D. Likhachev's memoirs

Kobrin → Outstanding persons

It is necessary to begin from far away. It is very difficult to remember to me — which of youth and in what degree was a believer. All anyway involved in very small circle "Seraphim of Sarov's Brotherhood" were believers. In Space Academy of Sciences from nine of her members certainly Tolya Terekhovko and Pyotr Pavlovich Mashkov were non-believers. Eduard Karlovic Rosenberg (my friend Fedya) passed from Lutheranism into Orthodoxy. The incomplete office of Baptism (only an anointing) was made in church on the Petrovsky island by the father Viktorin Dobronravov who is nowadays canonized by foreign church. Eduard's brother — Vladimir remained "the indifferent Lutheran", but in a mass cell on Shpalerny very much became friends with the father Vladimir Pishchulin. The atheist Tolya Terekhovko was on friendly terms with the priest on the Solovki also. The father Alexander Filipenko with whom we lived on the Solovki in the thirteenth quarantine company from all of us especially allocated Tolya Terekhovko and spoke to all of us: "He is an orphan". Really, the father and Terekhovki's mother finished suicide when he was still absolutely a boy. His sister finished suicide much later during the Siege of Leningrad, and it, having been hospitalized in Borovichi in the first months of war, starved himself. The father Alexander as if felt in him some tragedy and as I already told, loved him, was sorry and did not try to persuade him to believe in God. If the father Alexander was persistent in it — he would alienate himself from Tolya.

There was also "a special case". The son of rather rich parents (so spoke about him) Borya Ivanov attracted to our business by the investigator though he in circles was not fell on the Solovki into religious insanity. It was taken in "obedience" by some easy rider who declared himself the monk and the priest and "taught" Borya to "humility": removed from it a good black short fur coat and gave it the rags, took away the best of parcels which he received from parents, forced it to serve itself, to blow nose a hand (what he could not learn) etc.

When stages separated them, Borya Ivanov went the hospital attendant to patients with "Asian typhus", caught and died. The clergy on the Solovki shared on "sergiansky", adopted the declaration of the metropolitan Sergiya on recognition of the Soviet power by Church, and "iosiflyansky", agreeing with the metropolitan Josef who did not recognize the declaration. Iosiflyan there was majority. All believer youth was from iosiflyana. And here matter not only in usual radicalism of youth, but also that iosiflyan on the Solovki surprisingly attractive lord Victor Vyatsky (Ostrovidov) was at the head. It was very formed, had printing theological works, but a look reminded the rural dad. Greeted all wide with a smile (other I also do not remember it), had a beard liquid, rosy cheeks, eyes blue. Odette was over a cassock in a knitted women's jacket which to it was sent by someone from its flock. From it some shine of kindness and cheerfulness proceeded. Sought to help all and, the main thing, could help as all treated it kindly and his word was trusted. He served as an accountant in the Solovki state farm. Two of them with the father Nikolay Piskanovsky also persuaded A. N. Kolosov to take me in the Criminological office and when in the winter of 1929 I returned from sypnotifozny "teams recovering", sent me through Fedya Rosenberg gradually of green onions and sour cream. To what these onions with sour cream were tasty! Once I met the lord (among themselves we called him "vladychka") some especially brightened up and joyful. Transfiguration Cathedral had it on the square. The order of all prisoners left to tonsure and forbid carrying long clothes. The lord Victor who refused to execute this order was taken away in a punishment cell, violently shaved, having strongly wounded the person, and crookedly cut off from below his clothes. He went to us with the person wound by a towel and with a smile told how it was dragged in a punishment cell to cut, connected, and he demanded that at first cut off a long "KGB" overcoat (in the manner of that in which Dzerzhinsky was represented on Lubyanka) at dragging it in the escort's punishment cell. I think that ours resisted "vladychka" without animosity and considered the suffering as the Grace of God.

By the way, "vladychka" took to itself in Agricultural Mikhail Dmitriyevich Priselkov when, obtained by us from a quarantine company, he refused to work in the Solovki museum ("for occupation by history I was already put …"). The lord soon after "release" died in exile in the Arkhangelsk region where he was sent after camp, in extreme poverty and tortures.

The father Nikolay Piskanovsky was other light person. It was impossible to call it cheerful, but always in the most difficult circumstances radiating internal tranquility. I do not remember it laughing or smiling, but always the meeting with it was some consolatory. And not only for me. I remember how he told my friend, year suffering lack of letters from the family that it suffered a little and that the letter will be, soon soon. I was not present at the same time and I cannot therefore to bring here exact words of the father Nikolay, but the letter came next day. I asked the father Nikolay — as he could know about the letter? And the father Nikolay answered me that he also did not know, and "was so somehow uttered". But such "was uttered" there was much. The father Nikolay had an antimension, and he in a whisper made a liturgy in the sixth ("priestly") company subsequently. The cemeterial Onufriyevsky church belonged to "specialists" - the monks who concluded the labor agreement with camp and was sergiansky. The clergy from the sixth company did not go to it. Stories that nearly twenty bishops served in monastic church are incorrect. Permission the prisoner was allowed to visit outside the Kremlin church not more often than two times a year by appointment. I do not know how was before split of orthodox church — can be, and rules of visit were others. The father Nikolay was exhausted with the previous arrests and exiles, was ailing and worked some time in a setevyazochny workshop. Occasionally invited us, youth, to himself in a barrack when received "small fish" — the well-known Solovki herrings for the sake of which kept a quantity of monks-fishers in the monastery.

The father Nikolay knew that his wife was also arrested, and very much worried about children: what if take in children's home and will be brought up atheists! And here, when it was taken out from camp, in Kemperpunkta he stood in a man's queue for boiled water. Since other end besides to the crane the female turn approached. When the father Nikolay approached the crane, he saw the wife at the crane. They were covered by prisoners (it was strictly forbidden to talk to men to women), and the father Nikolay learned a message, joyful for it — children were taken by the believing acquaintances. The daughter of the father Nikolay is living, lives in Borisoglebsk (Tutaev). The son died.

Life of the father Nikolay was continuous torture or maybe a martyrdom. Recently I received the short biography written simply and faktichno from the father's family. Amazingly probably on the reported facts and on style on "Life" of the archpriest Habakkuk.

The camp administration did not distinguish iosiflyan and sergianets — all were equally tormented. A bit different was destiny of Catholic priesthood. Interceded for them from abroad and though they lived to the middle of 1929 in the same sixth company, were exempted from works and then lived on Anzer in bad conditions, but after all all together, without "lesson". The youth around them was not.

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