104
A Candle Burned
Russian Believers: Stories of Faith and Hope It snowed and snowed, the whole world over,Snow swept the world from end to end.
A candle burned on the table; A candle burned. The Poems of Yuri ZhivagoDoctor ZhivagoBoris Leonidovich PasternakBy Jerry Guibor
To my daughters,
Lindsay and Anne
A Candle Burned. Copyright 1998 by Jerry Guibor. All rightS reserved. Printed in the united States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without wRItten permission except in the cAse of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, please write to the author at 3526 W. Browning Ave., Fresno, Calif. 93711, or telephone (559) 449-7695
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Guibor, Jerry.
A Candle Burned
Scripture quotations used in this publication, unless otherwise noted, are taken from the
Holy Bible, New International Version. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible
Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Bible Publishers.
ONE
VIKTOR
Communism – the devil’s imitation of Christianity.
A.W. Tozer,
Christian theologian
Permeating the fabric of economy and society, crises in Russia since 1991 have brought surprisingly positive changes, though in fits and starts and with requisite pain. The renewal of Christianity has been one of those positive changes. Churches have made a startling comeback, proliferating where before they had conspicuously disappeared. Indeed, thousands of people go to church. While most people were forced to worship secretly soon after 1917, anyone now can embrace Christ openly.
In 1994, when I arrived in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, to work as a missionary, I did not sense much outward knowledge of God in the land. But, in the course of one year, I began to see a burgeoning undercurrent of faith that told me God had never left the former Soviet Union; Communist leaders just wished He had. Indeed, they may have had the rest of the world believing He had.
Working with The CoMission, a five-year project (1992-1997) with the Russian Ministry of Education to rebuild the moral and ethical base of the nation by teaching Christian principles in public schools, I witnessed new Russian Christians growing by leaps in their walk and service to the Lord.
I also saw atheists – indeed, former Communists – dedicate their lives to Jesus Christ.
Many of these new converts have continued to grow in their faith and have become leaders in churches and Bible studies in Rostov and other cities in the intervening years. There have been many others who have accepted Christ as a result of Bible studies conducted by Americans in the nine years since my first visit to Rostov.
Viktor Chernavsky, an obstetrician and gynecologist in Rostov, is one of those zealous new believers. First, he comments on the relationship between Russia's Marxist past and its evolving Christian present. Then, he offers his testimony as a magnificent expression of the dynamic that is an undercurrent in many stories in this book.
I asked Viktor to compare Christianity and communism, and he began his answer with a poignant question.
“How does one reconcile communism and Christianity? The question for a former believer of communism and a new believer of Christ is not as complicated as it may seem.
“Probably it will surprise you and your readers, but the ideologies of the Communist Party and Christianity are very similar.
“Thus, most of the moral principles are the same (don't steal, don't commit adultery, don't lie, etc.).
“Members of the Party had to attend common meetings (like attending church each Sunday or a Bible study).
“They believed in their "God" – leaders of the Communist Party who were ruling the country: Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev.
“They had their "Bible" – books by Lenin, Stalin, Marx and Engels.
“They were promised "Heaven" – communism in the future.
“The only big difference I can see is that, in order to achieve, communistic people were told to work hard (that was the way to make them work practically free of wages).
“This point still confuses many people who truly believed in the Communist Party and now truly believe in Jesus – they can't realize how it is possible to get into Heaven not doing anything except believing in the Savior. Also sins (including thinking differently from what they were told) in the Soviet Union were not forgiven only because of repentance. People were put in prison or into exile (the equivalent of hell).
“All this, of course, is only about those who truly believed in communism. There were many people who didn't believe but just lived according to the accepted rules. But these people do not believe in Christianity either.
“Thus, when true believers of communism were told that they were deceived, some of them began to seek a new faith. Others denied the truth of Christ and still believe in communism.”
Viktor’s testimony
At another time, I asked Viktor to tell me his testimony of how he changed his thinking and became a true believer in Christ.
He said he was born in 1974 – after the height of the Cold War and after the Soviet Union had begun its slide into oblivion.
Then, he pointedly added, “It was a time of horrible repression of the Church. Most churches and monasteries were closed. Only old people could pray openly. If a person declared that he believed in God, his career would come to a halt.
“For example, there was one Communist Party member's mother who was a Christian. Old and ill, she could not go to church by herself. At Easter time, she asked her son to go to church to have the paskha (special Easter bread) blessed. He planned to go in the evening, so he took the paskha to work. Somebody saw it and told a Party chief; the man was expelled from the Party and lost his job.
“My grandmothers (my grandfathers were killed in World War II) were women of deep faith. They wanted to baptize me, but it was dangerous to do it openly. I was baptized secretly at home by a priest. Now people can be baptized openly in church.
“I became a Christian, but only formally, because there was no possibility for me of learning about Christ. During the Brezhnev era, atheistic propaganda was everywhere. At the university, ‘scientific atheism’ was taught. My older brother told me that during exam time once, somebody wrote on the door of the exam room, ‘Lord, forgive me for passing this exam.’
“But most of the young people did not believe in anything and did not think about these questions. If someone was a believer and did not hide it, it was almost impossible for that person to go to college.
“It seemed that the Communist Party had stifled religion, but the reality was much more complicated. While faith was taken away from people, it is nevertheless human nature to believe in something. Thus, new gods were established: communism, the Party, the Soviet State.
“In the 1970s, these idols were destroyed because the economy was in ruins, and there was no connection between the worlds of the ruling elite and real people.
“People had nothing to believe in. The result was a demoralization of society and a huge rise in crime. This was the atmosphere in which I lived most of my life.
