Russia at war 1941-1945

"do you think they would have let me keep this if they had seen it? Not they—not the thieves and robbers that they are. Why, it's worth, I am told, well over a hundred

thousand roubles. I received it five years ago from the Patriarch Sergei himself. I hid it in a nice cosy safe place as soon as the Germans came; I wasn't going to take any chances with this precious cross Sergei had given me as a token of his esteem."

"I had a lot of trouble with the Germans, I can tell you," he said, "I really suffered for my country. How I adore the Red Army!" he cried, and, bending over the shoulder of the major sitting beside him, he kissed the epaulette with a loud voluptuous smack. "You don't mind, Comrade Major, do you? Let me kiss it again!" (Gosh, I thought to myself, the old buffoon, Father Karamazov come to life again!) I also thought for a moment the Major would resent this piece of buffoonery, but he took it like a man, and merely

laughed. "Oh, I know", the High Priest went on, "the Germans pretended they were great Christians; they opened five churches in this town of Uman—but what for? For German

propaganda, for un-Christian, heathen propaganda. And when they saw that it had no

effect, they turned against the church. The men of the Kommandatur would break into the church during Divine Service, and they carried rubber truncheons. They were afraid of our Russian nationalism. What quarrels, what arguments we had with them! They

expected us to recognise the Metropolitan Serafim of Berlin—a Nazi, I tell you. But they said he was the real head of the Russian Church and declared that that holy man the

Patriarch Sergei was—I hardly can repeat it—an impostor, who had been appointed by

Stalin. 'No', I said, 'he has not been appointed by Stalin, but by the Metropolitans. ..' 'Oh', they said, 'they're just a small group of impostors, a bunch of Kremlin stooges... ' I said,

'No, the Patriarch of Moscow is the only Head I can recognise'. But these arguments

really started later. At first, I must say that, to my eternal shame, I thought I could take advantage of the Germans' arrival, and open a few churches at Taganrog—for at that time I was still at Taganrog. They sounded encouraging at first—no use denying it. Only, my troubles soon started. I was told that I was expected to make a speech to the faithful, denouncing the Moscow Patriarch and accepting the authority of their Berlin

Metropolitan. They even said I should say prayers for a German victory. I failed to do either, and was, of course, duly reported, and ordered to go to Rostov, where I was hauled over the coals by a big German chief, who said: 'Look here, Your Eminence, if you think the German Army needs your prayers, you are quite wrong. But don't make any mistake

about it; we give good marks to those who do pray for us, and bad marks to those who do not. And, he added, 'the bad marks can be very bad indeed'. What a nasty, horrid man he was! "

For a long time there was no serious trouble, but then, suddenly, he was ordered to leave Taganrog for Kakhovka, in the Ukraine, where the Germans again brought pressure to

bear on him, this time in real earnest. They wanted him as "an Ukrainian Bishop" to make a public denunciation of the Patriarch Sergei, and to write a long article which the papers throughout the Ukraine would publish. Again he chuckled into his blond silky beard. "I wrote them an article—it made their hair stand on end! So they simply locked me up—

they locked me up in a dark cell without a window; and they starved me, and often left me for a whole day without water. I stayed in that cell for sixty-six days and nights... And as I sat there in the dark, hungry and thirsty, I kept saying to myself: 'I am doing the right thing. How can I not recognise the Patriarch who gave me my diamond cross? How can I not recognise Stalin? He gave me my passport.' And I said to myself: 'No, I shall not work for the enemies of my people, even if it costs me my life'."

It was not quite clear how and why he was let out in the end; but it seems that he was deprived of his large church, and given only a small church at Uman. He had one more argument with the Germans, though, and quite recently. "One day the Gebietskommissar called for me, and said: 'Now what do you make of this? The Archbishop of York has