"Sechin in a cassock." How Tikhon Shevkunov became the main ideologist of the Russian reaction

Tikhon Shevkunov looks too elegant and does not really fit into the image of the Orthodox monk that Dostoevsky introduced into Western ideas. His beard is scruffy, but only slightly; the chin is too sharply defined; and his head of thick, shoulder-length hair is too thick. His television performances are too polished to live up to the image of the mad, self-flagellating hermit in The Brothers Karamazov. Father Tikhon is the picture of a movie star with characteristic self-confidence - and he even looks a little like Russell Crowe.

If Dostoevsky’s monks sit in their unheated cells, then Tikhon cannot be called a recluse. When I interviewed him in December, he had just returned from China and was planning to travel to China soon. Latin America. The whitewashed walls and onion-like domes of the Sretensky Monastery in central Moscow, led by Shevkunov, are not an island of spiritual reflection, isolated from the modern world.

If you call the monastery, the switchboard operator will answer you. Need WiFi? No problem. Enter the outbuilding and you will see the largest publishing house of the Russian Orthodox Church. Go to the Internet, and there you will find the most famous and very popular Orthodox website, Pravoslavie.ru, created in 2000.

“They only recently got electricity on Mount Athos, but in Sretenskoye all the monks have iPads,” laughs Tikhon’s friend Evgeniy Nikiforov, who heads the Orthodox radio station Radonezh, referring to the Greek monastery, which by the standards of the Orthodox faith is the gold standard of asceticism and privacy. “Of course they need these iPads for preaching work,” he begins to speak seriously when he notices that I am writing down his words.

Father Tikhon enjoys influence in the church much greater than befits his modest title of archimandrite. This is mainly due to his connections in the Kremlin. One story is constantly told about him, which Shevkunov neither confirms nor denies: that he is a confessor of Vladimir Putin. The only thing he talks about is that one day Putin (most likely at the time when he headed the FSB secret service - and he headed it from 1998 to 1999) appeared at the gates of the monastery. Since then, these two people have openly and very publicly maintained ties with each other, and Tikhon accompanies Putin on trips around the country and abroad, solving church problems. However, according to persistent rumors, it was Tikhon who led the former KGB colonel to the Orthodox faith and became his confessor, or godfather.

Father Tikhon appears to be very knowledgeable about Putin's religious life: in 2001, he gave an intriguing interview to a Greek newspaper, declaring: "Putin really Orthodox Christian, not just nominally. This is a person who goes to confession, receives communion, and understands his responsibility before God for the high service that has been entrusted to him, and for his immortal soul.”

It also seems that Tikhon has influence - he almost single-handedly leads an anti-alcohol campaign in Russia, achieving amazing results: just before the New Year, the Russian parliament banned the sale of alcohol after 11 pm.

When I persistently begin to ask about the real extent of his influence, Tikhon answers sharply, saying only that he and Putin know each other well. However, the priest refuses to answer the question of whether he is Putin’s confessor. “You can believe these rumors if you want, but I’m definitely not the one spreading them,” he says. You won't find the word "Putin" in Shevkunov's autobiography, Unholy Saints, which last year became literary sensation in Russia and the main bestseller for 2012, ahead of even Fifty Shades of Gray in Russian translation.

Whatever the answer to the question about the confessor, the Kremlin considers it useful not to deny anything in this regard. "This is a very personal question," says Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov, "and I just don't know." Although he confirmed that Tikhon is “very popular” and that Putin and Shevkunov know each other well. “No one can know for sure whether he is a confessor or not. If someone knows that you are a confessor, then you are no longer a confessor.”

Father Tikhon studied at the Institute of Cinematography. In 1982, at the age of 24, he was baptized and found himself in the unique position of a very influential person, like others historical figures, who were in close proximity to the state authorities, who listened to them. True, he insists, and not without reason: “I am not Cardinal Richelieu!”

Strictly speaking, he is right, says Evgeniy Nikiforov. “There is not a lot of specific information in our confessions. You simply say, “I stole” or “I committed adultery.” You can add a few specific details, such as how many times this happened, how often it happened. But you don't have to go into detail. If some foreign intelligence service captured Tikhon's father and tortured him, he would be able to tell them very little.

St. Petersburg priest Georgy Mitrofanov says the fashion for confessors has only recently emerged among the Russian business and political elite. “This is an interesting phenomenon that appeared when rich Russians began to join the church.”

“Most people do not have a personal confessor. The majority confess in crowded churches, doing it as if on an assembly line. The rich want something personal, and some see this as a form of psychotherapy,” says Mitrofanov. “However, the confessor in this case finds himself in a very vulnerable position, since they begin to depend very much on their intercessor.”

Priest Mitrofanov doubts that Putin has a real confessor, “other than himself.” He says that several years ago he asked Father Tikhon if he was Putin’s confessor, to which Tikhon answered in the negative. “But that was a long time ago, and a lot could have changed since then,” Mitrofanov notes.

The connection between Putin and Father Tikhon seems strange for a number of reasons, but the first and main one is historical. Visitors to the Sretensky Monastery may not see the unremarkable stone cross unless they specifically look for it. It stands in a garden adjacent to one of the white walls of the monastery. Monks in robes look after him, and women in headscarves kneel before him, looking as if they have found eternal bliss. “The cross was erected in memory of Orthodox Christians who were tortured and killed in this place during the years of unrest,” it is written on a bronze plaque installed on the side.

The cross was installed on this site in 1995, and it seems to exist in tragic symmetry with the building located just one block from the monastery at the other end of Bolshaya Lubyanka Street. This is the headquarters of the former KGB, an organization that, in its various incarnations, shot and imprisoned more than 300,000 church employees in the name of the official atheism that reigned in the country since 1917. In Soviet times, the Sretensky Monastery, dating back 600 years from the day of its creation, was closed and the NKVD (predecessor of the KGB) barracks were located there. It is said that its territory was often used for executions.

A lot has changed today. In the building on Lubyanka, where the successor to the KGB is located federal Service security, today it has its own Orthodox chapel. The newly opened and reconstructed Sretensky Monastery became a symbol of the awkward alliance between the church and its former persecutors. It is the center of a spiritual renaissance in Russia's ruling circles, which are disproportionately populated by the former KGB operatives who flooded the Kremlin 12 years ago, following Putin.

According to Father Tikhon, now we should not dwell on the devastation caused to the church by the organization that actually rules Russia today. He believes that this should not become a reason for public confrontation in society, but there is no particular need to hide it. It is like a stone cross in the garden of a monastery - visible only to those who look for it.

Father Tikhon says that he will never reconcile with Soviet period in Russian history. And yet, he does not believe that contemporaries should be held responsible for the crimes of the NKVD and the KGB. “They have nothing to do with this. It’s like blaming an American soldier for what happened in Vietnam,” the priest said.

Instead of looking for those to blame, Father Tikhon wants to create a single arch of historical Russian statehood from the 70-year Soviet past. According to him, while working for the Soviet state, many of these KGB officers were actually serving Russia. "The intelligence officers I know were doing their job on behalf of the Russian state," he says, "and it would be completely false to say that they were guilty of repression."

Needless to say, such views are held by a minority in the church, especially among the rank and file of the clergy, who were previously classified as dissidents. However, such views are welcomed and even cultivated by the Kremlin leadership, which is striving with all its might to atone for its atheistic past and take advantage of the reputation of the church. According to a 2010 survey, the church is the second most trusted institution in Russia, despite the fact that only a small number of Russians regularly go to church. Falling popularity ratings and the rise of street protests in Russia have put Putin in a rush to take over the church, according to Geraldine Fagan, an analyst who studies religious freedom in Russia and recently wrote a book, Believing in Russia. .

“Russians identify themselves with the Orthodox Church as the only major social institution that has survived and survived this country’s turbulent history. So Putin wants to take advantage of Orthodoxy's image of permanence and resilience at a time when his own legitimacy is eroding,” Fagan says. Sretensky Monastery is at the very center of such efforts. The head of a Moscow public relations firm once jokingly called this monastery “the ideological directorate of the Kremlin.” But in fact, this is no joke.

Once imbued with ideology from top to bottom, Russian political life has been subjected to overarching doctrines and programs for centuries. Therefore, many believe that the uncomfortable vacuum that was left after the disappearance of communism is now beginning to be filled by politically charged and active Orthodox Christianity, which is supported by Father Tikhon. Shevkunov himself denies that he is someone's ideologist, but this label has stuck firmly to him, especially after 2008, when he became the director and protagonist of the documentary film and controversial political parable about the collapse of the Byzantine Empire, “The Death of an Empire. Byzantine lesson." This film was shown three times on central television in prime time.

Hardliners in Russia are fascinated by the idea that Russia is the “third Rome,” heir to the Orthodox greatness of the fallen Byzantium. And the main message of the film reinforces this historical connection, while simultaneously justifying the anti-Western worldview in historical terms. The Fall of an Empire glosses over the role of the Ottoman Turks, who captured Constantinople in 1453, and argues that Byzantium was rotten from within, succumbing to the ideological predators of an envious West.

