so outraged by this that they had armed themselves with pitchforks, scythes and axes and decided to tear apart GPU and the village Council. The authorities in Turukhansk were so frightened that they sent a messenger to me in Plakhino at once.
The road back to Turukhansk wasn’t too difficult, and it was only in Afinogen’s station that I had any problem. Afinogen sent one of his sons to take me back to the station where Stalin had lived. The horse walked slowly the whole time and the driver didn’t want to urge her on. I couldn’t bear it and snatching the reins from the driver’s hands, started whipping the horse. The driver jumped out of the sleigh and ran away. I had no choice but to turn the horse around and drive it slowly back to Afinogen’s hut. That ‘true Christian’ abused me, a bishop, most rudely, though his anger subsided immediately upon receiving a gold five-ruble coin from me. He gave me a pair of good horses and for a driver – a different son.
At one of the next stations I experienced what it is like to travel by dog – six enormous Siberian dogs in harness. They ran well, until suddenly one of them bit one of the others, that one bit another still, and they all turned into a big fighting mess. The driver jumped out and started to thrash them with a wooden stick that he held for the purpose of controlling them. Order was returned and the dogs got us safely to our destination.
The first person to meet me in Turukhansk, with open arms and sincere joy, was the police officer-komsomol member who had escorted me from Turukhansk to Plakhino.
I resumed my work in the hospital. The GPU representative, who had banished me from Turukhansk with such malice and gnashing of teeth, sending me north along the Yenisey because of my insubordination, met me with courtly politeness, inquiring after my health and life in Plakhino.
An amusing incident occurred once. The representative came to the hospital to see me for some reason or other. While we were talking the door opened and a whole line of Tungus entered the room with their hands folded to receive my blessing. I stood up and began to bless them all while the representative pretended not to notice. I continued, of course, to travel to the monastery on a sleigh covered with rugs.
That, my second sojourn in Turukhansk, lasted for 8 months, from the Annunciation of the Most Holy Mother of God until November.
I can’t remember exactly how it happened, but in the middle of summer I received what seemed to me a prophecy from God that my exile in Turukhansk would soon come to an end. I impatiently awaited the fulfillment of this promise, but the weeks dragged on and everything remained as it was. I fell into despair and once, in the altar of the winter church, which was connected to the summer church by a door, I prayed with tears before the icon of the Lord Jesus Christ that hung behind the altar table. My prayer clearly contained an element of grumbling against the Lord Jesus for taking so long to fulfill the promise to free me. And suddenly I saw Jesus Christ, depicted on the icon, sharply turn His most pure face away from me. I was horrified and moved to despair, and didn’t dare look at the icon again. Like a dog who has been whipped, I left the altar and went into the summer church, where I noticed the Epistle Book on the choir-place. I opened it without thinking and started to read the first thing that I saw.
To my great sorrow I don’t remember what text I read, though it had a miraculous effect on me. It exposed my foolishness and the insolence of my grumbling against God and at the same time confirmed the promise of freedom which I had awaited so impatiently.
I returned to the altar of the winter church and looking at the icon behind the altar table saw with joy that the Lord Jesus was again looking at me, His look full of light and grace.
Now, Is that not a miracle? !
Chapter Five - Leading up to Exile Number Two
My exile in Turukhansk was coming to an end. From the lower reaches of the Yenisey the steamboats came, one after the other, carrying my many comrades in exile, those who had received the same sentence as I. Our time had come to an end and these last steamboats were to take us to Krasnoyarsk. Day after day the boats came, alone and in groups, but nobody called me in to GPU to receive my documents.
One evening, at the end of August, the last steamer arrived, set to leave in the morning. Nobody called for me and I was worried, not aware that there had been an order to detain me for another year.
It was the morning of August 20th, I was reading Matins as usual, and the steamboat was starting to get up steam. The first long whistle from the boat... I’m reading the fourth kathism of the Psalter... The final words of the 31st psalm hit me like thunder... With my whole being I take them as the voice of God addressing me. He says, ‘I will instruct thee and teach thee in this way which thou shalt go; I will fix Mine eyes upon thee. Be ye not as the horse or as the mule which have no understanding; whose jaws thou must hold with bit and bridle, lest they come nigh unto thee.’ (Ps. 31:8,9).
Suddenly a deep peace comes over my disturbed soul... The steamboat whistle blows for the third time and slowly casts off. I follow it with a calm and joyful smile, until it eventually passes out of sight. ‘Go on, go on, I don’t need you... The Lord has prepared a different path for me, and it’s not on the dirty barge you’re pulling - it is the joyous path of a hierarch!’
In three months - not a year - the Lord ordered my release by sending me a small varicose ulcer on my lower leg with a bright inflammation of the skin surrounding it. They had to let me go to Krasnoyarsk.
The Yenisey had frozen into a disorderly conglomeration of giant blocks of ice. A sled road over it wasn’t to be established until the middle of January. Only one exile – the socialist revolutionary Chudinov – had been kept back when the last steamboats were departing and was to travel with me. His wife had joined him in exile with their 10 year old daughter, who died suddenly in Turukhansk.