“But I had a Gospel. It belonged to one of my grandmothers. It was printed before the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 and was missing half of its pages. I read it, but I couldn't understand it in many places. I began to learn about Christianity from religious programs broadcast by such Western stations as the Voice of America and the BBC.
“I first turned to the Russian Orthodox Church because it is dominant. Since the time of Peter the Great, it has been dependent on the state. This situation gave rise to many sects consisting of people who could not live the life of the official Church.
“After the Revolution, the Church was formally separated from the state. In reality, it was much more dependent upon it. Churches could not teach Scripture. Many of them were destroyed; others were used as storehouses and even one – you'll be surprised – as a swimming pool (in a church in St. Petersburg on Nevsky Prospekt). Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow was blown up, and a cathedral in St. Petersburg became a museum of atheism.
“The situation is changing, but there is a real chance that the Russian Orthodox Church may become a state organ again. Officials are calling for cooperation with the Church, but they are not actually Christians. They simply see the Church as an instrument to stop the moral degradation of society. They were forced to appeal to the Church because Communist ideology cannot influence people now as it once did.
“It has become stylish to look like a Christian. You may see drunks using bad language but wearing gold crosses on massive gold chains. Wedding ceremonies in church are popular simply because they are prestigious. People display Bibles at home because it looks fine, but they never read them.
“In 1993, a friend took me to the Church of Christ, founded in Rostov by Americans. There I, for the first time, heard preaching and took part in the worship. That time, I felt that God is leading me. In the spring of 1996, my mother discovered for me The CoMission Bible studies.
“First, I worked as an interpreter and had a chance to attend many studies. On Dec. 14, 1997, I accepted Christ into my heart, and that was the most important day in my life.
“I have turned to Protestant Christianity, which, I think, offers a full spiritual life and follows Scripture exactly. I feel that the Holy Spirit is present in it.
“I search for the chance to serve God and people, and for contacts with Western Christians from whom I can learn the proper Christian life. I also have a great desire to live in a Christian community and to help others.”
Conversely, I met atheists and former Communists who resisted or rejected Christ, and still are rejecting Him.
In these pages, you will find testimonies, life journeys – vignettes as it were – of people who were born and raised during the Soviet era. Some stories are secular; most are spiritual. Some are dramatic; none is mundane.
Next: As you will see as we begin, Yelena’s life is anything but routine.
Two
Yelena
In years of hardships, in the day
Of unthinkable existence
She had been cast up from the depths
By a high wave of destiny.
-- The Poems of Yuri Zhivago,
Boris Leonidovich Pasternak,
Doctor Zhivago (1958)
The longest walk
The ordeal of so long ago remains a painful memory for Yelena to recall. She wasn’t far into her story when her Russian eyes turned red and watery, and a tear slid down and caught in the rim of her eyeglasses resting on her cheek. The passing of 68 years hasn’t healed the pain, all too close to the surface.
She was recounting when she and her mother escaped from a Soviet labor camp, and they walked 5,000 kilometers (3,300 miles) across Siberia – for one year – to reach a train station. It took them through the worst of each season, especially the deep, aching cold.
For a while, Yelena, only 14 years old, wore big galoshes, but as starvation set in, her feet, knees and ankles became swollen badly with rheumatism, and the footwear became useless. Her face, once fair and clear, also was swollen, and her teeth were shaking in her mouth. It is Yelena’s way of saying they were loose from a lack of vitamin C. Her gums were oozing blood.
Much of her mother’s hair, which she had always worn pulled back into a tight bun, had fallen out. To this day, Yelena honors the memory of her mother by wearing her hair, a combination of blond and gray, in a bun. She never changes it. The bitter hardships caused her mother’s face to resemble a baked apple. Her left arm became infected and had to be amputated. Mother and daughter were filthy and covered with thousands of lice.
Their clothes were in tatters. No! Yelena shouts, correcting me. They weren’t clothes at all; they were rags – rags wrapped around her torso and arms and legs, as if you would wrap rags around water pipes next to the house to keep them from freezing. It was the winter of 1930.
How did they survive? I wanted to know.
Yelena raises her 81-year-old voice to give a ringingly clear answer in her still-present Russian accent: “GOD HELP US!”
In the 1920s, her older sister and brother already were schoolteachers in Moscow. Yelena beams with pride when she recalls her sister’s beauty, and then a dark look flashes across her face and the invective pours out. “An official of the Communist Party, a very ignorant man, had a stupid son,” Yelena says. “He wanted to be with my sister. He approached her in the forest. He was drunk, and he touched her breasts. She slapped him, and he said, ‘Your parents will be left in ashes.’ “
His father ordered Yelena’s family to be sent to prison. First, her father heard the rap on the door at exactly midnight. Police came to arrest Citizen Petrov. Before the officers could notice, he slipped off his wedding ring and gave it to his wife for safekeeping. Ten days later, the police returned for the rest of the family. This time, they took from Yelena’s mother her husband’s wedding ring. Hers would not come off so easily, so they ripped it off her right ring finger, stripping the skin and exposing the white gristle of a knuckle.
Fortunately, when the police came for them, Yelena’s sister was at school. The police could not find her anywhere. She kept on the move, leaving a trail of rumors she had turned insane. With this news, the “stupid” man gave up looking, satisfied she had been punished mentally. She and her brother were able to slip away and cross the western border into Byelorussia. They continued their teaching careers under assumed identities.
Meanwhile, Yelena, her mother and father were put into railway cars and hauled east, over the Ural Mountains. Yelena’s only consolation was that the man who ordered their arrest later was interrogated and executed.
