Pavel Gruzdev whose will you be. Pavel (Gruzdev Pavel Aleksandrovich)

Archimandrite Pavel Gruzdev is one of the most respected elders of the Russian Orthodox Church. The life of this man was not easy and full of difficult problems. However, the father never stopped hoping in God and believing in human kindness.

Childhood in a monastery

The reverend was born to a simple village couple. The exact date of birth is not known. Some sources say that the real date is August 3, 1911, others say January 1910. However, the man himself celebrated his name day on the day of memory of Pavel Obnorsky, in whose honor he was named. Now the father's birthday is January 23, 1910.

His family was very poor. In addition to the boy, the parents also raised two smaller girls. My father worked in a butcher's shop, so they still somehow survived. However, in 1914 the breadwinner was taken into the army, and he spent many years in the First World War.

Mom had nothing to feed the children, so little Pavel Gruzdev and his sister begged. They went from house to house and asked for food. Good and poor peasants helped in any way they could: potatoes, bread, vegetables. So the kids came to the Afanasevsky Monastery. They were recognized by their aunts who served as nuns there. The women decided that they could take care of the children, so they took them in with them. Thus, the future Father Pavel got acquainted with the spiritual life.

The path of the righteous

Within the walls of the monastery, the boy was not idle. In winter, he carried firewood to the stove, and in summer he grazed cattle and weeded vegetable gardens. Tranquility, prayers and services he liked very much. He later began working as an acolyte. So, in the monastery walls, childhood passed well and happily.

In 1928, the guy was supposed to be taken into the army. However, the commission decided that the young man was mentally ill.

Hard times have come. Temples were burned, shrines were robbed, and believers were persecuted. The Afanasievsky Monastery was closed. Therefore, Pavel Gruzdev moved to Novgorod, namely to the Khutyn monastery. However, the man worked in shipbuilding. In his free time, he prayed, helped the sanctuary, and kept order.

However, in 1932 this monastery was also closed by the authorities. Pavel found shelter in his own home. For some time he worked in the barnyard. And when the territory of their village fell under the basin of the reservoir, they dismantled the house and transported it along the river to Tutaev.

Jail for Faith

For the first time, they wanted to deprive the priest of his freedom back in 1938. However, at that time there was no evidence of his guilt. In the new place, the layman continued to go to church and even sang in the choir. He lived at this point with his family until 1941. On May 13, he and a dozen other people were arrested as "socially dangerous elements." So, Pavel Gruzdev ended up in the Yaroslavl prison. If not for these circumstances, perhaps the Christian would have ended up at the front.

The righteous man did not hide his faith, so he was beaten more than once for Orthodoxy. Then the man knocked out almost all of his teeth and ruined his eyesight. 15 people were kept in a small cell, where even there was not enough air for everyone. Some of his comrades were shot, and Father Pavel was sentenced to 6 years in prison.

The conditions there were terrible: cold, cramped, without proper food. A good layman was mocked by both the guards and the other prisoners. They called him a "holy man". Once they tied him to a tree at night in winter. After this incident, the father walked without problems. And one day before Christmas, a man asked for a day off to pray for the holiday, promising that he would work overtime later. For such a request, the prison authorities beat him so hard that he lay for several weeks, fighting for his life.

kind soul

Despite the terrible accusations, the guards knew that the good-natured father Pavel Gruzdev was not capable of meanness and escape. He was appointed as a railroad lineman. The father did not get tired of helping people even in prison. I went to the paths through the forest. In the summer he collected berries in buckets there, and in the fall - mushrooms. The booty was shared with both prisoners and guards. During the war years, food was especially tight, so forest gifts saved more than one life.

Once he was late from work and did not find evening bread in his cell. It was useless to ask for an extra piece. Tired and hungry, he continued to work. And somehow, on his section of the track, he saw horses knocked down by a train. It turned out that the shepherd fell asleep from fatigue, and the animals ran away. When the father came to the culprit, he just put a noose around his neck.

Almost from the next world, the father of the shepherd pulled out. Later, the unsuccessful suicide was to be tried as a supporter of the Germans who tried to sabotage the railway. However, the wise old man Pavel Gruzdev stood up for the poor man. Shepherd was acquitted, given 5 years probation. After this incident, almost every evening my father found an extra piece of bread under his pillow.

New penal servitude

After the end of the war, the father was released. At home, he continued to live his life. However, he did not enjoy freedom for long. In 1949, the man was again convicted as a criminal dangerous to the system. This time he was exiled to Kazakhstan as a free migrant.

For several weeks, a man traveled in a cramped carriage to a new place. And upon arrival there, it turned out that he and two other priests were not on the list of criminals. The authorities said that they did not need these people, but in order to avoid misunderstandings, they advised me to go to the local police. Three men spent the night in the forest. And in the morning Pavel Gruzdev saw the church. The priests immediately went to the temple, put candles there, and gave all the money they had left to alms. People approached the new arrivals and asked where they were from. When the locals learned the history of the Orthodox, they fed them and gave them shelter.

The life of a priest

Father Pavel settled with a married couple, where they accepted him as their son. He worked as a builder and helped his grandparents with the housework.

In 1954, the man was acquitted. However, the couple with whom he lived loved him so much that they did not want to let him go. Pavel said that he was going to visit relatives. But he immediately knew that he would not return to Kazakhstan.

Subsequently, the man was tonsured a monk and given the dignity. His kindness and sincerity were known far beyond the flock. People from all over the region came to listen to the sermon of the wise old man.

In 1983 he became archimandrite. A decade later, an eye disease made itself felt. He left the service, but continued to give good advice to all who asked. In all his life, the priest did not accumulate anything, dressed poorly, ate simply.

Life ended on January 13, 1996. The grave of Archimandrite Pavel Gruzdev is located near the parental graves, in the city of Tutaev.

Even today, priests come to the grave for help. And his instructive stories, which were recorded by supporters, are still touching and make you believe in the power of the Lord.

Pavel Alexandrovich was born in 1910 in the village of Bolshoi Borok, Mologa district, into a peasant family.
The father was taken to the war, the family began to live in poverty, and in 1916 Pavel went to live with his aunts, the nun Evstoliya and the nuns Elena and Olga, in the Mologa Afanasyevsky convent; first, he grazed chickens, then cows and horses, and sang in the kliros. The wearing of the cassock of an eight-year-old novice was blessed by Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow, who lived for some time in the monastery. In 1928, he was declared unfit for military service due to " weak mental development ". For a short time he was a judge (from the memoirs of an old man) :

"Sometimes they come and tell us:

- There is a Decree! It is necessary to select judges from among the members of the Afanasievskaya Labor Artel.

From the monastery, that is.

- Good,- we agree. - And who to choose as assessors?
- And whoever you want, that and choose.

They chose me, Pavel Aleksandrovich Gruzdev. Need someone else. Whom? Olga, the chairman, she alone had high-heeled shoes. Without that, do not go to the assessors. I'm fine, except for the cassock and bast shoes, nothing. But as an elected assessor, they bought a good shirt, a crazy shirt with a turn-down collar. Ow! infection, and a tie! I tried on for a week, how to tie the court?

In a word, I became a court assessor. Let's go, the city of Mologa, the People's Court. The court announces: Assessors Samoilova and Gruzdev, take your seats. ". I was the first to enter the meeting room, followed by Olga. Fathers! My relatives, the table is covered with red cloth, a decanter of water ... I crossed myself. Olga Samoilova pushes me in the side and whispers in my ear:

- You, infection, at least do not be baptized, because the assessor!
- So it's not a demon, - I answered her.

Good! They announce the verdict, I listen, I listen ... No, that's not it! Wait, wait! I don’t remember, they were tried for what - did he steal something, was it a pood of flour or something else? “ Not,- I say - listen, you, the guy - the judge! After all, understand that his need made him steal something. Maybe the kids are hungry! ”

Yes, I say it with all my might, without looking back. Everyone looks at me and it became so quiet ...

Write attitude to the monastery: “ Don't send more fools as assessors." me, that means ", - the father clarified and laughed.

On May 13, 1941, Pavel Gruzdev, along with Hieromonk Nikolai and 11 other people, was arrested in the case of Archbishop Varlaam (Ryashentsev) of Yaroslavl. The arrested were kept in the prisons of Yaroslavl. For a long time, Pavel Gruzdev was in solitary confinement in complete isolation, then 15 people were placed in a single cell due to lack of space.

(prisoner Pavel Gruzdev, photo from file)

The prisoners did not have enough air, so they took turns crouching at the door gap near the floor to breathe.
During interrogations, Pavel was tortured: they beat him, almost all his teeth were knocked out, his bones were broken and his eyes were blinded, he began to lose his sight.
From the memoirs of an old man:

"During interrogations, the investigator shouted:" You, Gruzdev, if you do not die here in prison, then later you will remember my name with fear! You will remember her well - Spassky is my last name, investigator Spassky! Father Pavel told about this: He was perspicacious, an infection, fear, though I don’t have it, but I didn’t forget his last name, I will remember it to death. He knocked out all my teeth, only left one for divorce »."

He began his pastoral ministry after rehabilitation in 1958 and continued until his death in 1996. On March 9, 1958, in the Feodorovsky Cathedral in Yaroslavl, he was ordained a deacon by Bishop Isaiah of Uglich, and on March 16 - a presbyter. In August 1961, Archbishop Nikodim of Yaroslavl and Rostov was tonsured a monk.

He served as rector of the church in the village of Borzovo, Rybinsk region. Since 1960, he has been rector of the Trinity Church in the village of Verkhne-Nikulsky, Nekouzsky district (formerly Mologa district). He gained fame far beyond the village and even the region. A variety of people went to him for grace-filled consolation and solutions to life's problems. He taught Christian love simply: with parables, life stories, some of which were written down and later published. Father Pavel was a model of Christian non-acquisitiveness: despite his wide popularity, he ate and dressed very simply, during his whole life he did not accumulate any material values.

In 1961 he was awarded a purple skufia by the bishop, in 1963 - a pectoral cross by the patriarch, in 1971 - a club, in 1976 - a cross with decorations. Hieromonk since 1962, hegumen since 1966, archimandrite since 1983.

Father Pavel had the gift to heal diseases, especially skin diseases. He also knew how to heal people from such a terrible disease as despondency. According to Archpriest Sergius (Tsvetkov), even when Father Pavel lay blind, with his pipe in his side, he continued to joke until his last breath and did not lose his cheerfulness. And he healed people from despondency with just his presence.
That's how writes about this gift himself Fr. Sergius:

However, he healed not only from despondency. I remember my mother, after the unction, fell off the porch and broke some bone in her shoulder. The fracture was very painful, and the pain did not recede even for a minute. And the doctors couldn't really help. And my mother and I went to Father Pavel. And he tapped on her shoulder with his fist - that's all ... And the pain went away. I will not say that the bone has grown together right away or something else. No, the healing went on as usual. But the pain receded, left, - and for her then it was the pain that was the biggest burden. And there have been many such...

The priest had a gift to heal any skin diseases. Sometimes he used to make healing ointment in front of me. He put on the stole and mixed the components. I was watching. Once he said to me: Here you know the composition, but you will not succeed, you need to know the word ". According to doctors from Bork, Father Pavel cured any skin diseases with his ointment, even those that doctors refused. Even the elder said that one person received this gift from the Mother of God and passed it on to him. Although I think he may have been that person. Father Paul's love for the Queen of Heaven was boundless.

Father Pavel often wrote down his memoirs. Here are some of them included in the book My relatives":
The happiest day (from the memoirs of an old man) :

Archimandrite Pavel, shortly before his death, in the 90s of our (already past) century, admitted: “My relatives, I had the happiest day in my life. Listen.

Somehow they brought girls to our camps. All of them are young, young, probably, and they were not twenty. Them " benders"They called. Among them is one beauty - her braid is up to her toes and she is sixteen years old at the most. And now she is so roaring, so crying ..." How sad for her - think, - this girl, that she is so killed, she cries so ".

I came closer, I asked ... And there were about two hundred prisoners gathered here, both our campers and those who were with the escort. " And why is the girl so rebellious? "Someone answers me, from their own, new arrivals:" We drove for three days, they didn’t give us expensive bread, they had some kind of overspending. So they came, they paid us for everything at once, they gave us bread. But she took care of it, didn’t eat - a day, or something, what a lean day she had. And this ration, which in three days was stolen, somehow snatched from her. For three days she didn’t eat, now they would share it with her, but we don’t even have bread, we’ve already eaten everything ".

And I had a stash in the barracks - not a stash, but a ration for today - a loaf of bread! I ran to the barracks ... And I received eight hundred grams of bread as a worker. What kind of bread, you know, but still bread. I take this bread and run back. I bring this bread to the girl and give it to me, and she says to me: " No, no need! I do not sell my honor for bread! “And I didn’t take bread, fathers! My dear, dear ones! Yes, Lord! I don’t know what kind of honor it is that a person is ready to die for it?

I put this piece under her arm and ran out of the zone, into the forest! I climbed into the bushes, knelt down ... and such were my tears of joy, no, not bitter. And I think the Lord will say:

- I was hungry, and you, Pavlukha, fed me.
- When, Lord?
- Yes, here's that girl, a Benderovka. You fed me!

That was and is the happiest day of my life, and I have lived a lot."

Batiushka was much more than capable of a well-aimed word. Once in Borki (this is a settlement of scientists in the Yaroslavl region), Father Pavel was sitting at a table with academic physicists, among whom were his spiritual children. There was some respectable scientist there who ate almost nothing, and about each dish he said: I can’t do this, my liver is sick ... from this heartburn ... it’s too spicy ... etc. Father Pavel listened, listened and commented: ROTTEN ASS AND GINGERbread DRISHET!

And again from the memoirs of Archpriest Sergius :

The Lord extended his days. The father said: Those who beat me, who knocked out my teeth, them, the poor; a year later they were shot, but the Lord gave me so many years of life ».

Sometimes I asked him: Father, the Lord helps you in everything, reveals such profound things... Is it because you carried such a feat in your life? He always answered these questions: And I have nothing to do with it, these are camps! "I remember how he talked with Mother Varvara, abbess of the Tolga Monastery, and answered her similar question:" These are all camps, if not for the camps, I would be just nothing! »

I think he was referring to the passionate nature of every person, especially a young one. Indeed, it was suffering that forged from him such an amazing ascetic, an old man. He did not like to talk about his kindness, but sometimes it slipped by itself. One day we were walking with him, walking around the temple. He showed me a picturesque secluded place: Here, I used to read the Psalter from cover to cover »...

Father Pavel often told a joke about a patient who had an operation under anesthesia. He woke up and asked the man with the keys: Doctor, how was the operation? » He replies: « I'm not a doctor, but the apostle Peter ". This anecdote has its own backstory. And it was like that.
According to the story of Father Pavel, when he was undergoing a difficult operation to remove his gallbladder, he suddenly woke up in a different world. There he met an acquaintance, Archimandrite Seraphim (rector of the Varlaamo-Khutyn Spaso-Preobrazhensky Monastery in Novgorod) and saw many strangers with him. Father Pavel asked the archimandrite what kind of people they were. He replied: “ These are those for whom you always pray with the words: remember, Lord, those whom there is no one to remember, for the sake of need. They all came to help you ". Apparently, thanks to their prayers, the priest then survived and served people a lot more.

In the late 1980s, Father Pavel began to rapidly lose his sight and became almost blind. He could no longer serve alone, without assistants, and in 1992 he was forced to leave the state for health reasons. He settled in Tutaev, at the Resurrection Cathedral, continuing to serve and preach, to receive the people, despite a serious illness and poor eyesight. Priests and laity found answers to life's questions from him and received consolation.
Spiritual vision did not leave the elder. His simple, childishly pure faith, bold, constant prayer came to God and brought grace-filled consolation, a sense of the close presence of God and healing to those for whom he asked. There are numerous testimonies of his foresight. Father Pavel hid these grace-filled gifts under the cover of foolishness.

The funeral took place on January 15, the day of the memory of the Monk Seraphim of Sarov, whom he especially revered, living according to his commandment: " Acquire the Spirit of Peace - and around you thousands will be saved ".
The funeral service and burial was performed by Archbishop Mikhei of Yaroslavl and Rostov, concelebrated by 38 priests and seven deacons, with a large gathering of people from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yaroslavl and other places.

Archimandrite Pavel was buried, as he bequeathed, at the Leontief cemetery in the left-bank part of the city of Romanov-Borisoglebsk.

(the grave of Archimandrite Pavel Gruzdev at the Leontief cemetery in Tutaev, served by the brethren of the Sretensky Monastery, headed by Fr. Tikhon Shevkunov (now Bishop Tikhon of Yegoryevsky))

What a wonderful father he was! And although he is not glorified in the face of saints (today), it is believed that he is praying for. Paul before the Throne of God for all of us sinners.

Pray, father, for our Russian country, for its authorities and army, for us, for our relatives and loved ones, for those who hate us and create misfortune for us. Pray, father Paul, that the Lord would forgive us our countless sins and have mercy on us all!

With love,
rb Dmitry

See also in audio format.

FOREWORD

The name of the Yaroslavl elder Archimandrite Paul (Gruzdev) is revered on Valaam and Mount Athos, in Moscow and St. Petersburg, in Ukraine and Siberia. During his lifetime Father Pavel was glorified by many gifts. The Lord heard his prayers and answered them. This righteous man lived a mighty life with God and with the people, sharing all the trials that befell Russia in the 20th century. The small homeland of Pavel Gruzdev - the county town of Mologa - was flooded by the waters of the Rybinsk man-made sea, and the Mologa exile became a migrant, and then a camp resident, having served a sentence of eleven years for his faith. And again he returned to the Mologa land - more precisely, what was left of it after the flood - and served here as a priest in the village of Verkhne-Nikulsky for almost thirty years and three years ...