Towards the end I was constantly noticing Chudinov in church, standing near the door and listening attentively to my sermons. The trip over the Yenisey was one made only by sledge, but for me the peasants made a covered sleigh. The long awaited day of my departure arrived... I was supposed to pass by the monastery church, which was located on the road that exited Turukhansk, and in which I had given many sermons and at times even served. The priest met me near the church, carrying a cross and accompanied by a large crowd of people.
He told me about an unsual incident. After the Liturgy, on the day of my departure, together with the churchwarden, he had put out all of the candles in the church but when, intending to accompany me, he had gone back into the church, a candle in the polycandelon lit up for a minute and then went out.
That’s how I was seen off by the church I loved, the church containing the reliquary of the holy martyr Vassily of Mangazeya.
The excruciating journey over the Yenisey was that very same joyous path of the hierarch which the Lord Himself, during the departure of the final steamboat, had foretold to me through the words of the 31st psalm, ‘I will instruct thee and teach thee in this way which thou shalt go; I will fix Mine eyes upon thee.’ I will watch as you travel this path, and don’t you be straining towards that steamboat, like a horse or mule, which has no understanding and needs to be controlled by bit and bridle.
My path over the Yenisey was truly the path of the hierarch, for at every stop where there was a church, some of which were even open still, I was met by the sound of bells and I served molebens and preached.
A bishop had not been seen in these parts for as long as anyone could remember.
In a large settlement, 400 versts out of Yeniseisk, I was warned that further travel was impossible – it was too dangerous, as a wide crack had formed on the Yenisey: near the shoreline the water had seeped over the ice forming so-called ‘shore ice’, moreover riverside roads in the taiga did not exist. We continued our journey nonetheless, though.
We travelled up to the wide crack, which was more than a metre in width. There we saw a horse and sleigh sinking into the water, a poor woman trying in vain to pull it out. We helped her and pulled out the horse and sleigh and then gave a thought ourselves as to what to do. My driver, an intrepid curly haired fellow, along with Chudinov’s driver, didn’t hesitate. They said only, ‘hold on tight!’ stood up straight, and shouted at the horses wildly, whipping them. The horses exploded with all their might and jumped over the patch of water, our sleighs following them through the air.
The journey from Turukhansk to Krasnoyarsk took us a month and a half. In a day we covered the distance from one station to the next - about 40 versts on average. I was dressed in Tungus fur clothing and I covered my legs with the raccoon coat. Once the driver asked me to hold on to the reins while he adjusted the harness on the horses. I was wearing rabbit skin mittens, but the moment I took my hands out from under the coat and took hold of the reins my hands felt as if they had been burned by fire, so severe was the cold.
In some of the stations I was visited by former patients, on whom I had operated in Turukhansk. One old Tungus man, half-blind from trachoma, whose entropion I corrected with a mucous membrane transplant, particularly sticks out in my memory. The result of the operation was so positive that he could shoot squirrels as well as before, hitting them right in the eye. A boy I had operated on in connection with an extremely advanced case of osteomyelitis of the thigh came to see me in good health. And there were other similar cases.
We arrived safely in Yeniseisk, where a grand meeting had been organized for me by the clergy, which had previously been entirely renovationist - until I put them on the right path before leaving for Turukhansk. We served a moleben of thanksgiving and, travelling another 330 versts, arrived in Krasnoyarsk, two days before the feast of the Nativity of Christ.
In Krasnoyarsk, in expectation of my autumn arrival, the people had turned out in vain to meet each and every steamboat arriving from the lower reaches of the Yenisey. Neither were they successful in meeting me this time.
We set off to see bishop Amphilochios. His keleynik, the monk Meletius, was blind in one eye, the result of central corneal leukoma, and it was necessary to perform an optical iridectomy on him. I sent him to the hospital’s head doctor with a letter in which I asked for permission to perform the operation in the hospital’s ophthalmology department. My request was granted willingly and on the next day, arriving at the hospital together with Meletius, I was surprised to find the ophthalmology department crowded with doctors who had come to observe my operation.
Making quick work of the iridectomy, I expressed my regret over not being able to show the doctors an operation removing the lacrimal sac, which would prove much more interesting for them. But I was at once informed that there was a patient in the hospital waiting for just such an operation. He was quickly prepared, and I explained to the doctors how I would carry out the operation. I began with a detailed description of the topographic anatomy of the lacrimal sac, I explained my method of regional anaesthesia and, beginning the operation, demonstrated step by step everything that I had just explained. The operation went off without any pain and almost without any blood. On the following day Chudinov and I were to report to GPU and in the hallway on the second floor waited to be summoned. I was first to be called up to the third floor. A young chekist began the interrogation politely, though we were soon interrupted by the GPU chief’s assistant, who cut the interrogation short, entrusting the job to someone else. The new fellow took out a sheet of paper and started asking me about my obstinate and audacious quarrelling with the GPU representative in Turukhansk. I answered in such a way that while I did not justify myself, I accused the representative and the chairman of the regional executive committee. The chekist took down my answers, becoming confused and clearly nonplussed.
