Read Online The Last Man in Russia: The Struggle to Save a Dying Nation by Oliver Bullough - Free Book Online

I returned to the
    corridor with the photographs.
    Father Dmitry’s year was the first
    pictureontheleft,becausetheywere
    the first students to enter the
    seminary after it reopened. All the
    other years had formal portraits of
    the students and teachers gathered
    together. This one had eighteen
    separate pictures, which had clearly
    been gathered after the students had
    already left. Some of them were
    identified by name but most were
    not, and I could not find Father
    Dmitryamongthem.
    Later accounts relate how he
    alwayslovedtalkinganddebating,a
    trait he learned from the father and
    grandfather that had introduced him
    toChristianity.Theyhadtaughthim
    that religion is a living thing,
    something to be discussed and
    celebrated.Hisfatherhadtaughthim
    phrasesfromtheBible,andtheyhad
    explored them, asking what they
    meant. He must have been a
    rambunctious presence in class, and
    that alone was enough to make him
    stand out. In 1940s Russia, people
    who wanted to survive did not talk
    openly to strangers. Even relatives
    neededtobetreatedwithcaution.
    Soviet children were raised on
    the story of Pavlik Morozov, a
    young boy whose body was found
    on the edge of his village in the
    Urals in 1932. According to the
    story pieced together (some say,
    invented) by the police, Pavlik had
    informed the authorities that his
    father, a poor peasant, was forging
    documents allowing kulaks to pass
    themselves off as ordinary citizens.
    On the basis of the evidence, his
    father was exiled. Pavlik was then
    murdered. Four of his family
    members – his grandparents, a
    godfather and a cousin – were
    executed for the crime, which was
    said to have been a bloody act of
    revenge.
    Thestory,whichislikelytohave
    been fabricated but which was
    passedoffastrue,wasturnedintoan
    opera,songs,playsandbiographies.
    School groups visited Morozov’s
    grave,andchildrenwereencouraged
    to believe that snitching on your
    own father was valuable if your
    fatherwasworkingagainstthestate.
    Martyrdom
    in
    the
    service
    of
    communism was the highest ideal.
    Storiessuchasthisoneestablisheda
    generation gap between new, young
    Sovietpeopleandtheoldpatriarchal
    villagesoftheirparents.
    As the historian Orlando Figes
    put it: ‘for anyone below the age of
    thirty,whohadonlyeverknownthe
    Soviet world, or had inherited no
    other values from his family, it was
    almostimpossibletostepoutsidethe
    propaganda system and question its
    politicalprinciples’.
    Father Dmitry, however, had
    inherited other values from his
    family,andthatmadehimnoPavlik
    Morozov. He did not inform on his
    own father, although his father
    attended secret religious ceremonies,
    noronhisgrandfather.
    By the end of the 1940s, the
    gulag camps all across the Soviet
    Union contained more than 2.5
    millionpeople–amillionmorethan
    in 1945 – and a similar number of
    people were in internal exile. From
    thesecondhalfof1948onwards,the
    police began rearresting former
    politicalprisonersbythealphabet.
    ‘I have long noticed your anti-
    Soviet spirit. You have read one or
    two sermons, and you’re already
    conceited. You want to reshape
    everything,’ said the professor who
    taught the students how to preach.
    Dmitry, when asked his opinion of
    the Bolshevik killing of the tsar and
    his family, replied that it was brutal,
    and that he pitied the children. That
    was an unwise thing to say, and by
    now the authorities had their eye on
    him. He had always loved writing.
    Inspired by the Psalms, he used
    poems as a way of exploring the
    same issues he liked to debate: his
    country,history,God.
    One older fellow student asked
    to read his poems. Dmitry, a village
    boyanduntrainedinthewaysofthe
    security services, assented. The
    studenthandedthepoemstotheKG
    B.
    Prosecutors seized on a poem of
    his that described Stalin as an
    ‘executioner’
    and
    the
    ‘first
    destroyer’. Father Dmitry’s brother
    Vladimir gave me a package of
    poems in Berezina, but I could not
    find this one among them.