Archimandrite Alipy (Voronov) - warrior, monk, shepherd. Archimandrite Alipiy (Voronov): the best defense is an offensive

(1914-1975)
Viceroy of the Pskov-Pechersky Monastery (1959-1975)

On March 15, 1975, thousands of people from Pskov, Leningrad, Tallinn, Moscow and other Russian cities came to the Pskov-Pechersky Monastery to say goodbye to Archimandrite Alypiy (Ivan Mikhailovich Voronov). Earthly life ended, eternity began.

Many years ago, in 1927, 13-year-old Vanya Voronov came to Moscow from Torchikha near Moscow. I came to conquer this city in a terrible time of hard times, “a time of great achievements.” His father and older brother lived in Moscow. Here Ivan completed his nine-year school, worked as a tunneler on the construction of the first stage of the Moscow metro, graduated from an art studio, and served in the army. In 1934, he received an apartment on the outskirts of old Moscow, on Malaya Maryinskaya Street (now Godovikova Street). The house in which Ivan Voronov lived in Moscow has not survived. New buildings of the seventies forever changed the appearance of one of the streets near Maryina Roshcha. In the surviving old photographs you can see how Ivan Voronov, wearing a hat and muffler, plays the characters of “Eugene Onegin” on the Moscow amateur stage. Torchikha has also changed a lot in recent years. Now you can only get to it on foot. The house in which the Voronovs lived has not survived. Now in its place is a transformer booth. But then everything was different.

Vladimir Herodnik relays the story of Father Alypiy: “After graduating from high school, I moved to Moscow, where I worked on the construction of the metro and at the same time studied in an art studio. My mother, Alexandra, was often sick and I often came to Torchikha. One day an accident happened on the train. I barely squeezed into the crowded carriage and helped the old woman free the bag jammed by the doors. But the fingers of his right hand were caught in the door, became limp and bled. Home we had to walk along the bank of the Severka River. I crossed myself with my left hand, lowered my right hand into clear water and said: “Most Holy Theotokos, who suffered for the sake of Your Son, heal me!” My soul felt lighter. Imagine my surprise when at home my fingers were able to move freely.” Indeed, God protected Ivan Mikhailovich all his life, and even in the most terrible years.

Before the Great Patriotic War, Voronov worked at the Moscow plant No. 58 named after. K.Voroshilov (now OJSC “Impulse” on Prospekt Mira). In 1941, when the plant management wanted to use vehicles for personal evacuation to the Urals, he did not allow this as a dispatcher, exposing the need to use vehicles to send bombs to the front.

In 1942, Ivan Mikhailovich joined the active army. “The whole long journey from Moscow to Berlin - a rifle in one hand, a sketchbook in the other.” Already an archimandrite, he said: “In the war, some were afraid of starvation and took bags of crackers on their backs to prolong their lives rather than fight the enemy; and these people died with their breadcrumbs and were not seen for many days. And those who took off their tunics and fought with the enemy remained alive.” Then he added: “The war was so terrible that I gave my word to God that if I survive this terrible battle, I will definitely go to a monastery.”

God protected Ivan Voronov, despite the fact that death was always nearby. What is the terrible episode worth when, in front of the eyes of Ivan Mikhailovich, who was driving a Jeep with General Lelyushenko, a car with Army General Vatutin took off?! He went through the entire war as a member of the 4th Guards Tank Army as an ordinary rifleman, and received shell shock. But even during the terrible years of the war, his education came in handy. He created an artistic history of the tank army. Front-line works were already exhibited in several museums of the USSR in 1943. The description says that Ivan Voronov received many awards and commendations from the command, including the Order of the Red Star and the medal “For Courage.” I celebrated victory in Berlin. In 1946, a personal exhibition of his front-line works was organized in Moscow in the Hall of Columns of the House of Unions. After the war, Ivan Mikhailovich worked in Moscow as an “artist working under a contract with organizations.” Unfortunately, more detailed information about this stage of the life of Ivan Mikhailovich Voronov could not be found.

In 1950, Ivan Mikhailovich went to sketch in Zagorsk and “conquered and enchanted by these places, he decided to forever devote himself to serving the Trinity-Sergius Lavra.” He immediately applied all his skills and knowledge to the restoration of ancient shrines - wall paintings of the Trinity and Assumption Cathedrals, the Refectory Church, the Patriarchal residence in the village of Lukino (near the station "Peredelkino"). During his monastic tonsure, Ivan Mikhailovich was named Alipius (the Careless) in honor of the venerable icon painter of Kiev-Pechersk. Fate fully confirmed this historical parallel. Higher art education has once again found itself in demand.

In 1959, thanks to the skillful “diplomatic game” of Patriarch Alexy (Simansky), Abbot Alypiy was appointed abbot of the Pskov-Pechersk Monastery, and in 1960 he was elevated to the rank of archimandrite. The most difficult task fell on the shoulders of Archimandrite Alypius - not only to restore the shrines and antiquities of the Pskov-Pechersk monastery, but also to protect the monastery from closure and from the slanderous campaign launched in the press. If you look only at the headlines of the central and local publications of that time, you feel uneasy: “The Pskov-Pechersky Monastery is a hotbed of religious obscurantism”, “Hallelujah” squatting”, “Freeloaders in robes”, “Hypocrites in robes”, “Devonian outcrops” " It was very difficult to resist this wave of slander; it was even more difficult to survive and preserve the monastery. In reports addressed to Vladyka John, Archimandrite Alypiy emphasized: “A stack of newspaper articles filled with undeserved insults and slander against Soviet honest, kind and good people, insults to the mothers and widows of dead soldiers - this is their “ideological struggle” - the expulsion of hundreds and thousands priests and clerics, and the best ones at that. How many of them come to us with tears that they cannot get even a secular job anywhere, their wives and children have nothing to live on.

They suffer because they were born Russian Christians.

It is impossible to describe all the vile methods of the “ideologists” with which they are fighting against the Russian Church. One thing can only be said: “Every earth-born rushes in vain.”

Talking about the methods of fighting the monastery, Archimandrite Alypiy gives a very illustrative example:

“On Tuesday, May 14th of this<196З>year, the housekeeper, Abbot Irenei, organized, as in all previous years of monastic life, the watering and spraying of the monastery garden with water, which we collect thanks to the dam we made near the gazebo behind the fortress wall in the ditch from melted snow and spring rains. While our people were working, six men approached them, then two more; one of them had in his hands a measure with which they divided the former monastery garden land, one of them began to swear at the workers and forbid them to pump water. He said that this water was not yours, and therefore ordered to stop pumping. Our people tried to continue working, but he ran up to them, grabbed the hose and began to pull it out, another with a camera began to photograph our people. The pump stopped working, probably sand got in there, because the puddle is very small and dirty. Moreover, the most active of them swore at the monks and people who help us, and called the worker Kunus a corrupt monastic henchman.

When I arrived there, the steward told these unknown people that the Viceroy had arrived, go and explain to him. One of them came up, it turns out, the same one, as our people say, the instigator. I asked what they want? The others stood at a distance, taking photographs of us; there are three of them left.

"Who you are?" - I asked again, and on whose behalf are you acting? They began to babble, calling District Committees, Regional Committees, etc.

"Are you a communist?" - I asked. He replied: “Yes.” I objected to him that it could not be that a person who thinks like that, reasons like that, and acts like that, could be in the Soviet Party. Illogical, rude, and irrational people cannot be in the party. If you consider yourself an employee of the City Committee, an honest and decent communist, and also your comrades in hats, then you should have, having seen the disorder on our part, immediately given me a written decree not to do this and that, and I would immediately accepted for execution, and you let's tumble the car into the mud and scold the monks and working people who came to rest, showing your lack of sound reasoning and your unbridledness, threatening to put us on trial for the fact that we breathed your air and drank your dirty water.

Walking away from us sideways, the man in the hat began to tease me: “Eh... father!!” I replied that I am a father for those people over there, and for you I am the Russian Ivan, who still has the power to crush bedbugs, fleas, fascists and generally all kinds of evil spirits.”

Father Alypiy was always tough but fair. And when they said to him: “Father, they can put you in prison,” he answered: “They won’t put me in prison, I will put them in prison myself. There is no guilt on me."

In a letter to the Kirov People's Court of Ufa, Archimandrite Alypiy wrote: “We are Christians, we are deprived of civil rights, and the enemies of the church take advantage of this and abuse it to their destruction. We believe that Truth will win, because God is with us.”

