Igor Zatolokin. Archpriest Igor Zatolokin: “The mission of a clergyman is related to education

- Father, tell me where are you from?

I was born in Novosibirsk. On the border with Ukraine, in the Kursk province, there is the village of Zatolokino - this is where my ancestors come from. And many Don Cossacks have this surname. I once lived in Kursk for many years and graduated from the history department of the Pedagogical Institute. There I became a priest. This was 22 years ago.

- Was it your dream to become a teacher, a history teacher? Or were you just very interested in history?

You could say both. Since 1995, I have had teaching practice, first at the Kursk Seminary, now at the Novosibirsk Seminary, although for a number of reasons I don’t teach there so often anymore. In Iskitim, I teach theological courses on general church history. Pedagogical skills are useful not only in educational practice, but also in priestly practice.

I am still interested in history, I continue to conduct research work mainly in the field, now in a more local space. For many years, starting in 2000, I studied the history of the Iskitim region, the Iskitim penal camp, and church local history in general. Unfortunately, during the 70 years of Soviet power, local history as such was not held in high esteem, and church topics were completely forgotten.

- Is it possible to see in your biography that you came to faith and the priesthood thanks to history?

For me, the path to God was connected with historiosophy and even more so with Russian philosophy. My choice of life path and profession was influenced by my acquaintance with such wonderful philosophers as... The very idea of ​​becoming a shepherd, of course, came to me unexpectedly. It was like some kind of call. When I moved with my wife to Kursk, on the very first day of our arrival we met one wonderful person, a clergyman. Archpriest Anatoly Zaishly, the rector of the Vvedensky Church, in fact, immediately invited me to become his assistant. I agreed - first I was appointed an altar boy, then I performed various obediences, including in the choir, and only then was ordained a priest.

Priesthood is an important hidden part of your life. But, as I understand, you devote a very large amount of time and effort to editorial activities related to education - you are the editor of the website “Education and Orthodoxy”, as well as the editor of all publications of the Iskitim diocese. I'm right?

It always seemed to me that the mission of a clergyman is connected with education, which, in turn, is closely united with history. Unfortunately, the Soviet era, like the pre-revolutionary era, was distinguished by the oblivion of many historical facts, and sometimes by deliberate suppression. Let's take, for example, the story of those who were persecuted and suffered martyrdom after the revolution and the tragic events of 1917. We knew nothing about this for many years, as if these repressions and terrible pages of our history did not exist. When we contacted various authorities for documentary evidence of the existence, we were told that we knew nothing, and that such a camp might not have existed at all. This only pushed us to further action; we continued to “knock” at the archives and look for documents. But until now, the era of persecution is one of the most poorly studied pages in our history.

- Was it possible to find evidence of the existence of such a camp?

I'm not the only one dealing with this issue. My colleagues from the Institute of History of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (II SB RAS), employees of the Iskitim Museum and archives provide great assistance. Of course, there are also written sources documenting that such a camp existed. The only thing that still remains the most difficult is the name lists of prisoners in a given camp. Unfortunately, we are going in circles here. The current FSB bodies are ready to help and provide information about people, but they ask for names to search for cases. However, we do not know their names, so we cannot make a request.

- In this camp, as far as I know, there were a large number of non-local prisoners...

Yes it's true. The specificity of the Iskitim camp was that it was a penalty camp. It contained either repeat offenders or those who had tried to escape many times. And often they sent here, mainly those who were disposed of in other camps. But, as in all Gulag camps, there was also a special so-called political contingent. The work and conditions here were unbearably difficult, essentially hard labor, and therefore the mortality rate was very high.

It must be said that neither Iskitim nor the village (now the urban microdistrict of Lozhok), of course, existed at that time. Thanks to geological research in the 30s of the twentieth century, rocks were found, from which crushed stone is still extracted, cement, lime are made... From several villages that existed for many centuries, an industrial center began to form. In many ways, the economy was totalitarian and coercive, so one of the SibLAG branches, the Iskitim Penal Camp, arose in Iskitim. Prisoners developed quarries and extracted minerals for the country. Before the revolution, there were hard labor for people who were sentenced to death, or had this sentence replaced with terrible, sometimes life-long, labor. But if then there was hope for a pardon, then in Soviet times this became an exceptional case, out of the ordinary. Many who were in the camp turned to both the Government and Stalin personally. And there was a chance for liberation, but the unfortunate ones died in these camps rather than leaving them. But there were also those strong in spirit who, having experienced all the torments of the camp hell, remained alive, despite all the difficulties. For example, the book tells a story about people who managed to survive after being in the camps. Still, we must pay tribute to the health of our ancestors.

