The trial of V Poresh:
Garvey, John
Of several minds: John Garvey THE TRIAL OF V. PORESH AN ACCOUNT OF THE CHRISTIAN SEMINAR THREE YEARS AGO Vladimir Poresh was sentenced by a Soviet court to five years in a labor camp, followed by...
...Even when you were in prison before the trial you had the opportunity to make your confession...
...Poresh: The whole world...
...The need is clear enough: there are nearly four hundred known Christian prisoners in the USSR, and their families share their fate...
...Poresh: Yes, I had good relations at work, and even the Party organizer treated me properly and kindly...
...The patrons of Keston College include leaders of the Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, and Jewish communities of Great Britain, and articles in Religion in Communist Lands have dealt not only with Christianity and Judaism but also with the plight of Buddhist and Islamic believers...
...Ogorodnikov gave the reasons for the Seminar's formation in a letter to Philip Potter, Secretary-General of the World Council of Churches: "We were convinced that our problems were being raised neither in church sermons, which are the only means for the religious education of believers, nor in the pages of the church journal, the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate, which, moreover, is inaccessible to the ordinary Christian...
...Aid to Russian Christians has an American branch...
...his sentence totals eleven years...
...They gathered in Ogorodnikov's shed to discuss the Bible and the Fathers of the Church, as well as the thought of Solovyov, Berdyayev, Bulgakov, Lossky, and other modern Orthodox thinkers...
...In his final statement to the court, Poresh said, "The Procurator asked for a short sentence for me...
...JOHN GARVEY...
...The indictment says I wanted to influence people," Poresh told the court...
...I would have asked for a longer one, but I know that this would be too great an honor for me...
...Poresh conducted his own defense at the trial, which took place in Leningrad from April 23 to April 25, 1980...
...Naturally I did: anyone who writes wants to influence and convince people...
...We need the whole world...
...One understandable reaction to the story of the Christian Seminar is to feel some relief that few of us have suffered for our beliefs as Poresh and his companions have suffered, and we feel compassion for those who have been forced to endure such obvious injustice...
...municate with people of different faiths in and outside of the Soviet Union...
...Of several minds: John Garvey THE TRIAL OF V. PORESH AN ACCOUNT OF THE CHRISTIAN SEMINAR THREE YEARS AGO Vladimir Poresh was sentenced by a Soviet court to five years in a labor camp, followed by three years of internal exile...
...Solzhenitsyn which features in this trial shows my conviction that the best way of struggling against Soviet power is not to struggle against it at all . . . I am talking primarily about spiritual action, about creating a new reality...
...You have seen the witnesses...
...Stephen for more information...
...All of the material quoted in this column appeared in-several issues of that journal, which is objective, carefully researched, and indispensable for anyone who wants to learn about the condition of believers in Communist countries...
...but it is not enough for a Christian to perform rituals: We can't stop there, we need the whole world...
...Most important of all, in the Russian church the parish is not like a brotherly community where Christian love of one's neighbor becomes a reality...
...The Christian Seminar was an obvious outgrowth of the insight of the young Christians who gathered to form it: they knew that Christianity has a social resonance...
...Solovyov has been called a "Russian Newman" because he took communion in Catholic churches...
...On August 1,1979, Poresh was arrested and charged with anti-Soviet activities...
...What I did is a natural consequence of my convictions...
...This is a new religious community . . . This new spiritual reality, this communal Christian view of the world, is being created everywhere, even here in the courtroom, and here I see the goal and meaning of this trial...
...Keston College's address,for those who want to know more about its work, is Heathfield Road, Keston, Kent BR2 6BA, England...
...There are people who have done much more for the church than I have...
...Apart from telling something about these brave men and women this column has a twofold purpose...
...Stephen, R.R...
...We are calling for liberation from sin, from sinful life in society...
...Poresh, now 34, was baptized in 1974...
...I saw joy on their faces: it was a joy to them to see me and a joy to me to see them...
...They believe, for example, that the interaction of Russian Orthodoxy with Roman Catholicism will enable both churches to fulfill their vocations...
...At least eleven members have been arrested at vari ous times...
...The information we have about the Christian Seminar is based almost entirely on samizdat documents which have made their way West...
...2, Box 51, Athens, Illinois 62613...
...Toward the end of the transcript of Vladimir Poresh's trial, there is an interesting exchange...
...and their words and witness have an intensity and hope which make most of what passes for Christianity in the West look pale and shallowly rooted...
...Its founder, Alexander Ogorodnikov, is in prison...
...If it is real, it means thorough transformation...
...The Christian Seminar is a group of young men and women, most of them converts to Christianity...
...So they met for discussion and mutual support, produced two issues of a samizdat journal, Obshchina (Community), and wrote letters to fellow Christians in the USSR and abroad...
...According to the laws of our country I should have sat quietly, in silence...
...What do you need...
...But this is not enough...
...It is clear from the experience and testimony of those involved in the Christian Seminar that they understand something about Christianity which we would do well to learn: Christianity is not a seasoning with which we may choose to season our primarily secular experience...
...they wanted to defend the rights of all believers to practice their religion...
...If our State is totalitarian, I am in fact breaking the law by having my own worldview, which I have never concealed and which I have talked about honestly and openly...