Among all the gifts of Archimandrite Paul, his gift of a storyteller is remarkable: he seemed to heal the interlocutor with the life-giving power of his word. Everyone who talked with the priest, who listened to his stories, recalls with one voice that they left Father Pavel “as if on wings”, their inner world was so joyfully transformed. We hope that readers of Batiushka's stories will also feel that joyful spiritual strength in communion with the Yaroslavl elder. As Father Pavel said: "I will die - I will not leave you."

PEDIGREE OF PAVEL GRUZDEV

The genealogy of Pavel Gruzdev is rooted in the ancient land of Mologa. “Once upon a time, the peasant Terenty (Terekha) lived in the village of Bolshoi Borok,” Father Pavel writes in his diary notebooks. “This Terenty had a son Alexei, who had a crooked wife Fekla Karpovna.” Among the six children of Terenty (the Gruzdevs in the old days were called Terekhins) there was a son Alexei Terentyich, and he had a second son named Ivan Alekseevich Gruzdev - this is the grandfather of Fr. Paul. “An old man of medium height, a small blond beard, shrewd brown eyes and an invariable naso-warmer, hair cut like a pot, old Russian boots, an inferior jacket and an old cap, and work and care from morning till night,” Father Pavel recalls. The family is ten people, and “one put on the land, there was a cow in the yard, there was no horse.” “His wife was Marya Fominishna, a native of Petrov, from the village of Novoe Verkhovye, a dense, physically developed woman, naturally 40 percent deaf, with a wart on her left cheek,” Fr. Pavel his grandmother. - Summer in the field, winter - spinning, weaving, grandchildren raised. These workers had six children.” The first daughter of the Gruzdevs, Olga, after graduating from one grade of elementary school, went to the Mologa Afanasyevsky convent, where her paternal grandmother's sister, nun Evstoliya, lived and one aunt, nun Elena, also lived. Son Alexander was born in 1888. “After completing three classes of the parish school,” writes Fr. Pavel, - was sent by his parents to Rybinsk to a shop with a certain Adreyanov, but the unbearable child labor and inhuman brutal treatment of the owners forced him to flee on foot to Mologa and, without going home, begged to be a boy to Ievlev Alexander Pavlych, who had a butcher's shop, where he worked before the revolution, or rather, until 1914. Through the thickness of time, the ancient Mologa flickers, like the mysterious Kitezh through the waters of Svetloyar. Mologa, Mologa, and your golden legends now lie at the bottom! Houses and streets, churches and cemeteries, crosses and bell towers are flooded. Where is your holy fool Leshinka, who came to the Ievlevs' shop and asked the hostess: "Masha, Masha, give me a piglet," having received which, he immediately gave it to someone or stuffed it into some slot? Apparently, from his father, Alexander Ivanovich, Pavel Gruzdev retained the memory of one case. “Tatya and the owner loved to go hunting for ducks to the Holy Lake in the fall, there were plenty of them before. Once on a rainy autumn day with a lot of killed game, our hunters got lost. It was getting dark, and the rain was like a bucket. Where to go? Which side of Mologa? No orientation. But suddenly they saw in the distance, as it were, a column of fire rising from the earth, stretching into the sky; and they, rejoiced, went to this landmark. After two or three hours, Alexander Pavlych (Ievlev) and his aunt ran into the cemetery fence in the city of Mologa. Having climbed over the fence, they saw a fresh grave, on which Leshinka was praying on his knees with his hands raised to the sky, this wondrous radiance emanated from him. Alexander Pavlych fell on his knees in front of him with the words: “Lyosha, pray for us,” to which he replied: “Pray yourself and don’t tell anyone that you saw me here.” Leshinka's full name is Aleksey Klyukin, he was buried in the Mologa Afanasyevsky Monastery near the summer cathedral, at the altar on the right side.

In 1910, Alexander Ivanovich married a girl from the village of Novoselki, Solntseva Alexandra Nikolaevna. The firstborn was the son Pavel, in 1912. daughter Olga was born, in 1914 - daughter Maria, and on July 19, 1914 the war began. Yes, just like everyone else, - we read in the diaries of Fr. Paul. - I remember that the quitrent was not good and a fine for firewood that was carried on the shoulders from the forest. So they sentenced my grandmother and mother to a week in Boronishino, in the volost government, in the cold, of course, my grandmother took me with her, and there were a lot of non-payers from Borku, 15-20 people. They locked everyone in a dark room, sit down, criminals. And among us were the deep old men Taras Mikheich and Anna Kuzina, both short-sighted. So they went to the restroom to recover, and there a kerosene lamp was burning, they somehow broke it. The kerosene flared up, a little, and they did not burn out. And in the morning the foreman Sorokoumov came and kicked us all out. It was August 29, 1915-16."

My father fought at the front, and the family was in poverty, they went around the world. Mother Pavlusha, as the eldest, sent to beg, collect pieces in the village. And he was four years old. And he fled to the Afanasevsky monastery to his aunt.

MONASTERY HONEY

Here they came to bow to the abbess. “Bang at your feet! - said the father. - Abbess and says: “So what to do, Pavelko! There are a lot of chickens, hens, let him watch so that the crows do not steal it.

This is how it began for Fr. Paul's monastic obedience.

“Grazed chickens, then pastured cows, horses,” he recalled. - Five hundred acres of land! Oh how they lived...

Then - there is nothing for him, that is, for me, Pavelka - he must be accustomed to the altar! He began to walk to the altar, serve the censer, fan the censer…”

“They worked very hard in the monastery,” the priest recalled. In the field, in the garden, in the barnyard, they sowed, harvested, mowed, dug - constantly in the fresh air. And the people are mostly young, they always wanted to eat. So Pavelka figured out how to feed the novice sisters with honey:

“I was five or seven years old at that time, no more. We have just begun pumping honey in the monastery apiary, and right there I am gathering honey on the monastery horse. Only the abbess disposed of honey in the monastery, she also kept records of honey. Okay!

But the honey wants something, and the sisters want something, but there is no blessing.

We are not ordered to eat honey.

- Mother abbess, bless the honey!

“Not allowed, Pavlusha,” she replies.

- All right, - I agree, - as you wish, your will.

And I myself run to the barnyard, a plan is ripening in my head, how to get some honey. I grab a rat from a trap, which is bigger, and carry it to the glacier, where honey is stored. Wait, infection, and instantly with her there.

I smeared the rat with honey with a rag, I carry:

- Mother! Mother! - and honey flows from the rat, I hold it by the tail:

- She drowned in a barrel!

And cry, what are you! A rat has never seen honey even a barrel of that. And for everyone, honey is defiled, everyone is horrified - the rat drowned!

“Get that barrel, Pavelka, and get it out!” - the abbess orders. “Just so that he isn’t close to the monastery!”

Good! That's what I need. Come on, take it! He took it away, hid it somewhere ...

Sunday came, to go to confession ... And the archpriest Fr. Nikolai (Rozin), he died a long time ago and is buried in Mologa.

- Father Nikolai, father! I start with tears in my eyes. - Ashamed! So, they say, and so, I stole a barrel of honey. But he didn’t think about himself, he felt sorry for his sisters, he wanted to treat him ...

- Yes, Pavlusha, your sin is great, but the fact that you had care not only about yourself, but also about your sisters, softens your guilt ... - And then he quietly whispers in my very ear: “But if I, son, one can, you pour another... The Lord, seeing your kindness and repentance, will forgive sin! Only, look, not a word about this to anyone, but I will pray for you, my child.

Yes Lord, yes Merciful, Glory to Thee! How easy! I run, I bring a can of honey to the archpriest. He took it to his house, gave it to the priest. Glory to Thee, Lord! A great weight off one's mind".

This story with monastery honey has already become a folk legend, and therefore it is told in different ways. Some say that it was not a rat, but a mouse. Others add that this mouse was caught by the monastery cat Zephyr, and colloquially, Zifa. Still others claim that Pavelka promised the abbess to pray “for the foul eaters” when he becomes a priest… But we are telling this story the way the priest himself told it, and not a word more!

"...TO THE STAR OF THE CHILD AND THE KING OF KINGS"

Pavelka was very fond of going to carols at Christmas and Christmas time. They went around the monastery like this - first to the abbess, then to the treasurer, then to the deanery, and to everyone in order. And he also comes to the abbess: “Can I carol?”

- Mother abbess! shouts the attendant. - Then Pavelko came, he will praise.

“This is me, Pavelko, at that time about six years old,” said the priest. “They don’t let her into her cell, so I’m standing in the hallway. I hear the voice of the abbesses from the cell: “Okay, let her praise!” This is where I start:

Praise, praise

you yourself know about it.

I'm little Pavelko,

I can't praise

but I dare not ask.

mother abbess,

give me a pin!

If you don't give me a nickel, I'll leave anyway.

Wow! And tsolkovy, you know what? You do not know! Silver and two heads on it - the sovereign Emperor Nikolai Alexandrovich and Tsar Mikhail Feodorovich, there were then such jubilee silver rubles. Thank God! And then I go to the treasurer - the whole procedure is like this ... Poplia's mother was the treasurer. He will give me a fifty dollars, and some sweets to boot.

“Oh, and you were cunning, father Pavel,” his cell-attendant Marya Petrovna interrupts the father. - No, go to a simple nun! And all to the abbess, treasurer!

- The simple ones themselves have that .., you yourself know, Marusya, what! You can’t beg for the Tsolkovy, even though you yell all day long, - Father Pavel jokes off and continues his story:

“From the treasurer to the dean. He sits at a table in a white apostolic, drinking tea.

- Mother Sebastian! the attendant screams at her. Pavelko has come, he wants to praise Christ.

She, without turning her head, says: “There is a piglet on the table, give it to him, and let him go.”

“Go away,” the cell attendant snapped. - The mother dean is dissatisfied.

And already more for the dean than for me, he is indignant: “Look, how much dirt he inflicted, slandered! The rugs are so clean and washed! Leave!"

He turned around, did not even take a patch from her. Okay, I think ... If you die, I won’t grieve for you! And I won’t go to ring the bell, know that, mother Sebastiana! And there are tears down my cheeks like a river ... They offended me.

Ringing the bell was also little Pavelka's obedience. As the priest said: “My labor income is in the monastery.” “For example, a mantle nun dies,” Father Pavel says. - Immediately the coffin comes - Faina was such a short-haired one - to tidy up the body of the deceased, and we go with her to the bell tower. One in the morning or one in the afternoon, wind, snow or rain with a thunderstorm: "Pavelko, let's go." We climb the bell tower, at night the stars and the moon are close, and during the day the earth is far, far away, Mologa lies like on the palm of your hand, all, like necklaces, entwined with rivers around. In the summer, barge haulers drag barges along the Mologa from the Volga, in winter everything is white and white, in the spring in the flood you can’t see the riverbed, only the endless sea ... Coffinous Faina ties the tongue of the bell with a manteika, which is 390 pounds. Faina pulled her mantea by the tongue - boo-u-m-m, and I with her - boom-m-m! According to monastic custom, no matter what obedience anyone is, everyone should bow three times for the newly deceased. You milk a cow or ride a horse, whether you are a prince or a priest - lay down three bows of the earth! All Russia lived like this - in fear of God ...

And this manteika hangs on the tongue of the bell until the fortieth day, there already from rain, snow or wind, only shreds will remain. On the fortieth day, these shreds will be collected - and on the grave. A memorial service will be served and that manteika will be buried in the ground. This concerned only the mantle nuns, and everyone else was buried as usual. And for that - Pavelko sits on the bell tower all night and day - they will pay me a ruble. Thank God, they didn’t die often.”

“AND I TO PATRIARCH TIKHON SPINKO TER, AND HE TO ME!”

In the summer of 1913, the tsar's anniversary was celebrated in Mologa - although without the personal presence of the Sovereign, but very solemnly. Archbishop Tikhon of Yaroslavl and Rostov, the future Patriarch, sailed on a steamboat along the Volga to Mologa. Of course, the main celebrations took place in the Afanasievsk monastery. Pavlusha Gruzdev was three years old, but he already knew the path to the monastery well, more than once his godmother, the nun Evstoliya, took him with him.

His first meeting with St. Tikhon, Fr. Paul remembered for the rest of his life. Vladyka was kind, he blessed everyone in the monastery without exception, and with his own hand distributed commemorative coins and medals issued in honor of the tsar's jubilee. Pavlusha Gruzdev also got a coin.

“I knew St. Tikhon, I knew Archbishop Agafangel and many, many others,” said the priest. - The kingdom of heaven to them all. Every time on January 18 old style / January 31 AD. v./, on the day of Saints Athanasius the Great and Cyril, Archbishops of Alexandria, people from everywhere came to our holy monastery, including the priesthood: Father Gregory, a hieromonk from Tolga, Archimandrite Jerome from Yuga, the rector of the Adrianov Monastery, Hieromonk Sylvester from Church of the Archangel Michael, five or six more priests. Yes, how did they go to lithium, Lord! Joy, beauty and tenderness!

During the Yaroslavl uprising of 1918, according to stories, Patriarch Tikhon lived in the Tolgsky monastery, but was forced to leave it, moving to the relatively quiet Mologa monastery at that time. bathe with His Holiness

“They’re heating the bathhouse, and the abbess calls “Pavelko” – that means me,” says the priest. “Go and wash with Vladyka in the bathhouse.” And Patriarch Tikhon washed my back, and I him!

Vladyka blessed the novice Pavelka to wear a cassock, with his own hands he put a belt and a skullcap on Pavlusha, thereby, as it were, giving him his hierarchal blessing for monasticism. And although Fr. Pavel took monastic vows only in 1962, all his life he considered himself a monk, a monk. And the cassock, skullcap and rosary given to him by St. Tikhon, he kept through all the trials.

For more than two weeks, according to Pavel, Patriarch Tikhon lived in the hospitable Mologa monastery. The abbess with him, the Rybinsk dean about Alexander, everyone called him Yursha for some reason, perhaps because he was from the village of Yurshino. I run next to the saint, I carry his staff. Soon we left the gate and found ourselves in a cucumber field:

- Mother abbess! - His Holiness Tikhon addresses the abbess - Look how many cucumbers you have!

And then the dean about Alexander was nearby, put in a word:

- How many cucumbers in the monastery, so many fools, then:

“You will be the first of them!” the saint remarked

Everyone laughed, including Father Alexander and His Holiness himself.

“Send the cucumbers to Tolga,” he then ordered.

Father Pavel told how they pickled cucumbers in barrels right in the river, how they drove mushrooms. Each case had its own custom, its own special ritual. They go for mushrooms - sit on a cart, take a samovar, provisions with them. Old nuns and they, young people, come to the forest, set up camp, tie a bell in the center, or rather, such a bell. Young people go into the forest to pick mushrooms, then a fire is burning, food is being prepared, and someone bangs into the bell so that they do not get lost, do not go far. They pick mushrooms, bring them back to the Old Woman's forest and pick the mushrooms, boil them right there.

And since childhood, Father Pavel was such that he loved to feed people, loved to run the household - in a monastic, systematic way.

HOW PAVEL GRUZDEV WAS A JUDICIARY

After the revolution and the civil war, the Mologa Afanasievsky Monastery turned from a monastery of monastics into the Afanasievskaya Labor Artel. But monastic life went on as usual, despite all the upheavals.

“It was very fashionable then to gather meetings,” recalled Fr. Pavel 20s in Mologa. - An inspector comes from the city, or someone else, authorized, immediately to us:

— Where are the members of the labor artel?

“So no,” they answer him.

- Where are they? he asks.

— Yes, to the all-night service.

- What are they doing there?

- Pray...

So the meeting is scheduled!

- We don't know that.

- Well, you will pray to me! he threatens.

Accused of evading “participation in public construction,” the sisters of the convent did their best to participate in the new Soviet life, to comply with all orders.

Father Pavel said: “One day they come and tell us:

— There is a Decree! It is necessary to select judges from among the members of the Afanasievskaya Labor Artel. From the monastery, that is.

“Okay,” we agree. - And who to choose as assessors?

- Choose who you want

They chose me, Pavel Aleksandrovich Gruzdev. Need someone else. Whom? Olga, the chairman, she alone had high-heeled shoes. Without that, do not go to the assessors. I'm fine, except for the cassock and bast shoes, nothing. But as an elected assessor, they bought a good shirt, a crazy shirt with a turn-down collar. Ow! infection, and a tie! I tried on for a week, how to tie the court?

In a word, I became a court assessor. Let's go, the city of Mologa, the People's Court. At the trial they announce: "Judges Samoilova and Gruzdev, take your seats." I was the first to enter the meeting room, followed by Olga. Fathers! My relatives, the table is covered with red cloth, a decanter of water ... I crossed myself. Olga Samoilova pushes me in the side and whispers in my ear:

- You, infection, at least do not be baptized, because the assessor!

“So it’s not a demon,” I answered her.

Good! They announce the verdict, I listen, I listen ... No, that's not it! Wait, wait! I don’t remember what they were tried for - did he steal something, was it a pood of flour or something else? “No,” I say, “listen, you guy is a judge! After all, understand that his need made him steal something. Maybe his kids are hungry!”

