Life or biography

The preface is an extraordinary book about an extraordinary person and about his incredible fate. Incredible even against the backdrop of current publications, when a stream of long -hidden information about heroes and political criminals, about executioners and victims fell on the reader. Here everything is non -standard and saturated with paradoxes, which in the mind of a foreigner can hardly fit.

Only inconceivable zigzags of domestic history of the last decades were able to give rise to this “life” and this “life”. The person who will be discussed by Mark Popovsky did not die in the camp, but went through all the circles of hell; He was not an oppositionist, but almost all his biography was a seal of fodder. The doctor who wrote scientific works in the prison cell, he not only waited for their publication, but also received the Stalin Prize for them under Stalin.

At the same time, he was both a surgeon and the clergyman of the Russian Orthodox Church, the archbishop ... I remember him already blind, ten years before his death in the year. I remember his letters to my mother, which he already had to dictate the secretary. Around him the most fantastic legends were formed. And not surprising. He truly seemed to be a miracle of nature, a ball of contradictions.

However, as the reader sees, it was this person who belonged to the breed of absolutely whole, as they say, “tied up from a single stone”. Such a figure is a real find for a biographer, for a psychologist and historian. And Mark Alexandrovich Popovsky was just a tireless recreate of historical characters. When he became interested in Professor Voyno-Yasenetsky, Archbishop Luke, he was already the author of a whole series of books about famous doctors and biologists.

He worked on the vast biography of academician Nikolai Vavilov. I gained the experience of "Documents hunting", stubborn searches in archives, a survey of living witnesses. The archbishop attracted the writer primarily as a scientist as a surgeon. The world of the Church, to which Voyno-Yasenetsky belonged, was at first incomprehensible and alien to the biographer. He also knew the fact that in the press the church activity of the famous doctor was silent.

How much could a brief certificate in the "Medical Encyclopedia" could give? He was kept in Simferopol, away from the capital. They did not trust. Of the hundreds of sermons of the archbishop, only a few were printed. His main theological work “On the Spirit, Soul and Body” was not published, she saw the light in Brussels 17 years after the death of its author. Other people, looking at the bust of the laureate of the Stalin Prize, were perplexed: why did he have long hair and a icon on his chest?

And when they were explained that this was a panagia, a sign of the episcopal dignity, there was no end to the amazement of them ... Be that as it may, Popovsky took a chance-and his epic began on creating the book "Life and Life of Voino-Yasenetsky, Archbishop and Surgeon." I say “epic”, because the writer not only personally managed to meet his hero, but traveled all the places of his life, medical practice, links, collected oral stories and subtle documents.

He talks in detail about all this in the book. Creating it, he sought to be extremely honest, to separate fiction from reality, not to turn the hero into a “icon”. To portray it alive in the context of the painful and painful era of the 10s and Stalinism. However, his inevitable excursions in the history of the Church could not be complete and quite objective. The obstacle was the gaps in this story of the Soviet period and the very position of the author, who looked at the church "from the outside." True, Popovsky who knew him admitted that the book, or rather, her hero, somehow imperceptibly brought him closer to spiritual problems.

This is felt as the narrative develops. When the labor was completed, it became obvious that it was impossible to print it with us. And by that time, in the minds of the author “Life and Life”, they turned into a certain center of his work, almost into the main work of life. But this is not enough. Another “central” biography for Popovsky’s work, a book about Vavilov, although it has published, but in a cut -out form.

Indeed, then they did not dare to openly admit that the great geneticist, the pride of Russian science, died of exhaustion and cold in prison. As a result, two stories about amazing fates determined the fate of their creator. Mark Popovsky emigrated. He was able to finally see his works published, but, alas, they did not reach those who were intended. Meanwhile, the climate in the country has changed.

Even before perestroika, several articles on Voino-Yasenetskoy came out. They appear now. But they cannot replace the extensive documentary novel by Popovsky. Her publication in the journal "October" is a real event. And its significance is not just that another chapter from Russian history will open before the reader. He will meet a person. A person of selfless faith, unbending will and devotion to duty.