The film states that instead of preserving traditions, Byzantium began reforms at the behest of Western (Venetian) bankers, who in the film wear carnival masks with very long noses, so that everything is clear who is who. The individualistic culture of the West weakened Byzantium's resolve and destroyed its hierarchical values. Society has lost faith in its rulers.

The film caused a scandal among liberals, who called it an example of eccentricity and obscurantism. Today, he would not make any impression on the airwaves, which are dominated by paeans to state power, historical revisionism, and accusations against Kremlin opponents who allegedly carry out subversive activities with foreign money. In other words, Tikhon was a little ahead of his time. But he is now finding it difficult to draw attention to himself amid the political elite's sweeping shift toward conservative nationalism and xenophobia that began after Putin returned to a third presidential term last May.

According to the Russian constitution written in 1993, Russia is a secular state. But recently she's been flirting rather perilously with religious law, in a strange way condemning a punk band Pussy Riot, whose participants turned into global martyrs after they were sentenced to two years in prison (one was later released) for “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.”

The prosecution documents allege that the three defendants in balaclavas, who performed the punk prayer “Virgin Mary, drive Putin away!” in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, violated articles 62 and 75 of the Council of Trulla, which was held in the seventh century under Emperor Justinian. According to these articles, only priests can ascend to the soleya and pulpit in Orthodox churches. Although the judge’s verdict in this case did not make any reference to the canons of the Council of Trullo, he nevertheless mentioned as an expert opinion the decision of the Council of Laodicea of ​​the fourth century, according to which “the solea and pulpit have a special religious significance for believers."

Many in the church believe that the state has gone overboard in its zealous cloak of ecclesiastical authority, and that the scandal has created a quarrel between senior clergy such as Patriarch Kirill and dissenting clerics, many of whom are pushing for reform. “These medieval canons have nothing to do with state law,” says priest Mitrofanov. “They simply used the church as an ‘ideological cover’, just as Soviet courts used communist ideology to justify their decisions.”

Innokenty Pavlov, who left the church in 1993 and became a well-known liberal opponent of the Orthodox establishment, doubts that there is anything other than political expediency behind the new piety of Russian leaders.

“It seems our leaders have learned one thing useful thing in his class on scientific atheism,” he laughs. - Voltaire said that if God does not exist, he must be invented. So they thought it was a good idea and decided to bring it to life.”

Even Father Tikhon signed a petition calling for Pussy Riot's prison sentences to be reduced. He sharply criticizes the group's behavior, saying: "The state has to react to this, otherwise it simply is not a state," and also, "If they did this in Westminster Abbey, they would definitely get a prison sentence." At the same time, Shevkunov notes: “But two years is too long.”

Apparently, realizing that he was going too far with his uncompromising image, Father Tikhon Lately tries to show the softer sides of his nature. It raises money for the monastery's children's center, which cares for 100 disabled children and is jointly funded by the monastery and the state.

"If you're looking for a 'symphony' of church-state power, this is it," says Father Tikhon, using a fifth-century Byzantine term for theocratic rule. “This is an example of how church and state work together for the benefit of people.”

There is no better evidence of Father Tikhon’s recent softening than his autobiographical book “Unholy Saints and Other Stories.” It is dedicated mainly to the memories of the older generation of clergy, Tikhon’s teachers. Shevkunov in this work presents a rather subtle, nostalgic portrait of a time when life was simpler. Unlike the film, there is no boastful jingoistic nationalism in the book, and there is no political propaganda for the current regime. This is a fairly well-written and compelling piece about the life of monks in the Soviet Union.

In fact, Father Tikhon was inspired on his long path to the heights of secular and spiritual power in Russia by the terrible impressions of spiritualistic seances in 1982. Then he studied at the Institute of Cinematography and his name was Georgy Shevkunov. The decision to be baptized in the pre-perestroika Soviet Union was not easy to make. But Shevkunov had good reasons for this.

While practicing spiritualism as an amateur, he and a group of friends showed an interest in the occult. They found out that with the help of a few candles, a tablet and the right location, they could “establish contact with completely incomprehensible, and yet absolutely real entities” from the world of spirits, as Shevkunov writes about in the book. New acquaintances introduced themselves as Napoleon, Socrates, or even Stalin. But suddenly something terrible happened.

One day a group of friends managed to get in touch with writer XIX century Nikolai Gogol - at least it seemed so to them. But he was in in a terrible mood, and the youth recoiled in horror when Gogol, in a fit of extreme irritability, told them all to commit suicide by taking poison. They rushed out of the room, and the next day they went straight to the church, where they were sharply reprimanded by the priest. The stupid youth did not actually come into contact with Gogol, the clergyman said. They were simply victims of a clever prank. Most likely, some small demon did it. He advised them all to be baptized.

People from Tikhon's generation were researchers of everything spiritual, and because of this, many of them were attracted to Christianity. The Soviet ban on religion made it even more attractive - a kind of forbidden fruit. Evgeny Nikiforov, who is over fifty, laughs today, remembering the eccentricities of the generation of the 1980s.

“First we studied yoga, then we learned Sanskrit, then we read the New Testament. At that time everything was one for us. And only later did we mature spiritually,” he says. - Nobody knew anything. The KGB even thought that karate was a religion. We watched films with Bruce Lee and thought it was some kind of mysticism. Can you imagine?

According to Father Tikhon, what attracted him to Christianity (besides the attempt to escape from devilish possession) was that one thought became obvious to his generation: “all the great people of the world and Russian history” - he names Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Kant, Goethe and Newton - “ all those whom we trusted, whom we loved and respected, they all thought about God “completely differently than we do.” On the other hand, “those who did not inspire any sympathy” - Marx, Lenin, Trotsky - “all these revolutionary destroyers who led our state to what it became, they were all atheists.” For him, the choice was clear.

Soon after his baptism, Shevkunov settled within the walls of the Pskov-Pechersk Monastery - this former hermitage monastery in northeast Russia (as in the text - approx. transl.). It was one of two active monasteries remaining in the country by the 1980s, out of nearly a thousand monasteries that existed before the 1917 revolution. In 1991 he was tonsured a monk with the name Tikhon, and in 1995 he became archimandrite of the Sretensky Monastery.

Tikhon's autobiography is devoted mainly to the "unholy saints", whom he calls his teachers. These people suffered much more from the Soviet regime than he did. The confessor of Father Tikhon himself, the now deceased Archimandrite of the Pskov-Pechersky Monastery Ioann (Krestyankin), had his fingers broken during interrogation by the NKVD in 1950, and then sent to the Gulag for five years.

“Thank God, I didn’t have such serious conflicts as my predecessors,” Tikhon says today. - In the 1980s we did not have such repressions; they could ruin your professional life, prevent you from studying, prevent you from getting a prestigious job, but nothing more.”

But although there is an occasional hint of anger in his prose, Unholy Saints is written in a calm, forgiving spirit, and is mostly concerned with personal recollections of the various quirks and endearing foibles of the older generation of priests. Critics say the book is notable for what it doesn't say: that in addition to clashes with authorities, the clergy often compromised. Many accuse the priests of working for the KGB, which essentially oversaw appointments to church hierarchy until the end of the 1980s.

No one knows more about this painful page in the history of the church - the collaboration between high-ranking clergy and the KGB - than former priest and liberal reformer Gleb Yakunin, who was excommunicated in 1997 partly because he criticized it. Speaking about the supernatural success of Tikhon’s new book, Yakunin admits that he and his wife liked “Unholy Saints.” At the same time, according to him, there is only “half the story”, and its positive half. He dismissively calls the book “socialist realism” (meaning the socialist school of official art devoted exclusively to depicting happy and contented workers and peasants).

Yakunin himself served five years in prison in the 1980s. In 1992, at the insistence of then-President Boris Yeltsin, Yakunin received access to the archives of the fourth department of the fifth directorate of the KGB, which dealt with religious groups, and spent a month studying the agents' reports. He never received a file with the names of the agents, and he managed to find out their identities only by comparing the agent nicknames and the contents of their reports with official information about the activities of high-ranking clergy.

For example, he found intriguing records of the travel itineraries of agent Mikhailov, who, according to his reports, traveled to New Zealand and Australia in February 1972, and in Thailand in January 1973, where he participated in meetings of the World Council of Churches.

Comparing these records and the news from the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate, Yakunin discovered that at that time such trips were made by a certain Archimandrite Kirill, who worked in the church department of external relations. In 2009, after four decades of climbing the ecclesiastical ladder, the burly, gray-bearded Kirill became patriarch of the Russian church. The Church claims that Kirill was never an employee or agent of the KGB. Representatives of the Patriarch from further comments refused.