Yes, I say it with all my might, without looking back. Everyone looks at me and it became so quiet ...

They write an attitude to the monastery: “Don’t send more fools as assessors.” Me, that means, ”the priest clarified and laughed.

"I WAS HUNGRY AND YOU FEED ME"

On May 13, 1941, Pavel Alexandrovich Gruzdev was arrested in the case of Archbishop Varlaam Ryashentsev.

The camp where Father Pavel served his term for six years was located at the following address: Kirov region, Kaisky district, p / o Volosnitsa. Vyatka corrective labor camps were engaged in the preparation of firewood for the Perm railway, and prisoner No. 513 called himself Fr. Pavel - it was instructed to serve the railway line, along which timber was taken out of the taiga from the logging site. As a narrow-gauge lineman, he was allowed to move around the taiga on his own, without a guard behind his back, he could at any time go into the zone and leave it, turn on the way to a free village. Convoylessness is an advantage that was highly valued in the zone. And the time was military, the very one about which they say that of the seven camp eras, the most terrible is the war: “Whoever did not sit in the war did not even taste the camp.” From the beginning of the war, the already impossibly meager camp rations were curtailed, and the products themselves worsened every year: bread - raw black clay, "chernyashka"; vegetables were replaced by fodder turnips, beet tops, and all sorts of rubbish; instead of cereals - vetch, bran.

Many people were saved by Fr. Pavel in the camp from starvation. While the brigade of prisoners was led to the place of work by two shooters, in the morning and in the evening - the names of the shooters were Zhemchugov and Pukhtyaev, Fr. Pavel remembered that prisoner No. 513 had a pass for free exit and entry into the zone: “I want to go to the forest, but I want to go along the forest ... But more often I take a pestle woven from twigs into the forest and pick berries. First he took strawberries, then cloudberries and lingonberries, and mushrooms! OK. Guys, the forest is nearby! Merciful Lord, glory to Thee!”

What could be carried through the entrance to the camp, Fr. Pavel changed in the medical unit for bread, fed his comrades in the barracks who were weakened from hunger. And they had a barrack - entirely Article 58: monks, Germans from the Volga region were imprisoned, the intelligentsia. Met about. Pavel in the camps as a headman from the Tutaev Cathedral, he died in his arms.

Stocked up for the winter. Chopped mountain ash and stacked in haystacks. Then they will be covered with snow and take all winter. He salted mushrooms in makeshift pits: he would dig them out, cover them with clay from the inside, throw brushwood in there, light a fire. The pit becomes like an earthenware jug or a large bowl. He will pile a full pit of mushrooms, get salt somewhere on the tracks, sprinkle the mushrooms with salt, then crush them with boughs. “And so,” he says, “I’m carrying through the checkpoint a bucket to the guards, two buckets to the camp.”

Once in the taiga I met Fr. Pavel bear: “I eat raspberries, and someone is pushing. Looked - a bear. I don’t remember how I ran to the camp.” Another time, they almost shot him while he was sleeping, mistaking him for a runaway convict. “Somehow I picked up a whole bunch of berries,” said the priest. - Then there were a lot of strawberries, so I scored it with a mountain. And at the same time, he was tired - either he walked from the night, or something else - I don’t remember now. He walked and walked to the camp, and lay down on the grass. My documents, as expected, are with me, but what documents? Work permit. So I lay down and sleep - so sweet, so good in the forest in the bosom of nature, and the pestle with this strawberry is in my head. Suddenly I hear someone throwing cones at me - right in my face. I crossed myself, opened my eyes, I looked - the shooter!

— Ah! Escaped?..

“Citizen chief, no, he didn’t run away,” I answer.

- Do you have a document? he asks.

“I have, citizen chief,” I tell him and take out the document. He always lay in my shirt in a sewn pocket, right here - on my chest near the heart. He looked, he looked at the document this way and that way.

- Okay, - he says, - free!

“Citizen chief, here are some strawberries to eat,” I suggest to him.

"All right, let's go," the gunslinger agreed.

He put the rifle on the grass... My dear ones, it was with difficulty that strawberries were recruited for the sick in the camp, and he ate half of me. Well, God be with him!”

“I WAS SICK, AND YOU VISITED ME”

In the medical unit, where Pavel Gruzdev exchanged berries for bread, two doctors worked, both from the Baltic states - Dr. Berne, a Latvian, and Dr. Chamans. They will give them instructions, orders to the medical unit: “Tomorrow is a shock working day in the camp” - Christmas, for example, or Easter. On these bright Christian holidays, prisoners were forced to work even harder - they were “reeducated” by hard work. And they warn the doctors, the same prisoners: “So that more than fifteen people throughout the camp should not be released!” And if the doctor does not fulfill the order, he will be punished - they can add a term. And Dr. Berne will release thirty people from work and he carries the list on watch ...

“Heard: “Who?!” Father Pavel said. - "Mother-peremat, who, fascist muzzles, wrote the list?"

They call him, our doctor, bent for what it should be:

“Tomorrow you yourself will go to give three norms for your arbitrariness!”

- Okay! Good!

So I will tell you, my dear children. I don’t understand in the beauty of the human body, in the spiritual I understand, but then I understood! He went out to watch with the workers, went out with everyone ... Oh, handsome, crazy handsome and without a hat! He stands without a headdress and with a saw ... I think to myself: “Mother of God, yes to the Lady, the Quick Listener! Send him just for his simplicity and patience!” Of course, we took care of him and took him away from work that day. They built a fire for him, they planted him next to him. The arrow was bribed: “Here you are! Shut up, you bastard!"

So the doctor sat by the fire, warmed himself and did not work. If he is alive, give him, Lord, good health, and if he died - Lord! Send him the Kingdom of Heaven, according to your covenant: “I was sick, but you visited Me!”

HOW FATHER PAUL TOOK A MAN FROM THE LOOP

All prisoners under Article 58 in the zone were called “fascists” - this apt stigma was invented by thieves and approved by the camp authorities. What could be more shameful when there is a war against the Nazi invaders? “Fascist muzzle, fascist bastard” is the most common camp appeal.

Once about. Pavel pulled a German from the noose - the same prisoner - a "fascist" like himself. Since the beginning of the war, many of them, Russified Germans from the Volga region and other regions, fell behind barbed wire - their whole fault was that they were of German nationality. This story is told from beginning to end by Father Paul himself.

“Autumn is in the yard! Rain is crazy, night. And on my responsibility - eight kilometers of the railway track along the camp trails. I was a tracker, and therefore the pass was free, they trusted me. I'm responsible for the way! I will advise you, my relatives, in this matter, and I will prostrate, just listen. After all, it is not an easy matter to answer for the path, if anything, they will strictly ask.

The head of our road was Grigory Vasilyevich Kopyl. How he loved me! Do you know why? I brought him the best mushrooms, and all kinds of berries - in a word, he received from me the gifts of the forest in abundance.

Okay! Autumn and night and the rain is crazy.

— Pavlo! How is the road on the site? - And there was Grigory Vasilyevich Kopyl, also a prisoner, like me, but the boss.

- Citizen chief, - I answer him, - the road is in perfect order, I looked and checked everything. Filled up - a joke, of course.

- Okay, Pavlukha, get in the car with me.

The car is an old reserve engine, you all know what a reserve engine is, it went between the camps. When to clear the blockage, when to urgently deliver a brigade of stackers - an auxiliary locomotive. Okay! Go!

“Look, Pavlo, you are responsible for the road with your head!” Kopyl warned as the train started moving.

“I answer, citizen chief,” I agree. Steam engine, crazy, you can't tighten your jaw with a bridle, maybe! Let's go. Good! We drove a little, suddenly a push! What kind of push is that? At the same time, the steam locomotive will quit ...

— Ah! So are you walking me? On the way lining dispersed!

The overlays are fastened, where the rails are connected at the junction.

- Yes, Grigory Vasilyevich, I checked the road!

- Well, I believe you, - muttered a disgruntled Kopyl. We go further. We drove another three hundred meters, well, five hundred ... another blow! Again the locomotive abandoned!

“From tomorrow, for two weeks, your ration will be not eight hundred grams, as before, but three hundred bread,” said Kopyl sternly.

- Well, your business, you are the boss ...

We drove eight kilometers to the camp. Everyone leaves, goes to the camp, to rest after work. What about me? No, my dears, I'll go there to see what's the matter. Did not follow the road, infection! And to run eight kilometers in the rain, and the night to that. But well - it's given to you, your responsibility ...

I'm running... Good! Here I feel, now is the place where the push was.

Look - mothers! - the horse is lying in a ditch, both legs were cut off ... Oh! What will you do? By the tail - and away from the mound of swine. I run further. And I roar, I scream! Night! I'm soaked to the bone, but spit. I call on the help of all the saints, but most of all: “Reverend Father Barlaamie! I lived with you for four years, God's saint! I always wiped your shrine near the relics! Help me, Father Barlaamie, and wipe away my sins, wash me with your prayers to our Lord, Savior Jesus Christ!

But at the same time, I keep running along the road ... I see - the horse is still lying, Lord! Also stabbed to death - by the locomotive on which we rode. Ow! To do what? But the Lord had mercy, I did not lose my head and pulled this one away from the road. Suddenly I hear - some kind of snoring, a groan like a human. And next to that place there was a sleeper-cutting - when they made the road, they put the motor there, they built the roof. Something like a barn like this, logs were cut into sleepers in it.

I run there. I ran mechanically into this sleeper cutter... My dear ones! I look, and the peasant, the camp shepherd, is hanging! Hanged, infection! He pastured those horses, German. What were the Germans then? He was arrested, maybe from the Volga region, I don’t know ...

Yes, Mother of God! Yes, I call all the saints and Michael of Klopsky, Lord! He called everyone, to the last drop. What should I do? We weren't allowed to wear knives, so I didn't. If found, they could be shot. They were shot for nothing. I could untie a knot on a rope with my teeth, so my teeth were all knocked out then. Investigator Spassky left me the only one as a memento in the Yaroslavl prison.

Once I tangled and tangled this rope with my fingers, in a word, unraveled it. He collapsed to the floor, Lord! I went to him, turned him over on his back, stretched his arms and legs. I feel the pulse - no. Nothing in it gurgles, nothing squishes. Yes, what to do? Yes, the Mother of God! Again, all the Saints to the rescue, and Elijah the Prophet. You are in heaven, I don’t know how to ask, how to please you? Help us!

No, my dears, I was already crazy. Died. Dead lies! Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian, and John Chrysostom… whoever he called!

Suddenly I hear! God! Then, right in his throat, he choked. Oh, mothers, it worked ... So far, so occasionally: koh-koh-koh. Then more often. He overlaid it with moera grass, it was already in August-September, and he himself ran to the zone, again eight miles. The rain has passed, and I'm dry, steam pours out of me. I run to the watch: “Come on, come on! Railcar, now I have a railcar! It’s bad for a man in the forest, on the stretch!

The arrows on the watch, looking at me, say: “Well, you prayed, saint! He's got the head!" They think I've gone crazy. Did I look like this or something? Don't know. They don’t say my last name, but as they call my number, they immediately say “holy”. For example: “The 513th has completely prayed, the saint!”

Let them talk, I think. - Okay.

I ran, found the head of the medical unit, we had such Feriy Pavel Eduardovich. I don’t know what nation he was, but his last name was Feriy. He respected me - no, not for handouts - but for the simple reason he respected me. I address him:

- Citizen chief, so, they say, and so!

“Okay, let’s run to the trolley, let’s go,” he tells me. We arrived at the sleeper, and this one is lying there without memory, but his pulse is functioning. He was immediately stabbed with something, given something and brought to the zone. Him to the medical unit, and I went to the barracks.

A month or a half later, a summons comes to me: “The number is such and such, we ask you to immediately appear in court at the eighth camp.” I arrived at the eighth camp, as indicated in the agenda. There is a trial, and I am a witness in court. They don't judge me, but that boy, the shepherd from the sleeper, whose horses were slaughtered by a steam locomotive at night.

As it turned out later, it turned out during the investigation, he simply overslept them. He walked and walked, passed, passed, and fell asleep, and they themselves wandered under the engine. And now the court is assembled, and it is judged.

- Well, you, 513th! - that means me. - Witness! How will you answer us? After all, you know, you understand, probably. The country is in a critical situation. The Germans are torn, and he undermines our defenses. Agree with that, yes, 513th? "He" is the shepherd who hanged himself.

I get up, they ask me, as a witness, I answer:

“Citizens of the judge, I will only tell the truth. So, they say, and so I took him out of the noose. Not for joy, he climbed into it, a noose. He apparently has a wife, "frau", which means that he probably also has children. Think for yourself, what was it like for him to climb into the noose? But fear has big eyes. Therefore, citizens of the judge, I will not sign and do not support the accusation you brought against him. Well, he was scared, I agree. Fell asleep - so night and rain. Maybe he’s tired, and then there’s a steam locomotive ... No, I don’t agree

So you are a fascist!

Yes, it's your choice.

And you know, my relatives, they gave him only conditionally. I don't really know what conditionality is. But he was given the opportunity. And then, sometimes, I still sleep on a bunk, and he will receive his ration of eight hundred grams of bread, and he will shove three hundred under my pillow

This is how my family lived.”

FOREST LITURGY

Different streams of people in different years poured into the camps - either dispossessed, then cosmopolitan, then the party elite cut down by another blow of an ax, then scientific and creative intelligentsia, ideologically not pleasing to the Boss - but always and in any years there was a single common stream of believers - “some kind of then a silent religious procession with invisible candles. As from a machine gun they fall among them - and the next step in, and go again. Hardness not seen in the 20th century!” These are lines from The Gulag Archipelago.

As if in the first Christian centuries, when worship was often performed in the open air, the Orthodox now pray in the forest, in the mountains, in the desert and by the sea.

In the Ural taiga, the Liturgy was also served by the prisoners of the Vyatka corrective labor camps.

There were two bishops, several archimandrites, abbots, hieromonks and just monks. And how many believing women were in the camp, who were all dubbed "nuns", mixing in one heap both illiterate peasant women and abbesses of various monasteries. According to Father Pavel, “there was a whole diocese there!” When it was possible to agree with the head of the second part, which was in charge of passes, the "camp diocese" went out into the forest and began worship in a forest clearing. For the sacrament cup, juice was prepared from various berries, blueberries, strawberries, blackberries, lingonberries - that God would send, the stump was the throne, the towel served as a sakos, a censer was made from a tin can. And the bishop, dressed in prison rags, “dividing My robes for himself and for My clothing, metasha lots ...” - stood before the forest throne as the Lord’s, he was helped by all those praying.

“Take the body of Christ, taste the source of the immortal,” the choir of prisoners sang in the forest clearing... How everyone prayed, how they cried - not from grief, but from the joy of prayer...

At the last divine service (something happened in the camp, someone was being transferred somewhere), lightning struck the stump that served as the throne - so that they would not desecrate it later. He disappeared, and in his place appeared a funnel full of clean, clear water. The guard, who saw everything with his own eyes, turned white with fear, said: “Well, you are all saints here!”

There were cases when, together with the prisoners, some of the guards-shooters took communion in the forest.

The Great Patriotic War was going on, which began on Sunday, June 22, 1941 - on the Day of All Saints, who shone in the Russian land, and prevented the implementation of the state plan of the “godless five-year plan”, according to which not a single church should have remained in Russia. What helped Russia to endure and preserve the Orthodox faith - weren't it the prayers and the righteous blood of millions of prisoners - the best Christians in Russia?

Tall pines, grass in the clearing, the throne of the Cherubim, the sky ... The communion cup with juice from wild berries:

"... I believe, Lord, that this is Your most pure Body and this is Your precious blood ... which is shed for us and for many for the remission of sins ..."

THE HAPPIEST DAY

Much has been written in the 20th century about the horrors and sufferings of the camps. Archimandrite Pavel, not long before his death, in the 90s of our (already past) century, admitted:

“My relatives, I had the happiest day in my life. Here listen.

Somehow they brought girls to our camps. All of them are young, young, probably, and they were not twenty. They called them "benders". Among them is one beauty - she has a braid up to her toes and she is sixteen years old at the most. And now she is crying so much, crying so much ... "How bitter it is for her, - I think, - this girl, that she is so killed, she cries so much."

I came closer, I asked ... And there were about two hundred prisoners gathered here, both our campers and those who were with the stage. "And why does the girl roar like that?" Someone answered me, from their own, the new arrivals: “We drove for three days, they didn’t give us expensive bread, they had some kind of overspending. So they came, they paid us for everything at once, they gave us bread. And she took care of it, didn’t eat - a day, or something, what a lean day she had. And this ration, which in three days was stolen, somehow snatched from her. For three days she didn’t eat, now they would share it with her, but we don’t even have bread, we’ve already eaten everything.

And I had a stash in the barracks - not a stash, but a ration for today - a loaf of bread! I ran to the barracks ... And I received eight hundred grams of bread as a worker. What kind of bread, you know, but still bread. I take this bread and run back. I bring this bread to the girl and give it to me, and she says to me: “Hi, don’t need it! I don’t sell my honor for bread!” And I didn’t take bread, fathers! My dear relatives! Yes Lord! I don’t know what kind of honor is such that a person is ready to die for it? Before that, I didn’t know, but on that day I found out that this is called a girl’s honor!

I put this piece under her arm and ran out of the zone, into the forest! I climbed into the bushes, knelt down ... and such were my tears of joy, no, not bitter. And I think the Lord will say:

“I was hungry, and you, Pavlukha, fed me.

