"Twin-pix" in Kozelsk: you will not get God

In the previous part of the cycle, Anna Popova went to the famous evil city of Kozelsk, who seven weeks of the troops of the Khan Baty, and discovered there the Winter “Twin Pix ”: a series of brutal murders, rumors about the sect of Satanists, for a quarter century, who was playing in the vicinity of the monastery, many doubles and a mysterious arsonist of Sasha. In the second part, the author of Samizdat goes from Kozelsk to Optina Desert, in detail restores the history of the attack on the monastery, describes the cult of unrecognized new martyrs, the myth of the confrontation of black and white monks, is in the Kozelsky forest and suddenly recalls that he has already been here earlier.

Four kilometers of the road in a dense pine forest are separated from Kozelsk. We went there during the day - to return in a dark. The car is stuffy. Masha listens to the singing of Optina monks. I look at the road winding among the trees. Two years after the murder of three monks on Easter, the Optina abbot Melchizedek gave an interview to “arguments and facts”. He stated that in the forests around the monastery they saw “white monks” - sorcerers engaged in dark arts.

“Numerous witnesses argue that recently people in the forest, very often in the early morning or late evening, people in white hoodies with witty hoods come and make incomprehensible rituals there,” said the igumen.

According to Melchizedek, sorcerers can stand behind a series of attacks that continued after Red Easter, in particular, the murder of a young man named Gregory, who occurred on the territory of the monastery in 1994.

“We finished the meal when we ran out of the monastery and called for help,” recalls Melchizedek. - In three hundred meters from the monster near the well, we saw a young pilgrim already in agony. No external signs of violence were noticed. But [then] in the region of the heart they saw a certain object. When he was pulled out, it turned out that it was an English pin a length of thirteen centimeters.

The pilgrim was placed thirteen injections with this pin in the heart, and one of the injections turned out to be fatal: there was a rupture of the pericardial bag and hemorrhage.

- Law enforcement agencies gave an official conclusion - suicide, Melchizedek noted. “But will it not seem strange to you, how could a person apply so many wounds in his heart, and then calmly lie down under a tree and tie a shirt and sweater in trousers?” But this version satisfied the police. And this despite the fact that several witnesses saw five men running away from the scene and hiding in a car, and even called the brand of the car and its color.

According to Melchizedek, three days before the murder of the young pilgrim of the “white monks” was seen in the Optina forests. One of them lay to the ground next to the well, where they later found the body of Gregory, and four "made a mysterious ritual over it."

“People who know in matters of occultism told me that this is how the rite of initiation into sorcerers happens and that the subsequent murder in the same place is also a ritual character is a bloody victim,” the hegumen claims. - Everything indicates that in the vicinity of Optina desert a certain occult group is working, which should have long been interested in our law enforcement agencies.

In 1995, the unknown tried to penetrate the fraternal corps. At two in the morning, the attendants saw how a man, like a pilgrim, was trying to choose the keys to the door to the cells. When asked what is happening, he answered, as if nothing had happened, “I should be the castle.” The pilgrim was detained. With him, a starting gun was found. In his things they found a sword, a hunting knife and books on black magic. Melchizedek recalled that Nikolai Averin, who killed the monks on Red Easter, was also fond of black magic and tried three days before the murder to penetrate the fraternal corps.

Already risen

Father Melchizedek knew the monks who were killed on Easter 1993. The monk Trofim (before tonsure - Leonid Tatartnikov) came to Optina from a small Siberian village. The boy is grazing of village cows, in his free time - read. The future monk began to go to church after school, explaining the craving for religion by the fact that "the world is in destruction and we must have time to repent."

The monk Ferapont in the world was called Vladimir Pushkarev. Like Trofim, he grew up in the village: Ferapont was born in the village of Kandaurov, the Novosibirsk region. According to the stories of relatives , in childhood he dreamed of becoming an angel. Ferapont was always quiet and silent, sought to be left alone with his thoughts. Perhaps that is why after the army he went to the rangers and for months lived in absolute loneliness in the taiga.

However, in his interview, Father Melchizedek especially often recalls the third and last victim of Nikolai Averin, the father of Vasily. Before the tonsure of Vasily's father, Igor Roslyakov was called. He graduated from the Faculty of Journalism of Moscow State University and professionally engaged in water polo. In the 80s, the future father Vasily began to go to church and went to obedience to the Pskov-Pechersky Monastery. He earned a reputation as an ascetic in the medieval sense of the word: he slept on the beds from the boards, instead of a pillow - bricks from the crypt of the Optina old man , refused tea and drank only boiling water.

