Book Review: Fr. Arseny †1973 HOAX

1980s: Operation "Father Arseny Streltsov"
https://web.archive.org/web/20160530101957/http://internetsobor.org/sergianstvo/lzheucheniia/sergianstvo/1980-e-gody-operatciia-otetc-arsenii-streltcov
Posted on Internet Sobor by Fr. Valery Leonichev on 06 July 2015. Published in Sergianism

In the mid-1980s, the book "Father Arseny" appeared as religious samizdat in Russia. In 1993, it was released by the publishing house of priest V. Vorobyov, after which it was published several times.

The book was initially presented not as a novel, but as a collection of memoirs about a real person. Very specific information was given about the main character: dates of life, year of admission to the historical and philological faculty of Moscow State University, date of tonsure, etc.  This information was easily verified even in the 1980s — and did not stand up to verification.  Not a single person with a similar biography was found among the graduates of Moscow State University, among the tonsured at Optina Hermitage, among the Moscow "non-commemorating" clergy.  There were also internal contradictions in the biographical data: for example, a 1916 graduate of Moscow State University could not have managed to become the author of several famous monographs on ancient Russian art in a year (before his tonsure in 1917)  ("a famous art critic, the author of many studies and monographs on the history of ancient Russian painting and architecture, a teacher of many, many").

The style of the text is extremely uniform, although it is assumed that this is a collection of several dozen memoirs by various authors.  This style is very unique and full of officialese.  A pearl is put into the mouth of the "famous art critic": "The influence of Orthodoxy was a decisive factor for the Russian people."

It seemed that the image of "Father Arseny" was composed of facts from the lives of various "non-commemorating" priests and bishops.  V. Eremina, a historian from the circle of Fr. John Ekonomtsev (independent of V. Vorobyov's circle) called this book "semi-apocryphal" in 1997, mentioning the name of Bishop Arseny Zhadanovsky as a possible prototype of the main character.  Historians V. Borisov and P. Protsenko called it "apocryphal"  N. Dmitriev analyzed the internal contradictions and ideology of the text.  The only arguments in defense of its authenticity boil down to the fact that venerable believers, elderly and respected people don't lie.

By the beginning of the 2000s, the study of materials about MSU graduates, about the Moscow clergy of the 1920s, about the non-commemorators, about the repressed clergy reached such a level that it became indisputable: "Father Arseny Streltsov" did not exist under this name or under any other.  We are talking about fiction, and about a deliberate and ideologically clearly defined fiction.

In 1999, Vladimir Bykov (1910-2004) was introduced to the public as "one of the compilers" of the book.  He was a very real person, a real member of the "catacomb" Church, the community of the real Fr. Sergiy Mechev.  He himself was not subjected to repression, although it was in his house that illegal services were held.  He is the only real person who testified that he saw "Father Arseny."

Bykov claimed that in the 1990s there were members of Fr. Arseny's community still living, and that he received memoirs from them.  But not a single person ever declared himself a spiritual child of "Father Arseny."  Bykov claimed that all these people were too old, almost 90 years old.  However, the text of the book emphasizes that from 1958 to 1974, Streltsov continued to actively receive people, including young people.  They certainly had no reason to hide in the 1990s.  Streltsov, according to the text, was treated in the 1970s in several Moscow clinics — the doctors who treated him and his medical records should still exist.  All the real people mentioned in the text died before 1970, and references to their acquaintance with "Father Arseny" (and Maximilian Voloshin was supposedly his spiritual son) cannot be verified.  Not a single photograph of "Father Arseny" has been published either, although photographs of the most insignificant characters in the church history of this period have been preserved, including from investigative files.

It remains to consider V. Bykov as the author of the book or a person who accepted the assignment to act as the author or cover for the author of the hoax.