When, Lord?

- Yes, that girl is a Benderovka. You fed me! That was and is the happiest day of my life, and I have lived a lot.

“LORD, AND FORGIVE US THAT WE ARE PRISONERS!”

In the case of Archbishop Varlaam Ryashentsev, who was the successor of Metropolitan Agafangel of Yaroslavl, Pavel Gruzdev was arrested twice. He received a second term in 1949, as they said then - he became a "repeater". From Yaroslavl, the prisoners were taken to Moscow, to Butyrki, and from there to Samara, to a transit prison.

In the Samara prison, Father Pavel, along with other prisoners, celebrated Easter 1950. On this day - Sunday - they drove them out for a walk in the prison yard, lined up and lead in a circle. It occurred to someone from the prison authorities: “Hey, priests, sing something!”

“And Vladyka — remember him, Lord! - the father said, - he tells us: “Fathers and brothers! Today Christ is risen!” And he sang: “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death and bestowing life on those in the tombs ...” Yes, remember, Lord, that righteous shooter - he didn’t shoot at anyone. Let's go, sing: “Resurrection day, let's enlighten people! Easter, Lord's Easter! From death to life, and from earth to heaven, Christ God has brought us…”

The prisoners were taken from Samara to no one knows where. There were bars in the wagons, they didn’t give bread for the road. “Oh, yes, the Solovetsky miracle workers! But where are you, the righteous, sending us? They go for a day, two, three .. You can see the mountains from the far window. And again - "with things!" Everyone came out, gathered, became in fact. Shout out the new arrivals alphabetically

- BUT! Antonov Ivan Vasilievich Come in.

Number 1 is in.

- Augustov ... Enters.

- B! .. C! .. G! .. Come in! To the zone, to the zone! Grivnev, Godunov, Gribov… Donskoy, Danilov…

- And what about Gruzdev? asks about. Paul.

“No, no,” they answer him.

“How not? - thinks. — I have them the worst fascist. Don't call me! It looks like it's going to get worse."

Everyone was named, no one was left, only two old men and him, Pavel Gruzdev.

Boy, are you a prisoner?

- The prisoner.

And we are prisoners. Are you a fascist?

— Fascist.

And we are fascists.

“Glory to Thee, Lord! - He breathed a sigh of relief. Pavel explained. “Own, so they called us fascists.”

- Duck boy, - the old people ask him, - you go to this, which boss, say that you forgot three!

- Citizen boss! We are also three prisoners from this party.

- We don't know! Back off!

The old men are sitting with Pavlusha, waiting. Suddenly, a guard comes out of the checkpoint booth, carries a package:

- Well, which of you will be smarter? The old people say:

- So give the guy back the documents.

- Take this. There, you see, three kilometers away, a house on a mountain and a flag? Go there, they will tell you what to do.

“Let’s go,” Fr. Paul. - Lord, we look: “monshases and shandas” - not in Russian, everything around. I say: “Guys, we were not brought to Russia!” They came to this house - the commandant's office, it is written in three languages. We go in, a Kyrgyz woman washes the floor.

- Hello.

- Whats up?

- Don't yell at us! Here are the real documents.

- E! — writhed all. - Let's leave! And then we'll call the police, shoot! Oh, you infection, they will still kill you!

We will come tomorrow at 9-10 o'clock, we will start work!

Went. Where are you going, father? Kutsy go something? We ask the prison. Yes, dirty ones! There were no lice. Shorn ones! Lord, yes Mother of God, yes Solovetsky wonderworkers! Where did we get? What is this city? Everywhere is not written in Russian. “Out of the prison,” they say. We approach the prison, I press the bell:

- We are not transmitting, it's too late!

- Honey, take us! We are prisoners!

- Run away?

“Here are the documents.

- It's in transit. Do not accept. Aliens.

We are back in transit. It's already evening. The sun has set, we need to look for a lodging for the night. And who will let us?

Guys, they don't take us anywhere!

- And our shift has passed, let's leave, otherwise we will shoot!

"Well, grandfathers, let's go." What to do? We are afraid to go to the city, I don’t remember where we went straight through the countryside. The river is making noise. I would like to drink some water, but I have no strength from hunger. I found some kind of hole, weeds - bang in the weeds. Here he fell, and here he fell asleep. And I put this piece of paper, documents, under my head, somehow saved it. I wake up in the morning. The first thing that seemed strange to me was the sky above me, the blue sky. Prison is everything, shipping ... And here is the sky! I think I'm nuts. I bite my hand - no, I'm not crazy yet. God! Make this day a day of Thy mercy!

I get out of the hole. One old man is praying, and the other is washing his shirt in the river. "Oh, son, alive!" "Alive, fathers, alive."

We washed ourselves in the river - the Ishim River. The sun has just risen. Prayers began to read:

“You rise from sleep, fall down to Thee, Blessed, and cry out to the angelic song, stronger. Holy, Holy, Holy ecu God, have mercy on us through the Theotokos.

From the bed and the sleep, the Lord raised me ecu, enlighten my mind and heart ... ”We read those prayers, we hear: bom! .. bom! .. bom! .. The church is somewhere! There is a service! One old man says. “Duck there, see, on the horizon?” A kilometer and a half from our lodging for the night. "Let's go to church!"

And it’s not that we were beggars, but what is the last step of the beggars - here we were on this step. And what to do - if only we would take communion! Judas would have repented, the Lord would have forgiven him. Lord, forgive us that we are prisoners! And the batiushka is eager to give a confession. I didn't have a dime. Some old man saw us, gives us three rubles: “Go and change!” Everyone got a fifty-kopeck piece, and they put candles on the rest for the Savior and the Queen of Heaven. We confessed, took communion - but no matter where you take us, even shoot us, no one is scary! Glory to Thee, Lord!”

CASE AT ZUEVKA STATE FARM

Thus began the exile life of Pavel Gruzdev in the city of Petropavlovsk, where on the very first day he and the old monks took communion in the cathedral church of Peter and Paul. In Kazakhstan, the prisoner Gruzdev was sent "to an eternal settlement." In the regional construction office, Gruzdev was put on a stone crusher. “They gave me a sledgehammer,” the father recalled. “In the morning, work starts at eight, and I will come at six o’clock, and I will fill the norm, and I will also overfulfill it.” Once they sent them, administrative exiles, to the village of Zuevka for harvesting. The state farm Zuevka was located thirty forty versts from Petropavlovsk, and as if something had happened there - cattle, poultry were left unattended, the harvest was not harvested. But no one tells the truth.

“They brought us in cars to Zuevka,” said Fr. Paul. -What is going on there! My relatives! The cows are roaring, the camels are yelling, but there is no one in the village, as if the whole village has died out. To whom to shout, whom to look for - we do not know. Thought, thought, decided to go to the chairman in the department. Come to him., oh-oh-oh! There is a bench in the middle of the room, and there is a coffin on the bench. Mothers! And in it the chairman lies, turns his head and looks askance at us. I say to my people: “Stop!” - and then to him: "Hey, what are you doing?" And he answered me from the coffin: “I am the newly-departed servant of God Vasily”

And they had such a father Athanasius there in Zuevka - he got there a long time ago, almost before the revolution. And it was this Athanasius who enlightened them all: “Tomorrow there will be an advent, the end of the world!” And he tonsured everyone into monks and laid them in coffins ... The whole village! They sewed some kind of cassock out of gauze and whatever. And Athanasius himself climbed the bell tower and waited for the coming. Ouch! The kids are small, the women are all shorn, all lie in coffins in the huts. The cows need to be milked, the cows' udders have been stolen. Why should cattle suffer? I ask one woman. - Who are you?" “Nun Evnikia,” she answers me. God! Well, what will you do?

We spent the night there, worked a day or two as expected, then they took us home. Athanasius was sent to the hospital. They wrote to the bishop in Alma-Ata - Joseph was, it seems, - he recognized this Athanasian tonsure as illegal and all the "monks" were cut. They put on their dresses and skirts and they worked as they should.

... But the seeds were thrown into the ground and gave their shoots. Little kids run around: “Mother, mother! And Father Luka smashed my face!” Father Luka is not five years old. Or else: “Mother, mother, mother Faina took the roll from me!” That was the case at the Zuevka state farm.

DIED "EVERLIVE"

So day after day, month after month, the 53rd year came. “I come home from work,” Fr. Pavel, - grandfather says to me:

“Son, Stalin is dead!”

- Grandpa, shut up. He is forever alive. Both you and me will be jailed. Tomorrow morning I have to go back to work, and they are broadcasting on the radio, warning that when Stalin's funeral is, “everyone will be honking! Stop work - stand and freeze where the whistle caught you, for a minute or two ... ”And with me in exile was Ivan from Vetluga, his last name was Lebedev. Oh, what a good man, a master of all trades! Well, whatever he takes in his hands, he will do everything with these hands. Ivan and I worked on camels then. He has a camel, I have a camel. And on these camels, we are going through the steppe with him. Suddenly the horns went off! The camel must be stopped, but Ivan beats him harder and scolds him. And the camel runs across the steppe, and does not know that Stalin is dead!”

This is how the cassock Pavel Gruzdev from the flooded Mologa and the jack-of-all-trades from the ancient town of Vetluga Ivan Lebedev saw off Stalin on his last journey. “And after Stalin’s funeral, we are silent - we didn’t see anyone, we didn’t hear anything.”

And here again the night, about one o'clock in the morning. Knocking on the gate:

— Is Gruzdev here?

Well, night visitors are a common thing. Father Pavel always has a bag of crackers ready. It turns out:

- Get going, buddy! Come with us!

“Grandfather revit, grandmother revit ... - Son! They have already got used to me for so many years,” Fr. Paul. - Well, I think I waited! They will take you to Solovki! I wanted everything to Solovki .. No! Not on Solovki. I took the crackers, I took the rosary - in a word, I took everything. God! Go. I looked, no, they were not being taken to the station, but to the commandant's office. Getting in. We are not allowed to greet, they greet only real people, and we are prisoners, a “fascist face”. What can you do? OK. I went in, hands like this, behind my back, as expected - for eleven years I got used to it, I gained experience. You stand in front of them, not to speak - breathe, blink your eyes, and then you are afraid.

— Comrade Gruzdev!

Well, I guess it's the end of the world. Everything is a “fascist muzzle”, and here is a comrade.

- Sit down, freely, - it means that they invite me.

“Very well, thank you, but I will stand, Citizen Chief.

- No, sit down!

- My pants are dirty, I'll get them dirty.

- Sit down!

Still, I sat down, as they said.

- Comrade Gruzdev, why are you serving your sentence?

— So after all the fascist, probably? - I answer.

- No, you do not shirk, you are serious.

- I don't know. Here you have documents lying on me, you know better.

“So by mistake,” he says.

Glory to Thee Lord! Now they will probably be taken to Solovki, when by mistake ... I really wanted to go to Solovki, to bow to the holy places. But I keep listening.

- Comrade Gruzdev, here's a certificate for you, you suffered innocently. Cult of personality. Go to the police tomorrow with a certificate. Based on this paper, you will be issued a passport. And we secretly warn you... If someone calls you a fascist or something like that, report to us, Comrade Gruzdev! We will attract that citizen for this. Here is our address.

Oh oh oh! - he waved his hands. “I won’t, I won’t, citizen chief, God forbid, I won’t.” I can't, dear...

…God! And as he began to speak, the light bulb above me was white-white, then green, blue, and finally turned pink ... I woke up after a while, with cotton wool on my nose. I feel that they hold my hand and someone says: “I came to my senses!”

They did something to me, some kind of injection, something else ... Thank God, he got up and began to apologize. "Oh, sorry, oh, sorry." Just let me think. After all, a prisoner, it’s embarrassing for me ...

"Okay, okay," said the chief. “Now go!”

- What about eleven years old?

— No, Comrade Gruzdev, no!

Only an injection was thrust into my memory below the waist ... I stomped. It took two days to issue a passport - "he is still alive with me," as Fr. Paul. On the third day, Gruzdev went to work. And their brigadier was such a comrade Mironets - he did not take the Orthodox into the spirit and in himself was of a very vicious disposition. The girls from the brigade sang about him: “Don’t go to the other end, Mironets will beat you!”

— Aha! shouts Comrade Mironets, just seeing Gruzdev. - Wandered around, praying with the nuns!

Yes, a mat on what the light covers.

- Your priest's muzzle! You go again! There, in the Yaroslavl region, you harmed, you bastard, arranged sabotage, and here you harm, damned fascist! You're ruining our plan, you saboteur!

“No, Citizen Chief, I didn’t wander around,” Gruzdev answers calmly. - Here is a document of justification, but I need to go to the director of the Regional Construction Office, sorry.

- Why do you, fool, director? Comrade Mironets was surprised.

It's all there on the paper.

The brigadier read the paper:

- Pavlusha! ..

"Here's Pavlusha for you," Gruzdev thinks.

The conversation in the director's office turned out to be completely discouraging.

- BUT! Comrade Gruzdev, dear! Sit down, don't stand, here's a chair for you, - as the best guest was met by the director of "comrade Gruzdev", who was already aware of his affairs. “I know, Pavel Aleksandrovich, I know everything. We got an error.

While the director crumbles into small beads, Gruzdev is silent, says nothing. What do you say?

- We are handing over a residential building in a day or two, - continues the director of the Regional Construction Office, - there is also a contribution of your Stakhanovite work. The house is new, multi-apartment. In it and for you, dear Pavel Aleksandrovich, there is an apartment. We have looked closely at you over the years, we see that you are an honest and decent citizen. The only trouble is that he is a believer, but you can close your eyes to this.

“But what am I going to do in your house?” - Gruzdev is surprised at the strange words of the director, but he himself thinks: “What is all this leading to?”

- You need to get married, Comrade Gruzdev, get a family, children, and work! - Satisfied with his proposal, the director happily concludes.

- How to get married? Pavel snapped. - I'm a monk!

- So what! Start a family, children, and remain a monk... Who is against that? Just live and work!

“No, citizen chief, thank you for your father’s participation, but I can’t,” Pavel Gruzdev thanked the director and, frustrated, returned to his place on Krupskaya Street. Do not let him out of production! No matter what you say, but hunting home ... Tya with her mother, sisters - Olka with the punks, Tanya, Leshka, Sanka Fokan ... Pavlusha writes a letter home: “Tya! Mother! I am no longer a prisoner. It was by mistake. I am not a fascist, but a Russian person.”

"Son! Alexander Ivanovich Gruzdev answers him. “There was never a thief in our family, there was no robber either. And you are not a thief or a robber. Come, son, bury our bones."

Again Pavel Gruzdev goes to the director of the Regional Construction Office:

- Citizen boss, I would like to go to my aunts with my mother, because the old ones can already die without waiting!

- Pavlusha, to go, you need a challenge! the boss answers. “And without a call, I have no right to let you go.”

Pavel Gruzdev writes to Tutaev relatives - so, they say, and so, without a call they are not allowed. And his sister Tatyana, in the marriage of Yudina, worked all her life as an obstetrician. She was on duty one night in the hospital. The Lord inspired her: she mechanically opened the drawer of the desk, and there was a seal and hospital forms. Sends a telegram: “Northern Kazakhstan, the city of Petropavlovsk, Oblpromstroykontor, to the head. We ask you to urgently send Pavel Gruzdev, his mother, who died after a difficult birth, gave birth to twins.”

And the mother is already seventy years old! Pavlusha, as he found out, thinks: “I've gone crazy! Or Tanya is being smart about something! But they call him to the authorities:

— Comrade Gruzdev, get ready for the journey immediately! We all know about you. On the one hand, we are glad, and on the other hand, we grieve. Maybe something to help you? Maybe you need a babysitter?

“No, Citizen Chief,” Pavel replies. “Thank you very much, but I will go without a nanny.

"As you wish," agreed the director.

“Now you can even joke,” the priest recalled this incident. “And then I didn’t feel like laughing. On such a century - you will spin, both on your back and on your side!

"AND CREEPING ON THE BED THE COLORADO BEETLE"

So many people and events Father Pavel saw during the years of his camp wanderings that he became, as it were, an inexhaustible fount - sometimes you wonder what happened to him! Batiushka himself said that all his spiritual experience came from the camps: “I saved up for eleven years!” And when Archimandrite Pavel became a glorified elder, many noticed that his spiritual guidance, his prayers are something special, for which there is no example in the lives of bygone times, this is our life, modern Holy Russia ...

And miracles happened - sometimes so casually, by the garden bed. One such case was told by an employee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, an official representative of the law.

“Once we went to Father Pavel, it was a bright sunny day, August. The village of Verkhne-Nikulskoye is located 1.5 km from the highway, and we took the road that the locals call BAM, it is more or less dry there, and through the potato fields you leave, bypassing the store, to the gatehouse of about. Paul, i.e. making a circle. When I was driving, I paid attention to the quality of the road, to what was around - that is. remembered more than my passengers. And so, moving through the so-called BAM, I noticed that the potato fields were showered with the Colorado potato beetle - everything is red like grapes. So much so that I even thought that you can grow Colorado potato beetles and cook kharcho soup from them. And with such a playful mood he came to Fr. Pavel. We were received as honored guests. And in a feast, in a conversation - like a potato? like an onion? in the village they always talk about agriculture - they are talking about the dominance of the Colorado potato beetle. And Father Pavel says: “But I don’t have the Colorado potato beetle.” He had two plots of potatoes - between the gatehouse and the cemetery, 10 × 10, and already in the church fence - like a mini-monastery. But I saw perfectly well that there were Colorado beetles all around - even at the neighbor's opposite. And suddenly: “I don’t have.” I'm like a detective - ha ha! - doubted. Everyone at the table had already eaten, no one listened to the other, I think: “No, now I will find the Colorado beetles. It can not be! Of course he's lying!" And I went out - it was light, the August twilight - to look between the gatehouse and the cemetery of the Colorado beetles, I will find a few and catch them! He came, began to crawl between the rows of potatoes on all fours. I look - not a single larva, not a single beetle! Can't be! It's red all around, but here ... Even if there were Colorado potato beetles on the site before our arrival, there should be eaten holes on the tops. I've looked all over - there's nothing! Well, it can't be, it's unnatural! I think there is everything in the second section. I, being an opera, i.e. a man who always doubts everything, is looking for enemies and knows that there are enemies - I think I will find! Nothing!