The truth has won... Let it take years for this to happen. The Pskov-Pechersk monastery is a wonderful monument to Archimandrite Alypiy. A lot of effort and money was invested in the revival of the fortress walls and towers, which were practically built anew; to cover with gilding the large dome of St. Michael's Cathedral, which for a long time was simply covered with roofing iron; to organize an icon-painting workshop in the tower above the Holy Gate. In 1968, thanks to the efforts of Father Alypiy, an all-Union readers' search for the treasures of the sacristy of the Pskov-Pechersk Monastery, taken out by the fascist occupiers in 1944, was announced. Five years later the treasure was found. In 1973, representatives of the German Consulate in Leningrad handed over the stolen priceless treasures of the sacristy to their rightful owner. Icons painted or restored by Archimandrite Alipius decorate the churches of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, the Pskov-Pechersk Monastery, and the Trinity Cathedral in Pskov.

Over many years, Father Alypiy collected a wonderful collection of works of Russian and Western European painting. Now the masterpieces of this collection adorn the Russian Museum, the Pskov Museum-Reserve, and the local history museum in Pechory. “Leave everything to the people!” - this is the testament of a true collector and connoisseur of antiquities. Archimandrite Alypiy could rightly be called the “Pskov Tretyakov.” Unfortunately, he was not able to attend the opening of the exhibition “Russian painting and graphics of the 18th - 20th centuries from the collection of I.M. Voronov,” which opened at the Russian Museum a few months after his death in 1975.

The ascetic life of Father Alypius was honored with a blessed death. Abbot Agathangel (who, unfortunately, was also deceased) said this in his funeral homily: “2 hours and 30 minutes before his death, Father Alipius exclaimed that the Mother of God had come to him: “Oh, what a wonderful face She has!” Hurry to draw this Divine image!” “And no one else heard a single word from his lips.”

Andrey Ponomarev

A. Ponomarev. Archimandrite Alypiy / Andrey Ponomarev // Pskov land. History in faces. "These people are winging..." - M., 2007. - P.399 - 403.

Archimandrite Alipiy. Human. Artist. Warrior. Abbot. / Compiled by Savva Yamshchikov with the participation of Vladimir Studenikin. - M., 2004. - 486 p.

In the book of memories of Archimandrite Alipia there are pages of memory of those whom he helped to take the bright path of serving God and people. Priests, artists, writers, and most importantly, people in love with the abbot of the Pskov-Pechersk monastery talk about the priest.

The publication contains many photographs taken over the years by Mikhail Semenov, Boris Skobeltsyn, as well as photos from the archives of Vladimir Studenikin and Savva Yamshchikov.

Archimandrite Alipy (Voronov) was in fact a “bloodless martyr.” It fell to his lot to fight to ensure that the monastery continued to be, with the Soviet state machine.

More than once those in power tried to close the Pskov-Pechersk monastery; similar orders came from Khrushchev himself, who sought to “show the country the last priest.” But thanks to the endurance of Archimandrite Alypius, the monastery continued to live and carry out its ministry. Against any attacks from the authorities, the archimandrite found compelling arguments, the right word, while trying to get out of a difficult situation with his characteristic ingenuity.

Below are the “stamps of the life” of Alypius (Voronov), captured by V. Nartsisov, S. Yamshchikov, V. Kurbatov, Arch. Nathanael.

Guests from Finland

Once upon a time, guests from Finland came to the Pskov-Pechersky Monastery. They are given a tour, told about all the shrines of the monastery, fed lunch, and given monastic kvass to drink. Everyone is happy. And suddenly one Finnish comrade, grinning triumphantly, says: “The astronauts flew to heaven, but they didn’t find God.” Father Archimandrite answers him: “Such a misfortune can happen to you: you’ve been to Helsinki, but you haven’t seen the president.”

Monastery Road

A complaint comes to the monastery from the Pachkovsky village council that, they say, there is a terrible road leading to the economic gates of the monastery: people fall, get hurt, animals break their legs.

Archimandrite Alypiy writes the answer: “No one walks along that road except monks and monastery cows, so thank you for your touching concern for us. We will be glad to fix the road. Only in winter such work is not carried out, but in the spring send an estimate - what to do: dirt, cobblestone, asphalt. But first, let them register these lands as monastic lands, otherwise they have been taken away. In general, we do not refuse to contribute our work to the cause of social construction and build a convenient road to the monastery. But how dare we contradict the editor-in-chief of the Pechora Pravda newspaper, Kostomarov, who constantly calls for no one to come close to the monastery?”

They didn’t remember that road anymore.

All communists - come visit us!

Archimandrite Alipy's phone rings. The serious voice of the big boss is heard from the receiver: “Ivan Mikhailovich (as he called Father Alypius), we can no longer provide the monastery with pastures that belong to the people. Graze your cows wherever you want."

A few days later the call came again. The same voice says to Father Alypiy: “A large delegation has arrived - communists from all over the world. The monastery is the face of Pechory. You need to give a tour, show the Caves, then feed them, treat them to kvass - you know. I hope for your understanding".

And after a hearty lunch, the guests stroll around the monastery. Archimandrite Alypiy gives the order to release all the cows and bulls inside the monastery to the flower beds. This comes as a complete surprise to distinguished figures of the proletarian movement, many of whom encounter such animals for the first time. One elderly French communist woman climbs out of fear onto the guard booth. An old Nicaraguan Marxist is attacked by a breeding bull.

Archimandrite Alypiy's phone is ringing off the hook. The same voice shouts indignantly: “What a disgrace this is. Ivan Mikhailovich? What kind of public slap in the face is this to the communist movement?” Father Alypiy calmly replies: “What slap in the face? You know it yourself - animals can get sick. So we decided that since there was no other way out, we would herd them inside the monastery.”

On the same day, all pastures were returned to the monastery.

Soviet scientists were very concerned about the lack of odor from burials in the monastery Caves. They said this: “The monks are deceiving the people as if there is no smell. Soviet science discovered that this smell is absorbed by sand! Meanwhile, world science knows that quartz - and in the Caves quartz sandstone - does not enter into chemical reactions.

Then Soviet scientists conducted a scientific experiment in the Moscow region: they found a similar sandstone, dug a cave, and placed a coffin with a body in it. A few days later, scientists, workers, and the world community were invited to that cave for a symposium. However, the symposium did not take place: there was such a stench in the cave that no one could even enter there.

A high commander calls Archimandrite Alypius.
- What is this? They say that your monks each have three women in their cells. Why was it allowed?
- How? Haven't you heard about the moral character of the builder of communism?
- Why, I heard, I know.
- Why then do you slander Soviet women? Not a single Soviet woman, unlike the decaying West, will allow herself to enter into an illicit relationship, especially with some obscurantist monk. And you don’t give visas to foreigners. So it's impossible.
- Certainly. This means that they are correct in saying that your woman is humiliated.
- How humiliated? Look, our women even take part in the service: they sing in the choir, they decorate churches, they take care of the vestments... It’s in your military registration and enlistment office that they are humiliated - you only hire men.

“For the sake of the Tsar we will raise everyone”

The Pechora District Executive Committee receives a secret report. It reports that the monks want to raise a king in the Caves.

However, after a thorough study, it turned out that the informant misunderstood the words of the Liturgy: “For the King we will raise everyone.”

“What, the pioneers are not people?”

One day the Caves in the monastery were closed for a while. And suddenly important guests arrive - high-ranking party leaders. Of course, they were immediately fed, treated to kvass, and taken to the Caves. As soon as they opened the door, the pioneers approached: can we have a look too?

“Of course it is possible,” says Archimandrite Irenaeus. Party members began to protest. “What, the pioneers are not people?” - the proletarian conscience was struck by this question.

Let's raise our voices against untruths

The Pechersk hieromonk gave a tour of the monastery for Italian guests. One Italian constantly interrupts him, asks sarcastic questions, and behaves defiantly. Finally, the hieromonk can’t stand it and loudly reprimands him. The Italian takes on the appearance of wounded pride, looks around indignantly and exclaims: “How? Have you raised your voice? “Yes,” the hieromonk answers, “all our newspapers call on us to raise our voices against all untruths!”

Kvass in the “den of counter-revolution”

One day a general comes to the monastery. They gave him a tour, showed him the Caves, then they fed him, gave him monastery kvass to drink, and took him to the Holy Hill. There the general expressed a desire to relax with his father, the archimandrite. We sat down in the gazebo.
- Everything is good in your monastery, only one thing is bad. You collaborated with the Germans during the war.
- Can't be! You slander the Soviet government!?
- How?
- Would it allow the enemy of the Fatherland to go unpunished? Or do you think that the valiant Soviet intelligence missed such a blatant crime?
- This is, of course, impossible...
- But you are slandering yourself too!
- How?
- Could you communicate with enemies of the people? Would you drink kvass in the lair of counter-revolutionaries?

With the last argument, the general was completely broken. The kvass seemed too sweet to him.

