Like most Russian believers, I am an Orthodox Christian. Though I am a U.S. citizen, I have work that takes me, to Russia for about a month at a time. I speak Russian. Thus in Moscow and Leningrad, Kiev and Kishinev, Odessa and Kazan, I have passed as a Russian Christian, taking the sacraments in churches, and shared regular fellowship with believers.
I have never been a part of any official religious delegation. My friendships are with laypeople in the Orthodox Church, whom I see unescorted. I know a few Catholics in Leningrad and the Baltic republics, but I have never met any of the Baptist or evangelical minority. Despite sporadic media attention to the problems of Christianity in Russia, I am troubled that Americans know so little of Russian Christians. It is not right that our brothers and sisters in the Soviet Union should be faceless. They deserve to have us see, briefly, a small slice of their spirit.
The church is everywhere in the Soviet Union. Let me assure you that Christianity, especially in its Orthodox form, is pervasive in Russia. Many Russians identify themselves quite frankly as "believers," a term much more frequent than "Christian." They pray. If a working church is within commuting distance, they worship openly. If there is no church close by, they go to great trouble to find one.
Westerners can be blind to the Spirit in Russia because they do not recognize its Orthodox form. Believers and non-believers are not quite so incessantly polarized as we might suspect. The Russian grandmother babysitting in the park is likely to be a Christian and to teach her grandchildren the sign of the cross and basic prayers before they ever learn the official atheist line. Families often split along theological lines--a brother is a believer, an aunt belongs to the Party, a grandmother is piously observant (all too many of the grandfathers died in the war), yet a daughter is ignorant of religious matters but believes, somehow, in a God.
Lenin is as omnipresent an image in Russia as are the well-fed, dazzle-smiled models who symbolize the good life in U.S. advertising. Any of these images can stand in the way of the gospel, but none of them can kill it. Our Christian social movement in the United States has been shaped in reaction to the consumer culture. Under socialism, surrounded by idealized images of the worker, burdened by antireligious legislation, the Spirit in Russia has taken on its own subtle shades that can instruct us as we discern them.
Clearly, the ministry of the church in Russia is very different from our own, at least in its emphasis. Christians take contradiction totally for granted. Pecherskaya Lavra, the Monastery of the Caves in Kiev famous among Orthodox as the cradle of Russian Christendom, is now a museum complex. At the entrance to the caverns where the hallowed monks are buried, guides assemble the groups they will lead through the caves.
I watched a Russian group from Leningrad. They nodded agreeably as the guide recited, in a bored monotone, the "superstitions" of the monks and the supposed miracle which preserved the bodies in the dry, natural embalming which the caves provided. Some even took notes.
Out of curiosity, and with some Orthodox outrage at the tone of the guide and the simplistic antireligious slogans on the walls, I tagged onto the end of the single-file procession through the narrow, twisting caves. I was not prepared for what I saw. The guide, far ahead, was well out of sight. The Russians at the end of the line crossed themselves. Many bowed, as is our custom, before the relics. Some left petitions for prayer scratched on shreds of paper, stuffing them into the icon-studded niches in the walls. And these were the same people who nodded so agreeably to the guide. Their resistance takes a different form, you see, from our own.
Christians in Russia begin by taking the last place at the banquet. Western visitors to Russia often conclude that the churches are filled with the old and uneducated. Seldom do they discover, unless they worship and converse with believers, that Christians dress like and have the demeanor of the old and the rejected. Believers in Russia "dress down" for church, in direct contradiction of our own custom.
Christianity in Russia is incompatible with success. Those who desire the Soviet equivalent of rising the corporate ladder can hardly speed that rise with membership at the right parish. To become a regular worshiper is to choose the way of Christ over the way of the world. As the psalm goes, chanted at the beginning of every Orthodox liturgy in Russia, "Put not your trust in Princes, in sons of men, in whom there is no salvation" (Psalm 146:3).
Following that psalm, the Russian choir intones the beatitudes, which draw the congregation into their spell. They are the laws of the kingdom proclaimed in the liturgy, and they embody the spirituality of the Russian church. It is hard to convey the joyous spirit, the almost palpable faith at the monastery in Zagorsk as the masses of pilgrims join the choir in singing, "Blessed are you when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake, for great is your reward in heaven."