I came and said: “Father, I was just now at that potato plot, I was at this one - really not a single Colorado potato beetle or larvae, but in general signs that they were.” Father Paul, as a matter of course, says: “Yes, you went in vain. I know prayer. And again I think to myself: “Hmm, a prayer! What is he saying! What a prayer!” Yes, that’s how I was Thomas the Unbeliever, although I didn’t even find a hole from that midge on a single potato leaf. I was put to shame. But the Colorado beetles directly migrated, they crawled ... "

Father Pavel loved poetry and songs so much that he had a poetic parable or a comic rhyme in store for any occasion, and if not, he composed it himself. About a month after the “police check”, Father Pavel composed a song about the Colorado potato beetle:

Potatoes are blooming, onions are greening.

And the Colorado potato beetle crawls into the garden.

He crawls, not knowing anything about

That Volodya the agronomist will catch him.

He will catch him, take him to the village council.

He will plant in a jar, fill it with alcohol.

The potatoes have faded, the onions have turned yellow.

There is a Colorado potato beetle in a jar.

"LET YOUR DASHKA RECOVERY!"

“Great was his prayer,” they say about Father Paul. - Great is his blessing. True miracles.

“At the service itself, he stood like some kind of spiritual pillar,” they recall about the priest. - He prayed with all his heart, like a giant, this small man, and everyone was present as if on wings at his prayer. She was like that, from the heart. The voice is loud and strong. Sometimes, when he performed the sacrament of communion, he asked the Lord in a simple way, like his father: “Lord, help Seryozhka there, something with the family ...” Right at the throne - help this one, and this one ... During prayer, he listed everyone as a keepsake and his memory was, of course, excellent.

“Dashenka, my granddaughter, was born to us,” says one woman. - And the daughter, when she was pregnant, celebrated her birthday at the Assumption Fast - with booze, with partying. I tell her: "Fear God, because you're pregnant." And when the child was born, they determined he had a heart murmur, very seriously - there was a hole on the breathing valve. And the girl gasped. Even during the day, back and forth, she cries, and at night she generally suffocates. The doctors said that if she lives to be two and a half years old, we will have an operation in Moscow at the institute. Previously not possible. And so I kept running to Father Pavel: “Father, pray!” And he didn't say anything. I'll come, I'll say - and says nothing. Dasha lived for 2.5 years. Send us a call for surgery. I run to my father. “Father, what should I do? The call for the operation came, to go or not to go? And he says: "Communion and go." Here they go. They are there in the hospital, and I cry, but I keep running to the priest: “Father, pray!” And then he says to me so angrily: “May your Dasha get well!” And thank God, now - Dasha recovered with his prayers.

“The Lord heard the prayer of Fr. Paul faster than others, one priest recalls. - Whoever comes to him, who has something that hurts - the priest will knock so easily on the back or pat his ear: “Well, that's it, you'll be healthy, don't worry.” And he himself will go to the altar and pray for the person. The Lord will hear his prayer and help this man. Of course, I can’t say clearly—he was limping, he went up to Fr. Pavel and immediately jumped. It's not always obvious. The man mourned, mourned, but prayed for Paul, confessed, took communion, talked, asked for his prayers, so everything gradually and eased. A week will pass, and he is already healthy. “Prayer works everywhere, although it does not always work miraculously,” is written in Fr. Paul. “One must get up to prayer hastily, as if on fire, and especially for monks.” "God! Through the prayers of the righteous, have mercy on sinners."

IS IT EASY TO BE A LIKE

A lot of clergy took care of Fr. Pavel, and over the years more and more, so that Verkhne-Nikulsky formed its own "forge of personnel", or "Academy of Fools", as Fr. Paul. And it was a real spiritual academy, in comparison with which the metropolitan academies paled. The spiritual lessons of Archimandrite Paul were simple and remembered for a lifetime.

“Once I thought about whether I could be such a novice that I could unquestioningly fulfill all obediences,” says Batiushkin’s pupil, a priest. - Well, what, probably, could! Whatever Father says, I would do. I come to him - and he, as you know, often responded to thoughts with action or some kind of story. He, as usual, puts me at the table, immediately Marya starts to warm something up. He brings cabbage soup, pours. The cabbage soup was surprisingly tasteless. From some concentrate - and I just took communion - and lard floats on top. And a huge plate. I ate it with great difficulty. "Come on, come on!" And he rushes with the rest in the pan - he poured everything out for me - eat, eat up! I thought I was going to be sick now. And I confessed with my own lips: “I can’t fulfill such obedience, father!” So he rebuked me.

Father Pavel knew how to make a person feel a spiritual state — joy, humility… “Once on the eve of the “Worthy” — he had a lot of clergy — he says to me: “Father, today you will be a sacristan!” recalls one of the priests. “This robe is the most beautiful, put it on and you will give it to others.” And, probably, I still had some kind of vanity: “Look, what a beautiful riza!” And just a few minutes later - Father Pavel was at home, and I was in church, he somehow felt my condition - he was flying - “Come on, take off the robe!” And father Arkady came from Moscow, “Give it to father Arkady!” comes to us! It struck me like lightning from head to toe - I was so resigned. And in this state I felt like I was in heaven - in some kind of reverence, in the joyful presence of something important, i.e. he made me understand what humility is. I put on the oldest riza, but I was the happiest in this service.

May 5th, 2015

Archimandrite Pavel(in the world Pavel Alexandrovich Gruzdev(January 10 (23), 1910 - January 13, 1996) - Archimandrite Russian Orthodox Church, elder .
(Based on Wikipedia)

Born on January 10 (23), 1910 in the village of Bolshoi Borok, Mologa district in the peasant family of Alexander Ivanovich (1888-1958), who worked in Mologa in a butcher's shop, and Alexandra Nikolaevna, nee Solntseva (1890-1961). He had two younger sisters: Olga (1912) and Maria (1914). Father was taken away to war , the family began to live in poverty, and in 1916 Pavel went to live with his aunts, the nun Evstoliya and the nuns Elena and Olga, in Mologa Afanasyevsky Convent ; first herded chickens, then cows and horses, sang on kliros. wear a cassock the eight-year-old novice was blessed by the Patriarch of Moscow, who lived for some time in the monastery Tikhon . In 1928, he was declared unfit for military service due to "poor mental development." For a short time he was a court assessor:

people's court<…>I was the first to enter the meeting room, followed by Olga. Fathers! My relatives, the table is covered with red cloth, a decanter of water ... I crossed myself. Olga Samoilovna pushes me in the side and whispers in my ear: “You, infection, at least don’t be baptized, you’re an assessor!” “So it’s not a demon,” I answered her. Good! They announce the verdict, I listen, I listen ... No, that's not it! Wait, wait! I don’t remember what they were tried for - did he steal something, was it a pood of flour or something else? “No,” I say, “listen, you, boy, are the judge! After all, understand that his need made him steal something. Maybe his kids are hungry! Yes, I say it with all my might, without looking back. Everyone was looking at me and it became so quiet… They wrote their attitude to the monastery: “Don’t send more fools to the assessors.”

On May 13, 1941, Pavel Gruzdev, along with Hieromonk Nikolai and 11 other people, was arrested in the case of Archbishop Varlaam (Ryashentsev) of Yaroslavl. Those arrested were kept in the prisons of Yaroslavl. For a long time, Pavel Gruzdev was in solitary confinement in complete isolation, then 15 people were placed in a single cell due to lack of space. The prisoners did not have enough air, so they took turns crouching at the door gap near the floor to breathe.

During interrogations, Pavel was tortured: they beat him, almost all his teeth were knocked out, his bones were broken and his eyes were blinded, he began to lose his sight.
All other prisoners involved in this case were shot., and Father Pavel was sentenced to six years in prison in labor camps with a loss of rights for 3 years. From 1941 to 1947 he was in Vyatlage (Kirov region, Kaisky district, p / o Volosnitsa ), being prisoner number 513.

With the end of the war, he was released, returned to Tutaev to his former work and occupations, but in 1949 he was convicted again in the same case and exiled to a free settlement in Kazakh SSR indefinitely. He was a laborer in the regional construction office in Petropavlovsk ; in his free time he performed duties clerk and reader in the Cathedral of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul ; lived with elderly spouses, ran their household. On August 20, 1954, he was released as an innocent victim. As a good worker, he was persuaded to marry and stay in Petropavlovsk.

Upon returning to Tutaev, he lived with his parents, was a worker in the Gorkomstroykontor, built roads, landscaped parks and squares, served as a reader in his spare time, sang on the choir and sang in. He submitted two petitions for ordination to the priesthood, but he was refused due to a criminal record. January 21, 1958 was rehabilitated and filed a new petition.

On March 9, 1958, in the Feodorovsky Cathedral in Yaroslavl, he was ordained a vodeacon by Bishop Isaiah of Uglich, and on March 16 - to the presbyter. In August 1961 he was tonsured a monk by Archbishop Nikodim of Yaroslavl and Rostov.

He served as rector of the church in the village of Borzovo, Rybinsk region. Since 1960, he has been rector of the Trinity Church in the village of Verkhne-Nikulsky, Nekouzsky district (formerly Mologa district). He gained fame far beyond the village and even the region. A variety of people went to him for grace-filled consolation and solutions to life's problems. He taught Christian love simply: parables, life stories, some of which were written down and later published. Father Pavel was a model of Christian non-acquisitiveness: despite his wide popularity, he ate and dressed very simply, during his whole life he did not accumulate any material values.

In 1961 he was awarded a purple skufia by the bishop, in 1963 - a pectoral cross by the patriarch, in 1971 - a club, in 1976 - a cross with decorations. Hieromonk since 1962, hegumen since 1966, archimandrite since 1983.

Since June 1992, due to health reasons, he moved to Tutaev and lived in a gatehouse at the Resurrection Cathedral, since he did not have any funds to purchase housing. Despite complete blindness and a serious illness, he continued to serve and preach, to receive people. Died January 13, 1996. He was buried by Archbishop Mikhei of Yaroslavl and Rostov, co-served by 38 priests and 7 deacons with a large gathering of people next to his parents.

The burial place of Father Pavel is popularly revered, pilgrims from different regions of Russia come to him. Memorial services are constantly served at the grave of the elder.

Interesting Facts

• According to numerous testimonies, Father Pavel walked barefoot in the snow in the most severe frosts. Perhaps this was due to torture by cold in a concentration camp, after which he ceased to be afraid of frost.


• The concentration camp guards called Pavel "holy man".


• During his imprisonment and exile, Paul learned a lot. Already a priest in the village of Verkhne-Nikulsky, Father Pavel, at the request of the chairman of the collective farm, regularly helped take in the winter, which took place with difficulties, calving of cows. For this, he was respected by the local authorities.


• Archpriest Pavel Krasnotsvetov tells about a funny episode from the life of Father Pavel. “Once Father Pavel gave communion to his clergy. He had one altar bowl, over 90 years old. And now she comes to the bowl, but she cannot name her name - she forgot! “Mother, tell me your name!” Father Pavel tells her. And she is just silent. Then he himself calls her name and takes communion ... "


• Three programs of the St. Petersburg radio "Grad Petrov" were dedicated to the memory of Father Pavel on August 15, 23 and 29, 2010. The programs were recorded by Archpriest Georgy Mitrofanov, a well-known historian and leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, whose spiritual mentor was Father Pavel.

The most interesting fact

According to the recollections of those present, the priest's beard aroused my deep distrust of him. And because of that, I began to treat him with obvious suspicion. And when at some point he turned away, I, who already knew how to walk, rushed to run away from him. Yes, they say, quickly, that everyone was surprised at such a run, and at such and such a not too mature age.

All this my attitude towards him greatly amused Father Pavel. With a cheerful laugh, he caught up with me, picked me up in his arms and exclaimed: "Well, what a quick one - just a real astronaut!" (On my birthday - August 6, 1961, our cosmonaut No.2 - German Titov. In the maternity hospital where I was born, a nurse who entered the ward with women in labor asked: "Well, how many Germans do we have here today?" - and not a single Herman was found. No one named their child that way) So for a long time later, according to Father Pavel, I was prophesied to become an astronaut. But not fate, perhaps? However, life is far from over! Let's see how his "prediction" will come true?))

These are my connections with Heaven))

Center for Orthodox Culture of St. Demetrius of Rostov

Publishing house "Kitezh"

With the blessing of His Eminence Micah,

Archbishop of Yaroslavl and Rostov

The name of the Yaroslavl elder Archimandrite Paul (Gruzdev) is revered on Valaam and Mount Athos, in Moscow and St. Petersburg, in Ukraine and Siberia. During his lifetime Father Pavel was glorified by many gifts. The Lord heard his prayers and answered them. This righteous man lived a mighty life with God and with the people, sharing all the trials that befell Russia in the 20th century. The small homeland of Pavel Gruzdev - the county town of Mologa - was flooded by the waters of the Rybinsk man-made sea, and the Mologa exile became a migrant, and then a camp resident, having served a sentence of eleven years for his faith. And again he returned to the Mologa land - more precisely, what was left of it after the flood - and served here as a priest in the village of Verkhne-Nikulsky for almost thirty years and three years ...

Among all the gifts of Archimandrite Paul, his gift of a storyteller is remarkable: he seemed to heal the interlocutor with the life-giving power of his word. Everyone who talked with the priest, who listened to his stories, recalls with one voice that they left Father Pavel "as if on wings", their inner world was so joyfully transformed. We hope that readers of Batiushka's stories will also feel that joyful spiritual strength in communion with the Yaroslavl elder. As Father Paul said: "I will die - I will not leave you."

PEDIGREE OF PAVEL GRUZDEV

The genealogy of Pavel Gruzdev is rooted in the ancient land of Mologa. “Once upon a time, the peasant Terenty (Terekha) lived in the village of Bolshoy Borok,” Father Pavel writes in his diary notebooks. “This Terenty had a son Alexei, who had a crooked wife Fekla Karpovna.” Among the six children of Terenty (the Gruzdevs in the old days were called Terekhins) there was a son Alexei Terentyich, and he had a second son named Ivan Alekseevich Gruzdev - this is the grandfather of Fr. Paul. “An old man of medium height, a small blond beard, shrewd brown eyes and an invariable tube-nose warmer, hair cut like a pot, old Russian boots, a poor jacket and an old cap, and work and care from morning till night,” Father Pavel recalls. The family is ten people, and "one put on the land, there was a cow in the yard, there was no horse." “His wife was Marya Fominishna, a native of Petrov, from the village of Novoye Verkhovye, a dense, physically developed woman, naturally 40 percent deaf, with a wart on her left cheek,” Father Pavel describes his grandmother. “Summer in the field, winter - spinning , wove, raised grandchildren<...>. These workers had six children. "The first daughter of the Gruzdevs, Olga, after graduating from one grade of elementary school, went to the Mologa Afanasyevsky convent, where her paternal grandmother's sister, nun Evstoliya, lived and one aunt, nun Elena, also lived. Son Alexander was born in 1888 "After finishing three classes of the parochial school," writes Fr. Pavel, - was sent by his parents to Rybinsk to a shop with a certain Adreyanov, but the unbearable child labor and the inhumane brutal treatment of the owners forced him to flee on foot to Mologa and, without going home, begged to be a boy to Ievlev Alexander Pavlych, who had a butcher's shop, where he worked before the revolution, or rather, until 1914. Through the thickness of time, the ancient Mologa flickers, like the mysterious Kitezh through the waters of Svetloyar. Where is your holy fool Leshinka, who came to the Ievlevs' shop and asked the hostess: "Masha, Masha, give me a piglet," having received which, he immediately gave it to someone or stuffed it into some slot? Apparently, from his father - Alexander Ivanovich - survived Pavel Gruzdev has a memory of one case: “Tatya and the owner liked to go hunting for ducks to the Holy Lake in the fall, there were already darkness and darkness there. Once on a rainy autumn day with a lot of killed game, our hunters got lost. It was getting dark, and the rain was like a bucket. Where to go? Which side of Mologa? No orientation. But suddenly they saw in the distance, as it were, a column of fire rising from the earth, stretching into the sky; and they, rejoiced, went to this landmark. After two or three hours, Alexander Pavlych (Ievlev) and his aunt ran into the cemetery fence in the city of Mologa. Having climbed over the fence, they saw a fresh grave, on which Leshinka was praying on his knees with his hands raised to the sky, this wondrous radiance emanated from him. Alexander Pavlych fell on his knees in front of him with the words: "Lyosha, pray for us," to which he replied: "Pray yourself and don't tell anyone that you saw me here." Leshinka's full name is Aleksey Klyukin, he was buried in the Mologa Afanasyevsky Monastery near the summer cathedral, at the altar on the right side.