Saint Nicholas

Feast of St. Nicholas in the monastery. Father Alypius preaches at the service: “Recently, Pechora Truth, referring to Eusebius of Samosata, wrote that St. Nicholas never existed. Question: who in the Pechora region has the books of the above-mentioned Eusebius to verify this statement? Further, if a historian does not write about someone, this does not mean that this person did not exist. It is known that Eusebius of Samosata was an Arian. Meanwhile, at the Ecumenical Council, Saint Nicholas slapped Arius in the face. Will Eusebius write about him? I doubt. I think the whole point is that Saint Nicholas did not come to the Pachkovsky village council to register and did not register with the Pechora City Executive Committee. However, we know confirmation that St. Nicholas was and is.

Once in the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, after restoration work, I met and talked with one military commander. He told me this: “I don’t know whether there is a God, but that St. Nicholas exists, that’s for sure.” And he told the following story: “During the war, our ship was hit in the Black Sea, and it began to sink. We see that things are bad. However, atheistic fear did not allow him to pray. And suddenly one of our sailors offers to pray to St. Nicholas, the patron saint of sailors. Everyone agreed: they knelt down and asked him for help as best they could. And then our ship righted itself and sailed as if nothing had happened. So he brought us - with a hole - straight to the shore. And it’s wonderful to say that before I even had time to give the order, the whole team rushed to the church to light a candle for St. Nicholas.”

This is what the military commander told me - this is not Eusebius of Samosata.”

“I’d rather die a martyr, but I won’t close the monastery”

Winter. Freezing. Archimandrite Alypiy is warming himself in his cell by the fireplace. The cell attendant comes: “You have guests.” Two people in civilian clothes enter. They hand over the paper. Father Alypius is ordered to announce at a fraternal meal the closure of the monastery and the dissolution of the brethren. It bears Khrushchev's signature. Father Alypiy tears up the paper and throws it into the fireplace. The two in civilian clothes turn white as a sheet: “What did you do?” Father Alypius stands up: “I would rather go to martyrdom than close the monastery.”

The monastery was never closed.

How many believers are there in Russia?

Once there was a large reception at the Pskov-Pechersky Monastery, arranged especially for representatives of the foreign press. About 150 correspondents from various newspapers, magazines, and television arrived. A festive table was laid in the refectory of the monastery, at the head of which sat Father Alypius and his assistants.

The most lively correspondent of one American newspaper immediately jumped up and asked in fairly decent Russian:
- Hegumen, tell me, how many believers do you have in your country?

Alypiy calmly turned to one of the assistants and asked:
- Tell me, how much is the population in our country?
- About 230 million.
“That’s how many believers we have in our country,” answered Alypiy.
- How! You have an atheistic country?!
- Faith is learned in difficult years. When the war began, Stalin, in his first address to the people, said: “Brothers and sisters” (not sisters -!). This is how I start my sermons every day. This means that in difficult times everyone believes, that means everyone is a believer.

"People's" control

Somehow, people's control decided to check the financial activities of the monastery.
“Tell me, who sent you,” asked Alypiy.
- Here we are, financial...
- No, I have only one boss. This is the Bishop of Pskov, Bishop John. Go to him for permission, and then I will allow you to see my financial papers.

The people's inspectors left, and a couple of hours later John called Alypiy and asked to allow the inspectors to come in for an inspection.
“You can’t add a call to business, send me a telegram,” answered Alypiy.

The telegram arrived an hour later, and another hour later the delegation arrived, and then Alypiy, holding the telegram in his hands, asked:
- Tell me, are you all communists?
- Yes, mostly communists...
- And received a blessing from your spiritual father??? At the Lord of Pskov??? Well, I’ll now send this telegram to the regional party committee...

This is where the story of the financial audit of the monastery ended.

Elections in Pechersk

As you know, in stagnant years everyone had to take part in elections. Not excluding the monks of the Pskov-Pechersky Monastery. Usually the box was brought directly to the monastery, where the voting ceremony took place. But the new secretary of the regional committee, outraged by the honor inappropriate for the Chernets, ordered to “stop the disgrace.” “Let them come and vote themselves.”

“Wonderful,” said Archimandrite Alypiy, the abbot of the monastery, upon learning about this. And then Sunday came, the long-awaited election day. After the liturgy and fraternal meal, the monks lined up in twos and, with spiritual chants, went through the entire city to the polling station. One can imagine the state of peaceful Soviet citizens who observed such a spectacle. When, to top it all off, the monks began to serve a prayer service right at the polling station, officials tried to protest. “It’s how it’s supposed to be with us,” answered Father Alypiy. Having voted, the monks just as decorously returned through the whole city to the monastery. Later, the ballot box began to be brought back to its place.

"Scientific scammers"

Father Alypiy was very fond of conducting excursions through the monastery caves himself. One day a delegation of fairly high-ranking officials arrived at the monastery, and Alypius led them into the caves.

Before the excursion, he always asked his cell attendant to soak his handkerchief in the scent of lilac. During a tour of the caves, grins almost always began to be heard. And then Alypius, turning to the mocker, said:

Here you are, a young man with a secondary education, not a fool, as I heard. Explain to me - here, a step away from us, lies, in fact, the decomposing body of a monk. And you stick your nose in and smell it - is there a smell of decay?

The young man begins to vaguely explain something about the special properties of the gorge and caves.

“Okay,” retorts Alypiy, “now take a handkerchief and smell it.” Do you recognize the perfume? Now smell the standing fresh flowers. Do you recognize? Like this. If only you scoundrels were objective. We are dispossessed, we have nothing... And you, you are not scientific atheists, but scientific swindlers.

State beggars

Archimandrite Alypius, being the governor, could answer anyone with a sharp word. The city authorities once called him:
- Why can’t you put things in order? After all, you have beggars in the monastery!
“Forgive me,” Father Alipy answers, “but the beggars are not with me, but with you.”
- How is it with us?
- It’s very simple. The land, if you remember, was taken from the monastery at the Holy Gate. The beggars stand on which side of the gate, on the outside or on the inside?
- From the outside.
- So I say that you have them. And in my monastery all the brethren are watered, fed, clothed and shod. And if you really don’t like beggars so much, then you pay them a pension of 500 rubles. And if after that someone asks for alms, I think they can be punished by law. But I have no beggars.

"Monastery Plague"

One of the most interesting oddities is still remembered in the monastery. Before the arrival of the next state commission to close the monastery, Archimandrite Alypius posted a notice on the Holy Gates that there was a plague in the monastery and because of this he could not allow the commission into the territory of the monastery. The commission was headed by the chairman of the Culture Committee A.I. Medvedeva. It was to her that Father Alypiy addressed:

I don’t feel sorry for my monks, fools, excuse me, because they are still registered in the Kingdom of Heaven. But I can’t let you, Anna Ivanovna, and your bosses in. I can’t even find the words to answer for you and your bosses at the Last Judgment. So forgive me, I won’t open the gates for you.

And he himself once again boarded the plane and went to Moscow. And again to work hard, beat the thresholds, and once again win.

Monastic songs

When Father Alypius was asked by civilian visitors (excursionists) how the monks lived, he drew their attention to the Divine service that was performed in the Assumption Church.
“Do you hear,” asked Alypiy.
“We hear,” the visitors answered.
- What do you hear?
- The monks are singing.
“Well, if the monks lived poorly, they would not have started singing,” Father Alypiy summed up.

Free labor

Once seeing how the believers in the monastery were cutting up flower beds and decorating flower beds, one of the representatives of the Pechora authorities asked:
-Who works in your monastery and on what basis?
“It is the master people who work on their own land,” answered Alypius.

There were no more questions.

“The one who goes on the offensive wins”

“The one who goes on the offensive wins,” - Father Alypius brought this principle from worldly life, from the terrible times of the Great Patriotic War. However, he always followed it, especially when the question of unjust oppression of the monastery and believers arose.

During the foot-and-mouth disease epidemic, Father Alypiy explained to the authorities that the service in the temple would not stop, because “cows don’t go to the temple, and not a single institution stops its work on the occasion of foot-and-mouth disease.”

When Father Alypiy burned the paper about the closure of the Pskov-Pechersky Monastery in front of the “sovereign envoys,” he turned to them and said:
“I’d rather accept martyrdom, but I won’t close the monastery.”

When they came to take away the keys to the caves, he commanded his cell attendant:
- Father Cornelius, give me an ax here, we’ll chop off heads!

After these words, seeing the determination in the eyes of Father Alypius, those who came fled.

“The demon will find an empty temple”

Father Alypius instructed the pastors of the church arriving at the monastery to diligently serve in his church.
- Here you are, father, you have left your temple, and the demon will serve in your temple.
- How so?
“The demon will find an empty temple,” Father Alypius answered in the Gospel.