The train slowly made its way east. People were jammed into boxcars with no toilet facilities. Disease set in, and people began to die. Bodies were simply chucked out of the cars, down the railroad embankments.
The train passed through Smolensk and then Omsk where people were allowed to bathe – without soap – and then dress again in stinking clothes that were thrown into a common pile. What they put back on was not even theirs.
When they arrived at Prokopyevsk, a city in a coal-mining region, they were taken to a prison camp named Birch Grove. It was a bitterly ironic name. There was no grass, no trees, only coal dust that coated the entire landscape.
In the prison camp at the start, there were 1,500 people, including 350 children. Soon, people started dying like house flies, in Yelena’s words. Dysentery and typhus became rampant. The population shrunk rapidly. “You could count the survivors on one finger,” she says. Perhaps eight children were left.
One Ukrainian man watched his family of 11 die, one by one, doing all he could for them and burying each of them. When it came his turn, he took one last bite of food – a pancake made from rotten potatoes – and collapsed by the stove. He stayed there, his mouth gaping open, frozen in death, for days. There was no one left in his family to bury him. No other survivors had the strength to remove his body.
Yelena’s father was dying, too, coughing up blood, and she and her mother encouraged him to escape. What difference did it make if he were caught? By the grace of God, Yelena says, his escape was successful, and it was their turn. They also escaped the careless guards and began their arduous journey on a path that, Yelena recalls, “Only God knows where we were going.”
Although Yelena knew mainly the Russian Orthodox Church, she had not had any liturgical training and, therefore, did not know Orthodox prayers. “When I walked in exile with my mother,” Yelena says, “I made up prayers in my own words to God.”
Yelena was baptized as an infant under instructions from her grandmother on her father’s side. A year later, the Bolshevik Revolution took place, and then, during the Soviet period, discussion about religion was forbidden, and Stalin began to close and destroy churches in the 1920s.
She says, “There was the slogan: Religiye – opium delya naroda. Religion is the opium of the people. Children could not speak about God, because that meant it came from influence of the family, and the family would be punished. It was like genocide for all believers. But we always prayed.”
As she and her mother trudged on, without dokumenti (registration papers), they could not walk on roads for fear of being caught and returned to the GULag (prison). Purposely, they walked through the thick taiga (coniferous forest) on trees that had fallen. It was frightening because there were bears and tigers.
Yelena remembers clearly, “Somebody taught us, when you walk in taiga, you have to constantly be yelling. Bear will run away if you make noise. If you unexpectedly meet the bear, you can say goodbye to your life.”
Along the way, they avoided danger and survived by eating wild berries they found in the taiga, along with mushrooms and a special grass that resembles the flavor of garlic. Both of them were ill with scurvy, and by then the rest of her mother’s teeth had fallen out.
After walking for that year, they reached Sverdlovsk, a large city on the eastern front of the Urals. Even though they were back in civilization, they were not, by any means, safe yet. Fugitives in their own country, they faced danger greater than bears – man – of being arrested again and, most likely, shot.
While common people, who risked interrogation, helped them along their miraculous journey, the most unexpected help of all came out of nowhere at the Sverdlovsk train station – from a high-ranking Communist Party official with a kind heart.
An honest Communist
Huddled on the platform at the Sverdlovsk railroad station were thousands of other refugees as desperate as Yelena and her mother. They, too, carried no dokumenti, had no money and were filthy and starving. They either were escapees from labor camps or people who had fled their homes because they knew their arrest was imminent.
In the classless utopia of communism, Yelena had wandered into the third-class waiting room at the station, looking at booterbrod (sandwiches) in the boofyet (cafeteria), when a tall, handsome man dressed in a beautiful gray suit and patent-leather shoes suddenly was standing by her side. It was obvious he was an important man.
Immediately, he saw that Yelena was frightened and said, “Don’t be fearful, deyvochka [little girl]. Are you hungry?”
Yelena hadn’t eaten in several days but vigorously shook her head “No!” without saying a word.
He knew different, of course, and took her to the first-class boofyet and ordered fried chicken and French rolls for Yelena and her mother. Then, he led them, wearing their rags and lice, into the first-class car where the high-society ladies who were fashionably dressed in furs recoiled at the sight of them. “They could see the lice crawling on us,” Yelena says.
They were given a private coupé (compartment), and, for the first time in more than a year, they had a warm place where they could rest their heads. They were accustomed to sleeping under bushes and in ravines. Yelena, though, slept with one eye open, fearing that this man with the kind heart would return and arrest them.
After an undetermined time on the train and 900 miles later, they arrived in Moscow and, as inconspicuously as possible, left the train. But a railroad conductor in a dark blue suit spied them and rapidly approached. He said in a friendly way, “I will take you.”
He escorted them to the Byelorussky Vogzal, the Byelorussia railroad station.
They already had tickets for the third-class train on which the masses ride, jammed together sitting on hard, wood benches, sleeping, fitfully, upright.
The railroad man, though, had his orders: purchase for them first-class tickets on the Moskva-Riga Skora Poyezd, the Moscow-Riga Express Train. Immediately, he stepped to the front of the line, and all the customers parted like the Red Sea to let him get to the window. The new tickets ensured their passage to the Byelorussia border. In his last official act for them, he put them on the train.
Yelena says, “That means the man in Sverdlovsk notified this man. That means he was a top authority in the Soviet government. He knew we were escapees. It also means that this man was honest. Even among Party members, there were honest people.”
They couldn’t relax yet. It was still the Soviet Union.
The train neared Baraukha, a military town where soldiers looked suspiciously at everyone’s dokumenti, and Yelena knew that. Accordingly, they slipped from the train early.