- Everything that you managed to collect probably needs some kind of perpetuation?

In 2015, it happened - at the Holy Spring in Lozhka, a temple was consecrated in honor of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Land. On the ground floor, semi-basement, a museum will be created, but also in general to repression. Since the Iskitim camp was one of the strictest and most cruel, then, in fact, this is a very suitable place for creating such a museum. It will remind people of the atrocities that were once committed here, as well as the lawlessness occurring on the part of the state at that time. Therefore, for many years we have been collecting materials both about clergy who could be in this camp, including those who served in the dioceses of the Novosibirsk Metropolis, and about ordinary people who innocently suffered. I really want this museum to represent all layers of society: the clergy, the peasantry, the nobility, who were subjected to severe persecution, of course, the intelligentsia, etc.

Initially, both the temple itself and the area around the Holy Spring were used as a memorial site. All construction projects that currently exist or will yet be are objects of memory for those who died in these terrible years. Therefore, the temple, museum, Poklonny cross, spring and the surrounding area will form a memorial park. I hope it will become a unique memorial complex in our region.

For many years, the Life-Giving Spring parish in Lozhka prepared exhibitions dedicated to our repressed clergy, new martyrs, which they presented at various exhibitions - “Orthodox Rus'”, “Orthodox Autumn” and others. In addition, some documents were put on public display that were transferred to the Novosibirsk diocese from the FSB archives several years ago, photographs of clergy, and their biographies. They will become the basis of the future museum.

Everyone knows that in our metropolis, archpriests Nikolai Ermolov and Innokenty Kikin have been glorified as saints of Novosibirsk. Many people know about the site of the mass murder of clergy in the 20s of the twentieth century in the Dovolensky district of the Novosibirsk region. But on the territory of the Novosibirsk region, three more Russian new martyrs testified to their faith by martyrdom.

28th of February The Russian Orthodox Church honors the memory. The last place of service was - now it is part of the Kyshtovsky district of the Novosibirsk region. On August 13-16, 2000, the Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church canonized priests Mikhail Pyataev and John Kuminov as holy martyrs on the proposal of the Omsk diocese.

Hieromartyr Elijah Berezovsky was arrested in 1933 in the village of Moshkovo, Novosibirsk region and deported to Kazakhstan. On December 14, 1937, he was again arrested by the Kaskelen department of the NKVD. Priest Ilya Berezovsky was shot on February 3, 1938 and buried in an unknown mass grave. Canonized as the Holy New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia at the Jubilee Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church in August 2000 for church-wide veneration.

In those years, thousands of clergy and simply believers suffered. However, to confirm their feat of faith, sources, both written and oral, are needed. And this is the most difficult thing at present, because for many years they have tried to forget about it, to erase it from history. And now, literally as in ancient times, according to the ancient acts of martyrs who were subjected to persecution, we find in the archives the names and surnames of those who suffered for their faith. Then we begin to look for their relatives, loved ones, people who know and remember at least something. Or vice versa - some relatives turn to our dioceses themselves asking for help in finding information about their neighbors. And this information is collected bit by bit. Perhaps someone can tell us about their grandfather, great-grandfather, father, who was in a penal camp in Iskitim, or simply a clergyman who suffered for his faith or went through the crucible of persecution. It is possible that the relatives still have some items, for example, an icon belonging to one or another ancestor, or a household item associated with his life. Letters, documents, photographs... We would be very happy and grateful if people contacted the Novosibirsk Metropolis, the Iskitim Diocese and thereby contributed to the creation of the museum. I hope they respond.

The all-Siberian historical and pilgrimage online resource “Rodinoved” was presented in mid-May in the Novosibirsk Metropolis as part of the round table “Historical and Church Local History. Revolution and the Church. Results of the century." The essence of the project, which has already united researchers from five regions of Russia, which before the revolution were part of the Tomsk province, was told to the “Parishes” portal by its ideological inspirer, Archpriest Igor Zatolokin, head of the information and publishing department of the Iskitim diocese, editor-in-chief of the Life-Giving Source magazine and the Education website and Orthodoxy,” rector of the Church of the Nativity of Christ in the village of Gorny.

Who is this project of Siberian researchers intended for?