Having gone through the entire war from 1942 to Berlin, he became a monk. Already as abbot of one of the last unclosed Russian monasteries, he gave battle to a many times superior enemy. He gave battle and won.

Ivan Mikhailovich Voronov, the future archimandrite and icon painter, was born in 1914 into a poor peasant family in the village of Torchikha, Moscow province. After graduating from rural school in 1926, he moved to live and study in Moscow with his father and older brother. After finishing his nine-year school, he lived in the village for two years, caring for his sick mother. In 1932 he began working at Metrostroy and studied at the evening studio at the Moscow Union of Artists. And in 1936, Voronov entered the art studio organized by the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions, which in those years was equivalent to the Academy of Arts. That same year, Voronov was drafted into the Red Army, where he served for two years. During this time, Ivan did a lot of work on organizing art circles and art studios at military units of the Moscow Military District.

After being demobilized in 1938, Ivan Voronov got a job as a dispatcher and forwarder at the secret military plant No. 58 named after. K. Voroshilov (now JSC Impulse, on Mira Avenue). Here he met the Great Patriotic War. The plant produced bombs needed by the front. But when the front line approached the capital, the factory management tried to evacuate in panic using official vehicles. The flight of leaders beyond the Urals, away from the war, was a common occurrence in the fall of 1941. But Voronov had the courage not to succumb to the general panic. The young dispatcher did not allow the factory vehicles to be used for the escape of his superiors, but used them to send bombs to the front.

Worried about the fate of his sick mother, Voronov went to his native village for several days, and when he returned to the capital, he found the plant abandoned. The bosses ran away after all! But there were workers on the ground, with whom Voronov decided to resume bomb production. Production was carried out at risk to life. The Germans were bombing Moscow, and any hit on the plant could turn it into a mass grave. But the production of bombs did not stop for a minute; malnourished and sleep-deprived workers exceeded the daily production quota by 300%. As Archimandrite Alypiy himself recalled, “our military plant was like a front and we never left the factory.”

Ivan Voronov was called to the front on February 21, 1942. He went to war not only with a machine gun, but also with a sketchbook of paints.

Moving along the front line, he managed to restore the icons to local residents and fed the entire unit with the products that local residents gave him for restoring the icons.

At the front, Ivan Voronov created several sketches and paintings, several albums of “combat episodes.” Already in 1943, the master’s front-line works were exhibited in several museums of the USSR.

The command encouraged “cultural and educational work among the unit’s personnel,” which was carried out by the artist, and noted the skillful execution of tasks “to summarize combat experience and party-political work.” “All the work performed by Comrade Voronov is of the nature of creativity and novelty. In a combat situation he behaved boldly and courageously.”

Ivan Voronov traveled from Moscow to Berlin as part of the Fourth Tank Army. He took part in many military operations on the Central, Western, Bryansk and First Ukrainian fronts. God protected the future archimandrite; he did not receive a single injury or concussion. For his participation in battles, Voronov was awarded medals “For Courage”, “For Military Merit”, “For Victory over Germany”, “For the Capture of Berlin”, “For the Liberation of Prague”, the Order of the Red Star and the “Guard” badge. In total, the artist-soldier received 76 military awards and encouragements.

The war left an indelible mark on the soul of Ivan Voronov: “The war was so terrible that I gave my word to God that if I survive this terrible battle, I will definitely go to a monastery.” Having become monk Alipius, archimandrite of the Pskov-Pechora monastery, in his sermons he repeatedly turned to military topics, often recalling the war: “I often went on night watches and prayed to God that we would not meet enemy scouts, so that no one would be slaughtered.”

Ivan Mikhailovich returned from the war as a famous artist. As he himself recalls: “In the fall of 1945, returning from the front, I brought about a thousand different drawings, sketches and sketches and immediately organized an individual exhibition of my front-line works at the House of Unions in Moscow. This exhibition helped me become a member of the city committee of the Association of Moscow Artists and gave me the right to work as an artist. Every year I had one or two solo or group exhibitions, which showed my growth as an artist.”

But the career of a secular painter did not attract him. “In 1948, while working plein air in the Trinity-Sergius Lavra near Moscow, I was captivated by the beauty and originality of this place, first as an artist, and then as a resident of the Lavra, and decided to devote myself to serving the Lavra forever.”

Upon entering the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, his mother blessed him with the icon of the Mother of God “Quench my sorrows,” saying: “Mother of God, let him be carefree.” And he saw his mother’s blessing as effective. During tonsure, when it was necessary to determine his monastic name, the governor of the Lavra looked at the Calendar; the closest name for him to be the birthday boy turned out to be “Alipy”, the name of the Monk Alypy, the famous icon painter of the Kiev-Pechersk. After his tonsure, Father Alypius himself looked at the Calendar and read the translation of his new name: “carefree.” Therefore, when representatives of the authorities tried to scare him over the phone, he answered: “Please note, I, Alypiy, am carefree.” And as his heavenly patron, Father Alypius was also an icon painter.

He did not have a separate cell. The governor of the Lavra showed him a place in the corridor with the condition that if Father Alypius made himself a cell in this corridor by morning in one night, then the cell would be his. Father Alypiy replied: “Bless me.” And in one night he made partitions, lined the fenced-off cell inside with splinters, plastered it, whitewashed it, installed the floor, and painted it. And in the morning, the governor of the Lavra was extremely surprised when he came to Father Alypiy and saw him in his new cell at the table with a hot samovar.

Soon he was awarded the priesthood, and in 1959 he was appointed abbot of the Pskov-Pechersky Monastery. Father Alypiy held this responsible position from 1959 to 1975.

A very difficult task fell on his shoulders: not only to restore the shrines and antiquities of the famous Pskov-Pechersk monastery. But another task was even more difficult - to protect the monastery from being closed by the authorities.

Soviet times in general were a time of severe restrictions on all freedoms, including freedom of religion. Hundreds of thousands of people, including thousands of priests, monks and bishops, were executed by the authorities only for faith and loyalty to God. Thousands of churches were destroyed, the rest were closed: even in large cities, the authorities tried to leave only one Orthodox church open.

The war forced the authorities to ease pressure on the Church and open some churches. But Khrushchev began a new round of struggle against the Church. He promised to show the last priest on TV. That is, he anticipated the present times, when television would replace God for people, and hoped to live to see them.

Here are the headlines of central and local publications of that time: “Pskov-Pechersky Monastery - a hotbed of religious obscurantism”, “Hallelujah squatting”, “Freeloaders in cassocks”, “Hypocrites in cassocks”. It was very difficult to resist the slander; it was even more difficult to preserve the monastery. In reports addressed to Metropolitan John of Pskov and Velikoluksky, Archimandrite Alypiy emphasized: “Newspaper articles filled with undeserved insults and slander against honest, kind and good people, insults to the mothers and widows of dead soldiers - this is their “ideological struggle” - the expulsion of hundreds and thousands priests and clerics, and the best ones at that. How many of them come to us with tears that they cannot get even a secular job anywhere, their wives and children have nothing to live on.”

What could one monk oppose to the apparatus of suppression of omnipotent power? He only had one weapon. But the most powerful weapon is the word!

The courage of his words is striking even when viewed from our liberal times. How amazing this bold and firm word sounded then! When they told him: “Father, they might put you in prison...”, he answered: “They won’t put me in prison, I’ll put them in prison myself. There is no guilt on me." Even during the war, he learned that the best defense is an offensive.

Here are just a few examples showing how Father Alipius repelled the attacks of the authorities. Some of the stories were told by monks, some became the property of popular rumor and were told by the Pecheryans.

State beggars

Archimandrite Alypius, being the governor, could answer anyone with a sharp word. The city authorities once called him:

– Why can’t you put things in order? After all, you have beggars in the monastery!

“Forgive me,” Father Alipy answers, “but the beggars are not with me, but with you.”

- How is it with us?

- It’s very simple. The land, if you remember, was taken from the monastery at the Holy Gate. The beggars stand on which side of the gate, on the outside or on the inside?

- From the outside.

- So I say that you have them. And in my monastery all the brethren are watered, fed, clothed and shod. And if you really don’t like beggars so much, then you pay them a pension of 500 rubles. And if after that someone asks for alms, I think they can be punished according to the law. But I have no beggars.

Interview for Science and Religion

In the late sixties, two journalists from Science and Religion tried to conduct a revealing interview with Alypiy.

-Who feeds you? - they asked.

He pointed to the old women. They didn't understand. Father Alypiy explained:

– One of them had two sons who did not return from the war, the other had four. And they came to us to dispel their grief.