Silent and tall, Father Vasily, during his lifetime, attracted a lot of attention to parishioners. He wrote poetry and kept a diary in which he once made an entry : “To take a cross and go for Christ means the readiness to take death for him and suffer, and whoever has the desire to die for Christ will hardly be upset, seeing his works and griefs, reproaches and insults.”

“I recall one joke during the Easter service itself,” said Melchizedek in an interview with Soyuz.
- [Father Vasily] used to change into Easter, red vestments. [And now] he stands near the altar. I go up to him, hold out his hand and say: "Father Vasily, Christ is risen!" He looks at himself - he is in red, and we are all in white - and says: "And I already rose."

Nikolai Averin from his three victims distinguished his father Vasily. After the detention, he spoke in detail about the Easter night of 1993:

-The last [Father Vasily] died like a manly one of them. The rest squeaked like women. I didn't like it.

Averin was almost the same age as the father of Vasily. In the past, he also considered himself a believers. During the service in Afghanistan, Averin believed: some higher powers guard him from death. After returning from the war, he turned into a fanatically religious person. He went to church, went to Kaluga and preached Christianity to passers -by. At some point, he even believed that he was actually Jesus Christ.

Relatives recalled that Averin had long been tormented by an obsessive fear of death. When he was ten, his neighbor died, and after a while the boy began to tell that at night the ghost of the deceased appeared - a light translucent silhouette. Gradually, Averin was more and more afraid of an unknown danger. It seemed to him that he could be observed by a sage capable of reading thoughts. In the end, Averina began to hear voices.

Sometimes they ordered him to hit his head against the wall, sometimes they insulted and mocked him. Averin tried to commit suicide to get rid of the voices. In the end, voice informed him that he was Satan's brother. In 1989, Averin went to the Moscow Psychiatric Hospital No. 4 named after P. B. Gannushkina. There he said that the demon "got into it." Averina was released two weeks later with a diagnosis of "schizophrenia paranoid continuously."

Before inflicting a mortal wound to Father Vasily, Averin talked about something briefly with him. According to the media, the monk heard the Easter ringing interrupted on the bell tower - the monks Trofim and Ferapont were already dead - and asked the stranger passing by in a military overcoat:

- Brother, what happened?

Averin muttered something in response and passed by. And then he suddenly turned and inflicted a quick blow to the monk with a sword from the bottom up, piercing the kidney, a light and cordial artery. When Father Vasily fell, Averin pushed a hood on his face. He did the same with the two previous victims - monks Ferapont and Trofim. Why, the killer did not explain.

The fact that the father of Vasily was attacked was found in the monastery only at dawn. The governor of the monastery Father Venedikt, together with the guests, was in his cell when they came to inform him that Father Vasily was lying near the monastery fence and did not move. At first they decided that he was simply greatly beaten. Venedikt’s father went to see what happened. Vasily spread on earth. His face was white: he lost a lot of blood.

By that time, Father Vasily did not say anything and did not even moan. The others decided that he was praying. When he was lifted, they saw something shapeless in a dark color on his stomach. At first glance, it seemed that this liver fell out of the wound, but then it became clear: there was so much blood that the cassock could not absorb it completely-and she curled up into a huge red-brown clot. Father Vasily was taken to the Vvedensky temple. There, pilgrims were sleeping everywhere: Optina was then only built and there were no hotels for those who came. In anticipation of the ambulance, Vasily tried to make an intravenous injection, but this was no longer possible: he was so bloodless that the veins literally left under the skin. The dressing material was either not found in the turmoil, or there was simply no: a source in medical circles said that the monk's wounds were sealed with foil. So he was sent to the Kozelsky hospital.

In intensive care, Father Vasily made an indirect heart massage and a subclavian injection. Then they tried to make heart, but the blood from the heart no longer pumped out. Father Vasily lay pale and breathed heavily.

-They said that when they undressed him, the blood somehow terribly squinted-in front and behind. He groaned quietly then - and that’s all, no more sound. He did not say anything from the moment he was found, ”a source in medical circles told me. -While they tried to do something in intensive care, Father Vasily has already left. Someone said: "Everything, you can wash your hands." A bloody piece of dressing material lying on the floor, which was closed on the back of Vasily's father, was raised and wrapped in a piece of paper. Then, on the window in the ward, the image of Ambrose Optinsky was noticed. It now seems to me that this is not without reason.