It is addressed to ecclesiastical and secular specialists, local historians, historians, and in general people looking for information about the churches of Siberia, perhaps about their clergy ancestors, about anti-church repressions, about new martyrs. Thanks to the new resource, a more or less clear picture emerges: where which churches were or are located, who served in them and when. The task is, using modern technologies, to systematize all knowledge about the history of the Orthodox Church in Western Siberia, to create a passport for all the parish or monastery that has ever operated, and first of all - if they were destroyed during the godless hard times.

The project “Rodinoved” involves the creation of an online map on which, with an exact geographical reference, churches and chapels within the borders of the Tomsk diocese will be indicated at the time of division in 1924.

It was no coincidence that the mid-20s of the 20th century were taken as a time reference for compiling a map of our resource. At that time, despite Soviet power, church buildings were still preserved and even built, and parish life was active. At the end of the same decade, the picture was completely different: brutal persecution of believers and mass closures of churches began.

Resurrection Church of Tomsk at the beginning of the 20th century

We receive most of the information from the archives of government departments that controlled church life. Subsequently, in the 40-50s of the last century, these functions were transferred to the Council for Religious Affairs. From the statistical data of government agencies, we learn when and how churches were closed. At this stage, we have collected all the statistics; we have thousands of cases of church closures. We started by posting information on the portal about when the temple opened and documents about its closure. In the future we will gradually supplement it with other information - archival and audiovisual.

What prompted you to start creating such a resource?

As a historian, I have been studying the 20-30s of the 20th century for many years, collecting and studying a large array of documents on this period. Among them were large documents and replies of a few words, but this is still very important historical information. We would like to combine the identified documents into a common reference database of the Rodinoved project, which, I hope, will serve all researchers.

First of all, we are not talking about those temples that exist now, because there are a lot of information resources about them. Unfortunately, in the 30s of the twentieth century, Orthodox topography in our region was almost destroyed. For example, according to our data, in the mid-20s there were more than 350 churches in the territory of what is now the Novosibirsk region. In 1921, in response to an appeal from the local clergy by Saint Patriarch Tikhon and the Holy Synod, a new vicariate was formed within the Novo-Nikolaevsky and Kainsky districts, which included 125 and 73 parishes, respectively, as well as parts of the parishes of the present Omsk region and Altai region. His Grace Sophrony (Arefyev) was appointed Bishop of Novonikolaevsk, but at the end of 1922 he was arrested.

In September 1924, the episcopal consecration of Archimandrite Nikifor (Astashevsky) as Bishop of Novonikolaevsky took place in Moscow - thus the new Novonikolaevsk diocese was established. In total, according to our calculations, at that time there were 357 parishes, which were also divided by the Renovationist schism. Today, about three dozen church buildings from those times have survived, most of them in a dilapidated state.

Michael the Archangel Church in Ust-Ina was converted into a residential building

After the war, only three churches remained operational on the territory of the Novosibirsk region: the current Ascension Cathedral - a former cemetery church that stood on the outskirts of Novosibirsk, the St. Nicholas Church in the village of Novolugovoye not far from the regional center and the Church of St. Seraphim of Sarov in the city of Bolotnoye, rebuilt from a residential building. All other parishes were closed, the buildings were mostly destroyed.

Certainly. We will definitely post information about people; a separate database for the clergy is being created. A certain difficulty lies in the fact that we usually learn about the place of service of clergy during the period of persecution from private memoirs and, mainly, from the archives of the NKVD. A huge amount of information has long been collected on dozens of repressed clergy and laity of the Novosibirsk region and neighboring regions. Now we need to make this database publicly available.

To conduct field research, for more than a decade in the region, with the blessing of Metropolitan Tikhon of Novosibirsk and Berdsk, field expeditions have been conducted with the participation of scientists, as well as students of the Novosibirsk State Institute of Architecture and Civil Engineering. For them, these expeditions are considered summer practice. Participants are taking measurements of temples in order to restore their historical appearance.

How will the historical appearance of the temples be recreated?

This is an already proven technique. Using tape measures, plumb lines, and rangefinders, we take measurements of what has been preserved, then a drawing is created, and on its basis the historical appearance of the building is recreated. We even restored the appearance of the temple based on the measurements of the foundations, based on memories and archival documents.