In 1910, Alexander Ivanovich married a girl from the village of Novoselki, Solntseva Alexandra Nikolaevna. The firstborn was the son Pavel, in 1912. daughter Olga was born, in 1914 - daughter Maria, and on July 19, 1914 the war began. - we read in the diaries of Father Paul. - I remember that the quitrent was not good and the fine for firewood that they carried from the forest on their shoulders. So they sentenced my grandmother and mother to a week in Boronishino, in the volost government, in the cold, of course, the grandmother and she took me with her, and there were a lot of non-payers from Borka, 15-20 people. They locked everyone in a dark room, sit down, criminals. And among us were deep old people Taras Mikheich and Anna Kuzina, both short-sighted. So they went to recover in the lavatory ", and there was a kerosene lamp burning, they somehow broke it. The kerosene flared up, a little and they did not burn out. And in the morning the foreman Sorokoumov came and kicked us all out. It was August 29, 1915-16."

My father fought at the front, and the family was in poverty, they went around the world. Mother Pavlusha, as the eldest, sent to beg, collect pieces in the village. And he was four years old. And he fled to the Afanasevsky monastery to his aunt.

MONASTERY HONEY

Here they came to bow to the abbess. “Bang at your feet!” the priest said. “Abbess says: “So what to do, Pavelko! There are a lot of chickens, hens, let him watch so that the crows do not steal it.

This is how it began for Fr. Paul's monastic obedience.

“Grazed chickens, then grazed cows, horses,” he recalled. “Five hundred acres of land! Oh, how they lived ...

Then - there is nothing for him, that is, for me, Pavelka, - you have to accustom yourself to the altar! He began to walk to the altar, serve the censer, fan the censer ... "

“They worked very hard in the monastery,” the priest recalled. In the field, in the garden, in the barnyard, they sowed, harvested, mowed, dug - constantly in the fresh air. And the people are mostly young, they always wanted to eat. So Pavelka figured out how to feed the novice sisters with honey:

“At that time I was five or seven years old, no more. We had just begun pumping honey in the monastery apiary, and I’m right here on the monastery horse. Okay!

But the honey wants something, and the sisters want something, but there is no blessing.

We are not ordered to eat honey.

Mother abbess, bless the honey!

Not allowed, Pavlusha, she replies.

Okay, - I agree, - as you wish, your will.

And I myself run to the barnyard, a plan is ripening in my head, how to get some honey. I grab a rat from a trap, which is bigger, and carry it to the glacier, where honey is stored. Wait, infection, and instantly with her there.

I smeared the rat with honey with a rag, I carry:

Mother! Mother! - and honey flows from the rat, I hold it by the tail:

Here she drowned in a barrel!

And cry, what are you! A rat has never seen honey even a barrel of that. And for everyone, honey is defiled, everyone is horrified - the rat drowned!

Bring that barrel, Pavelka, and get it out! - the abbess orders. - Only just so that he was not close to the monastery!

Good! That's what I need. Come on, take it! He took it away, hid it somewhere ...

Sunday came, go to confession... And the archpriest Fr. Nikolai (Rozin), he died a long time ago and is buried in Mologa.

Father Nikolai, father! I start with tears in my eyes. - Ashamed! So, they say, and so, I stole a barrel of honey. But he didn’t think about himself, he felt sorry for his sisters, he wanted to treat him ...

Yes, Pavlusha, your sin is great, but the fact that you had care not only about yourself, but also about your sisters, softens your guilt ... - And then he quietly whispers in my very ear: "But if I, son , one can, you pour another ... The Lord, seeing your kindness and repentance, will forgive your sin! Only, look, not a word about it to anyone, but I will pray for you, my child.

Yes Lord, yes Merciful, Glory to Thee! How easy! I run, I bring a can of honey to the archpriest. He took it to his house, gave it to the priest. Glory to Thee, Lord! A great weight off one's mind".

This story with monastery honey has already become a folk legend, and therefore it is told in different ways. Some say that it was not a rat, but a mouse. Others add that this mouse was caught by the monastery cat Zephyr, and colloquially, by Zifa. Still others claim that Pavelka promised the abbess to pray "for the foul eaters" when he becomes a priest... But we are telling this story the way the priest himself told it, and not a word more!

"...TO THE STAR OF THE CHILD AND THE KING OF KINGS"

Pavelka was very fond of going to carols at Christmas and Christmas time. They went around the monastery like this - first to the abbess, then to the treasurer, then to the deanery and to everyone in order. And he also comes to the abbess: "Can I carol?"

Mother abbess! - shouts the attendant. - Then Pavelko came, he will praise.

“It’s me Pavelko, at that time about six years old,” said the priest. “They don’t let her into her cell, so I’m standing in the hallway. I hear the voice of the abbess from the cell: “Okay, let her praise!” Then I begin:

Praise, praise

you yourself know about it.

I'm little Pavelko,

I can't praise

but I dare not ask.

mother abbess,

give me a pin!

If you don't give me a nickel, I'll leave anyway.

Wow! And tsolkovy, you know what? You do not know! Silver and two heads on it - the sovereign Emperor Nikolai Alexandrovich and Tsar Mikhail Feodorovich, were then such jubilee silver rubles. Thank God! And then I go to the treasurer - the whole procedure is like this ... Poplia's mother was the treasurer. He will give me a fifty dollars, and some sweets to boot.

Oh, and you were cunning, father Pavel, - his cell-attendant Marya Petrovna interrupts the father. - No, go to a simple nun! And all to the abbess, treasurer!

The simple themselves have that .., you yourself know, Marusya, what! You can’t beg for the Tsolkovy, even though you scream all day long, - Father Pavel laughs off and continues his story:

"From the treasurer to the dean. He sits at the table in a white apostle, drinks tea.

Mother Sebastian! - the cell attendant screams at her. - Pavelko came, he wants to glorify Christ.

She, without turning her head, says: "There is a piglet on the table, give it to him, and let him go."

Go away, - the cell attendant was alarmed. - The mother dean is dissatisfied.

And already more for the dean than for me, he is indignant: "Look, how much dirt you applied, slandered! How clean and washed rugs! Go away!"

He turned around, did not even take a patch from her. Okay, I think ... If you die, I won’t grieve for you! And I won’t go to ring the bell, know that, mother Sebastiana! And the tears are running down my cheeks like a river ... Offended.

To ring the bell was also the obedience of little Pavelka. As the priest said: "My labor income is in the monastery." “For example, a mantle nun dies,” says Father Pavel. thunderstorm: "Pavelko, let's go." We climb the bell tower, at night the stars and the moon are close, and during the day the earth is far, far away, Mologa lies like on the palm of your hand, all, like necklaces, entwined with rivers around. In the summer - barge haulers along the Mologa from the Volga drag barges , in winter - everything is white and white, in the spring in the flood you can’t see the riverbed, only the boundless sea ... The grave Faina ties the tongue of the bell with a manteika, the one that is 390 pounds. and I'm with her - boo-m-m! According to the monastic custom, no matter what obedience anyone is, everyone must bow three times for the newly deceased. You milk a cow or ride a horse, you are a prince or a priest - lay three bows of the earth! So she lived - in fear of God ...

And this manteika hangs on the tongue of the bell until the fortieth day, there already from rain, snow or wind, only shreds will remain. On the fortieth day, these shreds will be collected - and at the grave. A memorial service will be served and that manteika will be buried in the ground. This concerned only the mantle nuns, and everyone else was buried as usual. And for that - Pavelko sits on the bell tower all night and day - they will pay me a ruble. Thank God they didn't die often."

"AND I TO PATRIARCH TIKHON SPINKO TER, AND HE TO ME!"

In the summer of 1913 they celebrated the royal anniversary in Mologa - although without the personal presence of the Sovereign, but very solemnly. Archbishop Tikhon of Yaroslavl and Rostov, the future Patriarch, sailed on a steamboat along the Volga to Mologa. Of course, the main celebrations took place in the Afanasievsk monastery. Pavlusha Gruzdev was three years old, but he already knew the path to the monastery well, more than once his godmother, the nun Evstoli, took him with him.

His first meeting with St. Tikhon, Fr. Paul remembered for the rest of his life. Vladyka was kind, he blessed everyone in the monastery without exception, and with his own hand distributed commemorative coins and medals issued in honor of the tsar's jubilee. Pavlusha Gruzdev also got a coin.

I knew St. Tikhon, I knew Archbishop Agafangel and many, many others, - said the priest. - The kingdom of heaven to them all. Every time on January 18 old style / January 31 AD. /, on the day of St. Athanasius the Great and Cyril, Archbishops of Alexandria, people from everywhere came to our holy monastery, including the priesthood: Father Gregory - a hieromonk from Tolga, Archimandrite Jerome from Yuga, the rector of the Adrian Monastery, Hieromonk Sylvester from Church of the Archangel Michael, five - six priests more. Yes, how did they go to lithium, Lord! Joy, beauty and tenderness!

During the Yaroslavl uprising of 1918, according to stories, Patriarch Tikhon lived in the Tolgsky monastery, but was forced to leave it, moving to the relatively quiet Mologa monastery at that time. bathe with His Holiness

They drown the bathhouse, and the abbess calls “Pavelko” - that means me, - says the priest - Go and wash with Vladyka, in the bathhouse. And Patriarch Tikhon washed my back, and I him!

Vladyka blessed the novice Pavelka to wear a cassock, with his own hands he put a belt and a skullcap on Pavlusha, thereby, as it were, giving him his hierarchal blessing for monasticism. And although Fr. Pavel took monastic vows only in 1962, all his life he considered himself a monk, a monk. And the cassock, skullcap and rosary given to him by St. Tikhon, he kept through all the trials.

For more than two weeks, according to Pavel, Patriarch Tikhon lived in the hospitable Mologa monastery. The abbess with him, the Rybinsk dean about Alexander, everyone called him Yursha for some reason, perhaps because he was from the village of Yurshino. I run next to the saint, I carry his staff. Soon we left the gate and found ourselves in a cucumber field:

Mother abbess! - His Holiness Tikhon addresses the abbess - Look how many cucumbers you have!

And then the dean about Alexander was nearby, put in a word:

How many cucumbers are in the monastery, so many fools, then:

Of these, you will be the first! - noted the saint

Everyone laughed, including Father Alexander and His Holiness himself.

Send the cucumbers to Tolga, - he then ordered.

Father Pavel told how they pickled cucumbers in barrels right in the river, how they drove mushrooms. Each case had its own custom, its own special ritual. They go mushroom picking - they sit on a cart, they take a samovar and provisions with them. Old nuns and they, young people, come to the forest, set up camp, tie a bell in the center, or rather, such a bell. Young people go into the forest to pick mushrooms, then a fire is burning, food is being prepared, and someone bangs into the bell so that they do not get lost, do not go far. They pick mushrooms, bring them back to the Old Woman's forest and pick the mushrooms, boil them right there.

And since childhood, Father Pavel was such that he loved to feed people, loved to run the household - in a monastic, systematic way.

HOW PAVEL GRUZDEV WAS A JUDICIARY

After the revolution and the civil war, the Mologa Afanasievsky Monastery turned from a monastery of monastics into the Afanasievskaya Labor Artel. But monastic life went on as usual, despite all the upheavals.

“It was very fashionable then to gather meetings,” recalled Fr. Pavel 20s in Mologa. - An inspector comes from the city, or someone else, authorized, immediately to us:

Where are the members of the labor artel?

So no, they answer him.

Where are they? - asks.

Yes, all night.

What are they doing there?

Pray...

So the meeting is scheduled!

We don't know that.

Well, you will pray for me! he threatens.

Accused of evading “participation in public construction,” the sisters of the convent did their best to participate in the new Soviet life, to comply with all orders.

Father Pavel said: “One day they come and tell us:

There is a decision! It is necessary to select judges from among the members of the Afanasievskaya Labor Artel. From the monastery, that is.

Okay, we agree. - And who to choose as assessors?

And whoever you want, choose

They chose me, Pavel Aleksandrovich Gruzdev. Need someone else. Whom? Olga, the chairman, she alone had high-heeled shoes. Without that, do not go to the assessors. I'm fine, except for the cassock and bast shoes, nothing. But as an elected assessor, they bought a good shirt, a crazy shirt with a turn-down collar. Ow! infection, and a tie! I tried on for a week, how to tie the court?

In a word, I became a court assessor. Let's go, the city of Mologa, the People's Court. At the trial they announce: "Judges Samoilova and Gruzdev, take your seats." I was the first to enter the meeting room, followed by Olga. Fathers! My relatives, the table is covered with red cloth, a decanter of water ... I crossed myself. Olga Samoilova pushes me in the side and whispers in my ear:

You, infection, at least do not be baptized, because the assessor!

So it's not a demon, - I answered her.

Good! They announce the verdict, I listen, I listen ... No, that's not it! Wait, wait! I don’t remember, they were tried for what - did he steal something, was it a pood of flour or something else? “No,” I say, “listen, you guy is a judge! After all, understand that his need made him steal something. Maybe his kids are hungry!”

Yes, I say it with all my might, without looking back. Everyone looks at me and it became so quiet ...

They write an attitude to the monastery: “Don’t send more fools as assessors.” Me, that means, ”the priest clarified and laughed.

"I WAS HUNGRY AND YOU FEED ME"

On May 13, 1941, Pavel Alexandrovich Gruzdev was arrested in the case of Archbishop Varlaam Ryashentsev.

The camp where Father Pavel served his term for six years was located at the following address: Kirov region, Kaisky district, p / o Volosnitsa. Vyatka corrective labor camps were engaged in the preparation of firewood for the Perm railway, and prisoner No. 513 called himself Fr. Pavel - it was instructed to serve the railway line, along which timber was taken out of the taiga from the logging site. As a narrow-gauge lineman, he was allowed to move around the taiga on his own, without a guard behind his back, he could at any time go into the zone and leave it, turn on the way to a free village. Convoylessness is an advantage that was greatly valued in the zone. And the time was military, the very one about which they say that of the seven camp eras, the most terrible is the war: "Whoever did not sit in the war did not even taste the camp." From the beginning of the war, the already impossibly meager camp rations were cut, and the products themselves worsened every year: bread - raw black clay, "chernyashka"; vegetables were replaced by fodder turnips, beet tops, and all sorts of rubbish; instead of cereals - vetch, bran.

Many people were saved by Fr. Pavel in the camp from starvation. While the brigade of prisoners was led to the place of work by two shooters, in the morning and in the evening - the names of the shooters were Zhemchugov and Pukhtyaev, Fr. Pavel remembered that convict No. 513 had a pass for free exit and entry into the zone: “I want to go to the forest, but I want to go along the forest ... But more often I take a pestle woven from twigs into the forest and pick berries. , then cloudberries and lingonberries, and mushrooms! Okay. Guys, the forest is nearby! Merciful Lord, glory to Thee!"

What could be carried through the entrance to the camp, Fr. Pavel changed in the medical unit for bread, fed his comrades in the barracks who were weakened from hunger. And they had a barrack - entirely Article 58: monks, Germans from the Volga region were sitting, the intelligentsia. Met about. Pavel in the camps as a headman from the Tutaev Cathedral, he died in his arms.

Stocked up for the winter. Chopped mountain ash and stacked in haystacks. Then they will be covered with snow and take all winter. He salted mushrooms in makeshift pits: he would dig them out, cover them with clay from the inside, throw brushwood in there, light a fire. The pit becomes like an earthenware jug or a large bowl. He will pile a full pit of mushrooms, get salt somewhere on the tracks, sprinkle the mushrooms with salt, then crush them with boughs. "And so," he says, "I'm carrying a bucket to the guards through the checkpoint, two buckets to the camp."

Once in the taiga I met Fr. Pavel bear: "I'm eating raspberries, and someone is pushing. I looked - a bear. I don't remember how I ran to the camp." Another time, they almost shot him while he was sleeping, mistaking him for a runaway convict. “Somehow I picked up a whole bunch of berries,” the father said. “Then there were a lot of strawberries, so I picked them up with a mountain. And at the same time, I was tired - either I walked from the night, or something else - I don’t remember now. I walked and walked to the camp, and lay down on the grass. My documents, as it should be, are with me, and what documents? this strawberry is in my head. Suddenly I hear someone throwing cones at me - right in my face. I crossed myself, opened my eyes, I looked - the shooter!

Ah! Escaped?..

Citizen chief, no, he didn’t run away, - I answer.

Do you have a document? - asks.

I have, citizen chief, - I tell him and take out the document. He always lay in my shirt in a sewn pocket, right here - on my chest near the heart. He looked, he looked at the document this way and that way.

Okay, - says - free!

Citizen chief, eat some strawberries, - I suggest to him.

Okay, let's go, - agreed the shooter.

He put the rifle on the grass... My dear ones, it was with difficulty that strawberries were recruited for the sick in the camp, and he ate half of me. Well, God bless him!"

"I WAS SICK, AND YOU VISITED ME"

In the medical unit, where Pavel Gruzdev exchanged berries for bread, two doctors worked, both from the Baltic States - Dr. Berne, a Latvian, and Dr. Chamans. They will give them instructions, orders to the medical unit: "Tomorrow is a shock working day in the camp" - Christmas, for example, or Easter. On these bright Christian holidays, prisoners were forced to work even harder - they were "re-educated" by hard work. And they warn the doctors, the same prisoners: "To not release more than fifteen people throughout the camp!" And if the doctor does not fulfill the order, he will be punished - they can add a term. And Dr. Berne will release thirty people from work and he carries the list on watch ...