– Aren’t you ashamed to look into the eyes of the people? - another question.

- So we are the people. Sixteen monks were participants in the war, including me. And if necessary, put your feet in boots, cap on your head: “I have appeared on your orders”...

Prayer for rain

In summer, drought came to the Pskov region. Father Alypiy asked the district committee for permission to carry out a religious procession to Pskov to pray for rain.

– What if it doesn’t rain? – asked the official.

“Then my head will fly,” answered Father Alypiy.

- What if it happens?

- Then it’s yours.

The religious procession to Pskov was not allowed. The monks prayed for rain in the monastery, and the district committee workers sneered:

- You pray, but there is no rain!

“If you had prayed, it would definitely rain,” Father Alypius thundered.

After the monks held a religious procession inside the monastery, the rains began to fall. Although according to forecasts, the clouds were heading in the other direction.

Protection with horns

The Pechersk authorities caused harm in small ways. One summer the chairman of the city executive committee sent a letter saying that the monastery's cattle were prohibited from leaving the monastery gates. In a response letter, the abbot warned that then “the monastic herd will force out tourists, and the bull will gore the guides, who photograph the monks and bring a company of soldiers in caps into the temple at the most crucial moments of the service.”

No sooner said than done. Several dozen cows filled the monastery square, displacing tourists. And when a representative of the authorities tried to disperse the cows, the bull - the monks themselves were surprised - drove him into a tree and kept him there until seven in the evening.

The cows celebrated their victory in the pasture.

Elections in Pechersky style

In Soviet times, everyone had to take part in elections. Not excluding the monks of the Pskov-Pechersky Monastery. Usually the box was brought directly to the monastery, where the voting ceremony took place. But the new secretary of the regional committee, outraged by the honor inappropriate for the Chernets, ordered to “stop the disgrace.” “Let them come and vote themselves.”

“Wonderful,” said Archimandrite Alypiy, the abbot of the monastery, upon learning about this. And then Sunday came, the long-awaited election day. After the liturgy and fraternal meal, the monks lined up in twos and, with spiritual chants, went through the entire city to the polling station. One can imagine the state of peaceful Soviet citizens who observed such a spectacle. When, to top it all off, the monks began to serve a prayer service right at the polling station, officials tried to protest. “That’s how it’s supposed to be,” answered Father Alypiy. Having voted, the monks just as decorously returned through the whole city to the monastery. Later, the ballot box began to be brought back to its place.

Blessing for communists

One day, two regional financial officials arrived at the monastery to check the income. Father Alypius asked them:

-Who authorized you?

They didn't have the order on paper.

– We have been empowered by the people!

“Then at tomorrow’s service we will ask you to go to the pulpit and ask the people whether they authorized you,” suggested Father Alypiy.

– We have been authorized by the party! – the inspectors clarified.

– How many people are in your party?

– 20 million.

– And in our Church there are 50 million. The minority cannot dictate to the majority.

The next time, financial workers came with an order. Father Alypius answered them that, despite the order, he could only allow an inspection with the blessing of the bishop of the diocese. Then they contacted the bishop of the diocese and received a “blessing.”

-Are you communists? – asked their father Alypiy.

- How could you, communists, take a blessing from a clergyman? I’ll call the regional party committee now, they’ll kick you out of the party tomorrow.

These “comrades” never came again.

Russian Ivan

Archimandrite Alypiy himself said:

“On Tuesday, May 14 of this year (1963), the housekeeper, Abbot Irenei, organized, as in all previous years of monastic life, the watering and spraying of the monastery garden with rain and snow water, which we collect thanks to the dam we made near the gazebo, behind the fortress wall. While our men were working, six men approached them, then two more; one of them had in his hands a measure with which they divided the former monastery garden land. He began to swear at the workers and forbid them to pump water, saying that the water was not yours, and ordered them to stop pumping. Our people tried to continue working, but he ran up to them, grabbed the hose and began to pull it out, another - with a camera - began to photograph our people...

The housekeeper told these unknown people that the governor had come, go and explain everything to him. One of them came up. The others stood at a distance, taking photographs of us; there are three of them left.

Walking away from us sideways, the man in the hat said: “Eh... father!” I replied that Father I am for those people over there, but for you I am the Russian Ivan, who still has the power to crush bedbugs, fleas, fascists and all kinds of evil spirits in general.”

Axe

Sometimes the enemy forced Alypius to resort to truly “black” humor. They say that when representatives of the authorities came to him for the keys to the caves in which the relics of the holy founders and brothers of the monastery lie, he met blasphemers with military orders and medals and shouted menacingly to the cell attendant:

- Father Cornelius, bring the ax, now we will chop off their heads!

It must have been very scary - they ran away so quickly and irrevocably.

Monastic plague

Before the arrival of the next state commission to close the monastery, Archimandrite Alypius posted a notice on the Holy Gates that there was a plague in the monastery and because of this he could not allow the commission into the territory of the monastery. The commission was headed by the chairman of the Culture Committee A.I. Medvedeva. It was to her that Father Alypiy addressed:

“Sorry, I don’t feel sorry for my monks, fools, because they are still registered in the Kingdom of Heaven.” But I can’t let you, Anna Ivanovna, and your bosses in. I can’t even find the words to answer for you and your bosses at the Last Judgment. So forgive me, I won’t open the gates for you.

And he himself once again boarded the plane and went to Moscow. And again to work hard, beat the thresholds, and once again win.

Attempt to close the monastery

But probably the most difficult moment for Father Alypius came when they came with a signed order to close the monastery. It was no longer possible to laugh it off here. Father Alypiy threw the document into the fireplace and said that he was ready to accept martyrdom, but he would not close the monastery.

– Was it really that easy to defend the monastery? - we asked the oldest resident of the monastery, Archimandrite Nathanael, who remembered these events well.

- "Just"? “In everything you need to see the help of the Mother of God,” the elder answered sternly, with unshakable faith. - How could we have survived without her...

A lot of effort and money was invested by Fr. Alypius in the revival of fortress walls and towers, gilding of the large dome of St. Michael's Cathedral, organization of an icon-painting workshop. In 1968, through the efforts of Fr. Alypiy announced an all-Union search for the valuables of the sacristy of the Pskov-Pechersk Monastery, taken away by the fascist occupiers in 1944. Five years later, monastery utensils were found. In 1973, representatives of the German consulate in Leningrad transferred their monastery.

Fr. is gone. Alypia March 12, 1975. Sixty-one years of earthly life, of which 25 years were monastic life.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit!

Today the Orthodox Church remembers how the evil Herodias destroyed the great prophet of God John the Baptist. As the Holy Gospel tells us, Herod, the king of Judea, took as his wife the wife of his brother Philip, Herodias, with whom Salome was. John the Baptist denounced Herod for this illegal cohabitation. The evil Herodias harbored a grudge against the prophet of God and, wanting to destroy him, influenced Herod to imprison the Forerunner. And then the opportunity presented itself for Herodias to destroy the man of God.

The king was having a feast, the daughter of Herodias, Salome, entered and danced in front of the guests. Herod really liked this dance of Salome, and he, drunk, vowed to give her everything she asked for, even half the kingdom. Salome consulted with her mother, and she taught her to ask for the head of John the Baptist. This request saddened the king, but for the sake of his oath he fulfilled it. John was beheaded by the sword. Herodias did her evil deed.

The evil Herodias still lives in the heart of every woman - it is Satan, who attracts a woman to what is not given to her by God - to rule over her husband.

Even virtuous women have a tendency to rule, but they try to fight this vice. Those who do not have husbands also want to rule either over their families or over their neighbors. This satanic rule of a woman over her husband has caused many atrocities on earth. This is what fills all of Sacred History and, in general, all of earthly history.

The beheading of John the Baptist. End of the 16th - beginning of the 17th century

Thus, the evil Jezebel constantly persecuted and persecuted the holy prophet of God Elijah for the truth. Ahab was a good king, but his wife Jezebel had such an influence on him that she turned him away from the true God, and he turned away the entire people and led them into idolatry. Jezebel persuaded him to destroy Naboth because he did not want to sell his vineyard, and she did her evil deed. Naboth was stoned.

Samson loved his wife, and she loved him, but she herself betrayed him to death.

“It is better to live with an asp, the most evil snake, than with an evil wife,” says the Russian proverb; and another Russian proverb: “Where the wife cannot cope, Satan is sent there.” Such evil, treacherous wives for the most part have influence over vicious husbands, like Herodias over Herod, because he was a money-lover, a fornicator, and a drunkard. They take advantage of their husbands' weakness and keep them under their thumb.