What could have made Vladimir Bykov, one of the Mechevites, already being a 90-year-old man, become a participant in the operation "Father Arseny," and declare that this fictitious person is reality?  To declare it tongue-tied, so that even internal criticism of his texts shows that they are disinformation, "operational cover."  But — he declared it.  Ten years have already passed since the "abolition of the KGB"— Well, perhaps...  Only exactly ten years after 1990, a representative of the same special services became the president of the country.  Of course, Bykov was not an agent of the Lubyanka.  He lied under pressure, lied out of fear.  What kind of fear?  It is enough to hear about the fate of priest Konstantin Apushkin, who was betrayed by the bishop who performed his underground ordination in 1938.   His matushka recalls, "Father Konstantin was arrested and subjected to a cruel, mocking interrogation — he was driven under the table, and the inspectors sitting around the table, asking him questions, beat him "blindly" with their boots.  The sufferer tried to cover at least his face with his hands.  After the beating, he was finally, by the grace of God, released, but the beatings affected his health."

Fear of those who treat people like that was deeply rooted in Bykov's generation.  This fear persists (not because of "genes," but because the effects persist) in subsequent generations.  Survivors from1938 and are broken —  old age itself is not able to cure such fear.

The history of the underground community of Fr. Sergiy Mechev has not been studied well enough and, apparently, not by chance.  Four people who were secretly ordained by Metropolitan Manuel Lemeshevsky at Mechev's request were betrayed by Lemeshevsky, arrested, and then released.  Two of them subsequently did not carry out priestly service.  It would be unreasonable to assume that the community, numbering dozens of people, albeit divided into groups, was outside the purview of the secret political police, that there were no informers among the members of the community.

Was Bykov the author of the text or did he receive the text ready-made from people who kept him "on the hook"?  This is a secondary question.  There is no point in expecting an answer to it until the secret archives are opened.  However, an analysis of the text of the novel itself allows us to judge many things with confidence.

First of all, the text was certainly not made “in the depths of the KGB system,” contrary to Dmitriev’s opinion.  Among the book’s constant themes is criticism of the Chekists.  But there is another constant note: praise for the intelligence officers: “All the members of our group were good people; they were taken into the army because they knew German, sent to long-range reconnaissance, had nothing to do with the sadistic investigators from the NKVD”… “An old intelligence officer, fearless.  There are still people out there, in freedom, not all of them have yet drowned in meanness”…  “They reinstate him in the rank of general and send him back to reconnaissance.  He guarded the state all his life, he loved the Motherland.”  Several short stories are dedicated to miracles that happened to front-line intelligence officers.  A priest advises a former intelligence officer who became a Chekist: “You don’t need to work in the inner circle of the government [органах].  Go to something else, otherwise you’ll burn out.”

This allows us to assume that the text was created "in the depths" of the intelligence service, a rival of the "Chekists," who considered themselves innocent of repressions. The church theme was not alien to the intelligence service, since it was they who supervised the clergy sent abroad.   (In the 1990s, the Foreign Intelligence Service supported its former colleague, Metropolitan Raphael Prokopyev, in creating one of the branches of the "catacomb Church").  [Americans converts who joined the R-splits did not realize these groups, RTOC, ROAC, ROCiE were created by the KGB. ~jh]

The text of the "memoirs" contains several gross errors in the description of the camp system, errors that would hardly have been made by either former prisoners or the Chekists.  In particular, the assertion that people were held indefinitely in "special regime" camps, that the stamp "Keep in camps indefinitely — until death" was stamped on the files, and that those transferred to a special regime camp were reported as dead, is absolutely incorrect.  It is absolutely impossible for an army general to be demoted to major as a punishment during the war, sent to run a concentration camp, and at the same time bring a note from his wife to a priest (in a special regime camp!), having somehow learned that the priest was in this camp.  The author apparently does not know that many priests were released from the camps in 1943-1946.

Criticism of the Chekists is not the main theme of the text.  Even the references to the Bolshevik persecution of the Church are not too emotional.  The Bolsheviks are not the main enemies.  They are victims of the Satanic spirit, they can repent, they can be healed — such repentance and healing are the predominant theme of the work.  At the same time, the enemies that cannot be "converted," the deadly enemies, are very clearly and distinctly described.

The main enemy is not the executioners, not the Russian people who destroy churches, but the “leaders”: “The destruction of churches, the mass extermination of bishops, priests, deacons, and believers could only happen because the “microbe” of dark malice was thrown into the human mass by the “leaders.”