According to Yakunin, the KGB penetrated so deeply into the ranks of the church that “literally the entire episcopate was recruited as informants.” There is no incriminating evidence on Tikhon’s father indicating his connections with the KGB - he was too young to become an attractive target for recruitment. However, the people he writes about were compromised by such connections. For example, in the mid-1980s, he worked for two years as an assistant to Father Pitirim, who headed the publishing department of the Moscow Patriarchate. Yakunin calls him by the pseudonym that the KGB allegedly assigned to Pitirim - “Abbot.”

“I respect Father Pitirim, and I would not like to throw stones at him,” Father Tikhon says somewhat ambiguously on this topic.

20 years later, the compromises the church made are still the subject of painful debate within its circles. Instead of expelling the former agents, the church expels from its ranks those who raised this issue, in particular the priest Yakunin.

“The Russian Church created Russia,” says Father Tikhon. - Russia can sometimes be an obedient child, and sometimes a child who rebels against his parents. But the church has always felt responsible for Russia.”

Charles Clover is the Moscow bureau chief of the Financial Times.

Archimandrite Tikhon (in the world Georgy Alexandrovich Shevkunov; July 2, 1958, Moscow) - clergyman of the Russian Orthodox Church, archimandrite. Deputy of the Moscow Sretensky stauropegial monastery. Rector of Sretensky Theological Seminary. Executive Secretary of the Patriarchal Council for Culture. Co-chairman of the Church and Public Council for Protection from the Alcohol Threat. Church writer. He directs the publishing house of the Sretensky Monastery and is the editor-in-chief of the Internet portal Pravoslavie.Ru.

Archimandrite Tikhon (Shevkunov)
Birth name: Georgy Alexandrovich Shevkunov - Executive Secretary of the Patriarchal Council for Culture
from March 5, 2010

Abbot of the Moscow Sretensky Monastery since June 1995
Church: Russian Orthodox Church
Birth: July 2, 1958
Moscow, RSFSR, USSR
Ordination: 1991
Acceptance of monasticism: 1991

In 1982 Tikhon Shevkunov Graduated from the screenwriting department of the All-Union State Institute of Cinematography with a degree in literary work" After graduating from high school, he entered the Pskov-Pechersky Monastery as a novice. Archimandrite John (Krestyankin) became his confessor.
Since August 1986 Tikhon Shevkunov worked on the Publishing Council of the Russian Orthodox Church under the leadership of Metropolitan Pitirim (Nechaev).
In July 1991, in the Donskoy Monastery of Moscow, the hero of our story was tonsured into monasticism with the name Tikhon, in honor of St. Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow. In the same year he was ordained as hierodeacon and hieromonk. During his service at the Donskoy Monastery, he participated in the discovery of the relics of St. Tikhon.

In 1993 Tikhon Shevkunov appointed rector of the Moscow metochion of the Pskov-Pechersky Monastery, which was located in the Sretensky Monastery.
In 1995 Tikhon Shevkunov elevated to the rank of abbot and appointed abbot of the revived Sretensky Monastery.
In 1998 Tikhon Shevkunov elevated to the rank of archimandrite.
In 1999, he became the rector of the newly formed Sretensky Higher Orthodox Monastic School, transformed in 2002 into the Moscow Sretensky Theological Seminary.

Church and social activities of Tikhon Shevkunov

In November 2002 Tikhon Shevkunov was one of the four co-chairs of the II conference “History of the Russian Orthodox Church in the 20th century”, held in the Synodal Library of St. Andrew’s Monastery in Moscow.
Since March 5, 2010 - Executive Secretary of the Patriarchal Council for Culture.
Since May 31, 2010 Tikhon Shevkunov- Head of the Commission for Interaction of the Russian Orthodox Church with the museum community.
Since March 22, 2011 Tikhon Shevkunov- Member of the Supreme Church Council of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Social activities of Tikhon Shevkunov

Member of the Presidential Council of the Russian Federation for Culture and Art.
In the period from 1998 to 2001, with the brethren of the Sretensky Monastery, he repeatedly traveled to Chechnya with humanitarian aid.
He has a reputation as a person close to the Kremlin and the confessor of V.V. Putin, with whom, according to published evidence[, he was introduced by retired Lieutenant General of the KGB of the USSR N.S. Leonov.

Accompanied Vladimir Putin on a private trip to the Pskov-Pechersk Monastery in August 2000, and also accompanied the President of the Russian Federation to the USA in September 2003, where Vladimir Putin conveyed the invitation of Patriarch Alexy II to the First Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, Metropolitan Lavra, to visit Russia.

Accepted Active participation in the process of reunification of the Russian Orthodox Church with the ROCOR. He was a member of the Moscow Patriarchate Commission for Dialogue with the Russian Church Abroad (the commission worked from December 2003 to November 2006 and prepared, among other things, the Act on Canonical Communion).
In 2007, he took part in the trip of the Russian Orthodox Church delegation to the dioceses of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad.
In October 2009 Tikhon Shevkunov participated in the consecration of the restored Assumption Church on the territory of the Embassy of the Russian Federation in Beijing.
Tikhon Shevkunov-Academician of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences.

Since March 2001, he has been the chairman of the monastery farm - the agricultural production cooperative "Resurrection" in the village of Slobodka, Mikhailovsky district, Ryazan region.
Archimandrite Tikhon and writer V. G. Rasputin are co-chairs of the Church-Public Council for Protection against the Alcohol Threat. Author of the social anti-alcohol project “Common Cause”.
Member of the Board of Trustees of the St. Basil the Great Charitable Foundation.

Activities of Tikhon Shevkunov in the field of culture

While working in the Publishing Department of the Moscow Patriarchate, he took part in preparing the celebration of the millennium of the Baptism of Rus'. He was a consultant and script writer for the first films about the spiritual history of Russia.
Member of the editorial board of the Russian House magazine.

Author of the film “Tales of Mother Frosya about the Diveevsky Monastery” (1989), which tells about the history of the Diveevsky Monastery in the Soviet years.
Author of the film “Pskov-Pechersk Monastery”, which received the Grand Prix at the XII International Festival of Orthodox Film and Television Programs “Radonezh” (Yaroslavl) in November 2007.
Tikhon Shevkunov-author of the film “The Death of an Empire” shown on January 30, 2008 on the Rossiya channel. The Byzantine Lesson”, which received the Golden Eagle award in 2008 and caused a strong public response and wide discussion.
Author of Unholy Saints and Other Stories(2011), which is a collection of real stories from the lives of monks and many famous people whom he knew personally. The book became a bestseller, with a circulation of more than a million copies.

Inter-Council presence of Tikhon Shevkunov

Archimandrite Tikhon (Shevkunov) is a member of the following commissions of the Inter-Council Presence of the Russian Orthodox Church:
Commission on Ecclesiastical Law (Secretary)
Commission on Divine Worship and Church Art
Commission on the organization of church missions
Commission on the organization of the life of monasteries and monasticism.

Awards of Tikhon Shevkunov

Tikhon Shevkunov was awarded more than once or twice for the results of his activities:

Church awards of Tikhon Shevkunov

Order of St. Sergius of Radonezh, II degree (2008) - in recognition of diligent service and in connection with the 50th anniversary of his birth
Order of the Holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Grand Duke Vladimir, III degree (2008) - in recognition of work in restoring unity with the Russian Church Abroad
Order of St. Nestor the Chronicler (UOC MP, 2010) - for services to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the development of the Orthodox information space, the implementation of joint church information and publishing projects

Secular awards of Tikhon Shevkunov

Order of Friendship (2007) - for services to the preservation of spiritual and cultural traditions, huge contribution in the development of agriculture
National Prize named after P. A. Stolypin “Agrarian Elite of Russia” in the category “Effective Land Owner” and a special sign “For the Spiritual Revival of the Village” (2003)
Award “Best Books and Publishing Houses of the Year” (2006) - for publishing religious literature
Izvestia newspaper Izvestia Award (2008)
Winner of the national award “Person of the Year” for 2007, 2008 and 2013
Literary awards 2012:
“Book of the Year” in the “Prose” category
"Runet Book Award" in the categories " Best book Runet" (user choice) and "Ozon.ru Bestseller" (as the best-selling author)
Finalist of the “Big Book” literary award, took first place according to the results of reader voting

Awards of Tikhon Shevkunov

"Father Seraphim." Life St. Seraphim Sarovsky for children. Retold by Archimandrite Tikhon Shevkunov. Publication of the Sretensky Moscow Monastery. 2002
"The Death of an Empire. Byzantine lesson" by Archimandrite Tikhon, "Eksmo", 2008
"Unholy Saints" and other stories. M.: Sretensky Monastery, OLMA Media Group, 2011. Collection short stories from the life of Father Tikhon. The book was published on November 21, 2011, and by 2014, 8 reprints had been published. In total, about 1.3 million copies were sold during the year of sales.
"WITH God's help everything is possible! About Faith and Fatherland." (“Collection of the Izborsk Club”). - M.: Book world, 2014. - 368 p.