"You can hear:" Who?

They call him, our doctor, bent for what it should be:

"Tomorrow you will go to give three norms for your arbitrariness!"

Okay! Good!

So I will tell you, my dear children. I don’t understand in the beauty of the human body, in the spiritual I understand, but then I understood! He went out to watch with the workers, went out with everyone ... Oh, handsome, crazy handsome and without a hat! He is standing without a headdress and with a saw ... I think to myself: "Mother of God, yes to the Lady, Quick to Hearing! Send him everything for his simplicity and patience!" Of course, we took care of him and took him away from work that day. They built a fire for him, they planted him next to him. The arrow was bribed: "Here you are! Be silent, you infection!"

So the doctor sat by the fire, warmed himself and did not work. If he is alive, give him, Lord, good health, and if he died - Lord! Send him the Kingdom of Heaven, according to your covenant: "I was sick, and you visited Me!"

HOW FATHER PAUL TOOK A MAN FROM THE LOOP

All prisoners under Article 58 in the zone were called "fascists" - this apt stigma was invented by thieves and approved by the camp authorities. What could be more shameful when there is a war against the Nazi invaders? "Fascist muzzle, fascist bastard" - the most common camp appeal.

Once about. Pavel pulled a German out of the noose - the same prisoner - a "fascist" like himself. Since the beginning of the war, many of them, Russified Germans from the Volga region and other regions, fell behind barbed wire - their whole fault was that they were of German nationality. This story is told from beginning to end by Father Paul himself.

“It’s autumn in the yard! The rain is crazy, it’s night. And my responsibility is eight kilometers of the railway track along the camp trails. I was a tracker, that’s why I had a free pass, they trusted me. I will advise you, and I will prostrate, just listen.

The head of our road was Grigory Vasilyevich Kopyl. How he loved me! Do you know why? I brought him the best mushrooms, and all kinds of berries - in a word, he received from me in abundance the gifts of the forest.

Okay! Autumn and night and the rain is crazy.

Pavlo! How is the road on the site? - And there was Grigory Vasilyevich Kopyl, also a prisoner, like me, but the boss.

Citizen chief, - I answer him, - the road is in perfect order, I looked and checked everything. Sealed, - a joke, of course.

Okay, Pavluha, get in the car with me.

The car is an old reserve engine, you all know what a reserve engine is, it went between the camps. When to clear the blockage, when to urgently deliver a brigade of stackers, - an auxiliary locomotive. Okay! Go!

Look, Pavlo, you are responsible for the road with your head! Kopyl warned as the train started moving.

I answer, citizen chief, - I agree. Steam engine, crazy, you can't tighten your jaw with a bridle, maybe! Let's go. Good! We drove a little, suddenly a push! What kind of push is that? At the same time, the steam locomotive will quit ...

Ah! So are you walking me? On the way lining dispersed!

The overlays are fastened, where the rails are connected at the junction.

Yes, Grigory Vasilyevich, I checked the road!

Well, I believe you, - muttered a disgruntled Kopyl. We go further. We drove another three hundred meters, well, five hundred ... another blow! Again the locomotive abandoned!

From tomorrow, for two weeks, you will have not eight hundred rations, as before, of grams, but three hundred bread, - Kopyl said sternly.

Well, it's up to you, you're the boss...

We drove eight kilometers to the camp. Everyone leaves, goes to the camp, to rest after work. What about me? No, my dears, I'll go there to see what's the matter. Did not follow the road, infection! And to run eight kilometers in the rain, and the night to that. But well - it's given to you, your responsibility ...

I'm running... Good! Here I feel, now is the place where the push was.

Look - mothers! - the horse is lying in a ditch, both legs were cut off ... Oh! What will you do? By the tail - and away from the mound of swine. I run further. And I roar, I scream! Night! I'm soaked to the bone, but spit. I call on the help of all the saints, but most of all: “Reverend Father Barlaamie! I lived with you for four years, the saint of God! I always wiped your shrine near the relics! Help me, Father Barlaamie, and wipe my sins, wash with your prayers to our Lord, Savior Jesus Christ!

But at the same time, I keep running along the road ... I see - the horse is still lying, Lord! Also stabbed to death - by the locomotive on which we rode. Ow! To do what? But the Lord had mercy, I did not lose my head and pulled this one away from the road. Suddenly I hear - some kind of snoring, a groan like a human. And next to that place there was a sleeper-cutting - when they made the road, they put the motor there, they built the roof. Something like a barn like this, logs were cut into sleepers in it.

I run there. I ran mechanically into this trellis cutter... My dear ones! I look, and the peasant, the camp shepherd, is hanging! Hanged, infection! He pastured those horses, German. What were the Germans then? He was arrested, maybe from the Volga region, I don’t know ...

Yes, Mother of God! Yes, I call all the saints and Michael of Klopsky, Lord! He called everyone, to the last drop. What should I do? We weren't allowed to wear knives, so I didn't. If found, they could be shot. They were shot for nothing. I could untie a knot on a rope with my teeth, so my teeth were all knocked out then. Investigator Spassky left me the only one as a memento in the Yaroslavl prison.

Once I tangled and tangled this rope with my fingers, in a word, unraveled it. He collapsed to the floor, Lord! I went to him, turned him over on his back, stretched his arms and legs. I feel the pulse - no. Nothing in it gurgles, nothing squishes. Yes, what to do? Yes, the Mother of God! Again, all the Saints to the rescue, and Elijah the Prophet. You are in heaven, I don’t know how to ask, how to please you? Help us!

No, my dears, I was already crazy. Died. Dead lies! Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian and John Chrysostom... whoever he called!

Suddenly I hear! God! Then, right in his throat, he choked. Oh, mothers, it worked ... So far, so occasionally: koh-koh-koh. Then more often. He overlaid it with moera grass, it was already in August-September, and he himself ran to the zone, again eight miles. The rain has passed, and I'm dry, steam pours out of me. I ran to the watch: "Come on, come on quickly! Railcar, now I have a railcar! It's bad for a man in the forest, on the stretch!"

The arrows on the watch, looking at me, say: "Well, he prayed, holy man! He has that head!" They think I've gone crazy. Did I look like this or something? Don't know. They do not say my last name, but as they call my number, they immediately say "holy man." For example: "513th completely prayed, saint!"

Let them talk, I think. - Okay.

I ran, found the head of the medical unit, we had such Feriy Pavel Eduardovich. I don’t know what nation he was, but his last name was Feriy. He respected me - no, not for handouts - but for just that he respected me. I address him:

Citizen chief, so, they say, and so!

Okay, let's run to the trolley, let's go, - he tells me. We arrived at the sleeper, and this one is lying there without memory, but his pulse is functioning. He was immediately stabbed with something, given something and brought to the zone. Him to the medical unit, and I went to the barracks.

A month or a half later, a summons comes to me: "The number is such and such, we ask you to immediately appear in court at the eighth camp." I arrived at the eighth camp, as indicated in the agenda. There is a trial, and I am a witness in court. They don't judge me, but that boy, the shepherd from the sleeper, whose horses were slaughtered by a steam locomotive at night.

As it turned out later, it turned out during the investigation, he simply overslept them. He walked and walked, passed, passed, and fell asleep, and they themselves wandered under the engine. And now the court is assembled, and it is judged.

Well you, 513th! - that means me. - Witness! How will you answer us? After all, you know, you understand, probably. The country is in a critical situation. The Germans are torn, and he undermines our defenses. Agree with that, yes, 513th? "He" is the shepherd who hanged himself.

I get up, they ask me, as a witness, I answer:

Citizens of the judge, I will only tell the truth. So, they say, and so I took him out of the noose. Not for joy, he climbed into it, a noose. He apparently has a wife, "frau", which means that he probably also has children. Think for yourself, what was it like for him to climb into the noose? But fear has big eyes. Therefore, citizens of the judge, I will not sign and do not support the accusation you brought against him. Well, he was scared, I agree. Fell asleep - so night and rain. Maybe he's tired, and then there's a steam locomotive... No, I don't agree

So you are a fascist!

So, perhaps your will.

And you know, my relatives, they gave him only conditionally. I don't really know what conditionality is. But he was given the opportunity. And then, sometimes, I still sleep on a bunk, and he will receive his ration of eight hundred grams of bread, and he will shove three hundred under my pillow

This is how my family lived."

Different streams of people poured into the camps in different years - either dispossessed, then cosmopolitans, then the party elite cut down by another blow of an ax, then scientific and creative intelligentsia, ideologically not pleasing to the Master - but always and in any years there was a single common stream of believers - "some kind of then a silent religious procession with invisible candles. Like a machine gun, they fall among them - and the next step in, and go again. Hardness, not seen in the 20th century!" These are lines from The Gulag Archipelago.

As if in the first Christian centuries, when worship was often performed in the open air, the Orthodox now pray in the forest, in the mountains, in the desert and by the sea.

In the Ural taiga, the Liturgy was also served by the prisoners of the Vyatka corrective labor camps.

There were two bishops, several archimandrites, abbots, hieromonks and just monks. And how many believing women were in the camp, who were all dubbed "nuns", mixing in one heap both illiterate peasant women and abbesses of various monasteries. According to Father Pavel, "there was a whole diocese there!" When it was possible to come to an agreement with the head of the second part, which was in charge of passes, the "camp diocese" went out into the forest and began worship in a forest clearing. For the sacrament cup, juice was prepared from various berries, blueberries, strawberries, blackberries, lingonberries - that God would send, a stump was a throne, a towel served as a sakos, a censer was made from a tin can. And the bishop, dressed in prison rags, - "Divide my garmentsfor myself and about my clothes, metasha lots ..."-was standing on the forest throne as the Lord's, he was helped by all the worshipers.

"Take the body of Christ, taste the source of the immortal" - the choir of prisoners sang in the forest clearing... How everyone prayed, how they wept - not from grief, but from prayerful joy...

At the last divine service (something happened in the camp, someone was being transferred somewhere), lightning struck the stump that served as the throne - so that they would not desecrate it later. He disappeared, and in his place appeared a funnel full of clean, clear water. The guard, who saw everything with his own eyes, turned white with fear, said: "Well, you are all saints here!"

There were cases when, together with the prisoners, some of the guards-shooters took communion in the forest.

The Great Patriotic War was going on, which began on Sunday, June 22, 1941 - on the Day of All Saints, who shone in the Russian land, and prevented the implementation of the state plan of the "godless five-year plan", according to which not a single church should have remained in Russia. What helped Russia to survive and preserve the Orthodox faith - weren't it the prayers and the righteous blood of millions of prisoners - the best Christians in Russia?

Tall pines, grass in a clearing, the throne of the Cherubim, the sky ... A communion cup with juice from wild berries:

"... I believe, Lord, that this is Your most pure Body and this is Your precious blood... which is shed for us and for many for the remission of sins..."

THE HAPPIEST DAY

Much has been written in the 20th century about the horrors and sufferings of the camps. Archimandrite Pavel, not long before his death, in the 90s of our (already past) century, admitted:

“My relatives, I had the happiest day in my life. Listen.

Somehow they brought girls to our camps. All of them are young, young, probably, and they were not twenty. They called them "benders". Among them is one beauty - she has a braid up to her toes and she is sixteen years old at the most. And now she is crying so much, crying so much ... "How bitter it is for her, - I think, - this girl, that she is so killed, she cries so much."

I came closer, I asked ... And there were about two hundred prisoners gathered here, both our campers and those who were with the escort. "And why does the girl revit so?" Someone answers me, from their own, newly arrived: “We drove for three days, they didn’t give us expensive bread, they had some kind of overspending. ate - a day, or something, what a fast she had. And this ration, which for three days - was stolen, somehow snatched from her. For three days she did not eat, now they would share it with her, but also We don't have any bread, we've already eaten everything."

And I had a stash in the barracks - not a stash, but a ration for today - a loaf of bread! I ran to the barracks ... And I received eight hundred grams of bread as a worker. What kind of bread, you know, but still bread. I take this bread and run back. I bring this bread to the girl and give it to me, and she says to me: "Hi, don't need it! I don't sell my honor for bread!" And I didn’t take bread, fathers! My dear relatives! Yes Lord! I don’t know what kind of honor is such that a person is ready to die for it? Before that, I didn’t know, but on that day I found out that this is called a girl’s honor!

I put this piece under her arm and ran out of the zone, into the forest! I climbed into the bushes, knelt down ... and such were my tears of joy, no, not bitter. And I think the Lord will say:

I was hungry, and you, Pavlukha, fed me.

When, Lord?

Yes, that girl is a Benderovka. You fed me! That was and is the happiest day of my life, and I have lived a lot."

"LORD, AND FORGIVE US THAT WE ARE PRISONERS!"

In the case of Archbishop Varlaam Ryashentsev, who was the successor of Metropolitan Agafangel of Yaroslavl, Pavel Gruzdev was arrested twice. He received a second term in 1949, as they said then - he became a "repeater". From Yaroslavl, the prisoners were taken to Moscow, to Butyrki, and from there to Samara, to a transit prison.

In the Samara prison, Father Pavel, along with other prisoners, celebrated Easter 1950. On this day - Sunday - they were driven out for a walk in the prison yard, lined up and led in a circle. It occurred to someone from the prison authorities: "Hey, priests, sing something!"

“And Vladyka—Lord, remember him!” said the priest, “says to us: “Fathers and brothers! Today Christ is risen!" And he sang: "Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death and bestowing life on those in the tombs..." Yes, remember, Lord, that righteous shooter - he didn’t shoot at anyone. Let's go, let's eat "It's the day of the Resurrection, let's enlighten people! Pascha, the Lord's Pascha! From death to life and from earth to heaven, Christ God will bring us ..."

The prisoners were taken from Samara to no one knows where. There were bars in the wagons, they didn’t give bread for the road. "Oh, yes, the Solovetsky wonderworkers! But where are you, the righteous, sending us?" They go for a day, two, three .. You can see the mountains from the far window. And again - "with things!" Everyone came out, gathered, became in fact. Shout out the new arrivals alphabetically

BUT! Antonov Ivan Vasilievich Come in.

Number 1 is in.

Augustow... Enters.

B!.. C!.. G!.. Come in! To the zone, to the zone! Grivnev, Godunov, Gribov... Donskoy, Danilov...

What about Gruzdev? - asks about. Paul.

No, they answer him.

"How not? - he thinks. - I'm their worst fascist. They don't call me! Apparently, now it will be even worse."

Everyone was named, no one was left, only two old men and him, Pavel Gruzdev.

Boy, are you a prisoner?

Prisoner.

And we are prisoners. Are you a fascist?

And we are fascists.

“Glory to Thee, Lord!” Father Pavel sighed with relief and explained.

Duck boy, - the old people ask him, - you go to this, which boss, say that you forgot three!

Citizen boss! We are also three prisoners from this party.

We don't know! Back off!

The old men are sitting with Pavlusha, waiting. Suddenly, a guard comes out of the checkpoint booth, carries a package:

Well, which one of you will be smarter? The old people say:

So give the guy the documents.

Take this. There, you see, three kilometers away, a house on a mountain and a flag? Go there, they will tell you what to do.

“Let’s go,” Father Pavel recalled. “Lord, we look: “monshases and shandases” - everything around is not in Russian. I say: “Guys, we were not brought to Russia!” They came to this house - the commandant’s office, it is written in three languages.

Hello.

Whats up?

Don't yell at us! Here are the real documents.

E! - writhed all. - Let's go! And then we'll call the police, shoot! Oh, you infection, they will still kill you!

Tomorrow at 9-10 o'clock we come, work will begin!

Went. Where are you going, father? Kutsy go something? We ask the prison. Yes, dirty ones! There were no lice. Shorn ones! Lord, yes Mother of God, yes Solovetsky wonderworkers! Where did we get? What is this city? Everywhere is not written in Russian. "Out the prison," they say. We approach the prison, I press the bell:

We don't send transmissions, it's too late!

Honey, take us! We are prisoners!

Run away?

Here are the documents for you.

It's in transit. Do not accept. Aliens.

We are back in transit. It's already evening. The sun has set, we need to look for a lodging for the night. And who will let us?

Guys, they don't take us anywhere!

And our shift has passed, let's leave, otherwise we will shoot!

"Well, grandfathers, let's go." What to do? We are afraid to go to the city, I don’t remember where we went straight through the countryside. The river is making noise. I would like to drink some water, but I have no strength from hunger. I found some kind of hole, weeds - thump in the weeds. Here he fell, and here he fell asleep. And I put this piece of paper, documents, under my head, somehow saved it. I wake up in the morning. The first thing that seemed strange to me was the sky above me, the blue sky. Prison is everything, transfer ... And here is the sky! I think I'm nuts. I gnaw my hand - no, I haven’t gone crazy yet. God! Make this day a day of Thy mercy!

I get out of the hole. One old man is praying, and the other is washing his shirt in the river. "Oh, son, alive!" "Alive, fathers, alive."

We washed ourselves in the river - the Ishim River. The sun has just risen. Prayers began to read:

“Rise from sleep, we fall down to Thee, Blessed, and we cry out to thee, stronger than the angelic song. Holy, Holy, Holy ecu God, Mother of God, have mercy on us.

From the couch and sleep raised me ecu Lord, enlighten my mind and heart ... " We read those prayers, we hear: boom! .. boom! .. boom! .. The church is somewhere! There is a service! One old man says. "Duck out, see, on the horizon?" A kilometer and a half from our lodging for the night. "Let's go to church!"