“We walked from post to post,” Yelena says. “I said, ‘Mamochka [mommy], we will walk to this post and then we rest.’ Without exaggeration, my mother walk like this [Yelena took my arm to demonstrate, and together we wobbled side to side], and I hold her up. I was an invalid myself. Somebody can think we were two drunks. And the clothes that we had – they were terrible.”
These two raggedy invalids, whose every step was excruciating, kept up this agony for two days. At last, they came to a town called Borkovichy where they would live.
It was an odd mixture of community – two escaped prisoners, one Communist Party member and a schoolteacher – all living in a priest’s house. Yelena’s brother lived nearby, and soon he was arrested for hiding his social background.
Through the efforts of their sister, he didn’t stay in jail long and was transferred to another school.
Yelena finished high school there and then university. She became a schoolteacher, just like her brother and sister and 17 close relatives on her mother’s side.
Communism’s Big Brother was ever vigilant, making it difficult to teach in Soviet schools.
Yelena says, “You always have to have ooshki na makooshki. Those are little ears reaching up to the top of your head. It means you always have to be very careful to avoid speaking about politics. It was easier for me because I taught Russian language and literature. I didn’t have a subject like history where you have to connect it to communism or atheism.”
Where, I prodded, was God in her life during that period?
Yelena doesn’t hesitate: “In my heart.“
He had taken her through inhuman hardships, and she wasn’t going to forget Him now. Besides, there were more tragedies to come.
An illustrious teaching career
Her teaching career having begun, Yelena met a handsome academic vice president, and they were married.
Because of religious persecution, her husband, a Catholic, was arrested and interrogated as an enemy of the people. He was released without further questioning, and Yelena’s curiosity was running wild.
“When I asked, ‘What saved you? What helped you?’ ” she says, “he became very irritated and said: ‘GOD!’ When he told me that, it was like a heavy stone fell from my heart.” Knowing that his own wife wasn’t a threat because he was a believer, he was always praying and praising God after that.
Springtime came, Yelena was pregnant with her only child, a daughter, and the Great Patriotic War was not far off.
Her grandfather was killed in World War I – on the very day Yelena was born. Her father was in the Red Army at the same time. Now, her first husband was serving the Motherland, too.
The Germans invaded Russia on June 21, 1941, when the first bombs fell, killing a cousin with a direct hit.
Then, on Nov. 18, her husband was shot from a distance. The bullet went through his stomach and shattered his spine. For 2½ days, he survived, but in a coma. Then, he died.
Yelena says, “His mother was very kind to me. When I look at myself, I remember her.”
Inna, her daughter, was born in January 1942, during the German occupation.
Some Russian citizens were happy – secretly – that the Germans came, and some were neutral. Starvation was spreading, and the Germans opened a cooperative market where farmers and regular citizens could sell produce and fruit and dry goods.
“My sister-in-law said, ‘Yelena, let’s go and see what happens there.’ I was not bad looking. When we arrived at the market, somebody touched my shoulder, and I heard somebody say something. I turned and it’s the German chief of police. People were dying, and the German was stealing fur coats from Jews. He was giving them to his wife.
“He said to me, ‘Why are you so distant? Have a pity to my boots.’ And I moved away from him. He touched me again. I just jerked away from him and I said, ‘No!’ And he grabbed me again. I pushed him back. And he said, ‘You just wait.’ And I was arrested.
“So they took me for interrogation in front of the main German gendarme. And the chief of police who took me didn’t know I was fluent in the German language. And I said to his chief, in perfect German, “You’re going to interrogate me – and only you. I don’t want this man to be present. He looked at me – glared at me. I said, I will explain the reason.
“And he was sitting behind his desk. On his desk was the rubber mallet he killed the people with. It was THAT thick. But he told the other man to go out.
“I told him, ‘I will be honest with you. I don’t like you, and I don’t like Communists. You can do with me what you want.’ I told him the suffering I had been through, all the details. ‘I have a little girl, and what you do, that’s your business.’
“During the interrogation, he was very nice to me. He was ready to take me to the jail, but he let me go. I was the first person to come alive from there. My sister-in-law and my little girl were waiting at the entrance to say goodbye to me.
“I was living tragedy after tragedy all the time. And surprise, I am alive and a normal person and GOD GIVE ME BRAIN! I was smart in school. I was smart as a teacher.”
Later, Yelena and her daughter were taken to Germany where they lived as Displaced Persons. She worked on farms and did cooking and cleaning for a retired Nazi general and his family. They gave her nice, second-hand clothes for Christmas and a room in the attic of their house, while all other DPs slept in the basement.
In May 1945, there were American paratroopers suddenly moving all about the house. She had not seen uniforms with so many pockets. The war was over. She and her daughter were liberated and, after living in Germany for 4½ years, they – including a new husband – emigrated to Canada.
Though she worked in a sugar beet field, life at last was beginning to get better. Later, Yelena was employed in a textile factory when the opportunity came to take classes at the University of Iowa – despite the fact she knew very little English. Always a dedicated student, she earned her master’s degree and taught Russian language at Iowa for one year. She could have stayed, but another teaching position came open at Fresno State College (now university) in California.
“When I came to Fresno,” she says, “my English was even worse than now. They hired me only for one year. When they saw my work, they said, ‘You don’t have to have Ph.D.’ Some teachers who don’t have diplomas with Ph.D. they release. They keep me for 26 years.”
In all, Yelena taught school for 53 years.
Does a priest wear pants?
