Pavel Adelgejm

Pskov

Year of birth: 1938

Interviewed by Nastya Mikshevich, Liuba Ploshednova, Anya Mihailusova, Nadezhda Egorovna

4th February, 2007

Tell us about your parents please.

Well: my grandfather... I think I should start from there. My grandfather was German, he lived I don't know when – either during Ekaterina the Great's reign or in Peter the Great's, but he came to live in Russia. His roots can be traced back to the Baltics... 3 books exist about his surname. Even Walter Scott, in Ivanhoe, and – what was it called – 'The Lazy Cavalier'. There were obviously roots in different countries – you can find them in France too. The names are slightly changed, they would have been...

Well, anyway, my grandfather lived in Russia, and he was educated abroad as an engineer. A good education, evidently, because he built a whole lot of factories not far from Kiev. There was a china factory, and in Glukhovtsi a sugar factory and one where icons were made. There were lots of them. Then when the Revolution happened – he stayed on as Director of the factory for another 10 years after 1917. In 1927 – 1928 he was asked to set up the same factory in Vilnius, and he did that – as chief engineer in both places, and then later on as the Director of both factories.

Then in 1938, he decided to visit his family, because they had stayed behind in Kiev, on Rejtarskij St. They were living in very squashed conditions: there were only 2 rooms left from the original house. In one of the rooms lived a housemaid and her daughter, and in the other our grandmother lived. When he came back, the housemaid informed on him,and they took him away, and then after 2 months, after Epiphany, they gave a service for him. They'd delivered a package for him, you see, and they just returned his things and said he had died. So that was the fate of one of my grandfathers – he died. My grandmother, after that, and when the war started, she decided to leave the country. Of course she wasn't able to go anywhere at all. She fell very ill and ended up in a small shack, and in the yard by that shack she passed away.

That was on my father's side, and then on my mother's side my grandfather was Nikanor Pilaev. He studied at the military academy and was a colonel in the Tsar's army, but his fate ended after the Revolution. And my grandmother lived in Moscow.

So now about my father: all children of the repressed were taken up by strangers and given into slavery. They had no right to study in higher educational institutions, and they were deprived of lots of other civil rights as well. But he was a very talented person, he was a poet – he wrote lots of poetry. But his life was cut short at an early age: he wasn't even 30.

I remember I went to a meeting – a round table – at the history department, and I looked out all the old documents. I prepared photographs, and then when I went home again, I put everything back where it should be (he shows some photographs). My father wasn't able to study further, although he wanted to be an engineer as well, like his father. They refused him – they refused him at the entrance exam. The only place he was able to study was at the Studio Simonova, at the Vakhtang Theatre. He qualified at the theatrical institute, and that was where he met my mother. They got married there. Then they left for the town of Ivanovo, and he became Director of the regional theatre company.

In Ivanovo, when the war started, they arrested them – 15 of them were arrested, accused of espionage and treason. Out of the 15, 5 were shot. Then after some years, when things started to come apart, it turned out that except for the statements that they had made themselves, there was no basis at all for the accusations. Only what they had blurted out themselves – and they said what they did for perfectly understandable reasons. The first time they were questioned, they answered normally. But then from the second time onwards, they started to cover themselves with whatever they could think of, put up smoke screens. Then when the whole thing unwound – particularly because all the documents of the German secret service were revealed – and my mother was sent to prison, and I was left alone. I was just 2 1/2 by then. I ended up in a children's home, then we were exiled to Kazakhstan. We lived there until 1953, until Stalin died – there were enormous numbers of people settled there, huge numbers of de-kulakised people. My mother was released later on.

My wife had a completely different fate. Quite opposite. Her grandfather fought at the front, and strange though it may seem, he got through the whole war and returned home without even a wound. But his 3 sons died at the front.

Can you tell us anything about the 1930s and 1940s?

I was only born in 1938, so I can't tell you anything about that. But about the 1940s...-

When you were in the children's home, did you keep your name and surname?

Of course.

How did people treat you there?

