Russia at war 1941-1945

visited Moscow.' (The German papers were, indeed, full of it.) 'What do you make of the Anglo-Saxons and the Bolsheviks conquering Europe? ' I said I did not make anything of it. I tried to sound as simple as I could, and I said: 'Whatever happens, it will be the will of God'. The Gebietskommissar got very angry and said: 'I am not asking for any emotional utterances from you... I want you to think in a rational spirit.' I said he could not expect me to be too rational; I was a Priest, and therefore whatever God the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, decided, was good enough for me.' And I quoted to him the Lord's Prayer—'Thy will be done.' He didn't like it, and told me to go to hell." And, with a chuckle, he added: "Fancy telling a Bishop to go to Hell!"

I asked what he was going to do now. "Now", he cried, "now I shall be happy... Happy and frightened..." "Why frightened?" "Ooh! I am frightened, frightened of the Patriarch", he squealed, becoming more and more Dostoyevskian in his buffoonery. "Ooh! He is such a great man. Such a powerful mind. Do you know that his skull is sixty-three

centimetres in circumference? A great brain. After all", he explained in a dramatic whisper, "I did work with the Germans; oh, only a teeny-weeny bit, but I worked with them all the same... It's true, I refused to pray for a Hitler victory; nor did I write the article that they demanded from me denouncing the Moscow Patriarch... But still I am frightened. Sergei—he is such a disciplinarian! But I am not frightened of Joseph Vissarionovich, who knows I am loyal. He, in Ms infinite wisdom knows that I am not

like the Bishop of Vinnitsa. He escaped to Germany by plane; they even took some cattle away by plane. They took sheep and bishops away by air!" He giggled, and repeated

"Sheep and Bishops!" And, turning to the Mayor, he said: "I know you'll agree with me that Joseph Vissarionovich will not be angry with me... But Sergei, oh I am frightened of that great, grand old man! But perhaps his great heart will soften when he learns that I had to live in hiding the last three weeks the Germans were here. And I also want to write a little book which will be a devastating answer to the foul and libellous book that was written by a Volksdeutscher called Albrecht, about our Orthodox Church, and I want to print on the cover a large black serpent with a swastika on its tail... But I shall atone for my sins. I shall serve my country, great Mother Russia, and her great Soviet Government, and pray for them as long as I live... And so, for the second time in my sinful life, let me drink with you all to our great leader Stalin! "

We drank to Stalin. Our host and the others listened to all this with tolerant amusement.

The Archierei was a typical case, an average case. He was no hero, but he had not

"collaborated" wholeheartedly; that, at least, was fairly clear. Everybody understood that, in the past, he could have had but little love for the Soviet regime, and one had to make allowances for this. He had, for a short time, taken advantage of the Germans' apparent desire to encourage the revival of the Orthodox Church, but had soon realised that they were only out for their own ends.

The roads continued to be rivers of mud, but one morning the Major wangled a

Studebaker in which we drove to the Bug, west of Uman. Though the Red Army was well

beyond the Bug, on its way to Rumania, there were many people on the road: soldiers

who were wading through the mud towards the Bug, and they were jovial and in high

spirits; and new labour battalions of peasants who were being sent to repair the railway, and who were not looking too pleased to be dragged away from their farms; and, lastly, new army recruits, who were going to Uman to report for service in the Red Army—now

that, with the liberation of this part of the Ukraine, they had become available. Some of these looked singularly unenthusiastic; "however," said the Major, "they'll soon get used to the idea when they see so many of their fellow-Ukrainians, with high decorations, in the Red Army." There was no doubt, he said, that the German occupation had

demoralised many people in this part of the country, and while they hated the Germans, they had also lost much of their "soviet-consciousness" and had become parochial in their outlook.

We stopped in one or two villages; they had not suffered much from the war; nor had

more than two Germans ever been stationed there; nevertheless the German officials

regularly came on a weekly inspection, and slackness and absenteeism were severely

dealt with; a German surveyor with a whip travelled around the fields in a brichka and threw his weight about. In case of any trouble the police were called for. Suspected slackers were beaten up. Proportionately, there were much fewer deportations to