As we have seen, there has been no foolishness in Yelena’s life, and rightly so. Nevertheless, on a rare occasion, as she recalled her Russian Orthodox upbringing, she couldn’t resist telling a brief story on herself, a mischievous twinkle in her eye even before she could get the story out.
“My grandmother caught me in something funny,” she says. “As you know, Russian Orthodox priests wear these long, black robes. I was about 5 years old, and I wanted to see if he wears anything under his robe. So I tried to look. My grandmother pull me away. And she said, ‘What are you doing?’ I said, ‘I want to see if priest have pants on.’ ”
In Russia, the job of religious education often is left to the women. In Yelena’s case, it was no different. Her grandmother and mother raised her in the Orthodox Church, the only official church in Russia in 1916, the year of her birth. She was baptized soon after. At that time, people were free to worship, though the church was still controlled by the state and the Czar.
Her parents were religious people, and her mother was very devoted to the church. “The Orthodox Church has Lent,” she says, “and my mother never ate anything that was forbidden then. My father secretly did.”
She says he also fudged on crossing himself with a rapid, half-hearted effort, one time, from shoulder to shoulder. It was far from a distinct sign of the cross.
Her grandmother on her father’s side was German. Though he was pure Russian, he brought his wife-to-be from Germany. To be married officially, she had to convert to Orthodoxy and be baptized in the church. She did this and also quickly learned to speak Russian without an accent.
Her old German ways died hard, though. Yelena says, “We were not afraid of grandfather, but she was very strict. We were afraid of her. My grandfather always would come and say, ‘Lenochka, get into my pocket.’ He always brought chocolate or something.”
The Revolution occurred about 18 months after Yelena was born, in 1917, and repression of the church would begin. Not only was there spiritual starvation, but also physical starvation that gripped the land as food became scarce with the collectivization of farms in 1928. People were dying in great numbers. At the same time, an epidemic of tuberculosis also took its toll.
“A teacher I liked very much came to class one day,” Yelena recalls, “and said, ‘Dear people, I have to say goodbye to you.’ Blood had come from his throat that morning. He died later on. Millions of people died. I clearly remember that.”
Despite the promise of utopia, the early days of communism were an abject failure. Although there was a period of exuberance with Stalin’s Five-Year Plans, it mainly was a gossamer fabrication and became social and economic disaster.
Spiritually, communism is the ultimate cult – worshipping man and creating a false heaven on Earth. Because Communist atheism denies and then eliminates God and man’s soul, it is irrelevant to a Communist that Lenin died and Stalin died. Because they had no souls in the first place, it didn’t matter if they could not save themselves. Meanwhile, the entire experiment of the theory of dialectic materialism and its application, communism, collapsed.
What are Yelena’s thoughts on communism?
She says, “One lie is . . . Communist Party members will survive. But many paid with their lives. They were executed. They would say, ‘I am a member of the Communist Party, and therefore I survive.’ No, they died, too.
“Communism, that’s tyranny. Communism, that’s repression. Communism, that’s everything against decent people. They liquidate decent people. In the first place, they put everybody on collective farms, poor people and middle-class people. And kulaks landed in Siberia.” Kulaks were citizens who had attained more material wealth than they should have. In the Communist mantra, “Property is theft.”
After World War II, when Yelena and her family lived in Germany, she quickly took advantage of religious freedom and began to learn more formally about God.
“Immediately from horse stable,” she says, “we make church in Germany, in Bavaria. Then, we moved to Oberammergau. We organized school and church. We made icons and iconostasis, the screen and table for icons.”
It also was the time when she read God’s Word. “A priest came with Zakon Borzhi, God’s Law,” she says.
“I was born into a religious atmosphere. My mother and grandmother taught me from childhood. Even here at the university, some people said to me, ‘You are educated person. How possibly can you believe in God?’
“I said, That’s exactly why I am educated BECAUSE I believe in God! And nobody will take that away from me. Not even in the Soviet Union.”
Next: Tanya and Volodya find God back home.
THREE
Tanya and Volodya
Atheism is a theoretical formulation of the discouraged life.
Harry Emerson Fosdick
Before I moved 70 pounds of my belongings to Russia in July 1994, I had seen a dimly lit videotape of two Russians named Tanya and Volodya. I had heard of their desire to help American CoMissioners, so I was not surprised when our Tikhi Don train from Moscow pulled into the Rostov station and there they were, waiting to greet us, Volodya ready to help us with our luggage and Tanya saying hello in English. I remember seeing Tanya for the first time, at a distance through the crowd of people on the platform, her bright, ever-present flashing smile, her long black hair and gold hoop earrings. Though she is a Cossack woman, she could have passed for a Spanish senorita. Later, at their flat, she and Volodya and their three children prepared a feast for our entire team, and then they shared their testimonies, beginning here with Volodya’s.
Taunting God
At School No. 14 in Rostov, there was a dark-haired girl and a dark-haired boy. While they noticed each other, their glances – or glares – were traded only because they could tease each other. They were a year apart, she only 9 and he 10. Deep inside, there must have been something else going on because now Tanya and Volodya Pichko have been married for nearly 20 years and have three Christian children to show for it.
Back then, though, Volodya was really not interested in girls or Christianity.
He was drawn precisely to the Soviet Union propaganda that was force-fed to children and adults alike. He listened to discussions and lectures about Lenin. On radio and on television, the authorities spoke of Lenin as one would speak of Jesus, with reverence, praising his name. Indeed, it has been said that Lenin was the equal of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Jesus Christ rolled into one.
They spoke of Lenin as if he were absolutely wise, absolutely perfect.
“He knew everything,” Volodya says, “and he could help everybody. That was why he was a very important person in my childhood. And I believed he was perfect and that we must give our lives to be like he was. I was one of the creators of the Lenin Museum in our school. I liked that.”