Filmography of Tikhon Shevkunov

1989 - Tales of Mother Frosya about the Diveyevo Monastery (documentary)
2007 - Pskov-Pechersk monastery (documentary)
2008 - Death of the empire. Byzantine lesson (documentary)
2009 - “Chizhik-fawn, where have you been? A film about the adult problems of our children.” Project "Common Cause".
2010 - “Take care of yourself.” Short films of anti-alcohol advertising. Project "Common Cause".
2010 - “Let's have a drink!” Project "Common Cause".
2013 - “Women’s Day”. Project "Common Cause".

The following story is going around Moscow: “One of the officials is hired for a high position. Putin's personnel adviser Viktor Ivanov casually asks: what is your attitude towards Orthodoxy? The candidate was savvy and answered correctly. “Why don’t you get baptized?” – Ivanov asked sincerely and immediately called the fashionable priest, the rector of the Lubyanka monastery, Father Tikhon. And together they accepted a new worker - both into the bosom of the church and into the ranks of the administration.”

Many of the current elite can say to themselves: “We all came from the same font.” A pectoral cross became as important as before - the party card. Whether we will live to see the day when thieving officials will be forcibly tonsured as monks - only God knows. Well, maybe even Father Tikhon. Rumor and sources (which cannot be specified) persistently call him the personal confessor of President Putin.

- What am I to you, what Richelieu? – Father Tikhon himself responds to such suspicions, not without coquetry.

Faith slowly

In New York, at a meeting with the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, Putin almost became embarrassed. In the line of handsome elders, he needed to recognize the most important thing - Metropolitan Laurus. VVP hesitated a little, then confidently walked towards the priest with the longest beard. The next frame was captured by all the television cameras. A puny, short monk jumped up to Putin and turned him in the right direction. The “nun” who directed the president on the right path was Archimandrite Tikhon.

Soon the priest himself gave an interview to the Greek newspaper “Strana”, after which he was firmly included in “Putin’s confessors” - the priest knows too many of the president’s spiritual secrets.

“The President of Russia,” Father Tikhon told the journalist, “is truly an Orthodox person who confesses, takes communion and is aware of his responsibility before God...

Of course, no one held a candle during the president’s confession. But many would like to know: what and to whom does Vladimir Putin repent?

The human soul is darkness. And what is going on in the soul of the president of the country is completely unknown to mere mortals. A person who has trodden a path there cannot be ordinary. There are polar assessments about Father Tikhon - from enthusiastic to sharply abusive. For a humble Orthodox monk, they are even too polar. It is difficult for us, former Soviet people, to imagine the relationship between the head of state and his “spiritual father.” After all, he doesn’t ask him for his blessing to sign laws? Therefore, Father Tikhon is not compared with anyone - with Grigory Rasputin, Grishka Otrepyev and other monks who influenced the kings and the destinies of the country.

Life of Georgy Shevkunov

Father Tikhon is 6 years younger than his “spiritual son” Putin, but they say they even have similar characters - both are very energetic. What brings them together, apparently, is the fact that Father Tikhon is interested in politics.

Before becoming a monk, Tikhon had an ordinary Soviet life, and in his youth he even experienced a “bohemian period.”

Tikhon is a monastic name; in childhood the future archimandrite was called George. Neighbors remember him as Gosha.

– Gosha was very sick since childhood. Asthma, pneumonia, lameness - physically weak, to be sure, but he always had a fire in his temperament, recalls one of Shevkunov’s student friends.

“I remember him very well,” says Roza Tavlikhanova, a janitor from the apartment next to the Shevkunovs on the southern outskirts of Moscow on Red Lighthouse Street. “His mother still lives next door to me.” Gosha comes to see her, but not often. I know that my mother did not accept his decision to go to the monastery for a long time. But now I seem to have calmed down. Gosha is doing well and travels abroad. He recently made European-quality renovations in this apartment for his mother. He was very responsive since childhood. If I was sick, I always ran in: Can’t I buy you some medicine? Gosha had two bosom friends, and misfortunes happened to both of them. One has gone crazy and is now being treated in a mental hospital. And the second one became ill with his heart on the subway and died.

– I came for the entrance exam to VGIK, and there were applicants sitting there - grown-up guys, bearded. And ahead, I saw a boy who looked about 12 years old at most,” recalls classmate Vladimir Shcherbinin. – It was Gosha Shevkunov. We both did. And we became friends. As a student, he was both the darling of the course and, one might say, a bully. Just don’t ask for details - I won’t tell you anyway.

Shevkunov’s classmates still remember how he got into a fight with a future famous journalist. By the way, he has not forgotten this and still writes critical nasty things about his long-time offender. (And some words and actions of the controversial priest Tikhon actually give rise to this.)

“We had a teacher at VGIK on ancient Russian art,” Shcherbinin continues his memoirs. – He was an Orthodox man even at the time Soviet time. And not only did he not hide this, but he also told the students things that there was nowhere else to learn. We even got together after classes... Gosha got his own Bible - then it was difficult to get it, but he was always smart with us.

After graduating from the institute, the graduate cinematographer’s interest in religion continued. Georgy Shevkunov went to the Pskov-Pechora Monastery - one of the main Orthodox centers during Soviet times. The famous old seer of the 20th century, John Krestyankin, lived here - he became the spiritual father of the future archimandrite.

“George lived in the monastery on and off for about 8 years,” recalled Vladimir Shcherbinin. - Worked in the barnyard. When he decided to become a monk, his mother did not bless him for a long time. She is a scientist and has been involved in microbiology all her life. It was Soviet times, and it was difficult for her to understand her son’s passion for religion. She reconciled herself only after 8 years.

Georgy-Tikhon made the right decision. A life more interesting than any movie awaited him.

My own director

Tikhon became an atypical monk. Too many scandalous stories arose around the newly minted novice - with him, Tikhon, in leading role. Detractors called it “self-promotion,” and friends called it a consequence of his too lively character.

Having taken monastic vows, Tikhon moved to the Donskoy Monastery in Moscow. One night the monastery burned down, and Tikhon publicly blamed some “foreign agents” for everything.

Soon another “Hollywood” story played out within the church walls. The Patriarch recalled the abbot of the Sretensky Monastery, Georgy Kochetkov, and in his place appointed “his own man” - the young and devoted Tikhon Shevkunov. Sretensky Monastery is located in the city center, on Lubyanka. The church and the state then began to rapidly move closer, and it was imprudent to leave the “uncontrollable” Georgy Kochetkov and his supporters in such an important place. The expelled monks did not want to leave, because on their own they restored the building, which was destroyed during the Soviet years.

– We will come once, hold a service in the yard, then a second time. And for the third time we will come here with the Cossacks,” said the new abbot of the monastery on Lubyanka in a quiet voice.

“We did just that,” said Vladimir Shcherbinin, who eventually became an icon painter and witnessed the division of the monastery. “It was winter, and after serving in the cold, Tikhon caught a bad cold. But he didn’t back down.

The next time he appeared on the territory of the monastery with the “Black Hundred” - a combat Cossack unit under Orthodox banners. Supporters of Georgy Kochetkov surrendered the monastery without a fight.

After this story they began to say about Tikhon: he has a “bulldog grip.”

From the vicegerent's chair, the windows of Vladimir Putin's office were already visible, where the immortal soul of the future president at that time worked as director of the FSB.

Road to the temple

There are different versions about how the two Lubyanka bosses met.

One says that Putin himself came to the temple because it was close to his work.

Another version: Shevkunov and Putin were introduced by the KGB general, now State Duma deputy Nikolai Leonov. Putin was just beginning to “go into reconnaissance” when Nikolai Leonov had already become the second man in the First Directorate of the KGB and, as they say, personally supervised Fidel Castro and all our Jamesbonds on the American continent.

“I did not participate in this process,” Leonov immediately debunked this version. “And I didn’t see the president himself in Sretensky Church. I heard he has his own church on Valaam. I think in Moscow he has a place to celebrate personal, non-political rituals. But in the Sretensky Church, among the parishioners, I often see former Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov, Minister of Agriculture Alexei Gordeev, presidential representative for the Central Federal District Georgy Poltavchenko, deputy Sergei Glazyev...

Tikhon's entourage insists on the most casual of all versions of acquaintance.

– Father Tikhon carried out restoration work in the monastery - built, rebuilt... But in order to transport goods around Lubyanka, and even more so to dig, a special permit was needed - there are a variety of wires underground there... For such permission you had to go to to the first person of the FSB - Putin, that is,” said Vladimir Shcherbinin. “That’s how they met.”

Court Monk

Tikhon loudly welcomed Putin’s assumption of the presidency and rejoiced aloud at “the end of the era of Yeltsinism.” At the beginning of his church career, the fiery monk loved to make loud statements on various occasions. He either condemned the introduction of the Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN), or opposed the arrival of David Copperfield to Russia.