The GPU chief’s assistant came in again, and reading the interrogating chekist’s notes over his shoulder threw the notes into the drawer of the table. To my surprise he suddenly changed his tone, which had formerly been sharp and, pointing out the window at the rennovationist cathedral said, ‘those are the ones we hold in contempt; you and your kind we have a great deal of respect for.’ He asked me where I intended to go, which surprised me. ‘Does that mean that I can go wherever I want?’ ‘Of course.’ ‘Even to Tashkent?’ ‘Of course, even to Tashkent. I would only ask that you leave immediately.’ ‘But tomorrow is the great feast of the Nativity of Christ, and I absolutely must be in church.’ The chief was not eager to agree to this, and asked that I depart immediately after the Liturgy. ‘You will be given a train ticket and taken to the station. Please, please, we’ll take you to the station.’ He and the interrogating chekist were very polite and accompanied me down to the courtyard I remembered so well, from which one door led to the large feces soiled cellar in which my companions and I had been held before being sent off to Yeniseisk, another door leading to another cellar, in which executions had taken place while we were there.
In the courtyard the chief got me a car, the very model of civility, and ordered the chekist to escort me to the apartment I had put up in.
I knew from experience how dangerous it was to trust the words of a chekist and anxiously awaited which way the car would turn when we came to the place where a turn to the left led back to the prison, and a turn to the right led to the Orthodox cathedral. Near to it the chekist called at the gates, telling the landlady who came out not to worry about my residence permit. Politely taking his leave, he left, and I crossed over the road to the cathedral, where the Right Reverend Amphilochius lived.
At the very beginning of my conversation with him the monk Meletius entered to report that some breathless gentleman had come running in and was asking to be allowed to see me. I immediately guessed that it was Chudinov, anxiously running after the car I was being taken in and waiting in agony, as I had, to see whether it would turn to the right to the cathedral or to the left to the prison.
Receiving permission from the Right Reverend Amphilochius, Chudinov came running into the room, agitated in the extreme, and weeping, fell to his knees at my feet. Receiving my blessing and a blessing from bishop Amphilocius, he asked us both to pray for the repose of the soul of his daughter, who had died suddenly in Turukhansk.
Following the Christmas vigil and Liturgy, which I served together with bishop Amphilochius of Krasnoyarsk, a two-horse phaeton was sent from GPU and Chudinov and I set off for the station. Half way there we were suddenly stopped by a young police officer who jumped up onto the footboard and started to hug and kiss me. It was the police officer who had escorted me from Turukhansk to the station Plakhino, 230 versts north of the Arctic Circle.
A large crowd, come to see me off, was already waiting for me at the station.
I returned to Tashkent via the city of Cherkassy, Kiev district, where my parents and older brother Vladimir were living. The journey from Cherkassy to Krasnoyarsk went rather well.
I was travelling with Chudinov, and in Omsk had to send a telegram to Cherkassy. The stopover was short and the telegraph was located on the top floor and by the time I made it back down the train had started off. I sent a telegram asking Chudinov to leave my things at the next station, which he did, and I picked them up there. But with my kind travelling companion, headed for Archangel district, I was not to meet again.
The meeting of my aged parents with their son, the professor of surgery turned bishop, was touching. They kissed their son’s hand with love, listening with tears to the panikhida I served at the grave of my deceased sister Olga.
From Cherkassy I finally made my way back to Tashkent. It was the end of January, 1926. In Tashkent I stayed in the apartment Sophia Sergeevna Beletskaya was living in with my children, whom she fed and raised and whose education she saw to.
The first to come and welcome me were four leaders from the Baptist community. They were clearly embarrassed and the purpose of their visit was a mystery to me. I later found out that they had received a telegram from the Leningrad Baptist presbyter Shilov, in which they had been instructed by him to greet me as a new Baptist brother. I had to disappoint them, of course, through a certain Nalivayko, formerly a zealous parishioner of the cathedral who had gone over to the Baptists.
By this time the cathedral had already been destroyed and an exiled bishop, who had gone over to the ‘renovationists’ while I was in exile, had served several times in the church of the venerable Sergius of Radonezh.
The archpriest Michael Andreev, who had shared with me the hardships of exile in the Yenisey region and beyond as far as Boguchany, and who had returned not long before me, demanded that I reconsecrate the church of st. Sergius in the wake of the bishop who had gone over to the ‘renovationists’. I refused to carry out this demand, and my refusal was the beginning of some serious grief. Archpriest Andreev abandoned canonical obedience to me and began to serve in his own home for a small group of people who shared his views.
He wrote about me to the Patriarchal Locum Tenens Metropolitan Sergius more than once and even travelled to see him, and was successful in turning him against me. In September of that year I received three orders from the Locum Tenens, one following quickly upon the other, transferring me from my position in the Tashkent diocese to the city Rylsk in the Kursk district, as a vicar bishop, and then to the city Elets as vicar bishop to the Orlov bishop, and finally to Izhevsk as diocesan bishop.
I wanted to submit to these transfers without complaint, but the Metropolitan of Novgorod Arseny, who was living in Tashkent at that time as an exile and who was a very good friend of mine and my children, was persistent in advising me not to go anywhere and to request that I be allowed to resign.
It seemed to me that I ought to follow the advice of the venerable hierarch, who had been one of the three candidates for the Patriarchal throne at the Council of 1917. I followed his advice and went into retirement in 1927. This was the beginning of a sinful road for me and the punishment from God which resulted from it. I was replaced as bishop of Tashkent by Metropolitan Nicandor, also in exile in Tashkent.