(It must be inserted here that Volodya’s name is a diminutive of Vladimir, Lenin’s first name. Ironically, it was Prince Vladimir of Kiev who put his stamp of approval on Christianity for Russia in A.D. 988.)
All the while, the communists were mixing in propaganda that used many principles from Christianity, just as Viktor said. But only form, Volodya says. Of course, Christianity itself was anathema in the strongly atheistic society.
Following that lead and his parents’ teaching, Volodya understandably was not a believer. “I was absolutely an atheistic person,” he says, emphatically. Occasionally, Volodya will let it out that he went out of his way to flaunt atheism in the face of God inside solemn Russian Orthodox cathedrals crowned with deep blue or gold, onion-shaped domes.
But atheism and Leninism? “It was the exact education we had in our families and then in schools where we spend the biggest part of our young lives,” he recalls.
It’s such an impressionable time for youngsters everywhere around the world. We are well-cared for, we haven’t a worry and, in Russia, youngsters naively believe the slogans of communism – for example, “Tomorrow will be bright” – not having come face to face with its harsh realities yet.
Moreover, youngsters could join the Communist Youth Movement, comprising three organizations that were modeled after the Boy Scouts of England – the Octyabryoniks for children 8 to 9, the Pioneers for 10 to 12 and the Komsomol for ages 13 and up.
When Volodya was 15, he was swimming along in the tide with other young Russian men and women. Accordingly, he joined the Komsomol.
As he began to mature and develop independent thinking – a forbidden, potentially treasonous act in the Soviet Union – Volodya wondered:
“I realized that maybe something was wrong with this system. I still thought that Lenin was good, but I thought that, maybe, our life was not good. The people, I didn't like. I saw that they were really bad. They were a success in such organizations. I saw that the books I liked were forbidden. That's why I thought there was something unbalanced in my soul. I thought there was something wrong. As a result of these thoughts, I began to absolutely be not a political person. If before I read newspaper, and I was interested in different political events, at that time I lost all interest to all these things. And what I used to do in mathematics and physics, which I like, and my friends, with whom I spent most of my life. After I graduated from high school, I began to study in Rostov University in the Physics Department as a physics theoretician. Again, it was exactly like everything was without hope.”
He would hang out with his friends and, in Russia, that means standing – or squatting in a circle for hours – with your buddies on the street corner or in the park. There was nothing in their future either. Volodya was riding with them in a swirling back eddy. Certainly he had his university education by then and a good job, and he and Tanya were married, but his life was empty.
He says, “They used to drink wine, beer, play cards, have fun, have their company. I used to live this life for four years. And all these years, I had such a feeling that I needed something, but I didn't know what.”
Then, his daughter, Larisa, was born. Son Anton came along two years later. Andrew wouldn’t show up for nine more years. Still, there was a piece – and peace – missing.
If mental satisfaction couldn’t be found in his family, then could his friends supply it? No, Volodya says, that was an illusion. Accordingly, he poured himself into his work as a research physicist.
“I make many investigations. I spend time at the computer center. I remember three or four days at one time that I slept in my job place. It was for a few years. As a result, I had very deep depression. I am the type of person who cannot do something if I don't know for what. Why are you doing that?
“When I was near 24 or 25, I asked, for me, a dangerous question: For what am I on this Earth? And I couldn't find the answer. There were no reasons – the job, no; family, no; everybody will die; friends, no. So what is the reason I'm here?”
A scientist’s search
“It was so deep a question that I stopped going to work. I called the university and told them, I'm sick. And it was OK. All my time I spent in thought about that.”
With no possibility to read the Bible, Volodya looked to Greek philosophers, and the question finally took shape: What happens when a person dies?
Volodya, the atheist, came to these conclusions:
You must have family, so when you die you will depart from your body and leave them something.
You will have tried to do something for people. It means that you will leave something better.
With what little peace of mind this gave him, he began to work again. Of course, spiritual matters still nagged at him. Glasnost (openness) came, and the first spiritual books started showing up in Russian bookstores – Oriental books, the Quran and at last the Bible.
“I began to buy all these kinds of books because I didn't see a big difference between Christianity or Muslim religion, or anything else. I began to read all these books, but I think it was God's will because I realized the Bible was exactly what I liked. I stopped reading all other books, and I began to read the Bible.
“It's interesting that the first Bible I bought was during the first year of perestroika [reconstruction], about 1985. These Bibles were very expensive. The cost of one Bible was one-half of my month's salary.
“When I began to read the Bible, I began like a scientist. I had no faith, but I read it. A friend in my laboratory was a very strong believer. He is Jew believer, goes to synagogue and studies ancient languages. We began to discuss these things. We had many interesting talks about religion. He told me, ‘You are more Jew than some other people who have Jew last names.’
“But I was not a believer. My wife and I were baptized as children in the church. But my children were not baptized. At that time, I decided maybe I have to do that. Many generations before me did that. And we baptized them in the church not far from Rostov.
“It was not exactly a church. The church had been destroyed. But near there was an absolutely small room. Here the priest had the service.
“It was a stone church, once very beautiful, but absolutely destroyed. When the church was destroyed, the administration tried to build a swimming pool and library. But they didn't do anything. They destroyed everything and then closed it.
“We were very surprised some years later, during perestroika, because we saw that the people began to rebuild it. They already removed stones, the trash. When we came one year later, we saw that it was practically ready. New windows, new doors.