And Tikhon began to be called the “gray eminence” after he began accompanying Putin on various important trips. In 2001, under the leadership of Father Tikhon, the first “truly” Orthodox president of Russia made a trip (in church circles it is called a pilgrimage) to the northern monasteries of Russia and the holy places of Greece.

Before the death of the elder wonderworker John Krestyankin, Father Tikhon took the president to him. They talked face to face for an hour, and, as they say, the leader big country came out shocked and a little confused and even said:

- Very little time left...

Finally, in New York, at a meeting on the unification of the Russian Orthodox Church with the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, Vladimir Putin was again accompanied by Father Tikhon. Such closeness to the first secular figure even causes legitimate jealousy in the ranks of the Russian Orthodox Church. It is no coincidence that one of Shevkunov’s former “subordinates” at the Sretensky Monastery has already risen to the rank of bishop, and Tikhon is still an archimandrite.

Democrats whisper about Tikhon's illiberal influence on Putin.

– We never have any lousy democrats, only patriots! – one of the frequent visitors to the church on Lubyanka boasted to me about the “cleanliness of the ranks” of the parishioners.

“Tikhon has always professed conservative patriotic views,” says CEO information and analytical center "SOVA" Alexander Verkhovsky. – In short: Orthodoxy, autocracy, nationality. He is one of the statesmen in robes. But he is unlikely to be the president’s confessor; rather, he is simply one of his advisers on church issues.

About the priest and his workers

Under Tikhon, the Sretensky Monastery became rich. The monk choir performs in the Kremlin and even tours abroad. The Lubyanka Metochion, as I was convinced, produces and sells more Orthodox literature than the entire Moscow Patriarchate. Father is a good business executive. But for some cases only him and God's will few. We also need a presidential one.

In 2000, at the request of the Patriarch, the government transferred ownership of a monument of federal significance to the Sretensky Monastery - the former estate of General Yermolov’s nephew in the Ryazan region with a luxurious mansion, courtyard buildings and a large English park. Where a relative of the legendary conqueror of the Caucasus lived several centuries ago, a monastery will be founded - something like a country residence of the Sretensky Monastery. Multi-million dollar restoration work is underway government structure– Directorate for Construction, Reconstruction and Restoration.

I wanted to stop by and see how monastic life would be organized in the former mansions. But no one is allowed there:

- What are you talking about! This is a monastery!

And you won’t find fault.

Next to the estate there was a lagging collective farm. It was given to the monastery as a payload for the estate.

“They brought us under the monastery,” the collective farmers laugh. But they don’t complain much. For them, an average salary of 3,400 rubles per month is already an unearthly blessing. This didn’t happen before either. Investors in cassocks have already invested 17 million monastery money in pigs and cows, and instead of collective farm junk they bought new tractors. The workers on the farm are hired, and the financial director is a monastic one; Father Hermogenes knows accounting like the Lord’s Prayer. Although he calls himself in the old way - an economist.

In Moscow, Father Tikhon also clearly claims to expand his territory - the monastery has long insisted on the resettlement of “inconvenient neighbors” - the French school. Some time ago, two charitable institutions openly conflicted. But the “crusade” against the school failed - students, parents, and the press rose up. The clerics had to retreat.

- Now they even help us - with cleaning the territory, for example. But we are afraid that this is just the calm before the storm, and we are not giving any interviews, the school administration told me. And they hung up.

Who else is vying for the president's soul?

The president has a broad soul. They say that recently new candidates from the church have appeared to take their place in it. One of the main ones on this list is Elder Kirill, confessor of the last three Russian patriarchs, including Alexy II. He entered a monastery after the Great Patriotic War. Father Kirill lives in the residence of Patriarch Alexy, and, as they say, there is still a queue of people who suffer for advice, blessing or healing.

The other is the abbot of the Valaam Monastery, Hegumen Pankratiy. The mere fact that Putin gave Valaam a yacht worth $1.5 million is enough to believe in the president’s special affinity for the northern monastery. Officials and businessmen also give gifts to the Valaam Monastery: they recently received the Winter Hotel and were presented with a mobile diesel power station.

This list also includes one of Putin’s classmates, who became a monk and priest in one of the capital’s large churches. At the word “Putin” he hangs up. And in person he carries himself with that special self-confidence that comes from being close not only to God, but also to the president.

I was going to publish this interview on the website “ Open Russia" But Tikhon Shevkunov agreed to talk only because, as he says, he respects my mother Zoya Krahmalnikova, who served five years for believing in Soviet times. And he flatly refused to publish it on “Khodorkovsky’s website.” Therefore, with the consent of the editors of the Open Russia website, I am publishing the interview on the Radio Liberty website.

– You were baptized in the 1980s of the last century. Then believers were persecuted, and my mother, writer Zoya Krahmalnikova, was one of them. What did you hear about her in those years?

I heard about Zoya Aleksandrovna Krahmalnikova from priest Vladimir Shibaev. My friends and I sometimes came to his service in a church near Moscow. We were then young graduates of the capital's universities and were just beginning to get acquainted with Moscow church life, visiting different churches. This was almost forty years ago. Once, during a sermon, Father Vladimir said that Zoya Krahmalnikova, the one who illegally published the Christian almanacs “Nadezhda,” had been arrested. They published texts from the holy fathers of the Church, sermons, and stories about the new martyrs. We read these collections and passed them on to each other. (Zoya Krakhmalnikova wasarrested August 3rd 1982 of the year. – Z. WITH.)

– But such a collection of Christian reading was the only one of its kind.

“It was designed specifically for neophytes like us.” In the church of Father Vladimir, we collected some funds to help Zoya Alexandrovna, someone undertook to donate them to the prison, to buy something necessary. Some people tried to intimidate us, saying that it was dangerous to do this and there could be trouble. But we didn’t pay any attention to this at all. As for the dissident movement itself, it didn’t particularly interest us: my friends and I plunged headlong into understanding Orthodoxy. By that time I had written a letter of resignation from the Komsomol and no longer bothered with ideological problems. There was no heroism in this. This was, in general, the end of Soviet power.

–1982 is not at all the end of Soviet power. They continued to imprison people both for their faith and for possessing “anti-Soviet” literature. I wanted to ask you a little about something else: In 1989, my mother Zoya Krahmalnikova published an article “Bitter Fruits of Sweet Captivity” in the newspaper “Russkaya Mysl”, which had a great resonance. This article is about the so-called Sergianism (the policy of loyalty to Soviet power in the USSR, the beginning of which is usually associated with the Declaration of Metropolitan Sergius(Stragorodsky. – Z.S.). Is the Church today sick with Sergianism?

– Let’s first define what Sergianism is. Sergianism, as critics of the course of the then Patriarchate understand it, is a certain church policy chosen by Metropolitan Sergius. It consisted in the fact that in conditions of open state terror of the Bolsheviks in relation to the Church, in conditions of a real danger of replacing Orthodoxy with the so-called Renovationism, which the Bolshevik authorities were actively striving for, the locum tenens of the patriarchal throne, Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky), chose the path of non-underground existence of the Church, and the preservation of legal church structures. To do this, he had to make difficult compromises. The most tragic of them were that the church administration practically ceded to the state the right to control the appointment and transfer of bishops and priests, the removal of unwanted ones from departments and parishes, and did not openly protest against the persecution of the clergy and the lawlessness that was happening in the country.

What happened? Maybe the Metropolitan was saving his own skin? No, the tough church opponents of his course did not reproach him for this. Everyone was aware that simply dying in his position as an old bishop who had lived a long life and was responsible for the entire Russian Church during a period of unprecedented persecution would be the easiest way out. No, they reproached him not for this, but for the erroneousness of his chosen course of attitude towards power. Metropolitan Sergius himself justified his church policy with the conviction that if the Church went underground, the Bolsheviks would inevitably plant in the country the non-canonical, false renovationist church they had already prepared. And this, with the Bolsheviks in power for a long time and their total destruction of the canonical Orthodox Church, will have unpredictable consequences up to the complete disappearance of Orthodoxy among the Russian people. Unfortunately, similar examples have occurred in history.

But a truly terrible price had to be paid for the chosen church policy. There were cases when Metropolitan Sergius took upon himself the grave sin of untruth, when, for example, in his infamous interview of February 16, 1930, published in the newspapers Pravda and Izvestia, he asserted that there was no persecution of the faith in Soviet Russia . Of course it was a lie. It may be forced, but it’s a lie. Why did he take such steps? Metropolitan Sergius knew perfectly well that any resistance to the instructions of the authorities, as experience showed, would immediately increase repression and mass executions among bishops and priests in prison. All I can say is: God forbid I end up in his place.

The church policy chosen by Metropolitan Sergius found both understanding in the church environment and harsh condemnation and opposition. The worst thing we can do from what is safe today is to begin to judge specific people on both sides. Among those who supported the Declaration of Metropolitan Sergius were great saints: Archbishop Hilarion (Troitsky) - one of the most courageous new martyrs of the twenties, and the famous saint-confessor and surgeon Luke (Voino-Yasenetsky), who in 1920 became a priest and then a bishop, fully understanding that only prisons, suffering and, quite possibly, death await him. Metropolitan Konstantin (Dyakov), Metropolitan Evgeniy (Zernov) - many names can be listed, almost all of them accepted martyrdom, remaining followers of the church course of Metropolitan Sergius.

