Biography

Mikhail Trukhanov

Mikhail Vasilyevich Trukhanov was born in 1916 in the Saratov region in the family of an Orthodox priest. During his childhood he was mainly educated at home since his family had to move constantly in order to avoid hunger and persecution.

Mikhail was not a strong believer since the beginning. His faith got stronger as his family was going through the hardships of that atheistic era. His father Basil shared the fate of the thousands of Orthodox priests who died for Christ in prison and exile. His father’s life became a great example of faith and love, an example that he decided to follow. Choosing to dedicate his life to God, Mikhail knew that society would reject him; no one would be a friend of the son of «an enemy of the state». It is hard for us to understand how a young man living in that time of religious persecution could make such a decision in his life. But Mikhail did not fall into the fear and despair so common among the people of that time.

In the late 1930s, Mikhail began to study Astronomy at the Moscow University. He started to lead a Christian life, studying the Holy Scripture and setting up a study group of young people who shared in the same spiritual need.

On December 14th, 1940, he was introduced to Vera, his future wife, at the Moscow Cathedral of Elokhovskiy. After only a few weeks of meeting each other, on the 21st of January in 1941, at half past midnight, Mikhail was arrested in a student dormitory and brought before the NKVD. He was sentenced to 8 years in labor camps on the charge of "organization and leadership of an illegal group of churchmen".

A few days before Mikhail’s arrest, his father sent him a letter, saying: «I do not know what you will do in your life, but always remember I bless each day of your future life seven fold.» Mikhail said that he always felt his father was praying for him, that his prayers guided him through all the hardships in his life.

Mikhail was shocked at his arrest, and filled with confusion: «Lord, why are you putting me through this? Was I a bad Christian? I did everything a real Christian should do!». His heart was filled with despair. But after three days in prison, he suddenly saw everything in a new light. He prayed: «God, thank You for everything… If this if Your will, how can I be against it? My Lord, bless this new chapter in my life». When he was brought before the court, he smiled knowing that there was no way to escape punishment for being faithful to the Truth. An inner joy of suffering for God gave him the strength to withstand the trial and imprisonment.

He spent sixteen years in prison, surviving the hard labour camp. The Russians tried in vain to convince him to become an informer, which was obviously contrary to his beliefs: «As a Christian I do not have the right to be an informer!» he replied. Camp authorities decided to send him to the “ice punishment cell” for five days. The floor, the ceiling and the walls were covered with ice. «I knew I would die. No one ever survived it… I prayed all the time, I would walk for an hour, I would stand for an hour». The Lord gave him the strength to survive, and a guardian would bring him once a day a glass of hot water, a piece of bread and a bit of porridge. Even though it was prohibited to bring him food, the guard would give it to him in secret, and it was enough to keep him alive.

In 1951, he was exiled to Krasnoyarsk Territory, but after Stalin's death in 1953, he was newly arrested for "anti-Soviet activities" and sent into a labor camp near Omsk. In 1956, freed and fully rehabilitated, he returned to Moscow, where he finally married Vera, who had waited 15 long years for his return, even though they had only known each other for a few weeks.

Mikhail was later ordained an Orthodox priest by the Bishop of Chernigov, the only bishop who did not fear the KGB during that time, as the majority of priests were informants in those years.

He died in March 16, 2006 and was buried in Moscow at the Vagankovo cemetery.

Background

Russian Orthodoxy and Political Authority from World War II

A type of religious renaissance took place during the Second World War, as Stalin needed the moral and patriotic support of the Church during the invasion of the German Army. In the war that lasted from 1941 to 1945, the repressive nature of the government’s politics toward the Church relaxed somewhat. The vast majority of the repressed clergy was released from prison or labour camps, many churches were re-opened, from 150 to 400 parishes and nearly 30 monasteries became active again. The “Union of Militant Atheists” stopped its activity.

In 1946, the “renovationists’ structures” – that is, the clergy that had embraced the Bolshevik authority having declared the relationship between Christianity and communist ideology as “natural” after the well-known Declaration of 1927 of the Metropolitan Sergei Stragorodsky – previously supported by the state were closed. The government gave the building of the former German Embassy as residence of the newly appointed Patriarch. The Bells of the town churches began to ring again.

Khrushchev’s ideas during the late 1950´s, which aimed at building up a real communist country and a real “communist man”, by the ‘80s, induced a stronger pressure against the Church, particularly in his native Ukraine.

In 1961, a prohibition was passed against the ringing of church bells and against charitable activity that benefited churches or monasteries. In the mass media, an extensive campaign was waged against the clergy. As a result, clergy members, their families, and even ordinary religious believers could be subjected to discrimination at work, in school, in the army and in their day-to-day life. In contrast to the pre-war repressions, in the 1960s neither priests nor laypeople were executed or sent to prison for their faith. They were given the choice to become informants of the KGB, the Secret Services, or denounce the church, that is, their faith. By the end of the 1960s, the pressure had reached the level of a large-scale suppression, being fulfilled, primarily, in the widespread closings of churches and in massive deportations of Christians and Catholics.

During the roughly twenty-year power of Leonid Brezhnev, the end of the de-Stalinization reduced the crimes of the long-standing dictator to mere faults, and the rehabilitation of his victims never appeared. The KGB played a pivotal role there, forcing social obedience, collecting knowledge on all political and private aspects of life, and in the end, permanently extending its own power.

While the Orthodox Church was forced to downplay their existence during Brezhnev’s administration, the Catholic Church was subject to even stronger restrictions. Only two catholic parishes remained open in Russia: one in Moscow (The Parish of St. Louis, related to the French Embassy) and one in Leningrad (The Parish of the Mother of God, Our Lady of Lourdes). From the late 1970s, these two communities experienced a growing participation of young people who belonged mainly to the government intelligence.

Following the grey period of Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko, at the end of 1987, Michael Gorbachev prohibited the official atheistic propaganda and the persecution against the religious communities. The cooperation of all people was required for the putting into action of the perestroika. As a result of the improvement of relations with the Western world, religious freedom was reborn in the Soviet Union after 70 years of darkness.