The specificity of Western Siberia, rich in forests, is that most of our church buildings were wooden. Despite all this, some objects existed until the 60s and even the 80s of the 20th century and were destroyed by fires, and sometimes due to the careless attitude of local residents. Archival documents often indicate the architect who designed the temple, or a standard project from among those approved by the Holy Synod, according to which this particular building was erected. In the archives you can find correspondence and documents from the 18th - early 20th centuries related to the construction department. We are looking for information bit by bit, and based on this data we are reconstructing the appearance.

Peter and Paul Church in Nagorny Ishtan

It happens that we come across non-standard options. For example, we examined a temple in the village of Maslyanino. It was built according to a standard design, but the men, instead of, relatively speaking, six-meter logs, prepared eight-meter logs and asked to increase the designed volume of the building. The architect agreed and made changes to the drawings, accordingly increasing the height to maintain proportions.

I know that, for example, in the Kasimov diocese of the Ryazan Metropolitanate, a whole program has been developed to recreate the appearance of a ruined church using photometry with the construction of a 3D model in order to preserve at least something for posterity...

That's what we do. The result of this research for Novosibirsk architecture students is the creation of a 3D model of the temple. Unfortunately, these surviving buildings, due to the already mentioned specifics, are few in number. Recently, quite by accident, we found a temple in the Iskitim region, which after its closure began to be used as a community center. He had nothing left in common with the church building. I have been to those places a lot and would never have thought that this was a temple.

This year we will go there on an expedition. We usually stay at the local school. In the summer there are holidays, the building is vacant, and we come for two or three weeks. We make sure to serve a prayer service at the beginning of work. The members of the expedition are students, simple secular people, but they come to the prayer service. We examine the place, visit the local museum, talk with old-timers, and collect oral information. The process has been going on for about twelve years, everything is debugged.

The results of expeditions are usually published in the Life-Giving Source magazine, and then, as a journal publication, the information appears on our website Education and Orthodoxy.

This is not only good practice for students - many begin to become more deeply interested in Orthodoxy. Thank God, the trips have been led by Irina Lvovna Rostovtseva, a smart and church-going person, for many years. She does a lot of work with students in this direction.

How do the locals feel about all this?

Usually good. But expeditions must be prepared. If the trip is in July-August, in the spring we begin to travel around the targeted settlements, negotiate with local heads of administration, get acquainted with school directors and museum workers. We are always given advice on which of the old-timers we can contact with questions, who has preserved photographs. And someone himself or his relatives were connected with the church. Of course, information gleaned from such conversations is sometimes subjective, but this is also very important.

Since almost everything was destroyed in Soviet times, we, unfortunately, have no continuity of parish life, living historical memory has been lost. New parishes are opened - people begin to bring there icons preserved in the family, sometimes bells, church utensils that belonged to another, already disappeared temple. In old parishes, for example, in the church in Bolotnoye (this is my deanery), there are many ancient Siberian icons, simple but interesting. For the most part they are from previously closed and destroyed surrounding churches, but which one is from is most often impossible to find out.

Church of the Intercession with a shelter-nursery in Novonikolaevsk (Novosibirsk).
Zthe tribute has been preserved

Expedition participants not only conduct research, but also erect memorial crosses. Ideally, they should appear in all places where temples used to stand?

Yes, I would really like to. In especially important places connected with the life of our new martyrs or saints, we would like to erect memorial crosses, associated, first of all, with the churches where they served. The crosses were not designed for this purpose from wood, but rather from vandal-resistant sheet metal, which was cut in a special way into strips, and they were welded together. It turns out a very beautiful, openwork weave. Such a cross can be placed even in an open field, without fear of it being cut down or broken.

Two such crosses have already been installed. One of them - two years ago in the village of Doronino: where the village cultural center is now, there once stood a temple, and the holy martyr Nikolai Ermolov served in it. Another cross was placed in the cemetery, on the site of the no longer existing village of Vesnino, where there also used to be a temple.

This year we also want to erect a cross, most likely it will be on the territory of the former village of Dalniy, on the site of the martyrdom of the village priest Vasily Gogolushko, whose head was cut off by God-fighting executioners. There are several more options, you will need to go around everything and inspect it on the spot.

By the way, we keep in touch with many relatives of priests who were repressed or simply served in Novosibirsk. In winter, I went to St. Petersburg, where I met the daughter of the last priest of the village of Legostaevo, Nina Yakovlevna Mazaeva. She is an Honored Artist of the RSFSR, the wife of the famous artist Vladimir Lyakhov. She is already over ninety, but she is in very good health.