But among their spiritual opponents there were no less outstanding hierarchs - Metropolitan Kirill (Smirnov), Metropolitan Agafangel (Preobrazhensky), Archbishop Varlaam (Ryashintsev), Archbishop Seraphim (Samoilovich). They are also glorified by the Church as saints. Their position in relation to church politics put them on opposite sides of the barricades in those unprecedentedly difficult times, but in eternity they were united by martyrdom for Christ. Thus, on November 20, 1937, in Chimkent, followers of three opposing trends in church life were shot and buried in one mass grave - Metropolitan Joseph (Petrovykh), Metropolitan Kirill (Smirnov) and the “Sergian” Bishop Evgeniy (Kobranov).

Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) is not canonized by the Church. But I’m not going to judge him from the standpoint of our time, much less throw stones at him.

Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky)

My confessor, Father John (Krestyankin), told me about his vision (one of three that he had over 96 years of life), which radically influenced his fate. While still a layman, in the early thirties he was in opposition to Metropolitan Sergius. And here is a vision: Yelokhovsky Cathedral, everyone is waiting for Metropolitan Sergius. A dense crowd in the church, and in it - the future Father John, the then Ivan Mikhailovich Krestyankin, stands, realizing that the Metropolitan will now pass by him to the altar. And indeed, the Metropolitan is greeted at the door, and suddenly, passing by, he stops next to Father John and quietly says to him: “I know you judge me very much. But know this: I repent.” The Metropolitan enters the altar and this is where the vision ends. For Father John, this was both an extraordinary shock and a rethinking of many things.

– My question is not about assessing Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) specifically, but about assessing Sergianism as a phenomenon. We, secular people, understand that Sergianism is cooperation and support by the Church for the authorities and the state.

– I don’t quite understand what you mean. Let's be a little more specific. For example, we have a cooperation – an orphanage. It is subsidized by both us and local authorities.

– But you know what I mean.

– This is not about charity. What was Metropolitan Sergius reproached for? In his famous Declaration of 1927, he said: “We want to be Orthodox and at the same time recognize the Soviet Union as our civil homeland, whose joys and successes are our joys and successes, and whose failures are our failures.” And at this time the priests were already being imprisoned and shot with all their might.

– I have already spoken about the most difficult compromises, about the sin of lying, which Metropolitan Sergius took upon himself. This is something that we today, without personally condemning Metropolitan Sergius and his supporters, do not accept, and have repeatedly stated that church life certainly cannot and should not be built on these principles. At its center is only God, Christ. These are the “alpha” and “omega” of Orthodoxy. As for “your joys are our joys,” the Declaration of Metropolitan Sergius spoke about the “joys and successes” of the homeland, albeit the Soviet one - for the church consciousness, sick, tragically distorted, but still remaining the homeland.

– I’m asking you about today.

– I think that the joys and failures of today’s Russia are perceived as personal by the majority of the multimillion-strong Russian Orthodox Church. You say that the Church supports the state. Of course, he supports you in everything creative and good. And he calls for correcting everything that is painful and bad. Why do you reproach her for this? Have you ever thought that for more than a thousand years of our history, it was the Church that largely created and shaped the Russian and Russian state? And there were times, say, during the Tatar-Mongol invasion or in Time of Troubles, when it was the Church and only she who saved and preserved Russia. And how, after these thousands of years of motherhood, today she will not support the state in everything creative, good, and help in difficult times? Because liberals don't tell?

– I don’t compare positions. I compare the spirit.

- What do you have in mind?

– What do the intelligentsia reproach the Church for today? In the fact that she cooperates with the authorities, she glorifies the authorities. Remember the 2012 presidential elections, when Patriarch Kirill actually called for voting for Putin.

- There was no such thing. The Charter of the Russian Orthodox Church prohibits calls for voting for certain politicians and parties.

– Here is a quote: “I must say quite openly as the Patriarch, who is called to tell the truth, not paying attention to either the political situation or propaganda accents, that you personally, Vladimir Vladimirovich, played a huge role in correcting this crookedness of our history. I would like to thank you. You once said that you work like a slave in the galleys - the only difference is that a slave did not have such a return, but you have a very high return” (speech on February 8, 2012, meeting of the Prime Minister with leaders of religious communities) . The Patriarch speaks of Putin as a candidate “who, of course, has best chance realize this candidacy for a real position.” This is not a call, but unequivocal support from which the flock should draw conclusions.

– Listen, this is the patriarch’s business. He decided that he had the right and should speak in this way in the presence of all the heads of religious associations in Russia. I agree with you, this was support within the framework of the law, and not a direct call to vote for the candidate. You said everything correctly. Then what is the crime?

– The Church almost never criticizes the authorities. Never stands up for political prisoners. The Church supported the reunification of Crimea, although there were different opinions. The Church always follows the “party line.”

- Let's go in order. “The Church does not criticize the authorities.” Of course, for the church, unlike current opposition figures, criticism of power is not an end in itself and the meaning of existence. You are right here. But in those areas where the Church considers it necessary to point out to the state and society the dangers and mistakes, we, of course, speak out. It is from the Church, from the patriarch and many priests and laity that the harshest criticism of the state law on abortion comes. Collecting signatures, speeches by the patriarch in the Duma criticizing state policy in this area, in the media, in sermons, finally. We are talking about millions of lives, about the systematic suppression of this permissiveness and systematic murder. We propose steps based on international experience to reduce abortions.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, former Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov and Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus' Kirill (from left to right) at a gala reception in honor of graduates of military academies and universities in the Kremlin, 2012

Further, criticism of state policy in the field of production and distribution of alcoholic beverages. Indulgence in the unbridled production of alcohol took place under the guise of affirming the freedom of the market. The result of this criticism, and then many years collaboration state and Church - several years ago new laws were adopted to reduce alcohol consumption, and today changes have occurred in this problem, including with the help of the Church. Consumption of pure alcohol per capita per year in 2008, according to the Russian Ministry of Health, was 15.8 liters (and in reality it was about 18 liters) and in 2015 - 10.5 liters. I give such exact figures because I myself am directly involved in this area from the side of the Church.

Political prisoners. Personally, my position is this: if you personally know a person and understand that he is convicted for his political views, you have the right to protect him from arbitrariness. Therefore, for each priest, this is truly an exclusively personal question. I knew one man, a friend of mine, who was arrested and put on trial for Political Views after October 1993. And precisely because I knew him, was confident in him and in his rightness and innocence, I came to the trial and acted as a public defender. But if you don’t know either the person or the essence of his case, and they only tell you that, from our point of view, he is a political prisoner... The Church does not have the power of investigation. Agree, completely different situations.

In Crimea. There are church people who supported the reunification of Crimea, and there are a lot of them, including in Crimea. There are those Orthodox Christians who condemned this. There are priests who spoke publicly, and there were no reprisals against them.

-Name these priests.

- Well, I don’t remember now. I know several people have spoken about this. Protodeacon Andrei Kuraev, a clergyman of my vicariate in Moscow, both wrote and said that this was a mistake.

– But this is not called - they spoke publicly, and they were not subject to any reprisals for this. We are talking to you about speeches by representatives of the Church or hierarchs, and not about the blog of Father Andrei Kuraev.

– Our Father Andrei, of course, is not a hierarch, but he is also not at all a simple church blogger. He has repeatedly and publicly expressed his opinion on Crimea and has not been subjected to any repression for this. As for the hierarchs, why do you think that they should have the same opinion on this issue as yours, and not be in solidarity with 95% of Crimeans who voted to join Russia?

“The same deacon Andrei Kuraev gave an interview to the Dozhd TV channel under the title “This is the sin of Patriarch Kirill.” Have you seen?

- No. What sin?

– According to Kuraev, “neither Patriarch Kirill, nor Metropolitan Hilarion, nor Legoida, nor anyone else from this group, gave a moral assessment, church-moral, theological assessment of the pogrom sentiments and acts.”

– Apparently, this is about “Matilda” again. The official representative of the Russian Orthodox Church, Vladimir Romanovich Legoida, made statements several times that the Church categorically condemns any extremist antics regarding the film “Matilda”. Metropolitan Hilarion spoke about the same thing. It was possible not to notice these speeches in the press only by using some very special efforts.

– As I understand it, Kuraev, speaking about the “sin of the patriarch,” means that the patriarch did not stop these people in time, who called themselves Orthodox Christians, but in fact were pogromists.