Occupied only with receiving patients at my home, I naturally continued to attend every service at the church of st. Sergius to pray, standing in the altar together with Metropolitan Arseny.
In the spring of 1930 it became known that even the church of st. Sergius was destined to be destroyed. I couldn’t bear it and when the time for the church to be closed approached and the fearful day of closure had already been set, I made a firm decision to serve a final Liturgy after which, when the enemies of God were to arrive, I would lock the doors, take down all of the large wooden icons, laying them in a pile in the middle of the church, pour gasoline over them, mount them dressed in the hierarch’s mantle and set the gasoline on fire with a match and burn to death on the fire... I couldn’t bear the destruction of a church... Remaining alive and tolerating the horror of the desecration and destruction of God’s churches was completely unbearable for me. I thought that my self-immolation would frighten the enemies of God – the enemies of religion - and bring them to their senses, and bring an end to the destruction of churches, that colossal diabolical wave that was pouring across the entire face of the Russian land.
However, it was pleasing to God that I not perish at the very beginning of my service as a hierarch, and by His will the closing of the church of st. Sergius was delayed for some reason for a short time. And on that very day I was arrested.
On April 23rd 1930 I attended the Liturgy for the last time at the church of st. Sergius, during the Gospel reading suddenly becaming firmly convinced that on that very day in the evening I would be arrested. That’s precisely what happened and the church was destroyed while I was in prison.
In his famous Paschal sermon st. John Chrysostom says that God not only ‘accepteth the deeds,’
but ‘welcometh the intention,’ as well. For my intention to accept a martyr’s death may the Lord God forgive the multitude of my sins!
Chapter Six – Exile to Archangel
I was arrested for the second time on April 23rd , 1930. During the interrogations I soon became convinced that what they were seeking from me was a full renunciation of my priestly orders. I went on hunger strike in protest. Normally no attention is paid to a hunger strike and the prisoner is left in his cell to starve until his condition has become dangerous, and only then is he transferred to the prison hospital. I, however, was sent to the hospital early in the morning following my declaration of a hunger strike. I went without food for seven days. My heart quickly weakened and towards the end blood appeared in my vomit. This greatly worried the head GPU doctor, who came to see me every day. On the eighth day of my hunger strike, around midday, I dozed off and in my sleepy state sensed that a group of people was standing near my bed. Opening my eyes, I saw a group of chekists and doctors and the famous physician, Professor Slonim. The doctors listened to my heart and whispered to the head chekist that things didn’t look good. It was ordered that I be taken with my bed into the head doctor’s office, where even Professor Slonim was not allowed to remain.
The head chekist said, ‘Allow me to introduce myself - you don’t know me - I am assistant director of GPU for Central Asia. We have given great consideration to your overwhelming ‘double’ popularity as surgeon and bishop. We simply cannot allow your hunger strike to continue any longer. I give you my word of honour as a party member that you will be released if you end your hunger strike.’ I didn’t say anything. ‘Why aren’t you saying anything? Don’t you believe me?’ I answered, ‘you know I am a Christian, and the law of Christ orders us not to think badly of anyone. Ok, I will trust you.’
Instead of being returned to my former place, I was brought to a large empty hospital cell. The lock rang and it seemed to me that I had been left alone. Suddenly, though, I heard muffled sobbing, growing in strength and asked, ‘who is crying? What are you crying about?’ And I heard the following words, interrupted by sobbing, ‘how can I not cry when I see you? You know, we’ve been following your fate very closely and value your stand highly. I am a member of the central committee of the socialist-revolutionary party.’
He didn’t have time to finish before the lock rang and the of the GPU’s First Department came into the cell. He told the socialist revolutionary that he was being taken to Samarkand, where he had been arrested, and that he would be released there. Even someone as well acquainted with GPU as the socialist revolutionary believed it. He was already on the ninth day of his hunger strike and had been reduced to such a state of weakened resistance, self-pity and fear of death, as is unavoidable in those who go hungry for a long period of time. They left him for a few days in Samarkand, without releasing him of course, and then took him away to Moscow. I don’t know what happened to him after that.
They didn’t release me either, of course, despite the word of honour of a ‘party member’.
For two or three days I received plentiful packages from my children, afterwards declining to accept them, resuming my hunger strike. It continued for two weeks and my condition was such that I could hardly walk down the hospital corridor while holding on to the walls with my hands. I tried to read a newspaper but couldn’t understand anything for it was exactly as if a heavy shroud lay over my brain.
I was again visited by the head of the First Department who said, ‘we have informed Moscow of your hunger strike and a decision was made there in relation to your case, but we can’t inform you what it was until you end your hunger strike.’ A glimmer of faith in the words of chekists yet remained inside me and I agreed to end my hunger strike. I was then informed that I was to travel to the city of Kotlas without an escort, freely, though I was deceived this time as well. Approximately a week later I was sent under guard, in the penal wagon, to Samara, where we were left in prison for approximately a week. The memories that remain with me of this week are sombre and painful.
A transfer in Moscow to another penal wagon and the road onward to the city of Kotlas.