The desire of a woman to rule the state is madness. Catherine the Great, the wisest of all queens, when the military situation became difficult, even gave up. The great Russian commander Suvorov came to her, turned on his heel, crowed the rooster and said: “A chicken is not a bird and a woman is not a person.” You women should not be offended by this, because a woman is not the whole, but a part of the whole. The part cannot be the main one. For example, eyes remain eyes, hands remain arms, legs remain legs. These parts and other parts of the body cannot be the head. The woman is a part, not the head; the head is the husband.

The Gospel says that the Lord fed five thousand people in the desert - except for wives and children (Matthew 14:21). A wife must know why she was created, know her purpose. She is her husband’s assistant and must raise her children in the fear of God. Those Christian wives who understand this purpose are good mothers, sisters, and wives. And blessed are those who recognize this and do not strive for what is not given to them by God - to be the head of their husband.

If a husband has such shortcomings as drunkenness, the wife should forgive her husband for this weakness, because she herself is not without weaknesses. Whatever the husband is, he is the head of the house, he is the owner.

The Apostle Paul writes in his letter to the Corinthians that a wife should remain silent in the temple of God, that is, she should not teach in the temple of God; She must remain silent at home, since the head is the husband, and ask him what is not clear.

Let's see what befell Herod, Herodias and Salome after such an atrocity. They suffered a heavy punishment from God. The Roman emperor sent them into exile, where they spent their lives in poverty and dishonor. And Herodias’ daughter Salome was walking along the river, the ice broke, she danced under the ice with her feet, and her head was cut off by an ice floe. This severed head was brought to her mother, Herodias, and Herod.

The head of our Christian society are priests who lead their wives and children into the Kingdom of God, constantly teaching that one must go to the Kingdom of God through humility. But among our Christian wives there are many evil Herodias who do not accept these teachings of the priests, but themselves want to teach them. But whatever the priest, he is a servant of God, invested with authority from above.

I receive whole stacks of letters from evil Christian women who want to lecture us, priests, and even threaten: if you don’t do it the way I want, then I’ll go complain higher. At first I read these letters, and then I began to recognize them by their handwriting and, knowing that there was nothing smart in them, but only dirt and stupidity, without reading them, I began to throw them into the stove. All these Herodias are standing here in the temple!

Each monastery has its own charter, which must be obeyed. But women, both visitors and locals, want to introduce their own rules. In the mornings we have a fraternal prayer service, which can only be attended by all the brethren. And we, priests, out of Christian love, allow strangers to attend this prayer service. But how do these strangers behave? Before the brethren, they rush to venerate even the miraculous image of the Lady and the relics of the Venerable Martyr Cornelius, they walk on salt, lick the entire iconostasis in the Assumption Church, they walk where no one except the priest should set foot. The brethren also sometimes disturb the order, and the order should be like this: first the head of the monastery should venerate the miraculous image, then the brethren, and then the parishioners. We sometimes act rudely, restraining disorderly people, but this does not help much, and they do not like us for it.

Christian wives! In order for you to receive salvation, you must listen only to Orthodox priests, and not to yourself or anyone on the side, especially people in black robes who often teach others but do not correct themselves. If there is something you don’t understand, come and ask in the simplicity of your soul: why are you rude or something else, and we will explain.

So, let us humble ourselves, cut off all pride, the desire to rule, and then, with God’s help, we will be saved. Amen.

Archimandrite Alipy (Voronov)

100th birthday

Abbot of the Pskov-Pechersky Monastery, Archimandrite Alypiy

Archimandrite Alipius (in the world Ivan Mikhailovich Voronov; July 28, 1914, born in the village of Tarchikha, Lobanovskaya volost, Bronnitsky district, Moscow province, Russian Empire - reposed on March 12, 1975 in the Holy Dormition Pskov-Pechersk Monastery) - clergyman of the Russian Orthodox Church , archimandrite, icon painter, artist, collector.

From July 28, 1959 to 1975, abbot of the Pskov-Pechersky Monastery.

Savva Yamshchikov and Archimandrite Alipiy. Restorer and abbot.

Hitler's worst mistake was that if he had fought, as he himself said, with the Bolsheviks, perhaps the war would have turned out differently. But he fought with the Russian people, with our people and with their unshakable faith.

Savva Vasilievich Yamshchikov

Savva Vasilievich, you are one of the authors of the wonderful book “Archimandrite Alipiy. Man, artist, warrior, abbot.” It is known that you had the opportunity to be close to him for quite a long time. Please tell us how you met this wonderful shepherd and man?

In general, I have been lucky enough to meet a lot of amazing people in my life. Mostly these people, of course, are of the older generation - they were my teachers, from whom I studied directly, with whom I communicated for years, decades. With some these meetings were shorter. First of all, these are my university teachers, professors of the pre-revolutionary school. Many of them returned to teach at the university after serving significant sentences in the dungeons of the Gulag.

I will never forget our wonderful professor Viktor Mikhailovich Vasilenko, to whom in 1956 I came to study at the art history department at the university. I came to study, and he had just been released after a ten-year sentence.

These were people of amazing purity of soul and decency. They never complained about the terrible hardships and troubles that befell them, they accepted it as God’s punishment and tried to spend the rest of their lives telling us, the young, about the art that they themselves knew very well.

Then I was lucky enough not at the university, but at home to study for six years with the outstanding Russian art critic Nikolai Petrovich Sychev, who began his work in the pre-revolutionary years. He himself studied with the greatest specialist in Byzantine and Old Russian painting, Professor Ainalov. Sychev, together with our most famous scientist, academician Mikhail Pavlovich Kondakov, traveled for two years to holy places in Italy and Greece and copied many classical examples of painting. He wrote wonderful books on the history of ancient Russian and Macedonian art, and he was also an excellent restorer. When Nikolai Petrovich left the camps in 1944, he was the first to head our department of the All-Russian Restoration Center, which was located in the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent on Bolshaya Ordynka. Moreover, he was not allowed to come to Moscow for the whole week, so he lived in Vladimir and came only on Saturday and Sunday to inspect the work of our department. These were brilliant lessons.

None of our teachers succumbed for a minute to the atheistic Moloch who dominated our country. They continued to believe in God and serve God.

In Pskov, where I began to go on business trips as a restorer, I met Sychev’s student Leonid Alekseevich Tvorogov, who studied with him in the post-revolutionary years, and also spent his twenty years in the camps. Worked in the Pskov museum. He was a brilliant expert on Pskov, ancient Russian Pskov literature and icon painting. He was a true patriot of Pskov and always told us: “Stay in Pskov, and you will make a lot of world discoveries. There is an inexhaustible storehouse of materials, documents, and monuments here.” And these years of life and work together with Leonid Alekseevich Tvorogov are also unforgettable for me.

In Pskov, I met our outstanding scientist, researcher, poet Lev Nikolaevich Gumilyov, the son of Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilyov and Anna Andreevna Akhmatova. I became friends with him for many years and was one of his students. Lev Nikolaevich is a man who created his own theory and wrote brilliant books that are now reference books for us. He also spent a huge part of his life in dungeons and, again, never complained about it. Lev Nikolaevich taught us not only by passing on his scientific methods to us, introducing us to his theory, he taught us to live without complaining about fate.

Archimandrite Alipy (Voronov)

And among all my teachers, perhaps the main place belongs to Archimandrite Alypiy (Voronov), the abbot of the Pskov-Pechersky Monastery. It is not surprising that all this is connected with Pskov, since it is my favorite city. I spent more than one year there while on business trips, and now, with God’s help, I go there often. And that’s where I met him. Father invited me to come through one of my acquaintances, a restorer, because he knew about the icon exhibitions that I was doing at that time. He had my albums on ancient Russian painting, a catalog of exhibitions, my articles, and he just wanted to get to know me. And it was, perhaps, one of the most unforgettable meetings in my life.

They always greet you, as they say, by their clothes. Only then, over time, do they begin to get to know the person better. During your first meeting with Father Alypiy, what do you remember about his appearance, what struck you and has not been forgotten to this day?

Right from the first day, as soon as we met, I saw his amazing eyes, full of kindness: not sugary kindness, but the kindness of a person who went through the war, who knew what the horrors of war are.

Then he told us a lot about his military life. And one day I asked him why he, such a handsome, young, very capable artist, immediately after the war went to a monastery. But he told me: “Savva, it was so scary there! I saw so much death, so much blood that I gave my word - if I survive, I will serve God for the rest of my life and go to a monastery.” When the war ended, he organized an exhibition of his military works in Moscow, in the Hall of Columns of the House of Unions. She was popular. He organized an exhibition and immediately left as a monk at the Trinity-Sergius Lavra. It is necessary to note a special detail - Father Alypiy did not graduate from either theological seminary or the Academy, he went there with obedience in his main profession - the profession of an artist, and became a restorer. He was very warmly received by the Holy Archimandrite of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, His Holiness Patriarch Alexy, and instructed him to carry out restoration work in the Lavra.