...The Seminar's meeting places have been raided, members have been beaten, and some of them, detained for "psychological disorders," have been forced to undergo damaging drug treatments...
...and they wanted to com...
...Judge: What...
...Poresh: Essentially I have been sen-tenced for my worldview...
...Ogorod-nikov was a cinematography student who grew disillusioned with Marxism and explored various forms of nihilism and the life of the hip subculture before Paso-lini's film The Gospel According to Matthew led him to study Christianity...
...I simply don't understand how I could have kept out of prison...
...It may be that he was simply ahead of his time, and of our churches...
...In a recent issue of Sojourners a visitor to Russia described a conversation with one Russian Christian, who said that he felt sorry for American Christians, because the materialism and ease of our society could so easily blind us to the demands of true Christianity...
...Most of us have never been forced to become aware of the cost of belief, or what it truly demands of us...
...They have been...
...In this they have been influenced by Vladimir Solovyov, who believed that the Christian church must be at once Catholic in its pursuit of unity, Orthodox in its cultivation of the interior life and radical humility, and Protestant in its commitment to Biblical fidelity...
...Only the second issue of Ob-shchina has reached the West...
...His official crime was "anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda.'' His actual offense was his membership in a remarkable group, the Christian Seminar...
...I am grateful for that...
...My letter to A.I...
...The present condition of the Christian Seminar is difficult to know...
...In it, translating from the Italian, one can read the following: 'We must struggle against social pressure and towards spiritual freedom...
...What we know of the Christian Seminar and the fate of some of its members tells us a lot about the state of religion in the Soviet Union...
...He contributed to Obshchina and was harassed and followed for a while...
...Write to the Society of St...
...Members of the Seminar saw their work as threefold: they wanted to become theologically and philosophically grounded in a way which was closed to them under the officially tolerated church channels...
...It calls our own approach to Christianity into question as well...
...In prison they gave me a prayer book and a Bible...
...The number of Seminar members now in prison is uncertain, but one of the cases about which we have some details is that of Vladimir Poresh...
...Since the cost of sending a package full of needed materials to the Soviet Union can be prohibitive, it makes sense for church groups, prayer groups, or other communities of Christians to do collectively what it might be difficult for someone to do individually...
...The wife of Father Gleb Yakunin, for example, is ill, unable to work, and depends upon the generosity of others to support her children...
...Why in capitalist Italy do they have to struggle against society...
...The people who founded Keston College have also formed an organization to correspond with and aid Christian prisoners and their families...
...It is the Society of St...
...but he felt that he had never left Orthodoxy, and the Orthodox claim him as their own...
...The message which these Russian Christians bring to the West is revolutionary in the New Testament sense of the word...
...One member, Tatyana Shchipkova, was hounded out of a teaching job and in January of 1980 was sentenced to three years in a labor camp...
...I consider that our task is to create a Christian community transcending national boundaries, and a new Christian worldview...
...But the more one reads of the struggles of those who suffer for their belief, the more another dimension of their belief, and ours, becomes apparent...
...Judge: But you yourself stress that you were not persecuted for religious convictions...
...They are all my friends, believers and unbelievers...
...I have a negative attitude towards Soviet power but I have never called for struggle against it: fighting, struggling, poisoning the wells - nothing like that...
...One is to acquaint Commonweal readers with the work of Keston College, a research center in England which publishes the excellent Religion in Communist Lands...
...The society needs money, and contributions are appreciated...
...This hall was filled with a constant sense of joy in spite of the fact that I am in custody...
...The point is that we have one common goal: struggling against the social sinfulness of the world...
...It was there, in 1974, that the first meetings of the Christian Seminar took place...
...The story of the group's founder, Alexander Ogorod-nikov, is in many ways typical...
...There is a strong ecumenical direction among members of the Seminar...
...He joined the Orthodox church, lost his scholarship as a result of his conversion, and was given a job as a maintenance man at a tuberculosis clinic in Moscow and a shed - formerly a carpenter's workshop - to live in...
...If I had called for the restoration of capitalism (as has been stated here), then what would the Italians have to free themselves from, since they have freedom and democracy...
...The first was confiscated by the KGB, and there may be no existing copies...
...Many of them helped me even though they did not completely share my convictions...
...One Protestant member of the Seminar noted the willingness of the largely Orthodox group to learn from the Protestant experience, and the Seminar has made an effort to keep in touch with Christians in other countries, particularly with the Italian Catholic youth organization "Com-munione e Liberazione...
...So let me say once again that the aim of our journal, and my own personal aim, was the Christianization of the world, the liberation of people from social pressures: this is confirmed in my letter to Italian and French friends...
...But what it needs even more are individuals and groups willing to sponsor particular prisoners and their families...
...At the preliminary inquiry I said that I had had meetings with two Italian girls, Agnesa and Graziella, from the Catholic youth organization 'Communione e Liberazione.' The program of this Catholic organization has been brought up at this trial...
...You were given the opportunity of being baptized and of baptizing your children...
...The State persecutes every manifestation of church life, except for the performance of a 'religious cult.' Our thirst for spiritual communion, religious education and missionary service runs up against all the might of the State's repressive machinery...
Vol. 110 • March 1983 • No. 5