There was such a great multitude of lice in the wagon that I took off all of my underclothing each morning and evening and found about a hundred lice in them; amongst these were very large black lice, the likes of which I had never seen before. On the way we were given a piece of bread each and one raw herring per two prisoners. I didn’t eat them.
Upon arrival in Kotlas we were placed three versts outside of town, on the sandy banks of the Northern Dvina, in a camp that had acquired the name ‘Makarikha’, and which consisted of 200 hundred barracks housing whole families of dispossessed ‘kulak’ peasants from provinces all over Russia. The ridge roof was made of boards came all the way down to the sandy ground. They contained two rows of plank beds with an aisle down the middle. When it rained water streamed into the barracks through the rotting roofs.
One morning I witnessed the way 200 prisoners were driven into the camp’s central meeting ground, where they were registered and driven on to barges pulled by a small steamship down the Vychegda River, which flows into the Northern Dvina not far from Kotlas.
The desolate Vychegda flows through dense, uninhabited forests and, as I learned later, all those who had been driven onto the barges had been dropped off in the dense forest several dozen versts from Kotlas, given axes and saws, and ordered to build huts. I don’t know what became of them after that. I was soon transferred from Makarikha to Kotlas and it was suggested that I see patients in the outpatients’ clinic. A short time later I was transferred to the city hospital to work as a surgeon.
Right before my transfer to Kotlas there was an outbreak of Epidemic Typhus in Makarikha. Residents of Kotlas told me that the year before Epidemic as well as other types of typhus had also been rife, along with epidemics of nearly every type of infectious children’s disease that existed. Each day during this terrible period at Makarikha a big pit was dug and at the end of the day filled with around 70 dead bodies.
I didn’t get to operate in the hospital in Kotlas for very long before I was informed that I was to travel by steamer to the city of Archangel. In my first year in Archangel I experienced great difficulties in regards to accommodation and was practically homeless. Not only the doctors at the hospital, but to my surprise, even the bishop of Archangel received me rather coldly.
I was allowed to do operations in a large outpatients’ clinic. There I had the opportunity to see women with mammary gland cancer who had undergone operations that had not been drastic enough, and so, when a woman came to me with breast cancer, instead of sending her to the hospital, I decided to operate on her as an outpatient and undertook a very radical operation. When they found out, the doctors at the hospital complained about me to the head of the district health department, though he only responded by asking them - ‘so the operation was a success, the patient is alive, and there were no complications? What more do you want?’
During my time in Archangel I discovered a knobby tumour on my body that made me suspect cancer and notified the head of the First Department, requesting his permission to travel to Moscow for an operation. He sent off a request to Moscow and in two weeks I received permission to travel for my operation, though I was to travel to Leningrad instead of Moscow. I found this surprising, but accepted the new direction as God’s will.
Sharing a wagon with me on the way there was a young doctor who made my acquaintance and invited me to stay with his family, delivering me from the difficulties of an unfamiliar city.
He took me far away to Vasilievsky Island to a large clinical hospital that housed the surgical department of Professor N.N. Petrov, an eminent oncology specialist. Professor Petrov devoted a great deal of attention to me and undertook my operation. The removed tumour turned out to be benign.
Upon being released from hospital I set off for Novo-Devichi monastery, which had already been closed, and was received very kindly by Metropolitan Seraphim, who was living there.
I was accompanied from the clinic to the monastery by my former surgical student doctor Zholondz. We discussed medical topics and I was very far from any mood or thoughts that were the least bit mystical. Even so, the following took place. I came to the Metropolitan’s on Saturday, not long before the Vigil service and set off for the large monastery church in the most ordinary of moods. A priest monk served and I stood in the altar. When the time for the Gospel reading came, I suddenly felt some incomprehensible, quickly growing nervousness, which reached a great pitch when I heard the reading. It was the eleventh Sunday Gospel. The words of the Lord Jesus Christ, directed to the apostle Peter, “Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me?... Tend my sheep...” (John 21:16) I received with unspeakable trepidation and emotion, not as an appeal to Peter, but rather directly to me. My entire body shook; I couldn’t wait until the end of the Vigil service, went to see Metropolitan Seraphim and told him about what had happened. He listened very carefully and told me that something similar had happened in his life.
For two or three months following, every time I thought about what I had experienced during the reading of the eleventh Gospel, I began to shake again, and tears poured from my eyes.
Quite soon after my return to Archangel from Leningrad, I was summoned to Moscow by a specially commissioned GPU representative, and every day after my arrival for three weeks he spent a very long time talking with me. He had been charged with reviewing my case because, according to his words, I had been tried in Tashkent by a bunch of ‘numbskulls’. It was obvious that he had been charged with making a thorough study of me. His words were full of flattery, and he praised me in every possible way. He promised me a surgical department in Moscow, and it was perfectly clear that they wanted me to renounce my orders.
As I mentioned earlier, before my second arrest I was sent into retirement by the Patriarchal Locum Tenens Metropolitan Sergius. Imperceptibly, the honeyed words of the special representative began to poison my heart and I fell victim to a grave misfortune and terrible sin, for I wrote such a statement: ‘I am not serving as a bishop and am in retirement. I do not consider it possible to continue my service under the present conditions, and so, if my holy orders are not a hindrance, I would like to be given the opportunity to work as a surgeon. However, I will never renounce my orders as a bishop.’