There were lots of children like that. Then I entered the Kiev-Pechersky Monastery – I was a lay-brother there. After that I went into the seminary, studied there for 3 years, and then they didn't exactly ban me, but asked me to leave. Then I went off to Tashkent, worked there and built a cathedral – although at that time it was forbidden. I was imprisoned for anti-soviet activities. One of my classmates from the Seminary wrote an official complaint about me to the Committee for State Security, saying that I had refused to sing the Soviet national anthem. The fact is that at that time, that anthem was forbidden: it wasn't just at the seminary that people didn't sing it, but even in the politburo. We were meant to study all members of the Party, know everything about them and in every detail. I was sent to prison in 1969. I spent a year in an underground cell, then I was sent off to a prison camp. I was in 4 different camps...

Then later on, they started to rehabilitate people: they rehabilitated my grandfather, my father, mother, and then they overturned my conviction, according to the criteria for rehabilitation. Now they need to rehabilitate my son, as the child of someone who was repressed.

Children of the repressed – that's a terrible thing, because it can even be felt in school, in the way people behaved. I was completely indifferent to Soviet power: I didn't share its outlook and felt no love towards it at all. In general, you should never love the state, you can only love the fatherland. Soviet ideology always connected those two concepts, but in fact it had in mind the state. We were under the impression that we should love the state. Soviet power treated us as enemies – not because of something we had done, but because according to its own psychology, if someone's parents had been murdered, their family destroyed, then that person would be bitter, angry, full of malice. But this is where they were mistaken: we bore no malice, because we were Christians. For Christians, revenge is a sin. We had a peaceful attitude towards the state, a human relationship towards it.

What did you know about de-kulakisation and about collectivisation?

The thing is – I not only knew about it, but I saw and heard those people. My wife could tell you more about de-kulakisation than I can. Her family was not a rich one. They had 3 horses, some land, and grandfather built the house with his own hands. It was a large family. The village was a small one, with a population of 15,000. They wanted grandfather to join the kolkhoz but he refused, categorically. And he said categorically, that no-one from his family was going anywhere.

They took the ropes away – they wove these themselves. They took the horses, the plough... They took everything, and left them with nothing. Then during Khruschev's time – in general, strange things happened at that time. They took the plough and ploughed the land around the house. They couldn't have even one small seed-bed: they had to go and work in the kolkhoz. In front of every house there were large areas of land which couldn't be used. The land stood empty for many, many years. That's what an interesting government we had. You could respect it, or you could laugh at it. In fact, at the time, we used to joke that that was the only form of our relation with the authorities.

Can you tell us about religion?

That's a question it's hard to answer briefly. Beginning with Lenin – all the documents have been made available by now – the authorities in charge of the country made it their aim to eliminate the church completely. But despite the fearful, iron will of the state, it was still unable to deal with religion. In other words: history repeated itself. The Roman state had tried to eliminate Christianity – there were thousands of martyrs. They died, but their blood turned out to be the seeds of Christianity, and that iron state cracked, it became a Christian one. Then exactly the same happened with the Soviet state. It seemed that everything had been reduced to nothing: in Russia there were 80,000 cathedrals, and only 150 remained by the beginning of the war. The five-year period which was to end with the start of the war was even called the 'Godless Five-Year Plan'. By 1941, the church should have been uprooted in its entirety, but instead – the war began. Stalin turned to the country and said 'Brothers and Sisters...' In other words, he spoke for the first time in the language of Christianity. He was very alarmed in the month of October, very scared. In that manner, when the war ended, the church began to be revived.

But there was terrible legislation concerning the Church. There was a revival of spirituality, of the clergy, but among them more than 300,000 were eliminated for 'insubordination'. From every generation of priests, I think they all went to the prison camps.