And it’s not that we were beggars, but what is the last step of the beggars - here we were on this step. And what to do - if only we would take communion! Judas would have repented, the Lord would have forgiven him. Lord, forgive us that we are prisoners! And the batiushka is eager to give a confession. I didn't have a dime. Some old man saw us, gives us three rubles: "Go and change!" Everyone got a fifty-kopeck piece, and they put candles on the rest for the Savior and the Queen of Heaven. They confessed, took communion - yes, no matter where you take us, even shoot us, no one is scary! Glory to Thee, Lord!"

CASE AT ZUEVKA STATE FARM

Thus began the exile life of Pavel Gruzdev in the city of Petropavlovsk, where on the very first day he and the old monks took communion in the cathedral church of Peter and Paul. In Kazakhstan, the prisoner Gruzdev was sent "to an eternal settlement." In the regional construction office, Gruzdev was put on a stone crusher. "They gave me a sledgehammer," the father recalled. Once they sent them, administrative exiles, to the village of Zuevka for harvesting. The state farm Zuevka was located thirty forty versts from Petropavlovsk, and as if something had happened there - cattle, poultry were left unattended, the harvest was not harvested. But no one tells the truth.

“They brought us by car to Zuevka,” Father Pavel said. “And what is happening there! My relatives! Cows roar, camels yell, but there is no one in the village, as if the whole village had died out. We don’t know who to shout, who to look for. We thought, we thought, we decided to go to the chairman in the administration. We come to him., oh-oh-oh! There is a bench in the middle of the room, and there is a coffin on the bench. Matushki! And in it the chairman lies, turns his head and looks askance at us I say to my own : "Stop!" - and then to him: "Hey, what are you doing?" And he answered me from the coffin: "I am the newly-departed servant of God Vasily"

And they had such a father Athanasius there in Zuevka - he got there a long time ago, almost before the revolution. And it was this Athanasius who brought them all to their senses: "Tomorrow there will be an advent, the end of the world!" And he tonsured everyone into monks and laid them in coffins ... The whole village! They sewed some kind of cassock out of gauze and whatever. And Athanasius himself climbed the bell tower and waited for the coming. Ouch! The kids are small, the women - and all have tonsured, all lie in coffins in the huts. The cows need to be milked, the cows' udders have been stolen. “Why should the cattle suffer?” I ask one woman. “Who are you?” "Nun Evnikia" - answers me. God! Well, what will you do?

We spent the night there, worked a day or two as expected, then they took us home. Athanasius was sent to the hospital. They wrote to the bishop in Alma-Ata - Joseph was, it seems - he recognized this Athanasian tonsure as illegal and all the "monks" were cut. They put on their dresses and skirts and they worked as they should.

But the seeds were thrown into the ground and gave their shoots. Little kids run around: "Mother, mother! And Father Luka broke my face!" Father Luka is not five years old. Or else: "Mother, mother, mother Faina took the roll from me!" That was the case at the Zuevka state farm.

DIED "EVERLIVE"

So day after day, month after month, the 53rd year came. “I come home from work,” Father Pavel recalled, “Grandpa says to me:

Son, Stalin is dead!

Grandpa, be quiet. He is forever alive. Both you and me will be jailed.

Tomorrow morning I have to go to work again, and they broadcast on the radio, warning that when Stalin's funeral is, "the horns will hum like everyone! Stop work - stand and freeze where the horn found you, for a minute or two ..." And with me Ivan from Vetluga was in exile, his surname was Lebedev. Oh, what a good man, a master of all trades! Well, whatever he takes in his hands, he will do everything with these hands. Ivan and I worked on camels then. He has a camel, I have a camel. And on these camels, we are going through the steppe with him. Suddenly the horns went off! The camel must be stopped, but Ivan beats him harder and scolds him. And the camel runs across the steppe, and does not know that Stalin is dead!

This is how the cassock Pavel Gruzdev from the flooded Mologa and the jack-of-all-trades from the ancient town of Vetluga Ivan Lebedev saw off Stalin on his last journey. "And after Stalin's funeral we are silent - we didn't see anyone, we didn't hear anything."

And here again the night, about one o'clock in the morning. Knocking on the gate:

Is Gruzdev here?

Well, night visitors are a common thing. Father Pavel always has a bag of crackers ready. It turns out:

Get it together, buddy! Come with us!

"Grandfather revit, grandmother revit ... - Son! They have already got used to me for so many years," said Father Pavel. "I took crackers, took a rosary - in a word, I took everything. Lord! Let's go. I see, no, they are not being taken to the station, but to the commandant's office. I go in. We are not allowed to greet, they greet only real people, and we are prisoners," a fascist muzzle ". What can you do? Okay. I went in, hands like this, behind my back, as expected - for eleven years I got used to it, I gained experience. You stand in front of them, not to speak - breathe, blink your eyes and then you are afraid.

Comrade Gruzdev!

Well, I guess it's the end of the world. Everything is a "fascist muzzle", and here is a comrade.

Sit down, freely, - it means that they invite me.

Okay, thanks, but I'll stand it, Citizen Chief.

No, sit down!

My pants are dirty, I'll get dirty.

Sit down!

Still, I sat down, as they said.

Comrade Gruzdev, why are you serving your sentence?

So he's a fascist, isn't he? - I answer.

No, you don't shirk, you're being serious.

I do not know. Here you have documents lying on me, you know better.

By mistake, he says.

Glory to Thee Lord! Now they will probably be taken to Solovki, when by mistake ... I really wanted to go to Solovki, to bow to the holy places. But I keep listening.

Comrade Gruzdev, here's a note for you, you suffered innocently. Cult of personality. Go to the police tomorrow with a certificate. Based on this paper, you will be issued a passport. And we secretly warn you... If someone calls you a fascist or something like that, report to us, comrade Gruzdev! We will attract that citizen for this. Here is our address.

Oh oh oh! - waved his hands. - I won't, I won't, citizen chief, God forbid, I won't. I can't, dear...

God! And as I began to speak, the light bulb above me was white-white, then green, blue, and finally turned pink ... I woke up after a while, with cotton wool on my nose. I feel that they hold my hand and someone says: "I came to my senses!"

They did something to me, some kind of injection, something else ... Thank God, he got up and began to apologize. "Oh, I'm sorry, oh, I'm sorry." Just let me think. After all, a prisoner, it’s embarrassing for me ...

All right, all right, - the chief reassured. - Now go!

• What about eleven years old?
• No, Comrade Gruzdev, no!

"Only an injection was thrust into my memory below the waist ... I stomped." It took two days to issue a passport - "he is still alive with me," as Fr. Paul. On the third day, Gruzdev went to work. And their foreman was such a comrade Mironets - he did not take the Orthodox into the spirit and in itself was of a very vicious disposition. The girls from the brigade sang about him: "Don't go to the other end, Mironets will beat you!"

Aha! shouts Comrade Mironets, just seeing Gruzdev. - Wandered, prayed with the nuns!

Yes, a mat on what the light covers.

Popovskaya your muzzle! You go again! There, in the Yaroslavl region, you harmed, you bastard, arranged sabotage, and here you harm, damned fascist! You're ruining our plan, you saboteur!

No, citizen chief, he didn’t wander around, ”Gruzdev answers calmly. - Here is a document of justification, but I need to go to the director of the Regional Construction Office, sorry.

What for to you, the fool, the director? - Comrade Mironets was surprised.

• It's all there on the paper.
• The brigadier read the paper:

- Pavlusha!..

So much for Pavlusha, thinks Gruzdev.

The conversation in the director's office turned out to be completely discouraging.

BUT! Comrade Gruzdev, dear! Sit down, don't stand, here's a chair for you, - as the best guest was met by the director of "comrade Gruzdev", who was already aware of his affairs. - I know, Pavel Aleksandrovich, I know everything. We got an error.

While the director crumbles into small beads, Gruzdev is silent, says nothing. What do you say?

We are handing over a residential building in a day or two, - continues the director of the Regional Construction Office, - there is also a contribution of your Stakhanovite work. The house is new, multi-apartment. In it and for you, dear Pavel Aleksandrovich, there is an apartment. We have looked closely at you over the years, we see that you are an honest and decent citizen. The only trouble is that he is a believer, but you can close your eyes to this.

What am I going to do in your house? - Gruzdev is surprised at the strange words of the director, and he himself thinks: "What is all this leading to?"

You need to get married, comrade Gruzdev, get a family, children, and work! - Satisfied with his proposal, the director happily concludes.

How to get married? Pavel snapped. - I'm a monk!

So what! Start a family, children, and remain a monk... Who is against that? Just live and work!

No, citizen chief, thank you for your father's participation, but I can't, - Pavel Gruzdev thanked the director and, frustrated, returned to his place on Krupskaya Street. Do not let him out of production! No matter what you say, you want to go home... Tya and mom, sisters - Olka with punks, Tanya, Lyoshka, Sanka Fokan... Pavlusha writes a letter home: "Tatya! Mom! I am no longer a prisoner. It was by mistake. I not a fascist, but a Russian man."

“Son!” Alexander Ivanovich Gruzdev answers him. “We never had a thief in our family, there wasn’t even a robber. And you are neither a thief nor a robber. Come, son, bury our bones.”

Again Pavel Gruzdev goes to the director of the Regional Construction Office:

Citizen boss, I would like to go to my aunt with my mother, because the old ones can already die without waiting!

Pavlusha, to go, you need a challenge! - the boss answers. - And without a call, I have no right to let you go.

Pavel Gruzdev writes to Tutaev relatives - so, they say, and so, without a call they are not allowed. And his sister Tatyana, in the marriage of Yudina, worked all her life as an obstetrician. She was on duty one night in the hospital. The Lord inspired her: she mechanically opened the drawer of the desk, and there was a seal and hospital forms. Sends a telegram: "Northern Kazakhstan, city of Petropavlovsk, Oblpromstroykontor, to the head. We ask you to urgently send Pavel Gruzdev, his mother, who died after a difficult birth, gave birth to twins."

And the mother is already seventy years old! Pavlusha, as he found out, thinks: "I've gone crazy! Or Tanya is being smart about something!" But they call him to the authorities:

Comrade Gruzdev, get ready to hit the road! We all know about you. On the one hand, we are glad, and on the other hand, we grieve. Maybe something to help you? Maybe you need a babysitter?

No, the citizen is the boss, - Pavel answers. - Thank you very much, but I will go without a nanny.

As you wish, the director agreed.

“Now you can even joke,” the priest recalled this incident. “But then I was not laughing.

"AND THE COLORADO BEETLE CREEPS IN THE GROUND"

So many people and events Father Pavel saw during the years of his camp wanderings that he became, as it were, an inexhaustible fount - sometimes you wonder what happened to him! Batiushka himself said that all his spiritual experience came from the camps: "I saved up for eleven years!" And when Archimandrite Pavel became a glorified elder, many noticed that his spiritual guidance, his prayers are something special, for which there is no example in the lives of bygone times, this is our life, modern Holy Russia ...

And miracles happened - sometimes so casually, by the garden bed. One such case was told by an employee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, an official representative of the law.

"Once we went to see Father Pavel - a bright sunny day, August. The village of Verkhne-Nikulskoye is located 1.5 km from the highway, and we went along the road that the locals call BAM, it is more or less dry there, and you leave through the potato fields, bypassing store, to the gatehouse of Father Paul, i.e. you make a circle, as it were. While driving, I paid attention to the quality of the road, to what was around - i.e. I remembered more than my passengers. through the so-called BAM, I noticed that the potato fields were showered with the Colorado potato beetle - everything is red like grapes. So much so that I even thought that it was possible to grow Colorado potato beetles and cook kharcho soup from them. And with such a playful mood I came to Pavel. We were received as dear guests. And at a feast, in a conversation - like potatoes? like onions? in the village they always talk about agriculture - they started talking about the dominance of the Colorado potato beetle. And father Pavel says: "But I don't have a Colorado beetle beetle". He had two potato plots - between the gatehouse and the cemetery, 10x10, and already in the church fence - like a mini-monastery. But I saw perfectly well that there were Colorado beetles all around - even at the neighbor's opposite. And suddenly: "I have no." I'm like a detective - ha ha! - doubted. Everyone at the table had already eaten, no one listened to the other, I think: "No, now I will find the Colorado potato beetles. This cannot be! Of course, he is lying!" And I went out - it was light, the August twilight - to look between the gatehouse and the cemetery of the Colorado beetles, I will find a few and catch them! He came, began to crawl between the rows of potatoes on all fours. I look - not a single larva, not a single beetle! Can't be! It's red all around, but here ... Even if there were Colorado beetles on the site before our arrival, there should be eaten holes on the tops. I've looked all over - there's nothing! Well, it can't be, it's unnatural! I think there is everything in the second section. I, being an opera, i.e. a man who always doubts everything, is looking for enemies and knows that there are enemies - I think I will find! Nothing!

I came and said: “Father, I was just now at that potato plot, I was at this one - indeed, not only a single Colorado potato beetle or larvae, but in general signs that they were.” Father Paul, as a matter of course, says: "Yes, you went in vain. I know the prayer." And again I think to myself: "Hmm, a prayer! Why is he saying such a thing! You never know what a prayer is!" Yes, that’s how I was Thomas the Unbeliever, although I didn’t even find a hole from that midge on a single potato leaf. I was put to shame. But the Colorado beetles directly migrated, they crawled ... "

Father Pavel loved poetry and songs so much that he had a poetic parable or a comic rhyme in store for any occasion, and if not, he composed it himself. About a month after the "police check", Father Pavel composed a song about the Colorado potato beetle:

Potatoes are blooming, onions are greening.

And the Colorado potato beetle crawls into the garden.

He crawls without knowing nothing about

That Volodya the agronomist will catch him.

He will catch him, take him to the village council.

He will plant in a jar, fill it with alcohol.

The potatoes have faded, the onions have turned yellow.

There is a Colorado potato beetle in a jar.

"LET YOUR DASHKA RECOVERY!"

“Great was his prayer,” they say about Father Paul. “Great is his blessing. True miracles.”

“At the service itself, he stood like some kind of spiritual pillar,” they recall about the priest. “He prayed with all his heart, like a giant, this small man, and everyone was present as if on wings at his prayer. It was like that - from the very heart. Voice loud, strong. Sometimes, when he performed the sacrament of communion, he asked the Lord in a simple way, like his father: "Lord, help Serezha there, something with the family ..." Right at the throne - help this, and this .. During prayer, he listed everyone as a keepsake, and his memory, of course, was excellent.”

“Dashenka, my granddaughter, was born with us,” says one woman. “And my daughter, when she was pregnant, celebrated her birthday on the Assumption Fast - with drinking, with partying. I tell her: “Fear God, because you are pregnant.” And when the child was born, they determined that he had a heart murmur, very seriously - there was a hole on the breathing valve. And the girl was choking. Even during the day, back and forth, she cries, and at night she suffocates altogether. The doctors said that if she lives to two and a half years , we will do an operation in Moscow at the institute. Previously, it’s impossible. And so I kept running to Father Pavel: “Father, pray!” But he didn’t say anything. They send us a call for an operation. I run to the priest. "Father, what should I do? The call for the operation came, to go or not to go? And he says: "Communion and go." Here they go. They are there in the hospital, and I cry, but I keep running to the priest: "Father, pray!" And then he says to me so angrily: "May your Dasha get well!" And thank God, now - Dasha recovered with his prayers.

"The Lord heard Father Paul's prayer faster than others," recalls one priest. “And he himself will go to the altar and pray for a person. The Lord will hear his prayer and help this person. mourned, but prayed to Paul, confessed, took communion, talked, asked for his prayers, so everything gradually and eased. A week will pass, and he is already healthy. "Prayer works everywhere, although it does not always work miraculously,"- written in the notebooks of Fr. Paul. "One must get up to prayer hastily, as if on fire, and especially for monks." "Lord! Through the prayers of the righteous, have mercy on sinners."

IS IT EASY TO BE A LIKE

A lot of clergy took care of Fr. Pavel, and over the years more and more, so that Verkhne-Nikulsky formed its own "forge of personnel", or "Academy of Fools", as Fr. Paul. And it was a real spiritual academy, in comparison with which the metropolitan academies paled. The spiritual lessons of Archimandrite Paul were simple and remembered for a lifetime

“Once I thought, could I be such a novice that I could unquestioningly fulfill all obediences,” says the father’s pupil, the priest. “Well, what, I probably could! What the father says, I would do. to him - and, as you know, he often responded to his thoughts with an action or some kind of story. As usual, he sits me down at the table, immediately Marya starts to warm something up. He brings cabbage soup, pours it. The cabbage soup was surprisingly tasteless From some concentrate - and I just took communion - and lard floats on top. And a huge plate. I ate it with great difficulty. "Come on, come on again!" , eat up! I I thought I would be sick now. And I confessed with my own lips: "Such an obedience, father, I cannot fulfill!" So he rebuked me.

Father Pavel knew how to make a person feel a spiritual state - joy, humility... this riza is the most beautiful, put it on, and you will give it to others. "And, probably, I still had some kind of vanity:" Look, what a beautiful riza!" And just a few minutes later - Father Pavel was at home, and I Church, he somehow felt my condition - he was flying - “Come on, take off the robe!” And father Arkady came from Moscow, “Give it to father Arkady!” It hit me like lightning from head to toe - I was so resigned. And in this state I felt like in heaven - in some kind of reverence, in the joyful presence of something important, i.e. he made me understand what humility is. I put on the oldest robe, but I was the happiest in this service ".