I feel God's presence nowhere so strongly as I do in Russia. The Soviet posters proclaim the worker triumphant over the material conditions of his being. The Soviet church has incorporated some of the same consciousness and, in the grand ideological transformation (or subversion) typical of our faith, the church has transfigured it. Christ the worker, Christ the peasant, Christ the fool triumphs over the powerful, the rich, and the wise.
Christians in Russia focus upon the self-emptying of God, the divine condescension of Christ in becoming human, as their spiritual model. Mary, the Bogoroditsa, "Birth-giver of God," is a manifestation of God immanent in the humble.
Yuri is a solemn young engineering student in Leningrad. He scowls when he walks, as do many Russians--you've met these faces in our media portraits of Soviets, daily, you will find him with that same round, Slavic face rapt in prayer before an icon of the Mother of God in one of Leningrad's churches.
Yuri had only a copy of the Gospels, not in modern Russian but in the liturgical language of Old Church Slavonic, which he studied to better understand the Word. Given a Bible as a gift, he scanned the modern Russian text through tears of gratitude. (Those scowling Russians can be intensely emotional.)
In serious conversation, he professes to prefer his own dilemma to ours. "It is difficult for us, especially in the out-reaches like Siberia and Central Asia. No Bibles, no churches--but we survive. With us, the choices are plain. But from what I know of you, the choices seem insidious. Materialism among us is an ideology. We can combat it. But with you, it seems to be a way of life. Your battle, it seems to me, is the harder to fight." If you pray for Yuri in his struggle, remember also that he prays for you.
Yuri's choices, however difficult, have not involved him in radically open declarations of faith. I first saw Olga at vespers services in a central Russian city. Her dress drew my attention. Though it is common for young believers to dress simply--babushkas or shawls for the women and nondescript, coarse dark coats for the men--Olga was dressed in a modified nun's habit with a long dark dress and a veil pinned beneath her chin. She clutched in her hand a long black staff. Crossing herself, bowing deeply through the long litanies of the evening service, she was known to the other worshipers and frequently interrupted her devotions with a smile to one, or a few kisses, Russian style, to another.
Olga is a "nun in the world." With opportunities to enter the monastic life severely limited, this becomes an option in Soviet Russia. Although she was educated for a clerical profession, her radical choice to be so open a believer has committed her to another way of life. She is content in a menial job, that of a street sweeper, which occupies her early morning hours. She is able, then, to attend the daily liturgies that take place in most Orthodox churches in the Soviet Union. Though she punctuates her conversation with signs of the cross and expressions of faith, she is a product of modern Soviet education. She has willingly taken upon herself the contemporary equivalent of an ancient Russian choice: to become a "fool for Christ," a poor person, a pilgrim who gives to others her testimony to the fullness of the Spirit.
These younger believers exist in increasing numbers. Many of them are, in a sense, converts to the faith of their forebears. Most of them were once "good Soviet kids" who, like many of us, found emptiness in the world.
"The Party gave me an appreciation for justice, but it failed me in Spirit," said Volodya, once a member of Komsomol, a youth cadre run according to Party principles. Volodya at one time aspired to the Party in imitation of his father and older brother, both Communists. He eventually, at 24, turned to the church instead. "I accept, still, many of the political principles--to be a capitalist and a Christian involves contradiction I couldn't bear," he protests. "But I came to the church to find food for the soul. My father and my brother, of course, can't understand. They think I'm in another century. But my grandmother and uncle," he smiles, "think it's great."
Volodya's close colleagues at work know he is a believer and respect his convictions. "In socialism we achieve many goals," he professes, "but without God, we cannot hope to penetrate the center of justice."
To go to confession in the Soviet Union brings into sharp focus the nature and trials of being a Christian. In a mid-sized provincial town during a month-long trip one recent summer, I went to confession to a very busy priest who had just finished a long line of baptisms. You must understand that confession for an Orthodox Christian is of two kinds: frequently we receive absolution, simply a cleansing acknowledgement of forgiveness, before we receive the Eucharist. Much less often, we engage in a prolonged, private face-to-face confession. I had chosen to go to private confession.
The first question the priest asked me, not recognizing me as an American, was: "Did you ever deny God or deny your faithfulness to him?" The question was in an offhand drone. Clearly, it was a question of great frequency. When I said I had not, the priest raised an eyebrow and scrutinized me more closely: "Are you from another republic?" (He expected me to be from one of the Baltic republics, perhaps, where the situation of believers is somewhat less constrained.) When we settled into the details of my spiritual life, he gave me kind, patient, and good counsel. In the midst of our talk, however, he sniffed the smell of tobacco. "Do you smoke?" he asked. I nodded--to my knowledge, our faith did not prohibit smoking. "No more," he said. "Not here in Russia. You are a believer." Going without nicotine was my pathetic reflection of the hard choices Russian Christians make.