After the Great Fatherland War, a completely different era began (1947 – 1949). Stalin began to rely for help on the Orthodox Church, he tried to build relations with it. Until the death of Stalin, relations between the Church and State were quite tolerable. But from 1953, very many people had to turn away from religion, from being Christened. This would begin and end very suddenly, because different people would come to power with a different set of aims objectives. So it's hard to explain it all in the same way. But in general, they were all inclined towards atheism. Of course, there wouldn't have been any fuss about Christians if they could have worshiped idols or emperors, but Christians will worship only God. In Brezhnev and Khrushchev's time the situation with the Church was very difficult. And when Gorbachev started talking about some sort of rights and freedoms, this sounded very strange to me – completely unbelievable. Then the 'thaw' began (this was about 1988) and continued until 1992. Then again we began to feel the pressure.

And now this apparent flourishing of the church, all this building of cathedrals is quite unnecessary. There are some places where there is no church at all, where people have been starved of the church's words, of christianity. In Pskov, though, we have a different situation: we have 30,000 churches for 700,000 people. This is the only Russian town with such an enormous number of churches – not Moscow, not Saint Petersburg, but right here in Pskov!

Can you tell us whether people at that time were able to change their place of residence, or of work?

Not everyone. Many people didn't want to get a passport, and it turned out that the passport is the only way to live a normal life. The entire rural population was without passports. In the cities people could move from one town to another, and there was no problem with that. Well – in Moscow you needed a propiska, and in Saint Petersburg, but for the other towns, you could move between them freely. But of course – times were different, and there were different epochs. As far as the villages were concerned, everyone there was tied, bonded. Take my life, for example: when I met my future wife, it took us 3 days to register our marriage, and just because they wouldn't give her a passport straight away. They just delayed it, just for a while. Then later on she joined the Komsomol, so that she could leave the village on one of their permits. Boys could get passports after they had served in the army, and girls by joining the Komsomol. People from the villages began to try desperately to leave – for anywhere they could – just in order to escape. Later on it became unbelievably difficult.

But the thing is that I was very young then – I don't really remember. Then during Khrushchev's time I was a priest and I lived a life of religion. If you compare the state of the Church then and now, then I would say it was better in Khrushchev's time. The unfortunate times joined us together. I could go to the Bishop and tell him everything that was worrying me, and he would listen to me with his full attention. But now there is none of that: he lives in a world where there are no moral demands, and is wholly unconcerned with theological matters. In religious life today there is commerce, there is politics. Religious life, unfortunately, has lost a great deal. On the outside, the churches are decorated, painted; but on the inside we are losing our spiritual life.Before, when I was a priest in Karagand, religious services were forbidden, and we all used to gather in some house or another at around 10.00, and we would pray until 5.00 in the morning. All together. In Tashkent, the same thing happened: there was an intense spiritual life in the cathedral.

When did you decide you wanted to be a Priest?

I just happened on a wonderful church community, and I used to travel there regularly. There was a wonderful Father there – he was renowned. So there was – I mean it was forbidden to give religious services, forbidden to preach, but we used to meet in different houses every evening. Somewhere around 10.00 the service would begin, and around 5.00 it ended.

He wasn't very old – about 58, I think. He would read the service all night. At 5.00 in the morning it would end, and we would drink cups of tea, then obviously we all went to sleep – and he would go on to another house. And I remember one little house...

Where else did you serve as a priest?

I was in Koroleva. I had my own parish - unofficial, of course - and officially I served in Pskov... There wasn't a church, there was a small benefice, a community of about 25 people.

Can you tell us what you think when you compare life in those days with today?

You know – there used to be a joke about new times – 'We live like dogs: the chain is longer than it was, but everyone steals from everyone else, and it isn't clear who to bark at'. Of course – today we

live in a mad bazaar, and soon life will be terrifying. In those days there was order, but no-one had the right to express his opinion. Everyone was well-fed, clothed and shoes on their feet. But everyone looks at it in a different way. In our day, we needed books – and they didn't just sit on the shelves, we read them, and read them, all night long. Literature was rare: we had to snap it up, and people were ready to give whatever was needed to get it. My wife typed out whole books of Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva, Ivanov, Lewis – everything that was forbidden.

Thank you – you have answered all our questions!

My pleasure.