“We saw that it was the priest and his people. They were working very hard. Suddenly, I had a very strong feeling something was wrong. I told my wife, ‘Maybe I will help them.’ I asked them, ‘Can I help you?’ The men said, ‘No, no, you are on vacation; you are having a rest.’ I said, ‘No, no, I want to help.’ For me, it was very important.
“The reaction of people was negative. At first, they decided that I lost my money or gambled it or lost in cards. They came and asked how much I will charge them for this work. I told them, ‘This is free.’
“But day by day, I saw them change. They began to feel some respect. When I walked on the streets, I did not know these people. And they began to say hello and to speak with me. It was very important, and we began to speak with the priest of this church, Father Igor, and he was the first to give me words about church, about religion, but not Bible.
“One year later, I told my wife, ‘Maybe we will marry in church.’ We had three children by then, and maybe it was a strange idea, but she enjoyed that idea very much. We came to the same church and married there.
“Still, it was not a time when I felt that I was a believer. I just felt that I had to do that. I had no explanation.
“Later, I had the opportunity to go to the United States as an invited researcher at Cornell University. A very special group, with a Nobel Prize winner in theoretical chemistry. When we went to the United States and worked for one year, it was my first foreign country, a very good university, a very good experience.
“But in a spiritual way, I had such a feeling that I didn't find anything. When I spoke to my wife about our year, I had very strong feelings that we must return to Russia. I told her, I don't know why, but we have to return. Something must happen in Russia.
“When I went to the United States, I had no opportunity to find people who really seek the word of God. There were people who spoke that they were believers, but their style of life, their relations with family, were far from what I thought it must be in Christian families. I don't know why, but I didn't find anything. Then, we came back to Russia.”
There they truly found God in the former Soviet Union, and He had greater plans for their lives.
Touched by the Holy Spirit
In September 1993, Volodya and Tanya Pichko and family returned to Russia from spending that year at Cornell University with leading physicists from throughout the world. Weeks earlier, a team of American missionaries had arrived in Rostov as part of The CoMission. (The project officially ended in December 1997 and was succeeded by CoMission II.)
Two of the women on that first Rostov team, Elisabeth Konti and Barbara McDavid, were visiting a school one day. It happened to be the school where Tanya taught. In typical female fashion, they became fast friends in a matter of minutes, and Elisabeth and Barbara invited Tanya to dinner at their flat.
Now it was Tanya’s turn to try to convince Volodya to go just across town, but he didn’t have the time or the inclination to go to dinner with people he didn’t even know. Besides, he was tired, and his allergies were acting up. Tanya persisted, explaining also that it would be a good opportunity for the children to practice their English – if for no other reason.
She won out, Volodya went and, to his amazement, he had a good time. He recalls, “Somebody touched me and told me: Help these ladies. I thought I would have to help them because when I saw two very good, very kind ladies on Lenin Street – it’s not the best region in our town – without language, without understanding our style of life, which in many cases is difficult to Americans. I decided that they will not survive.”
Volodya and Tanya helped, indeed. And the arrangement was reciprocal. Tanya says, “They taught me how to read and understand the Bible. It was the beginning of our meetings. Some new truths came to me – new feelings, what is faith and what it means to be a believer.”
But for Volodya, the process of becoming a Christian took more time. Being a scientist, he needed proof.
He says, “Step by step, we began to speak about Bible. I knew the Old Testament, but I had read only half of New Testament. It was an interesting conversation, but it was just conversation. They invited me once to translate at one school, and I saw one film. It was Dobson. It had a very big influence on me, and I told them, if you have such movies in school, invite me. I don't want to translate. I just want to listen.
“Later, we had good conversations on the telephone. Then, I decided – I must make a decision about the Bible. Is it true or not? I opened the New Testament to Matthew, and I began to read. I marked what is wrong or with what I am not in agreement. I began to discuss that. And I was surprised to realize there is no problem here. Everything is right and very deep. It's an amazing book. After that, I had huge respect for it. I began to read more and more, and I found many interesting things. And it took all my time. Lisa and Barbara said: ‘Now you are a believer; you've accepted Jesus and you read the Bible.’
“I said, ‘No, maybe I can't say so.’ I had a feeling that something didn't happen. I wanted to be absolutely certain. It had to be special to me. If you say you are a believer, you really had something special happen to you. I had very deep respect, but I had such feelings that it's not really believing. I thought maybe it was like a gift, like people have a singing voice or they can dance. But I thought I just don't understand.
“Then, God helped me do that extra step. In January in Russia, that's Christmastime when you have a lot of food and so on, and some problems. I had the same problems with my stomach for one week. It was very painful. I couldn't sleep. Very painful. Everybody was asleep. And I decided, I am alone. There's nobody here. And I said, ‘Can I make – I am a scientist – an experiment?’ I had never prayed. I had never asked God about something, because I am so small; He's so big. But I decided: Can I ask Him to help me? And I did it.
“It was absolutely a dark room, and I just said, ‘God come to my life. I am accepting you, and I come to you for my sins.’ All the years, all the ways of this life, all my problems came to this exact point. And I had very deep feelings that I want Jesus to come to my life. What happened inside? My stomach was like boiling water. I had very strong pain. But this pain disappeared in two seconds. One, two. And nothing. It so surprised me that I cannot explain. What was more important was that when I said I accepted Jesus, I had such a feeling that now I understand – it was the Holy Spirit.
“When He touched me, it was a very special feeling. Very special feeling. And I was happy. Then, I had feelings that now I am a believer.”
Tanya’s Testimony
At the time Tanya Pichko was born, in 1957, Soviet Russia was a month away from launching Sputnik, and the nation was at the height of its glory as a communistic – and therefore – atheistic state. In fact, her parents toed the atheistic line, raising her according to its dictates.