It was in Legostaevo that the first stone church in the region was built at the beginning of the 19th century. Now it is dilapidated, probably a fifth of the church building has survived. And somewhere nearby there is the burial place of a very famous locally revered saint - Father John Mukhin. His life is described in the Tomsk Diocesan Gazette.

Father John served here in the 18th century, was buried near the temple, and when the temple was moved, the remains of the priest were found incorrupt. The relics were transferred to the new church, and a chapel was erected over the grave. It, of course, was also destroyed long ago. Several years ago we tried to find the exact burial place of the righteous man. Can you imagine how revered this saint was, if pilgrims came here throughout the entire 19th century!

Geophysicists used instruments to study the site and discovered cavities underground where the burial could be located. We reached an agreement with archaeologists and ethnographers, but failed to find understanding with the local authorities. In the year of the 100th anniversary of the revolution, I would like to return to this issue. I think that we will find an opportunity to carry out archaeological excavations in the near future.

Can volunteers from other dioceses participate in your church archaeological expeditions?

Of course they can! Moreover, I would very much like to see associations of church history and local history lovers emerge in all dioceses. Time is running out catastrophically: old-timers are dying, someone is leaving. And, in fact, it is people who are the custodians of a whole layer of modern church history. After all, not only documents and things are important, but also oral testimony of eyewitnesses, it is important to record them. This is all part of our common memory.

Interviewed by Olga KIRYANOVA

Photos of temples collected

The history of the Novosibirsk region is the history of our country. All eras are here... And ancient settlements that delight archaeologists, and the first forts, and a camp with an evil memory. From 1929 to 1956, there was in the Novosibirsk region one of the most terrible islands of the Gulag archipelago - OLP-4.

Spoon. Very close to Iskitim. Today there is almost nothing that reminds us of those times. On the site of the parade ground stands the Palace of Culture, where the barracks stood, now there are houses or gardens. Just a couple of decades ago, one could see coils of barbed wire and the walls of barracks here... Today, all that remains of the camp tower is a photograph; the thorns and stone from which the walls were made were taken away for household needs. All that remained were hills overgrown with birch trees and two walls, which you couldn’t immediately see in a small forest.

All that remains of the barracks

But the two limestone quarries, of course, couldn’t go anywhere. When the Stalinist era disappeared, they were flooded, and now one in which the men worked has turned into a kind of recreation area where they drink all kinds of drinks and fish; and the second, where the women worked, dried up. The view from the bottom of the second slope is straight African - very reminiscent of the approaches to the Sahara. But the evidence of that era still found here and there (wire sticking out of the ground, remains of walls... the narrow-gauge railway is no longer there - it was also dismantled for scrap metal) switches consciousness from geography to history.

Symbol of time

And the story was terrible. Priest Igor Zatolokin in the book “Spoon. From the history of the Iskitim convict camp,” which was published quite recently, gives the following figure - at least 30 thousand people lost their lives in the camp. Everyone was afraid to go to Lozhok, because it was practically impossible to return from there: the poisonous lime dust corroded the lungs, and the only question was who would hold out how long.

There were men and women here; those who were suspected of escaping were exiled here. The logic is simple: if in winter the temperature at the bottom of the quarry is more than forty degrees below zero, and the work is incredibly hard, then soon there will be one less enemy of the people. And how many of them there were!

Palace of Culture on the site of the camp

Here sat the wife of the man whom Lenin called the party’s favorite, Nikolai Bukharin. Anna Larina-Bukharina repeated every day, so as not to forget, the text of Bukharin’s letter “To the future generation of party leaders” that she had memorized. The publication of this letter in the first years of perestroika became a real sensation.

And Igor Zatolokin managed to collect a lot of evidence from those who were in this terrible place - both those who sat and those who guarded. Those who remember how it was are still alive. And Alexander Solzhenitsyn could not help but stop by Lozhok when he returned to Russia in 1994 and traveled by train across the country to Moscow. The man who opened the Gulag archipelago to the world visited here to honor the memory of those who did not return.

There is a book about the terrible camp, but there is still no real monument-museum. It's not a matter of a memorial sign - a whole historical and memorial complex can be created here. And this is needed not by those who are buried in the pits in the Lozhka area, but by those who live today, and, perhaps, voting for the “name of Russia”, choose Joseph Stalin. They should go

Kuzmenkin Vladimir