The enemy is Western Christianity.  "In our icons there is a spiritual symbol, the spirit of faith, the sign of Orthodoxy; in Western icons the lady is a woman, spiritual, full of earthly beauty, but in her there is no sense of Divine Power and grace, she is only a Woman."

The enemy, in particular, is the Greek Catholics: "The hatred of the Uniate clergy towards the Orthodox priests was enormous, and any even the most innocuous conversation instantly turned into a stream of insults and abuse against Orthodoxy.  I have long noticed that the Uniates were quite friendly with the Baptists and Protestants, but the Orthodox were hateful to them."  The memoirs of many Orthodox "camps" do not confirm the fact of the "hatred" of the Greek Catholics towards the Orthodox.  It is curious that the author does not explain where the Greek Catholics in the concentration camps came from.

The enemy is Jewry.  The teacher "Nathan Aronovich" puts on a performance at school — a trial of Christ, and when the performance turns out to be to the advantage of Christianity, "he almost hissed: "Enough of this comedy, there is no Christ, Christianity is an unsuccessful perversion of the Jewish religion. ... Read the verdict!"  The student who defended Christianity is sent "to an orphanage for difficult children" (an absolutely fantastic detail).  (The author reveals his poor knowledge of the era when he puts the following characterization of 1940 into the mouth of a memoirist: "It was fashionable in those days to engage in anti-religious propaganda."  The "fashion" had already passed by 1935, and it was a government campaign, not a sincere passion of the youth.)

The enemy is the intelligentsia (oriented toward Western ideals): "Before 1917, a huge number of books were published, written by "progressive" professors, left-wing writers, and various kinds of scientists, in which, under the guise of studying natural phenomena, scientific discoveries and research, and even simply occult sciences, real anti-religious propaganda was conducted, and sometimes demonic teachings were preached.  Work was actively carried out against the Orthodox Church, everything and everyone was discredited."  In the preface to the publication of the novel in 1993, priest Vl. Vorobyov lashed out at dissidents: "They write about their lives in camps and prisons, about interrogations, but no one has yet told us about the millions of believers who died in these camps."  The priest "forgot" that it was dissidents who were collecting materials about the persecution of the Church, and in those very years when Vorobyov was making his church career, collecting Chekist fabrications like "Father Arseny" instead of facts.

The enemy is the media, especially television (not the kind financed by the Kremlin, but oriented toward Western standards): "Demonic evil is spreading like an epidemic, and to a large extent this is facilitated by books, newspapers, magazines, radio, and especially the rapidly emerging and spreading television.  All this freely enters the human home and poisons the soul of a child, a youth, an adult."

Enemies — “sectarians”: “The people who ended up in the camp were very different, there were also sectarians, fanatical to the point of madness and absurdity.  Sometimes they went to their deaths, just so as not to compromise even a little.  They were completely sincere in their beliefs and therefore treated everyone like lost sheep.  Often these sectarians helped people, but it seemed that they did it not for the sake of the person, but for their own sake.”  It is unlikely that “sectarians” are meant to refer to the Old Believers; apparently, they are talking about Protestants.

The enemy is the supporters of reforms in the Church: “No criminal has committed as many betrayals and murders as the renovationist bishop who calls himself a believer, together with the OGPU and NKVD, destroying the faith and corrupting the spiritual consciousness of the people.”

The enemy is the supporters of translating the divine service into Russian: “We must pray only in the Slavic language, our spoken language is too vulgar, sometimes cynical.”

The enemies are the supporters of the "evangelical circles" and "rational" people in general: "When they came to the Church, they accepted everything rationally, especially at first, I will not say critically, but cautiously.  Most of them did not have the childlike faith that perceives the Lord God, the Mother of God, the saints with all their hearts, with all their minds, with all their souls.  They analyzed the spoken word, as if filtering it; then it passed.  Apparently, the independent study of spiritual scriptures and their own interpretation left in the souls of the circle members the need to filter what was said through reason."