A real person, not created by imagination. For many people, especially young people, is a meeting of exceptional importance. They have already learned the truth about lawlessness and atrocities, about the collapse of moral principles, about the distortion of the image of God in a person. You need to know and remember this.However, it is equally necessary to talk about those who have not surrendered, who did not lose themselves, who kept the treasures of the spirit in the most difficult circumstances, who really served their neighbors.

They were not superman. They had weaknesses and mistakes. They were “people among people,” as Mark Popovsky called one of his books about doctors. And it is precisely in this that encouraging, giving hope for the power of their example. Archpriest Alexander Miner M. Popovsky's preface to the edition of the end of the X My beloved hero. The one who in Soviet times fell into the hands of my books may remember that they were dedicated to a scientist, the history of scientific discoveries.

Nevertheless, I was not a popularizer of science. To colleagues who were maliciously asked if it was boring for me to delve into the “scientific garbage” explained that my interest was addressed primarily to the personality of the researcher. My heroes are the storage-seekers, people of strong will and assertive creative character. For them, scientific search is an arena where their energy, courage, indefatigability, and talent are revealed.

So it was, but deep down I still felt: I have not yet been able to find a genuine hero. Even the great biologist, academician Nikolai Vavilov, to whom I dedicated ten years of searches, in fatal circumstances, was still inferior to his Bolshevik persecutors. With that and died of hunger in the camp. And there is no need to talk about ordinary Soviet candidates and doctors of sciences.

Raising the archives and interviewing dozens of witnesses, I now and then found actions from my heroes, gently put it, not quite clean. The Soviet government corrupted its citizens very, very successfully. The hero that I dreamed about for years is the number one figure in science and, at the same time, a person capable of resisting communist falsehood, arose on my horizon more than forty years ago, in the year.

I went to Tashkent with a travel certificate of the Literary Newspaper. The usual interview with a local professor took place in such cases. I was about to leave his apartment when my attention was attracted by a portrait of a bearded old man with a clearly non -standard, strong -willed physiognomy. The owner of the house explained: this is his university professor, the famous surgeon Valentin Feliksovich Voino-Yasenetsky, who lived in Tashkent in the twenties and thirties.

The professor headed the department of surgery and at the same time was an archbishop, the first person of the Russian Orthodox Church in Central Asia. The authorities arrested and referred this stubborn three times, but Valentin Feliksovich, in the monastic of Vladyka Luke, did not give up. But it turned out that the surgeon-archaitan is alive and even leads the Crimean diocese.

Moreover, in the struggle against a believer, the Soviet regime lost, after all,. During the war, the surgeon was released from the Siberian exile and appointed a surgeon-consultant of a military hospital for 10 thousand beds. And for his scientific merits, he was even awarded the Stalin Prize.

I left Tashkent literally captured by this amazing personality. Yes, it was such a person who would like to see the hero of my book. Two weeks after the Tashkent meeting, I was already in the Crimea. The Archbishop of Crimean and Simferopol accepted me in a modest country house near Alushta. At the age of 80, he still made the impression of the personality of the unbending.

Our two -hour conversation indicated that the memory of the professor was not changing. But, alas, he completely lost his vision: in the kindergarten, where we were preparing to talk, he was brought by a black elderly nun, dressed in all the black elderly. I replied that I was going to write a book about him. And he was right. The book “The Life and Life of Voyno-Yasenetsky, Archbishop and Surgeon” saw the light only in the year in Paris.

To write a book about the bishop-surgeon, I needed two decades. During this time, it was possible to interview more than one hundred and fifty contemporaries of the hero, go around, from Crimea and Uzbekistan to Krasnoyarsk and Turukhansk, twelve cities and several villages. As a result, volume appeared in the pages recently reprinted by a good Russian family in America. Gathering materials for the future book, I came across fears and fear from even close relatives of my hero.

The children of Voino-Yasenetsky received me at first friendly, provided the opportunity to get acquainted with my father’s letters, but then scared, decided that the appearance of the book could badly influence their professorship careers.