Before that, restoration work there in churches and with painting monuments was carried out by a team led by Academician Igor Grabar, with whom, by the way, Archimandrite Alypiy studied in the pre-war years. But, as the priest later said, this brigade did not work very honestly: they took a lot of money, but the result was not very good. Having looked closely, he turned to his teacher: “Dear teacher! Unfortunately, the results of your work do not meet our requests and our requirements.” And he himself led a team of restorers, and for several years he brought many monuments of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra into order.

You said that there have always been warm relations between Patriarch Alexy I and Father Alypius. What do you think connected them? What did Father tell you about His Holiness Alexy?

Archimandrite Alypiy was very close to His Holiness Patriarch Alexy I. In Novgorod, he was the cell attendant of Archbishop Arseny (Stadnitsky), later a metropolitan, who did a lot to preserve monuments of ancient icon painting and fresco painting in Novgorod. My teacher Nikolai Sychev, while still young, before the revolution, with the help of Bishop Arseny, created an ecclesiastical and archaeological museum in Novgorod, which became the basis of the brilliant Historical, Artistic and Architectural Novgorod Museum-Reserve.

Patriarch Alexy I treated Father Alypius very warmly. There was another reason - Archimandrite Alypius had an amazing voice and hearing, and musical abilities. The Patriarch loved to concelebrate with him, especially in his courtyard in Peredelkino, in Lukin, where the priest also did a lot to restore the decoration of a small church.

At the end of the fifties, His Holiness the Patriarch instructed Archimandrite Alipius, then still a young monk, to restore the destroyed, but fortunately never closed, Pskov-Pechersky Monastery.

As you know, the monastery was badly damaged during the Great Patriotic War. The devastation, as described by eyewitnesses, was terrible. Did you happen to see the monastery in that deplorable state?

Yes. Certainly. I was there for the first time even when Father Alypius had not yet received this monastery under his protection. I saw these dilapidated walls; cows freely passed into the monastery territory through gaps in the wall. But three or four years passed from the moment when Archimandrite Alypiy was there, and I heard that restoration work was going on there. The work was carried out by my Pskov friends, architects and restorers, under the guidance of the famous master Vsevolod Petrovich Smirnov. Father Alypiy took part in the restoration himself - as a designer, he did not hesitate to take a trowel and work on laying out these walls. And when I got there with Vsevolod Petrovich Smirnov, I saw the monastery as some kind of restoration miracle. It was transformed, as if a caring hand had walked along the fortress walls, put the temples in order - they were surprisingly delicately and harmoniously painted, the domes were gilded or painted with appropriate paints. I was simply amazed. But that time I was not able to meet Archimandrite Alypius, and only a year later our meeting took place.

I will tell you an episode from our acquaintance with him. When we were talking, he said, “Where are you from?” I say: “I’m from Paveletskaya Embankment.” “Oh, near the Paveletsky station. “And I,” he says, “grew up in the village of Kishkino, Mikhnevsky district.” And I tell him: “Father, I spent eight years there - my mother and grandmother rented a dacha and lived with the peasants.” He says to me: “Yes, you and I were picking mushrooms in the same forest. Do you remember the big oak there? How many mushrooms did you pick there?” I say: “There were such visits when one day I sat down, crawled, and collected five hundred mushrooms.” Father Alypiy: “Here I am for the same amount. There is such an amazing oak there. Only white ones grow under it.”

This is the kind of person he was - simple, sincere, and immediately endeared you with his openness. Almost ten years of living together next to my father became for me one of the main chapters, so to speak, in my life. Everything that I and my fellow colleagues did, we all measured against what Father Alypiy would say, as he would suggest.

Did he often insist on his opinion or wishes? I mean the conversations you had with your priest about faith, about Orthodoxy?

No, what are you! He wasn't intrusive. He didn’t say: “Let’s go to church in the morning...”. His preaching came from within, and he often read these sermons to us on the Holy Hill, or at the table, while drinking tea, or during walks in the vicinity of the monastery. Of course, we accepted and went to services, but on major holidays, when tens of thousands of people gathered there, he had no time for us, because he was very busy. But we saw him on these holidays, especially on the Dormition of the Virgin Mary, on the patronal feast of the monastery - and that was already enough. You should have seen his enlightened face!

In general, he was a servant of the Mother of God. Our Lady was everything in his life. It was not for nothing that when he was dying, Archimandrite Agafangel, one of his most interesting companions, wrote in his farewell speech that when Father Alypius was dying, his last words were the following: “Here She is, here She is. I see Her, the Mother of God. Give me a pencil and paper! And he began to make a sketch and died with a pencil in his hand, trying to capture the moment the Virgin Mary appeared to him.

You said that Father Alypiy had the gift of a restorer and an artist. Is this a profession, after all, of the kind of high aesthetics, is it far from those economic problems that Father Alypius had to solve as a governor? Did he succeed in this combination?

Still would! He did everything, delved into everything, and everything worked out great for him. I saw this myself. Archimandrite Alypius was generally a universal person; he could do everything. He was an artist, he was a builder, he was a poet, he was, first of all, a preacher, he was the caretaker of an entire monastic brethren. He was a business manager - every tree and bush planted there, from the rose garden to the centuries-old trees - all of this was under his supervision.

I will never forget one incident. He and I were walking through the monastery, and there, on the slope from St. Michael’s Cathedral, a monk was mowing the grass, and suddenly (and the priest was a very temperamental person), Father Alypiy ran up sharply to this monk, raised his fists to the sky and began to frantically shout at him: “ What are you doing! What are you doing! Who allowed you to do this?!” The monk actually dropped his scythe out of fright. I then asked him: “Father, what did he do, why would you do this to him...?” “Yes, there are oak trees that I brought from Mikhailovsky, from the Pushkin estate and planted, they have been growing for the second year, and he mows them down! For me, this is the same thing as killing a child!”

Or, say, those famous pyramids made of sawn and split firewood. How carefully they laid out their efforts, and this process was personally monitored by Father Alypiy. You know, when logs are stacked on top of each other, the entire structure gradually rises up, and one log is placed at the very top. The wood is being properly dried and ventilated at the same time. It was so beautiful! Father himself made amazing pickles of cucumbers, tomatoes, mushrooms - he also did this himself. Cucumbers in general were famous not only in the monastery. Cucumbers were salted in the following way: in the fall they were lowered on a rope in a barrel into the river that flowed through the monastery, and the cucumbers were freshly salted and lightly salted until spring. The then Pskov party leadership sent to the monastery for a barrel of cucumbers on May 1 or Victory Day to hold ceremonial receptions. He also salted the tomatoes. When it was mushroom time, local residents collected mushrooms and brought them to the monastery, and Father Alypius himself bought and took them from them. I will never forget these porcini mushrooms that were literally amber in color. I've never tried anything like this again in my life. He did all this himself.

One day we were sitting with him in the evening, having tea, it was already quite late - we sat for a long time: firstly, he talked a lot, and secondly, it was interesting to listen. There was no time for sleep. And suddenly Father Theodorit comes - he was a paramedic and beekeeper in the monastery - and says: “Father, your favorite cow is there, something incomprehensible is happening to her - some kind of writhing, pain.” Father Alypiy says: “Well, Savva, let’s go and have a look.” We came to the barn, he began to feel her, and then he said: “Savva, you go away, you weren’t in the war, now Father Theodorit and I will perform an operation on her - she swallowed something.” And literally an hour later he came back happy and said: “Everything is fine, we gave her anesthesia, cut her belly, she ends up in the pasture swallowing a can of canned food. We got it out of her, and the day after tomorrow she will be on the mend.”

You can’t help but be amazed at the talents of this shepherd! Father Alypius, indeed, as you said, can be called a universal man. But still, restoration work remained his favorite activity - right?

Yes this is true. Father Alypius, using his skills as a restorer to the fullest, simply resurrected the monastery from the ruins. Before my eyes, a complete restoration of the monastery took place. He used me and my friends and colleagues to restore monuments and icons. And we gladly responded to his requests. I remember one sad story related to this. You will understand later why she is sad. Case One summer day he says: “Savva, let’s go to the Assumption Cave Cathedral, there behind the iconostasis (the iconostasis of huge icons was late - the beginning of the 20th century), it seems to me - there should be frescoes there from the 16th century. When the temple was being built, perhaps the Venerable Martyr Cornelius himself even wrote them.”