Protodeacon, writer Andrei Kuraev at the premiere of the film “Matilda” directed by A. Uchitel

– Is this organization “Christian State”? Which consists of two people and both, it seems, are already under investigation? I repeat, with the blessing of the patriarch, his official press secretary and head of the media relations department publicly condemned any manifestations of extremism. All bishops in many dioceses of the Russian Orthodox Church in local newspapers, on diocesan websites and the media warned the flock about the inadmissibility of protests outside the legal framework, although I am sure that only known provocateurs who have nothing to do with the Church could take extremist actions. And as for legitimate civil protests, do you think the patriarch should have banned them? Are you proposing to start church repressions against them?

- And the princes? How do you feel about them?

– Have you seen at least one Tsar-worshipper yourself? Can you name at least one name? I have only seen one such lady. One. All. I know that there are several tiny groups that have declared the king as a redeemer. There are indeed several more of them than those two from the “Christian State”. But priests, if they find out about such sects, talk with their adherents and try to clarify the misconceptions. Do they really interest you so keenly?

– They are also very aggressive.

– Our country is full of aggressive activists of all stripes. But we do not demand a ban on all inadequate “demshiza” just because we don’t like them. If this inspires them so much, let them become active from time to time, each in their own repertoire, as long as they do not break the law.

– What about the ban on the play “Tannhäuser” at the Novosibirsk Theater?

– Again a strange example. The Novosibirsk Metropolitan is a citizen of the Russian Federation, right? According to the law, he filed a lawsuit to close the performance on the basis of the law on insulting religious feelings. And he lost this trial! Only later the decision to remove the opera from the repertoire was made by the Ministry of Culture, as it saw in this story a rapidly growing civil conflict.

– When the Novosibirsk Metropolitan filed a lawsuit, did he consult with any of the hierarchs?

– Each bishop is absolutely free to make decisions. The more cautious are advised. But it is their right to do it or not to do it.

– You criticized the film “Leviathan” quite sharply. Here is a quote: “This film is the same “art” as “art” is what the “Pussies” did in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior.”

– This is not an exact quote. I said it verbatim: “Those who applauded “Pussy” also applaud “Leviathan.” But with everything negative attitude to a film associated with obvious tendentiousness and hyperbolism, no one, including your humble servant, thought of calling for a ban on the film. I have already repeated many times that bans are an absolutely dead-end and wrong path. However, routine slander on this topic is already becoming commonplace.

Recently I was informed that a rumor had been started that I or with my participation had been removed from the premiere of Kirill Serebrennikov’s play “Nureyev”. The author of the rumor is Alexey Venediktov. Where did he get this from? I answered him quite harshly.

– But your answer was somehow unclear.

- I said he was lying. Is it somehow incomprehensible, vague?

– Venediktov wrote in his telegram channel that there were representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church in civilian clothes at the performance. They didn’t like the performance, they told you, and you called Minister Medinsky.

Vladimir Medinsky and Bishop Father Tikhon (Shevkunov)

- Lies. Sick fantasies.

– Why is there a rumor going around Moscow that you didn’t like Serebrennikov’s film “The Apprentice”?

- I really can’t say. I haven't seen this film. But I want to watch it someday, because the topic is interesting to me. And why the rumor spreads throughout Moscow and St. Petersburg is simply because for a significant part of our progressive creative society, rumors and gossip are their inspiration and delight.

- Explain.

- They love rumors. There was such a wonderful publicist Ivan Lukyanovich Solonevich. He said: “Russia was ruined by rumors and gossip,” meaning February 1917. They spread a rumor that a telegraph wire had been laid from Tsarskoye Selo to the German General Staff and that Empress Alexandra Feodorovna was personally telling the enemy all military secrets. There was a rumor that due to the fact that rye flour did not arrive in Petrograd for several days, famine would begin any day, although Petrograd was the best-fed of all those fighting in the First World War. world war capitals Yes, by the way, February revolution and some historians call it “the revolution of the well-fed.” Now we know that there was plenty of grain on the eve of the February coup. 197 million poods remained until the next harvest; this would be enough for the country, for the front, and for supplies to the allies. There were temporary interruptions due to snow drifts and sabotage by high-ranking railway revolutionaries-conspirators. And all this ultimately led to controlled unrest, revolution and everything that followed. Gossip, gossip. Do not think, I am not hinting that the activities of the current creative and handshake slanderers and gossipers will lead to a revolution. Nonsense, they are too small and primitive compared to the Guchkovs, Milyukovs and Rodzyankas. But let's leave it at that. I did not watch the film by Kirill Serebrennikov that you are talking about, and I did not watch anything that he filmed or directed.

- Well, do you know that there is such a director?

- Of course I know.

– How do you know if you haven’t watched anything?

– Does this surprise you? Untwisted figure. I read the news.

– “The Apprentice” is a very tough anti-clerical film.

- I know that, I know the plot. Just from the retelling, this is not an anti-clerical film, but rather a film denouncing the aggressive fanaticism of righteousness - pharisaism.

-But you've never seen him? And they didn’t show it to Putin?

-Are you joking?

- I'm telling you what they say.

– You never know what they say.

- Then explain why?

– Because, I repeat, there are many liars and gossips in the world.

- To harm you?

– I think, for the most part, to create the appearance of being informed and important.

– Who is Serebrennikov for you? Enemy or opponent?

– A person whose beliefs are very far from mine. Perhaps he is a good director. I haven’t watched anything, I don’t presume to judge it.

– When I asked you for an interview, you wrote to me via SMS that you wouldn’t give an interview because custom articles were being prepared against you. I know that the Dozhd TV channel is making a film about you. But I assure you, it is not custom made.

- So it goes away on its own?

– Why do you have such a stereotype that someone always orders articles? Who orders: Patriarch Kirill?

- Who else? There is simply no one to order.

– There was such a person whom you cannot blame for ignorance, US President Roosevelt. So he said: “If something happens in politics, then don’t even doubt that this is exactly how it was intended.” The Dozhd TV channel is politics, and politics first and foremost.

– As far as I understand, the Dozhd TV channel is making this film because you play a big role in politics.

- It's irony?

– Yes, they write everywhere that you are the president’s confessor. But you never deny it.

– The Dozhd TV channel has ordered a film. Now there will be a large flow of similar films and articles about the Russian Orthodox Church. We know about this, we are aware of it. It’s normal, we take it calmly.

– Why this “order”?

– The Church is a special structure in modern Russian society and in Russian history. There are people who believe that its influence should be weakened as much as possible.

– Influence on the authorities?

- For the people first of all.

– In Russia, everything is controlled by the authorities.

– This is where we differ somewhat. In my humble opinion, both in Russia and in the world, everything is controlled by the Lord God.

“The people in power are now all believers.

- All? Of course not.

– Dozhd has only 70 thousand subscribers. So the impact is not very big.

– The Iskra newspaper at one time was published in an even smaller number of copies. But with her help they successfully lit the flame. So the guys from Dozhd have not lost anything yet.

– You are in captivity of “conspiracy theories”. The interest in you is purely journalistic. For example, I am interested in one question. In your youth, when you studied at VGIK, you read “The Gulag Archipelago”, samizdat. Why do you trust the KGB and FSB so much?

– What does this mean, in your opinion? Especially about the KGB in more detail.

– For me it’s the same thing. After all, you don’t deny that you are Putin’s confessor?

– I have already said more than once that on issues of Christianity and Orthodoxy, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin has the opportunity to consult with a considerable number of competent people - from His Holiness the Patriarch to ordinary priests and laity. Your humble servant is one of these priests, and this is indeed true. The President regularly visits Valaam and communicates with famous confessors of Athos. However, when speaking about a confessor, you, of course, mean some sinister person capable of exerting a special influence on the president. You have every right to fantasize as much as you like on this topic or to compose any of the most exciting fairy tales, but the fact is that such a person does not exist in nature. If only because the president, and this is well known, does not tolerate any direct or indirect attempts to influence him. To suggest such a thing is simply ridiculous. Any analyst who has unbiasedly followed the president’s activities over all the years of his public life in politics understands this. The rest is for lovers of conspiracy theories and conspiracy theories. By the way, I had to repeat all this many times, until my teeth set on edge.

O. Tikhon at a meeting of the Council under the Plenipotentiary Representative of the President of the Russian Federation in the Central Federal District, 2012

- But do you know the president?

- Well, who among us doesn’t know him? Well, good: I have the happiness of being slightly personally acquainted with him.

- Well, here you are being disingenuous.

- Why on earth? Forgive me, if I say that I know him a little, it only means that I really only know Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin a little. Whoever is ready to claim that he knows our president fully, let him be the first to throw a stone at me.

– Who was the first to write that you are the president’s confessor? Not yourself?

- Of course not. I know this journalist. I won’t mention his name now. I respect him, although then, about sixteen years ago, when he first wrote something similar in his article, I was terribly annoyed with him.

– Does it help that you are called the president’s confessor in the media?

– I don’t pay attention to it.

– So, you come, for example, to Yekaterinburg, and all the high-ranking officials immediately run to you.