In Optina, at the site of the murder of Father Vasily, the earth was still wet with blood. She was dismantled on a handful of spiritual children of the monk and pilgrims. During the investigation, it turned out that the attack was a witness-a twelve-year-old girl-gunner. She really did not remember the killer. Either from fatigue, or from stress, she died that after the wound of Vasily’s father, he turned into the beast and, jumping over the fortress wall, disappeared into the dark forest.

After the detention, Averin spoke calmly and in detail about the murder:

- I could not get God, because you can’t get it. This car is the most insidious and, rudely, the cleanest in the universe. [Therefore, I decided to kill the monks]. They are direct ministers, his warriors, ” Averin told the camera . He added that he “has no evil” for his victims.
- [There is] War. Between God and Satan. Between God and one of his best students, ”Averin remarked. “I'm glad I am with Satan.” Because I am good. I have always done good in life. Helped only.

Lights in the forest

When a matter of minutes remain to Optina, a clearance occurs among dark trees. The pale pink walls of the monastery and the stone bell tower are shown. The day before, when I looked at her from the window of the machine house, she seemed white to me. Now I see that it was an optical deception: the bell tower is green.

Masha wonders how I could forget about it:
- This is one of the symbols of Optina.

The monastery is surrounded by houses: these are hotels for children of Optinsky monks. Masha leaves the car at the fortress walls. Before entering the territory of the monastery, I tie a black skirt on top of the trousers with my fingers. First of all, we go to lay flowers on the fresh grave of the former abbot Optina, Father Venedikt. Twenty -six years ago, he sang to the brothers killed on Red Easter.

From the grave we go to the chapel, where the remains of the murdered monks rest. Candles and quite crampedly are spent inside: three sparkling coffins occupy the entire altar part. The coffin of Father Vasily is the extreme on the left. Each has a bouquet of fresh colors. Above the coffins the "Christ is risen."

- They say, then Averin repented, chrazovo. But these are all rumors, ”Masha remarks.

After the “Red Easter”, many exalted neophytes began to come to Optina - in their midst stories about the supposedly miraculous phenomena of the monks killed in 1993 were circulated especially often. So, in April 2003, a group of Tula pilgrims arrived in the monastery. They arrived at Optina too early and before the start of the morning service they remained to rest on the bus.

At three o'clock in the morning, a priest with Kadil came out of the forest. He went to the bus and turned near the door. They let him in. The priest did not name his name and began to talk with pilgrims about Vera, said that they needed it every evening, at exactly ten o’clock, pray to the Virgin, and also urged not to believe in rumors about the end of the world. Then the priest left. In the afternoon, pilgrims bought a book about Red Easter, and one of them recognized in the night guest of the murdered monk Ferapont.

Neither Ferapont, nor Trofim, nor Vasily have yet been canonized, but still many pilgrims recognize the saints in them - and come to Optina for the anniversary of their death, April 18. People close to the Optina fraternity say that the pilgrims bring notes to the dead and secretly take all the sand from the candlesticks in the chapel with three coffins.

Masha and I leave the chapel and slowly walk in the forest around Optina - in the very one where, according to rumors, the ghost of the monk Ferapont came out. I recall my past business trip to Optina, held about four years ago. We had to talk with one of the Optina monks and agreed that we would meet at the edge of midnight at midnight. My acquaintance could not find another time: until late at night he was busy with monastic obedience and services.

Exactly at midnight, I was in place. The darkness seemed alive: she surrounded me from all sides. In an undertone, I told my colleague about the “Red Easter”, when suddenly a white shining ball appeared ahead of the trees. He smoothly approached us, then soaring up, then sinking down. I froze in place. I have never been a superstitious person, but here I felt really scary.

The ball swam up close to us. It turned out that this is not a ball at all, but a flashlight on the mobile phone of the Optina clergyman. The monks go black from head to toe, and it is difficult to see them in the night forest.

Masha pulls my sleeve. Singing from the cold, she offers to return to the car. I agree. The forest does not seem the most successful place for walking.

We return to the car along a narrow path near the fortress walls. Fire is on fire in the guard towers of the monastery. On the roof, a golden angel with a pipe is dimly shone on the roof - a ghost from "Revelation of John the Theologian." In the distance, the reddish lights of Kozelsk are visible behind the forest.
“Now we will drive Kozelsk, you will see: there are still seven more, but no one is on the streets,” says Masha. - All year round.