The Venerable Martyr Cornelius is one of the founders of the Pskov-Pechersky Monastery, whose head Ivan the Terrible cut off in anger, and then, repenting, he himself carried the lifeless body along the road to the St. Nicholas Church, and this road is still called the Bloody Road. St. Cornelius himself wrote icons and copied books, and there, in the temple, according to the priest, there should be frescoes. It was a sunny Sunday and I didn’t really want to work. I say: “Father, if you take out these icons there, they weigh a hundred kilograms.” And he says: “Everything has already been taken out - your job is to take the solvents and go.” I took a basic cleaning agent, came there - and there was already a stepladder there. “Here, let’s rinse at a height slightly higher than human height,” says the priest. He had already calculated everything in advance. And there, behind the icons, there is such a layer of dirt and soot that nothing, no frescoes, are visible.

When I washed the first window, a magnificent 16th-century fresco face of St. Savva the Sanctified was revealed. Father Alypiy says: “Although he is not your namesake (my namesake is Savva Vishersky), but still Savva. There will be eight huge figures here - taller than human height." “Okay,” I say, “father, I’ll go to Moscow, take my colleague to help, and we’ll restore it.” And he says: “No, no Moscow - you’re under arrest. Call Kirill in Moscow so that he can come urgently.” And so he didn’t let us go here for ten days, until we washed all the frescoes, and until the amazing ancient Russian beauty was revealed. And the priest had already arranged everything: they installed doors to the deacon, Kirill painted icons in the style of the 19th century, and surrounded the place with a metal fence. It was joy. Archimandrite Alypiy immediately published his discovery in the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate; he instructed me to publish it in the magazine of decorative arts, then in an album about Pskov. And then he once told me: “Savva, look at the frescoes for now, if I die, they will kill me again.” I say: “Father, what are you saying, this is unique, this is what Saint Cornelius wrote, this is like relics, like the flow of myrrh.” A month after his death, in 1975, the icons were put in place, and for thirty years now we have been fighting to get it open again. And I cared a lot about this, and I tell the clergy about this.

Some time after this incident, Kirill, my friend, became interested in enamels in the Byzantine style: he restored the technique of their production, since we had a kiln in our workshop. Everything was done according to Byzantine models - and it was not some kind of hack work. Kirill's processing principle was completely restored. When we showed the first samples to the priest, he said: “We need these enamel icons to be embedded in the wall of the monastery.” We first made a small icon for the St. Nicholas Church: it was placed and solemnly consecrated. Then they made a large icon in front of the entrance, above the holy gates of the Assumption. It took us a long time to make these icons—it took us a whole year. Then they made the Mother of God Hodegetria where St. Nicholas Church and the Bloody Road are.

Father Alypiy received great pleasure from our work - we saw and felt this. And then one day Kirill and I arrived at the monastery, we looked, and not a single icon of ours was there. The priest had a decisive character. We think: “So I looked at it, didn’t like it and removed it.” We come to his chambers. The cell attendant met us. At this time the priest was changing his clothes. We look - Nikola is hanging in the red corner with a lamp - he didn’t reject it. He comes out and says: “Well, did you miss your enamels?.. The story is completely paradoxical. A delegation of Orthodox priests arrived, I think from America, looked at these enamels, then went to Moscow. And at a reception with His Holiness Patriarch Pimen, they said: “Your Archimandrite Alypius is a billionaire, he has Byzantine enamels, which at world auctions cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, just embedded in the wall.” The priests took them for real Byzantine enamels. Pimen immediately called His Holiness and told them to remove it. Alypiy began to explain to him, but he didn’t care: “No, that’s not necessary.”

These enamels were removed, and after the death of Father Alypius they were lost. Archimandrite Zinon only preserved Nikola.

It is known that Father Alypiy took a tough position in relations with the authorities. Some government officials were even afraid of him. Have you witnessed such relationships?

He was generally very good at finding a common language with the authorities. He found a common language, first of all, in the fact that he did not allow the only monastery in the Soviet Union to be closed when the wholesale destruction of churches by the robber Khrushchev was underway. When representatives of the authorities came to the priest, he told them: “Look at the monastery - what a deployment here, tanks will not get through here, half of my brothers are front-line soldiers, we are armed, we will fight to the last bullet, you can only take us out of the sky with aviation. And as soon as the first plane appears over the monastery, in a few minutes the whole world will be told about it on the Voice of America and the BBC.

He had a good relationship with the first secretary of the Pskov regional party committee, Ivan Stepanovich Gustov, by the way, a very decent person.

Father Alypius always did everything for the good of the monastery. Of course, they found fault with him, and there were frequent trials. “Where did you buy the timber? It's stolen." And the priest answered: “Do we have shops? I would buy it in a store with pleasure.” “Where do you get incense?” — he was constantly pestered with such claims. He said: “Savva, if you write my hagiographic icon, be sure to write the stamps: twenty-five ships that I won.” So he was joking.

All of Russia came to see him. Ivan Semenovich Kozlovsky constantly visited all the holidays - our wonderful singer, and artists, and writers, and bosses went to see him - I saw the chairman of the Council of Ministers and our cosmonauts there. People came to see him, and he knew how to talk to everyone. But the main thing for him was service to God, he never forgot about it, and this did not become a wall for those who came, and thus he, as a catcher of human souls, succeeded more than anyone else, converting people far from God to ours. great Orthodox faith.

The book you published about Father Alipia talks about his most important ministry - the ministry of a shepherd who leads people to God. Please tell us about this?

I know, I saw that Archimandrite Alypius opened the eyes of many people to the world again. You can read all this in our book. He gave many the joy of communicating with God. How many underground artists came to Father Alypius and abandoned their demonic activities and turned to real realistic painting. Such an example is given in the book in the memoirs of Father Sergius Simakov. Father Sergius was also an underground artist, he came with his father, saw Archimandrite Alypiy, talked with him and began to paint pictures on a religious theme, and not only began to paint pictures, but became a priest, rector of a church near Uglich. Last year, his mother, who shared his obedience with him, died, and he now accepted monasticism - he became Hieromonk Raphael and paints magnificent paintings related to Russian history, to the history of the Russian Church. And there are many such examples.

The task of those who participated in the creation of this book is to glorify the name of Archimandrite Alypius. Vladimir Aleksandrovich Studenikin is one of the creators of the book, a churchgoer, he graduated from the Leningrad Theological Academy, and practiced during the summer holidays at the Pskov-Pechersk Monastery. Father Alypiy loved him very much and trusted him to lead excursions. Volodya also learned antiques - Father Alypiy instilled in him this taste of a good collector. Vladimir is now one of the real, good collectors, he has an antique store on Prechistenka “Orthodox-Antique”. Two years ago Volodya came to me and said: “Savva, I’ll give you money, we must definitely publish a book in memory of the priest.” We first conceived it as a memoir, and then, when the book was already ready and was in the printing house, they gave me the manuscript of Andrei Ponomarev, a talented young historian who wrote a magnificent chronicle of the life of Archimandrite Alypius, and at the same time Volodya caught it on the Internet. I called him from Pskov, offered to publish excerpts from the manuscript in a book, and he told me: “We won’t count the money, we’ll publish it in full.” And this publication, I believe, is superbly maintained from the ecclesiastical side, and most importantly, it is a wonderful tribute to the memory of Archimandrite Alypius. We hope that after the book is published, there will be other people who will remember something about Father Alipia, and we will continue to perpetuate the memory of our father, who helps us live now. In our prayers we always turn to his bright image, we always remember him and always re-read his sermons, which are spoken not in official language, but in the language of an enlightened, intelligent man, and at the same time, of simple origin, from a peasant family.

People like Father Alypiy are gradually becoming less and less in our lives. There are few lamps that illuminate and sanctify our lives. More and more of the evil spirits rushing towards us that you spoke about. What can we do?

This evil spirit, this grief that has befallen our Motherland - everyone knows about it and everyone sees it. And we must fight this. Everyone must fight in their place. Don't give in, because they are demons. And the Lord was tempted by the devil, and we are mere mortals, they knock on us all the time and knock with their hooves. What to do? Pray, work and believe.

You know, I believe that all this evil spirits that rushed towards us, into our lives, is a phenomenon of troubled times, it will all pass. And what our people did, defeating fascism, not allowing us to conquer our Motherland - the exploits of people like Archimandrite Alypiy and millions of our soldiers and officers - their exploits will never be forgotten.

Hitler’s worst mistake, our emigrants also said this, and our wonderful thinker Ivan Ilyin wrote about this superbly, that if he had fought, as he himself said, with the Bolsheviks, perhaps the war would have turned out differently. But he fought with the Russian people, with our people and with their unshakable faith. Therefore, this war of his was doomed to defeat in advance thanks to people like Archimandrite Alypius.