I don’t understand, I don’t understand at all how I could forget so quickly the words of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, which had shaken me so completely, ‘Tend My lambs.... Tend My sheep....’
The only explanation I can come to is that it was incredibly difficult for me to tear myself away from surgery.
Following my statement, a copy of which I left with Metropolitan Sergius, not only was I not released early, as was the practice with exiles summoned to the special representative, but I was returned to Archangel and another six months were added to my term in exile.
Only at the end of 1933 was I released; I left for Moscow. The Lord God knew, of course, that I was about to commit another grave sin, and He warned me by way of a train crash, which, unfortunately, frightened me, but didn’t bring me to my senses. The first thing I did when I got to Moscow was visit the office of the Locum Tenens, Metropolitan Sergius. His secretary asked me if I was interested in occupying one of the vacant Episcopal sees. Abandoned by God and devoid of the ability to reason, I worsened my grave sin of disobedience to Christ’s call to ‘Tend My sheep,’ with the terrifying answer – no.
Not long before, I had intended to return to Tashkent, and had written to Metropolitan Arseny about doing so, though from his reply I had understood that he would by no means rejoice at my return.
Even before the end of my exile in Archangel I had sent a letter to Vladimirsky, the People’s Commissar for Health, with a request that I might be given the opportunity to work in a special research institute on the development of the surgical treatment of purulent wounds. In search of my own perdition, after seeing Metropolitan Sergius I headed to the Ministry of Health in order to make my request personally. The People’s Commissar Vladimirsky didn’t see me, sending me instead to his deputy. I asked the deputy about setting up a special research institute for me on the surgical treatment of purulent wounds. He was very sympathetic to my request and promised to talk to director Fedorov of the institute of experimental medicine, who was soon to return. To the devil’s joy and my own perdition, I was very pleased by this, though the Lord, protecting me and directing my ways, preserved me from ruin, for Fedorov refused to grant the management of a research institute to a bishop.
There was nowhere for me to go, and at lunch with Metropolitan Sergius one of the bishops advised me to travel to Crimea. Without any reasonable aim, I followed this advice and travelled to Feodosiya. There I felt like I had lost my way and been abandoned by God, ate in a dirty cooking-house, slept in the house of a peasant and finally made another stupid decision – to return to Archangel. For another two months or so I saw patients there in the outpatients’ clinic. A medical institute opened up in Archangel at that time, and I was offered the surgical department. I refused and, coming to my senses a little, left for Tashkent.
But I couldn’t stay in Tashkent and be in Metropolitan Arseny’s way. I sank so low that I changed into civilian clothes and took a position from the Ministry of Health working as a consultant at the hospital in Andijan.
There I again experienced the feeling that the grace of God had left me. My operations were sometimes unsuccessful. I played a role inappropriate for a bishop, that of a lecturer on malignant lumps and was soon punished by God severely. I came down with the tropical pappataci fever, which caused the further complication of detachment of the retina in my left eye.
Returning to Tashkent, I was made superintendent of a small division for the surgical treatment of purulent wounds with 25 beds in the municipal clinical hospital. Later on the division increased to 50 beds.
Soon I came to hear about an operation that had been performed by the Swiss ophthalmologist Gopen, in which 60% to 80% of patients suffering from retinal detachment had been cured. The operation had soon become widespread in many countries, and was being performed in Moscow by Professor Odintsov. I left my work on purulent wounds and travelled to Moscow to Professor Odintsov’s clinic. He performed Gopen’s operation on me twice, as he hadn’t accurately identified all points of retinal detachment the first time. After the operation I lay with my eyes bandaged and late in the evening was once again gripped by a passionate desire to continue my work on the treatment of purulent wounds. I was considering how I might write the People’s Commissar again, and with these thoughts in mind fell asleep. To save me the Lord God sent me an unusual prophetic dream that I can remember with perfect clarity even now, after many years.
I dreamt that I was in a small, empty church, in which only the altar was clearly illuminated. In the church not far from the altar, near the wall, there was the reliquary of some saint, covered with a heavy wooden lid. In the altar, on the altar table, there lay a wide plank, and on this plank lay a naked human corpse. Alongside and behind the altar table stood students and doctors smoking cigarettes while I read them a lecture on anatomy with the use of the corpse. Suddenly, starting at the sound of a knock, I turned around to see that the cover had fallen from the reliquary and the saint had sat up in his coffin and turned, looking at me in silent reproach. I awoke in horror.....
It is impossible for me to understand how this terrifying dream did not serve to bring me to my senses. Upon being discharged from the clinic, I returned to Tashkent and spent two more years working in the department for the surgical treatment of purulent wounds, work for which it was often necessary to carry out research on corpses. And the thought repeatedly occurred to me that such work was impermissible for a bishop. For over two more years I continued this work and was unable to tear myself away from it, because it was producing one very important scientific discovery after another, and the observations gathered in the department subsequently made up a major part of the basis for what I was to write in my book "Notes on the Surgical Treatment of Purulent Wounds ".