The twist comes, though, because she thought she was a believer, having been taken to be baptized by a dutiful grandmother who received religious training before the October Revolution in 1917 and before the ultimate demise of the church during Stalin’s reign of tyranny.
Tanya’s granny was a true believer; she grew up in a family of Russian priests.
As a result, some of her relatives suffered during Stalin’s purges in the 1930s as he tried to weed out enemies of the people and sent them to labor camps in Siberia. Tanya’s grandfather died in one of those camps.
While a small girl, Tanya thought believing meant going to church, lighting candles and bowing to the icons 40 times. There was a mystical feeling about it. She had no understanding about the living, omnipresent God, but she spent her life looking for something special so she could understand spiritual truths in life.
That something special was the Bible that her husband, Volodya, bought in the church, paying one-half month’s salary for it. It would be a few years, however, before she would understand it. It’s necessary to note that Tanya is a bright schoolteacher who is adept at simultaneously interpreting English into Russian, or vice versa.
“Still,” she says, “I didn't understand all things which God has written in the Bible. It's difficult for me.”
Years passed, and Volodya was invited on that trip to Cornell in upstate New York. Tanya says, “We spent the year in Ithaca, which is a gorgeous place. It is a real paradise on Earth. And we enjoyed all the year in America.
“I was shocked when I knew that people could live in a different way, not like we live in Russia. The many beautiful stores shocked me. I saw how people smile to each other, how they enjoy life itself, how they are sincere.
“When people smile to each other, it's a miracle for me. In Russia, it's not a custom to smile to each other on the streets. And I was trying to understand what was the reason. I looked at the people, and I watched. I visited the churches. I saw people, and they enjoyed the love of Jesus, the love of God.
“It was so strange for me, because in Russia coming to the church you are made to feel so guilty. You need to put something on your head, you can't have any decorations [jewelry] and you have to be so humble. And you feel guilty all the time.
“I saw people being joyful as Christians, and I tried to understand why. If they have a different faith? Or if they have a different God? I didn't know at that time.”
While waiting at a bus stop one beautiful spring day, God’s handiwork was all around her – blossoming trees, sun shining gloriously.
“I felt like I'm in paradise. Suddenly, I have a special feeling, and I began to pray. It was the first prayer in my life. I asked God to help me understand the different ways we can live in Russia, and I asked how to change something in myself and in Russia, too. It was a sincere prayer. It came naturally out of me. Nobody ever taught me how to do it. And I began to cry. Now, I think, it was the first touch of the Holy Spirit in my life.”
God has his way of answering even simple prayers by rookie pray-ers.
When the Pichkos returned to Russia, Tanya’s answer came in the form of those two CoMissioners, Elisabeth Konti and Barbara McDavid.
“They taught me how to read and understand the Bible. It was the beginning of our meetings. Some new truths came to me – what is faith and what it means to be a believer. It was a special time because I had some troubles understanding my husband. Volodya was not a believer, and he did not understand my intentions. My new friends were unknown to him. Well, I invited him to visit Barbara and Elisabeth. I nearly had to force him to go. It was difficult. Finally, he came and was happy to meet really, really good friends. And they both helped him to get to be a believer. It was a wonderful miracle of God, a wonderful blessing of God.”
Now, the Pichkos are a devoted Christian family.
“I am thanking God for all these wonderful gifts because I never expected in my life to be so happy. But when we have troubles in our life, we understand that God has all these under His control. And I am happy that I met all the beautiful friends who came to Russia to be missionaries, in this way, helping God to find other people who need the help of Jesus Christ. Maybe this way is the way to change Russia. Praise God for all His gifts in my life.”
The Pichkos leave Sodom
Let’s say your husband awakes early one morning and announces:
“God just told me that we will have to leave this country. Now I admit, I am a little puzzled by it, too. But we will go to a foreign country, thousands of miles away, but we already know the language.”
It’s highly likely you would be more than merely a little puzzled. The Scriptures don’t say explicitly, but it’s highly likely that Abram’s wife, Sarai, may have been somewhat quizzical, too.
In the fall of 1995, when Volodya told Tanya that they would have to quit their jobs, pack up their belongings, sell their apartment and leave their native Russia for Canada, she was downright angry. Volodya’s version of what she said goes like this: “Are you crazy? Everything is OK. We have a ministry here. We have no financial problems. We have a good flat. We have kids.”
All of it was true. Volodya was a highly respected research physicist at Rostov State Institute in Rostov-on-Don. He was the director of the biggest Internet project for science in the region – with an annual budget of $300,000 and two years remaining on the contract. Tanya, a schoolteacher, was able to teach English using Bible stories and Christian songs in public schools. Their apartment, while not palatial, was in a building occupied by many former Communists and, therefore, of higher than usual standards. The Pichkos had ample room for them and teen-agers Larisa and Anton, and first-grader Andrew.
Tanya tells it this way: “At first, I was absolutely against my husband’s decision, and I was angry at him, but very soon, God changed my mind, in maybe two weeks, by giving me some very powerful verses from Genesis – the story of Lot and his wife. God told me that I need to take my kids out of Sodom.”
Whether it was Abram’s Sarai or Lot’s wife, it was simply a miraculous turn of events for Volodya and Tanya, especially considering that two short years before no one in the family believed in God, let alone Jesus. In fact, when Volodya, now 41, was much younger, he prided himself on how well he knew the atheism of Marx and Lenin, which he learned during his schoolboy days. And though Tanya had had a mystical idea of some sort of spirituality, she, too, was a confirmed atheist. But their lives were about to change.