Solovetsky seat

Residents of Solovki rebelled against local monks who encroached on the most sacred thing they have - tourists

“If Solovki completely captures the church, then their monks will not be counted. Let's take up the axes," Sergei Korchagin, the watchman of the Botanical Garden on the Solovetsky Islands, says menacingly. Sergei, a peaceful and middle-aged man, is very worried that the Solovetsky archipelago ceases to be secular and the same thing that happened to Valaam, where all power belongs to the church, can happen to him. “Only we are people of the north, you won’t take us so easily,” Sergei continues. His eyes are as hard as ice, and his fists are like those of a boxer.

Many residents of the only village on Solovki have long been dissatisfied with the activities of the Spaso-Preobrazhensky Solovetsky Monastery. In 2001, they were outraged by the transfer of the Church of Anzer Island. Now you can get there only on a pilgrimage ticket. In 2007, on a call from the monastery, according to local residents, the club in the village of Solovetsky was forbidden to show The Da Vinci Code. Then, thanks to the intrigues of the same clergy, school discos were abolished. And the residents of the village did not like at all that “thick, ruddy monks walk around the island and look at everything in a businesslike way.” However, until recently, the dissatisfaction of the locals was limited to gossip and sidelong glances in the direction of people in cassocks.

This year, after the governor of the Solovetsky Monastery, Archimandrite Porfiry, in the world Vladimir Shutov, became the director of the Solovetsky Museum, the inhabitants decided to organize an opposition movement, which included representatives of the local intelligentsia. It was led by a tour guide, writer and militant atheist Oleg Kodola. “It boiled over,” he says. Oleg formalized everything accumulated in a letter addressed to Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin, where he stated what exactly did not suit him in the actions of the church on Solovki. “We are complaining to the highest officials of the Russian Federation, although we understand that it was you who created such a situation in our life and on our islands,” Kodol ends the letter.

The letter was immediately signed by 30 people. At the time of the Newsweek correspondent's stay on Solovki, enthusiasts continued to collect signatures, attracting tourists, who, like pilgrims, were very numerous on the island - after all, Patriarch Kirill arrived. He arrived in order to hold a meeting of the commission for the preservation of the spiritual, cultural and natural heritage of the Solovetsky archipelago. Extreme revival reigned in Solovki. Pilgrims in headscarves on bicycles hurried to the temple for the patriarchal service, sedate monks left the store with full packages of products. The bells did not stop ringing over the island.

And the locals discussed in the kitchens what will happen to them next. If it were an official conference, the main topics would be called: “How exactly the church will continue to switch tourist flows to itself” and “Director of the Solovetsky Museum Vladimir Shutov and Archimandrite Porfiry in one bottle. Severe case of split personality.

“So, in winter, the director of the museum, Vladimir Shutov, handed over 109 monuments to the abbot of the monastery, Archimandrite Porfiry, for free use. He gave it to himself, two in one person, in general, some kind of fool! ”- the watchman Sergey is indignant.

Oleg Kodola says that he wrote to Dmitry Medvedev: they say, by what right is a clergyman appointed manager of a secular organization. He received an answer from the Ministry of Culture: "In accordance with the Labor Code."

“Of course, the de facto museum has remained a secular structure, but the monastic spirit is already being felt. I don’t like it, maybe I sympathize with the pagans,” says the watchman Korchagin, wagging his nose in disgust. The deputy director of the museum, Anna Balandina, calls this decision strange: “There was a conflict between the monastery and the museum. Thus it was decided. But a monk should not be engaged in worldly affairs. At least as frankly." All the local residents interviewed by the Newsweek correspondent are sure that the archimandrite was appointed in order to make it convenient for the monastery to expropriate Solovki.

But most of all, the inhabitants of Solovki were outraged by the recent statement of the governor of the Arkhangelsk region, Ilya Mikhalchuk. He proposed to receive guests of the island according to the system of one-day tourism. This means that tourists will be able to spend only one day on the Solovetsky Islands. They will have to spend the night on the mainland, in the villages of the White Sea coast. According to the governor, this will reduce the anthropogenic load on the island. But there is a caveat: those tourists who purchase a pilgrimage tour will be able to stay on the island for several days.

"All this is being done in the interests of the church and will be the ruin of the village," he said. O. head of the village Natalya Yakovleva. After the commission meeting, to which she was not invited, she looks confused. “It is strange that the fate of the islanders is decided without the participation of the head of the settlement,” she is indignant, explaining that the locals have something to fight for: “Now people can earn a normal living and live with dignity. In our country, even the birth rate, according to the data of the last two years, exceeded the death rate.”

Solovetsky really makes a very good impression—it is clear that they are not living in poverty here. Well-maintained houses, flower beds in the front gardens, expensive cars. About 1,000 people live here, and most of the able-bodied work in the public sector, earning up to 10,000 rubles a month. Without additional income, it would not be easy for them, so everyone in the tourism business earns extra money, from cleaners to the head of the district. Some rent out rooms, others have rented bicycles and boats, and others are engaged in transportation.

Pyotr Lapshin, a stout forty-year-old man, works as an operator in a boiler room. He receives 10,000 rubles. “My daughter is studying in Arkhangelsk, I need to help her, so I drive tourists in my car wherever they want. For three months I earn my daughter for a year,” says Peter. If he loses his income, his daughter will most likely not be able to get a higher education.

And for some islanders, tourism is generally the only source of income. Spouses Roman and Lyudmila rent out rooms, and in the winter they live what they earned in the summer. They recently built on the top floor, made a dining room and a summer veranda. And now they regret that they invested a lot of money in repairing the house. “If there is no opportunity to engage in tourism business, almost everyone will leave the village. You don’t even need to relocate people, they will run away themselves,” Lyudmila gets upset.

Oleg Kodola does not hide the fact that, fighting with the monastery, he primarily defends his own financial interests - he has a tour desk. “The most unpleasant thing is that the monks do not say anything specific. Silent glanders decide something there. Probing the soil, spreading rumors. And we have to guess, ”outraged icon painter Nina Maryakhina. In protest against the secret policy of the monastery, she stopped going to the temple. Indeed, the ROC has not yet announced any specific decisions regarding the future of the Solovetsky Archipelago. But, according to locals, the trend is obvious. “They want us to go away from their holy Solovetsky land. For example, this year the monastery received a proposal to move our village to the interior of the island, far from the sea. Then we fought back,” says Kodola.

However, some residents are even happy about church expansion. Teacher Olga Anatolyevna believes that the “ennobling influence of the church” on the life of the local community is evident. For example, her husband, after a conversation with a priest, stopped drinking and became interested in cross-stitching. Patriarch Kirill was solemnly presented with a letter in support of the restoration and further development of the Transfiguration Monastery of the Savior. From four hundred local residents. "Church bells fill people's hearts with joy," rejoiced the 400 signatories. "Who are all these people? We have only four hundred adult residents, and those who are for the Russian Orthodox Church, we know all of them,” Nina Maryakhina is surprised.

it will not be easy to calm her fellow villagers of the church. "The concept of the development of the Solovetsky Archipelago will take place within the framework of the spiritual revival of Russia and in the interests of local residents," Vladimir Legoyda, chairman of the Synodal Information Department of the Moscow Patriarchate, told Newsweek. “And the fact that they are not allowed on Anzer is for their own good, so that they do not get lost,” he added. “The places are very deaf.”