In my prayers of repentance I fervently asked God to forgive me for continuing to spend these two years working on surgery, but once my prayer was brought to a stop by a voice not from this world, ‘Don’t repent for that!’ And I understood that "Notes on the Surgical Treatment of Purulent Wounds" had been pleasing to God, for they had increased the force and meaning of my confession of the name of Christ infinitely at a time when antireligious propaganda was at its height.
On February 10th 1936 Metropolitan Arseny died suddenly of a brain haemorrhage. My relations with the Right Reverend Arseny were of a most intimate and friendly nature. He loved my children and Sophia Sergeevna and visited them often. He made a present of two photographs, on one of which he wrote, ‘Sacrifice for sacrifice’ (Флп. 2; 17), and on the other, ‘the hearts of the saints have been refreshed by you, brother.’(Philemon 1:7). He was photographed with me as well. He listened very carefully to my sermons and rated them highly. In regards to himself he said that he had carried out everything God had intended for him to do, and so awaited death.
Chapter Seven – Arrest Number Three
The next year, 1937, saw the beginning of a terrible time for the Holy Church – Yezhov’s term as head of the Moscow GPU. Mass arrests of clergy, and all who were suspected of being hostile to the Soviet authorities began. Of course I was arrested too. Yezhov’s regime was truly frightening. During interrogations prisoners were even subjected to torture. The so-called ‘conveyer belt’ method of interrogation was invented, which I myself experienced twice. The terrifying ‘conveyer belt’ continued day and night without a break. The interrogating chekists relieved one another in turn, not allowing the prisoner to sleep, day or night.
I once more went on a hunger strike in protest, going without food for many days. Even so, I was forced to stand in the corner, and soon I began to fall to the floor in exhaustion. I started to experience strongly pronounced visual and tactile hallucinations, one after the other. One moment it would seem yellow chickens were running around the room and I was catching them. Then I would see myself standing on the edge of an enormous pit in which an entire city had been placed, brightly lit by electric lights. I clearly felt snakes wriggling across my back, under my shirt.
They continued to demand that I confess to espionage, but I replied only by asking them to specify exactly which government I was spying for. Naturally, they were unable to specify. The conveyor belt interrogation continued for 13 days, and more than once I was run under a tap, from which cold water was poured over my head. With no end to the interrogation in sight, I decided to frighten the chekists. I demanded that the head of the First Department be summoned and when he arrived I said that I would sign anything they wanted except for maybe the attempted murder of Stalin. I announced that I was stopping my hunger strike and asked to be sent dinner.
I intended to sever my temporal artery by placing a knife to my temple and striking firmly against its handle. In order to stop the blood it would be necessary to tie up the temporal artery, which would be impossible under the conditions in GPU, and it would be necessary to take me to a hospital or surgical clinic. This would cause a great scandal in Tashkent.
The chekist on duty sat at the other end of the table. When they brought in dinner, I felt the dull blade of the knife without being noticed and realized that it would be impossible to cut the temporal artery with it. I jumped up then and ran quickly to the middle of the room, sawing my throat with the knife. I couldn’t even cut the skin.
The chekist leaped towards me like a cat, tore the knife away and punched me in the chest. I was taken away to another room and offered the chance to sleep on a bare table with a bunch of newspapers under my head for a pillow. Despite the severe shock I had experienced, I nevertheless fell asleep, and can’t remember how long I slept for.
The head of the First Department was already waiting for me, the fabricated story of my espionage ready to be signed. I simply laughed at the request.
Now that two weeks of conveyer-belt treatment had met with defeat, I was returned to the basement at GPU. I was completely drained of all strength by the hunger strike and the conveyer belt, and when we were allowed to visit the washroom, I fainted on the dirty, wet floor. I had to be carried back to my cell. The next day I was transferred to the main regional prison. I spent approximately eight months there under very difficult conditions.
Our large cell was filled to overflowing with prisoners who lay on plank beds three stories high, and in the spaces between them on the stone floor. In order to get to the latrine, which was located near the entrance door, I had to make my way past all of the people lying on the floor at night, tripping and falling on top of them.
Parcels were not allowed, and we were fed extremely badly. To this very day I can remember what they fed us on the feast day of the Annunciation of the Most Holy Mother of God – a big vat of hot water with a very small portion of buckwheat stirred in.
I can’t remember why, but for some reason I ended up in the prison hospital. With the help of God I was able to save the life of a young petty thief who was very ill. I could see that the young prison doctor couldn’t understand what was wrong with him. I examined him myself and found a splenic abscess. I managed to obtain the consent of the prison doctor to have the patient sent to the clinic where my student, dr. Rothenburg, worked. I wrote him about what he would find during the operation and how, and Rothenburg wrote me later to say that everything had been exactly as I had written in my letter.
The petty thief’s life was saved, and for a long time after that whenever I was out in the prison courtyard for one of our walks I was greeted loudly by the criminal inmates on the third floor, who would thank me for saving the thief’s life.
