Conversation with the President
In 2000, Father John was surprised that the new President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, congratulated him on his next birthday. Later, the head of state visited the monastery and talked tete-a-tete with Father John for about an hour in his cell. About what - God knows. But judging by Putin’s subsequent seventeen years in power, the conversation was very fruitful.
Father John died on February 5, 2006, on the day of the celebration of the Council of New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, almost immediately after receiving Holy Communion of the Body and Blood of Christ.
Pillar of Russian eldership
He was called “the pillar of Russian eldership,” although he himself was extremely dissatisfied when he heard that he was called an elder. With amazing irony, he spoke about it this way: “do not confuse the old man and the old man. And there are different old people, some are 80 years old, some are 70, like me, who are 60, there are old people and young people. But the elders are God’s blessing to people. And we no longer have elders. An old man runs around the monastery, and we follow him. And now the time is like “there are millions of two-legged creatures, we all look at Napoleons.” But we need to learn that we are all essentially unnecessary, and are not needed by anyone except God.”
According to the rector of the Michael-Arkhangelsk Monastery of the city of Yuryev-Polsky, abbot Afanasy (Selichev), it was simply humility: “He found the royal elders.” That is, such a denial of one’s own significance is a pre-revolutionary church tradition.
However, when he became a resident of the Pskov-Pechersky Monastery, hundreds and thousands of people flocked to him, like an elder, and he accepted everyone, and tried to help everyone. Even in the last years of his life, when Father John was already weak and sick, he still answered numerous letters with requests for spiritual advice.
On the pencil of the Soviet regime
He began as an accountant, becoming a psalm-reader in 1944, and in 1945 he was ordained deacon by Metropolitan Nikolai (Yarushevich) in Moscow. The persona of this Bishop Nicholas is also interesting. If Nikolai (Nikolsky) was still radically against reconciliation with the Soviet regime, then Nikolai (Yarushevich), on the contrary, adhered to the course of Sergius (Stargorodsky), and, moreover, participated in negotiations with Stalin in 1943 on the restoration of the patriarchate, the return of priests and bishops from places of detention. These negotiations entered the history of the Church as a “concordat”.
However, Father John (Krestyankin) himself was “on the pencil” of the Soviet regime. Surprisingly, he fell under the rink of repression only in the fiftieth year, that is, at the end of Stalin, and left the camps in 1955, that is, during the atheist campaign of Khrushchev.
By the way, both the time of his imprisonment and his subsequent biography were surrounded, among other things, by political rumors. According to one version, Father John was an anti-Stalinist and generally spoke out in 1953 in the sense that “Stalin’s death is a holiday for the Russian people.”
According to other “eyewitnesses,” much later, he said that “there is no need to condemn Stalin, Stalin will appear before the judgment of God.” However, both of these testimonies are not confirmed by practically anything other than “personal memories of conversations with the elder.”
What is known for certain is the statement of Father John regarding the campaign to close churches and fight against religion on the part of Khrushchev: “let us not deprive ourselves of the temple when we can, but let us also learn to carry it with us: train your heart in kindness, your body in purity, both will make you a temple of God.”
Monk from age 12
He was born in 1910 in Orel, into a bourgeois family, and from childhood he was associated with Orthodoxy: at the age of six he became a subdeacon, which is an extremely early age for such a church “position.” A subdeacon is a church servant who serves the bishop at the liturgy. And such service requires attentiveness, perseverance and intelligence. For six years old, this is a huge responsibility.
At the age of 12, according to contemporaries, Ivan Krestyankin (his name remained the same when he was tonsured, which is a rarity in the Russian Church), asked Bishop Nicholas (Nikolsky) for a blessing to become a monk. This was also an extremely interesting personality. During the years of the Renovationist schism, Bishop Nicholas opposed this with all certainty, but in the end he did not recognize the 1927 declaration of Metropolitan Sergius (Stargordsky) on the interaction of the Church and the Soviet government.
However, the events of 1927 were still far away, and then Bishop Nicholas blessed Ivan Krestyankin to become a monk, but with the caveats that he needed to study, work, then serve as a priest, and then become a monk. And, in general, this is what happened to Father John in the end.
“Write what you remember”
By the way, here’s what’s interesting: there were, and still are, the most contradictory rumors around Father John. And he foresaw this at the end of his earthly life, and therefore asked then Archimandrite, and now Bishop Tikhon (Shevkunov), to write memories about him: “Behold, I will soon die. So work hard, write what you remember and want to say about me. Otherwise, then you will still write and you may come up with something that will be like poor Father Nikolai, who “resurrected cats” and other fables. And then I’ll look through everything myself and I’ll be at peace.”
During the years of parish service, Father John was often transferred from parish to parish, until finally, in the Moscow Patriarchate in 1967, he was assigned to the Pskov-Pechora Lavra.
And already a year after he became a resident of this monastery, they went to him for spiritual advice. This was the time of Brezhnev, but not yet “stagnation”, when the atheistic policy of the Soviet state became absolutely inert. However, the Pskov-Pechora monastery itself was an amazing place with an amazing fate in general and in Soviet times in particular.