The situation of believers in Russia is a complex, many-faceted tale. By no means is the Orthodox Church in Russia a hotbed of dissent. Nor is it a cowering reflection of Kremlin policy. It is an expression of God's kingdom, not ours. And intemperate, righteous indignation at the situation of believers in Russia can hold the church hostage.
Of course the state resists the faith. The state openly espouses an atheist doctrine. We cannot forget that, any more than we can forget that our own state espouses materialist, self-aggrandizing principles no less hostile to faith. Yet to use believers in Russia as ammunition in a propaganda battle endangers our brothers and sisters there as much as anything else.
We should encourage our American press to silence its stridency. We should quell our righteous indignation and listen quietly for a moment to what these believers can teach us. First of all, they can teach us the soul of ecumenism. Orthodox believers, without sacrificing who they are, express love for other Christians.
Vilnius in Lithuania has a strong Catholic presence and a working Orthodox monastery. There is a profound sense of community among Christians in that vigorously believing city. One gracious woman, a devout Catholic with a deep devotion to the Orthodox St. Seraphim and a smiling portrait of John Paul II pinned up in her kitchen, is the focus for a small community of sharing believers. When I asked her why a mutual friend in Moscow had thought she was an Orthodox Christian, she chided me, "My dear, in Vilnius I was born. Here I am a Catholic. But Moscow is an Orthodox city. Wherever we live, we are God's workers." When I reminded her that bishops, Catholic or Orthodox, might object to her idea of faith by geography, she waved the reminder away with a spoon. "I love our bishops," she smiled, "but I also know human nature. It is divine nature we must obey."
Russian believers can teach us something about a Christian stance toward disarmament. No Russian Christian I know sees nuclear arms as anything but the work of Satan. There is no self-excusing justification among them for a balance of' terror. It is revealing to worship with those who feel threatened by us in the United States. When American missiles point at a friend and his children, it is difficult to argue, "Hey, that's O.K. Remember, we're the good guys."
Despite the antireligious bias of their government, Russian Christians see our government as a danger. They are acutely aware that we are the party who actually used the bomb, who will not promise not to do it again, and who see them, after all, as its primary targets. The Soviet press publicizes, accurately, the statements of Christian nuclear apologists. When Jerry Falwell speaks, he creates for Soviet Christians the model of a Christian pastor who would hold over their children the threat of incineration.
I can only imagine the response of my friends in Moscow if, before Sunday liturgy, they read in Pravda the publicized words of that great theologian, Phyllis Schlafly: "The atomic bomb is a marvelous gift that was given to our country by a wise God."
And finally, Russian believers can teach us something of the Spirit. Simplicity, purity, a willingness to become "fools for Christ"--these are qualities we could use ourselves. In Russia, where being a Christian involves an irrevocable break with success, I believe that we find a lot of very good and wise Christians. Respectability can undermine the radical injunctions of our Lord. Russian believers can resist without stridency, persevere without the image of worldly victory that sometimes tempts us Christian activists in our political and religious struggles. In their long-suffering, they can humble us and teach us.
In my discussion of Orthodox believers, I in no way wish to detract from the struggles of evangelicals in the Soviet Union. But I do wish to argue that it is the intense hostility between our two countries, and the hatred which we so glibly fuel, that embodies an evil greater than that contained in either one of us.
In explaining the differences between Eastern and Western Christians, I remember what an earnest young Orthodox physicist said in a small discussion among Catholics and Orthodox, late at night, in one of the vast apartment complexes on the edge of Moscow. "You in the West, it seems to me, aim somehow for the breadth of the gospel. In worship, in social movements, you seem to want to stretch outward. We Orthodox here in Russia are more vertically oriented. We strive for depth, we 'dive' for the Spirit. We try to find that center from which radiates the divine energy."
The two movements, vertical and horizontal, create of Christendom a vast and saving cross. May we be as faithful to our role in its work as the believers in Russia are to theirs.
The author, who asked to remain anonymous, was a literary scholar involved in ecumenical study emphasizing Roman Catholic-Eastern Orthodox relations when this article appeared.
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