Enemies are also people who do not obey the Moscow Patriarchate, continuing the line of the "non-commemorators": "Often those who now claim to be the successors and admirers of the holy martyrs are in fact pastored by completely different pastors."  The author mentions that "Father Arseny" served the liturgy at his home, but does not say whether Streltsov commemorated Patriarch Alexy Simansky or Pimen Izvekov.  In an interview, Bykov emphasized that the Mechev community was not a "catacomb" but a "home" Church — such concern for the correct interpretation of the past indirectly supports the assumption of his commitment to the department "working" to resolve the problem of the catacomb Church.

Apparently, it is impossible to trust the unique message of the text: “Back in 1924, Patriarch Tikhon recommended that a number of faithful priests of Moscow select suitable people from the brothers of their communities or from the parishioners and prepare them to accept the secret priesthood, since the threat of the total destruction of the clergy loomed.”

The positive program of the text is also quite clear.  First of all, it is solidarity with the authorities:

"I cannot condemn our government, because the seeds of unbelief have fallen on the soil we have already cultivated, and from here comes everything else, our camp, our suffering and the vain sacrifices of innocent people.  However, I will tell you, no matter what happens in my fatherland, I am its citizen and as a priest I have always told my spiritual children: we must protect it and support it, and what is happening now in the state must pass, this is a colossal mistake that sooner or later must be corrected."

The author is against the "revision of history."  For him, the enemies of Soviet power are also his enemies: “Former policemen, Vlasovites, traitors to the motherland... were really in prison for a reason.”   "Father Arseny" absolves the sins of repentant communists: “The Lord, who punishes us for our sins, is also free to forgive them with His inherent mercy, and there is no sin or curse so grave that it cannot be atoned for by our deeds and prayer.”  However, there is no and cannot be forgiveness for the Renovationists and Vlasovites.

The main positive social force is the Church: “And if we talk about Russian priests, then you should know that they were the force that united the Russian state in the 14th and 15th centuries and helped the Russian people throw off the Tatar yoke.”

The people, poisoned by “leaders,” can be healed by leaders — only by church leaders: "It takes a pastor to kindle a small spark into an unquenchable flame of faith."

An episode, supposedly "funny," demonstrating the methodology of "ignition" is curious.  A former intelligence officer who became a priest tells how he dealt with hooligans who were pestering his wife, thinking:

“You were a scout, you learned different techniques at a special school, and God didn’t short you of strength.  He turned around with all his might. … He hit one over the head, another in the solar plexus, and the third one with the edge of his palm on the neck, and then rushed at the one who attacked Nina.  He became furious to the limit, beat up the fourth guy and threw him into the bushes.  Nina stands there, unable to understand anything.  Two guys who were standing to the side rushed to help their own, but when I gave one of them a good beating, they ran away.  I gathered the beaten guys together and gave them a good beating. The main thing is that everything turned out unexpectedly for them, they didn’t expect resistance, they thought -— a wimpy priest, unresponsive.  I gathered them together and decided to teach them a lesson.  It’s embarrassing to remember now, but I made them crawl on all fours for about fifty meters.  They crawled, tried to resist, and I gave them a beating.  My Ninka laughs: “I didn’t know you were like that, Platon!  I didn’t know!”  I was very angry then.  I understand!  Judge me for this fight, it is not for a priest to do something like this, but there was no way out.  If I had gone alone, maybe... but not with my wife there.  Then I went, told the bishop, he laughed a lot and said: “In this case, you did the right thing, but in general, do not use force.  The Lord will forgive!”

The text is "carnivalesque": it admits that the priest behaved inappropriately, but emphasizes that such behavior is quite appropriate for a "spy" and anyone who wants to be like him.  In the 1990s, many novels and stories were written in the style of "one in the solar plexus, and the third with the edge of the palm on the neck" and, most importantly, political problems began to be solved in this style.  Of course, the creators of "Father Arseny" are not the only ones to blame for this.  The popularity of their text is not the cause, but a consequence of the militant tendencies in the Orthodox environment.  Of course, many readers of this work read from it, first of all, miracles (stories about them compensate for the lack of real information and evidence) in the spirit of the "Mother of God Center."  The maliciousness of the text should not be exaggerated, but its characteristic should not be underestimated either.  Yakov Krotov

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