Unfortunately I’ve forgotten much of what I experienced in the regional prison. I remember only that I was taken to GPU to be interrogated some more and attempts to have me confess to some sort of espionage were intensified. Conveyor-belt interrogations were repeated, during one of which the interrogating chekist fell asleep. The head of the First Department came in and woke him up. Now in trouble, the chekist, who had formerly been very polite to me, and who was wearing leather boots, began to kick me in the legs. Not long after this, already worn out by the conveyor-belt and sitting with my head bowed low, I noticed that three head chekists were standing facing me, watching me. On their orders I was taken to the basement of GPU and locked up in a very small punishment cell. While the escort soldiers were changing me, they noticed very large bruises on my legs and asked me what they were from. I answered that I had been beaten by a certain chekist. In the basement, in the punishment cell, I was tormented for several days under very severe conditions. Later I found out that the results of my first interrogation for espionage, which had been passed along to GPU Moscow, had been declared invalid and it had been ordered that a new investigation be undertaken. Evidently this was why I had been held for so long in the regional prison and subjected to a second conveyor-belt.
Although the second investigation didn’t bring any results, I was nonetheless exiled for the third time - for three years to Siberia.
This time I was transported via Almaty and Novosibirsk and not Moscow. On the road to Kransnoyarsk I was very shamelessly robbed by the petty thieves in our wagon. With all the prisoners watching, a young petty thief, the son of a Leningrad prosecutor, sat down beside me and distracted me while behind him two other petty thieves emptied my suitcase.
In Krasnoyarsk we were kept for a short time in a kind of transfer prison on the edge of the city and from there taken to the settlement Bolshaya Murta, approximately one hundred and thirty versts from Krasnoyarsk. In the beginning I was in great need without a permanent place to live, though before too long I was given a room at the hospital and worked there with the local doctor and his wife, who was also a doctor. Later they told me that I could barely walk, so weak was I after being fed so poorly in the prison in Tashkent, and that I looked like a decrepit old man to them. However, before long I got stronger and undertook serious surgical work in the hospital in Murta.
I was sent a great many medical case histories from the department for the surgical treatment of purulent wounds in Tashkent, which made it possible for me to write many chapters for my book "Notes on the Surgical Treatment of Purulent Wounds".
I was summoned unexpectedly to GPU Murta and, to my surprise, told that I was being allowed to travel to the city of Tomsk to work in the extensive medical faculty library that existed there. It is quite likely that this was a result of the letter I had sent to Marshal Kliment Voroshilov from prison in Tashkent requesting an opportunity to finish my work on purulent wounds, something altogether essential for military field surgery.
In Tomsk I settled in an apartment that had been put at my disposal by one deeply religious woman. In two months I managed to read all of the newest literature that existed on the surgical treatment of purulent wounds in German, French, and English, copying out large chunks of them. Upon my return to Bolshaya Murta I completely finished my large book "Notes on the Surgical Treatment of Purulent Wounds".
The summer of 1941 came and Hitler’s hordes, finishing up with the western countries, invaded the USSR. At the end of July the head surgeon of the Krasnoyarsk district flew to Bolshaya Murta and asked me to fly back with him to Krasnoyarsk, where I was made head surgeon of evacuation hospital 15-15. The hospital occupied three floors of a large building that had formerly been a school. I worked there for more than two years and the memories that remain of that work are bright and joyful.
I was very well-liked by the wounded officers and soldiers. Whenever I would make my rounds in the morning, the wounded greeted me with joy. Those who had been operated on unsuccessfully before in other hospitals for wounds of the large joints and who I had managed to heal invariably saluted me by lifting their straight legs high into the air.
After the war I wrote a short book "Late Resection of Infected Wounds of the Large Joints", which I submitted together with the large work "Notes on the Surgical Treatment of Purulent Wounds" to be considered for the Stalin prize.
Upon completion of work in evacuation hospital 15-15, I received a formal letter of gratitude from Western Siberia Military District Command, and when the war finished was decorated with the medal `For valorous work in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945`.
The Holy Synod, under the Patriarchal Locum Tenens Metropolitan Sergius, considered my treatment of the wounded valorous hierarchal service and elevated me to the rank of archbishop.
I combined my treatment of the wounded in Krasnoyarsk with my service as a hierarch in the diocese of Krasnoyarsk and every Sunday and Feast day walked to a small cemetery church far outside of the city, for there was no other church in Krasnoyarsk. The mud was so bad that once, halfway to the church, I got stuck, fell down in the mud, and had to return home.
It wasn`t possible to serve a hierarchal service as the only person there who could help me was an old priest, and so I limited myself to zealously preaching the word of God.
When my exile came to an end in 1943, I returned to Moscow, and was assigned to Tambov, a district where there had been 110 churches before the revolution and where I found only two – in Tambov and Michurinsk. With lots of free time on my hands, in Tambov I once again combined my service in the Church with work in hospitals for the wounded for approximately two years.
In 1946 I was awarded the Stalin Prize of the First degree for my "Notes on the Surgical Treatment of Purulent Wounds" and "Late Resection of Infected Wounds of the Large Joints".
In May 1946 I was transferred to the position of archbishop of Simferopol and Crimea. A group of students set off to meet me at the train station with flowers, though the meeting was not be as I took a plane. That was 26 May, 1946.
With that the memoir comes suddenly to an end. It was dictated by Archbishop Luke, by that time completely blind, in 1958 in Simferopol to his secretary E.P. Lakefield. Archbishop Luke died on 11 June, 1961 and was buried in Simferopol, where he served as archbishop for 15 years.