- Why are you exaggerating? This is how rumors are born. I came to Yekaterinburg as the head of the “Russia – My History” project for the opening of our exhibition in the city. As a member of the presidium of the Presidential Council for Culture and Art and as chairman of the Patriarchal Council for Culture. God knows what an important bird, but still. At the airport I was met by my fellow bishop and officials from the provincial administration responsible for the opening of the local historical park. We held a meeting with them immediately on the way to the city, discussing the details of the opening of the park and the further work of local historians and guides. The governor was actually present at the opening. But in other regions the governor sometimes sent his representative.

– Doesn’t it bother you that in Russia the authorities persecute dissidents?

– In this issue there is a fundamental difference between Soviet and our times. In Soviet times, we knew specific people who were repressed for dissent according to political articles. In the first half of the twentieth century, these were, say, the new martyrs known to everyone. Later, within our memory, everyone in the country knew such people as Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn, Zoya Krakhmalnikova, Alexander Ogorodnikov ( a well-known Orthodox dissident, organizer of a Christian seminar, served more than 10 years. – Z.S.), and in the church they prayed for Viktor Burdyug (in 1982 sentenced to four years in the camps for possession and distribution of anti-Soviet literature. – Z.S.), Nikolai Blokhin ( in 1982 he was sentenced to 3 years in the camps for possession of anti-Soviet literature. – Z.S). I know the last three personally. But today I simply do not know the names of people imprisoned in camps and prisons for their beliefs.

– You probably don’t have the opportunity to monitor this, but such cases are often falsified, and we have the same political prisoners as then. There are fewer of them, but they exist. The Church must stand up for the innocently convicted.

– Do you still want us to lead the dissident movement?

- That would be too much. As I understand it, you were in favor of the annexation of Crimea.

– What about the war in Donbass?

- It's horrible.

– Have you heard about the Ukrainian film director Oleg Sentsov, who was sentenced to 20 years for allegedly wanting to blow up a monument to Lenin in Simferopol? Film director Alexander Sokurov stood up for him. You should know that the state today, perhaps not on the same scale, but in principle is doing the same thing as it did before.

– I heard it on the news.

– Another question: who is closer to you, Metropolitan Philip Kolychev or Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky)?

Reproduction of Yakov Turlygin’s painting “Metropolitan Philip denounces Ivan the Terrible”

– Metropolitan Philip was a great saint and a man of amazing courage. He denounced the king for atrocities that were completely obvious to everyone. But he was not faced with the choice that most tormented Metropolitan Sergius. Metropolitan Philip knew that he would expose Ivan the Terrible and die, but Orthodoxy and the church would survive. Metropolitan Sergius had a different choice: the first option was to preserve the Orthodox Church in the legal space of Soviet Russia. At the same time, the most difficult compromises will have to be made in order to prevent the renovationists from taking over Russia after the Bolsheviks, whose activities, encouraged by the atheistic state, led to the replacement of Orthodoxy with the pseudo-Christianity preached by the renovationists. Similar cases are known in the history of the universal church. In the future, as is known from the same history, a return to Orthodoxy, to true Christianity in peoples who have experienced similar vicissitudes is no longer possible. Metropolitan Sergius knew this very well and, preserving the church, bided his time to restore church institutions from the crumbs remaining after the repressions.

The second option offered to Metropolitan Sergius is to renounce the legal existence of the church, die heroically along with his companions, and remain an undisputed hero for centuries. But at the same time, the possibility of unhindered and unalternative strengthening in the country of replacing Christianity – renovationism in its various forms – will be opened. At the same time, the local Orthodox Russian Church with a high degree of probability and, perhaps, will be completely destroyed in its hierarchy forever. Such examples are known in history.

“Let my name perish in history, so long as the church is useful” - these words were spoken by the holy Patriarch Tikhon. Metropolitan Sergius, of course, could repeat them. He himself said: “The easiest thing for me now is to be shot.” Of course, we cannot now say whether the local Russian Church would have been preserved if it had taken a different path? Perhaps, despite the total dominance and power of the renovationists, despite the full support of their state with its all-consuming repressive machine, Orthodoxy could be revived in the nineties from the remaining underground. But these are all just assumptions. Those people lived in those times and in those realities. They were responsible for the Church before God, and they will be responsible for their decisions and actions at the Last Judgment. I repeat: it’s not for us to judge them!

Archimandrite Tikhon, aka Georgy Alexandrovich Shevkunov, was born in 1958. Graduated from the screenwriting department of the All-Union Institute of Cinematography. Soon after graduating from VGIK, he went to the Pskov-Pechersky Monastery, where he was a novice for nine years, and then took monastic vows. He returned to Moscow and worked in the publishing department of the Moscow Patriarchate.

Ten years ago, Shevkunov first appeared in print as the only ideologist of the fundamentalist direction of the Russian Orthodox Church, publishing an article Church and State, in which he openly laid out his concerns about democracy. A democratic country, quotes Father Tikhon Free Lapse Breau, will inevitably try to weaken the most influential Church in the country, bringing into play the old principle of divide and conquer. This statement seems important due to the fact that Russian media They call Father Tikhon the confessor of President Putin, that is, a person who influences the worldview of the leader of the state.

In church circles, Tikhon is spoken of as a well-known intriguer and careerist. The certified film screenwriter took the first step in his brilliant church career shortly after his return to Moscow from the Pskov-Pechersky Monastery in 1991. Then he initiated a brawl near a fire in the Donskoy Monastery, where he lived. According to investigators, the cause of the fire was a drunken monastery watchman who fell asleep with a lit cigarette. Shevkunov accused Western intelligence agents sent to us under the guise of believers of the Russian Orthodox Church abroad of malicious arson. (By the way, at the moment, foreigners, despite the long-standing row, support Father Tikhon. According to rumors, they see him as the main candidate for the post of the next Patriarch of All Rus'.) They say that the certified screenwriter himself is not in the running to take the highest church post in Russia.

There is also information about Tikhon’s father’s connection with the KGB. Perhaps these connections later helped him get to know Vladimir Putin better. One of the parishioners of the Sretensky Monastery is a close friend of Father Tikhon, Lieutenant General Nikolai Leonov. He served in the KGB from 1958 to 1991. In the 60-70s he worked in the First Main Directorate (PGU) of the KGB of the USSR, and was deputy head of the department. (In the 70s, Putin also served at PSU.) Tikhon (Shevkunov) and Nikolai Leonov are on the editorial board of the Russian House magazine, which is published on the basis of the Sretensky Monastery publishing house. Leonov is a political commentator on the program of the same name, which airs on the Moscovia channel, and Shevkunov is also the confessor of both magazine projects and the television program. Frequent guests of the Russian House include representatives of Russian National Unity (RNU) and the Black Hundred.

Papa Tikhon is also known for his global projects. He was one of the activists in the movement for the canonization of the royal family. He led a crusade against the tour of magician David Copperfield in Russia, informing the flock that the magic tricks of this vulgar American Woland put the audience in bondage to the darkest and most destructive forces. And no matter how popular his plan is, he fights with satanic barcodes and individual taxpayer numbers (TIN). In the barcodes and tax identification number, according to Father Tikhon, the number of the beast 666 is disguised. In addition, the universal organization of accounting subjects the Orthodox to total control by the secular, anti-Orthodox, from Tikhon’s point of view, state. His article “The Schengen zone”, dedicated to this global problem, was published in the RNE publication Russian Order. Despite the fact that Pope Tikhon denies his connection with the Russian Nazis, their views are very, very close.

Here are the holy father's thoughts on censorship. Censorship is a typical tool in a normal society, one that should cut off everything extreme. Personally, of course, I am for it both in the religious field and in the secular field. As for state censorship, before the deadline or later, society will come to a sober understanding of the need for this institution. Let us remember how Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin in his youth scolded censorship and did not rhyme it except with the word fool. And later he advocated censorship. Tikhon’s last thought, nevertheless, baffled researchers of A.S.’s work. Pushkin. Well, Pushkin didn’t write something like that!

Tikhon was one of the first to congratulate Putin on his accession to the throne and then publicly rejoiced at Yeltsin’s timely departure, condemning the era of Yeltsinism.

Father Tikhon hides the story of his acquaintance with Putin. But he advertises his closeness to the first person in every possible way. There is talk in church circles that the rumor, just as Tikhon is the president’s confessor, was started by Tikhon himself. The certified screenwriter himself does not confirm this rumor, but does not refute it either; he flirts: What are you trying to make out of me as some kind of Richelieu? Nevertheless, journalists from Moscow publications firmly wrote from Tikhon’s words that Vladimir Putin confesses to him all the way. It is he who instructs the president in spiritual life.

In any case, certified screenwriter Tikhon actively takes advantage of his real (or imaginary) closeness to the president. As they say, now the Patriarch himself is afraid of him.

Also read biographies of famous people:

Tikhon Juchkov Tihon Juchkov

Awarded the Order of Lenin, the Red Banner (three times), Patriotic War 1st degree, Red Star, medals.