Heidi Bradner for The New York Times
Posted on 11/20/2003 7:55:48 PM PST by saquin
KURILOVO, Russia — Shoulders back, chest out, the young soldier stands as if on parade in his camouflage fatigues — his boots polished, his rifle at his shoulder, a halo around his head.
His face is the blank mask of a man for whom duty is life. It is not easy being a soldier, or a saint.
Portraits of this young man, Yevgeny Rodionov, are spreading around Russia — sometimes in uniform, sometimes in a robe, sometimes armed, sometimes holding a cross, but always with his halo.
He is Russia's new unofficial saint, a casualty of the war in Chechnya who has been canonized not by the Russian Orthodox Church but by a groundswell of popular adoration.
The portraits are religious icons, venerated in homes and churches where Private Rodionov has become the focus of a minor cult that seems to fill a nationalist hunger for popular heroes.
In one icon he is painted to look like a medieval Russian knight. In another he is included, in full uniform, in a group portrait of the last czar and his family, under the gaze of Jesus.
Church officials say all of this breaks religious law. Sainthood is not a popularity contest, and icons are not campaign posters. The process of canonization, the officials say, is long and arduous and can only be carried out by the church.
But it does happen from time to time that a symbolic figure emerges to capture the passions of a moment and becomes a sort of folk saint — sometimes the first step toward official sainthood.
In pamphlets, songs and poems, in sermons and on Web sites, Private Rodionov's story has become a parable of religious devotion and Russian nationalism. The young soldier, it is said, was killed by Muslim rebels seven years ago because he refused to renounce his religion or remove the small silver cross he kept around his neck.
It is the story his mother says she was told by the rebels who killed him and who later led her, for a ransom of $4,000, to the place they had buried him. When she exhumed his body late one night, she said, the cross was there among his bones, glinting in the light of flashlights, stained with small drops of blood.
"Nineteen-year-old Yevgeny Rodionov went through unthinkable suffering," reads an encomium on one nationalist Web site, "but he did not renounce the Orthodox faith but confirmed it with his martyr's death.
"He proved that now, after so many decades of raging atheism, after so many years of unrestrained nihilism, Russia is capable, as in earlier times, of giving birth to a martyr for Christ, which means it is unconquerable."
As his story has spread, pilgrims have begun appearing in this small village just west of Moscow, where his mother, Lyubov, 51, tends his grave on an icy hillside beside an old whitewashed church.
Some military veterans have laid their medals by his graveside in a gesture of homage. People in distress have left handwritten notes asking for his intercession.
In a church near St. Petersburg, his full-length image stands at the altar beside icons of the Virgin Mary, the Archangel Michael, Jesus and Nicholas II, the last of the czars, who was canonized three years ago.
Aleksandr Makeyev, a paratroop officer who heads a foundation to assist soldiers, said he had seen soldiers kneeling in prayer before an image of Private Rodionov. "The kids in Chechnya, they feel they've been abandoned by the state and abandoned by their commanders," he told the newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets.
"They don't know who to appeal to for help, but they understand that Zhenya is one of them," he said, using Private Rodionov's nickname. "You can say he is the first soldier-saint."
Among the photographs of her son that Mrs. Rodionov spreads on her kitchen table are laminated cards that she says some soldiers carry with them for luck. They bear his image along with a prayer:
"Thy martyr, Yevgeny, O Lord, in his sufferings has received an incorruptible crown from thee, our God, for having thy strength he has brought down his torturers, has defeated the powerless insolence of demons. Through his prayers save our souls."
Although he has not been formally canonized, Private Rodionov's mother and other believers say his icons sometimes emit rivulets of holy perfume, as some extremely sacred Orthodox icons are said to do.
Indeed, Mrs. Rodionov said, her own icon of her son drips perfume. "When that happens and I am planning a trip, I postpone it," she said. "The icon gives me signs."
Mrs. Rodionov said she was able to find her son's body and learn how he died during a lull in the war when rebel soldiers were demanding huge sums of money to return live prisoners or the bodies of men they had killed.
According to the accounts of his captors, she said, he and three other soldiers were seized in 1996 while manning a checkpoint and were held in a cellar for 100 days before they were executed.
Private Rodionov was killed, she said, when he refused the rebels' demand that he remove his cross and forswear his religion.
A poem called "The Cross," composed in his honor, paints a scene of laughing heathens who beheaded the young soldier when he defied them.
"Pure mountains in the distance, slopes covered in blooms of blue," the poem reads. "Refusing to renounce Christ, the soldier of Russia fell. And his head rolled, blood flowed from the saber, and the red grass whispered a quiet prayer in its wake."
Private Rodionov was proud to wear his military uniform and to do his duty for his country, his mother said. But as a boy in this small village, all he really wanted was to be a cook.
Heidi Bradner for The New York Times
Interesting last name, Rodionov. The root rod- "birth" is in many words:
rodina, motherland.The Russian singer Oleg Gazmanov often writes songs honoring soldiers and officers. One music video of his, Rodniki (Springs), has a group of grunts in a fire-fight somewhere in the Kavkaz, their foxhole near a country spring (rodnik). During the battle the spring gets blown up, but the soldaty dig it out. Years later they come back to the site where there's a little church by the well, and children play.
rodstvenniki, relatives.
roditeli, parents.
I know, pretty sentimental... it's a Russian thing ;-)
St. Herman of Alaska upon hearing that an Orthodox Aleut had died under torture by Jesuits in California asked his name, and when told "Piotr" immediately asked the intercessions of the saint. St. Peter the Aleut has been vernerated by the Orthodox faithful of North America ever since.
Thanks for the info on the icons. I've found that Zehki make the most interesting icons, though they often forget the prayers.
The one above was made by a friend while he was serving in the Soviet army, not in jail. He said he used an old ammo box, scraps of wire, and leather and rubber shavings.
Where there's a will...
I'm with you there! I love Eastern Christian iconography. I have a small diptych of the Theotokos with Child, and of Jesus Christ Pantocrator, as well as individual icons of Holy Protection, St. Joseph, St. Francis de Sales, and Our Lady of Perpetual Help.
12/25/2003 15:48
Canonization of soldiers martyrized in Chechnya reveal that Russians do need the faith and their own heroes
At the time when officials speak about spirituality, teachers dispute about introduction of religion lessons into the school curriculum, church hierarchs settle unification of churches and politicians call the church Putin's support, - the Orthodoxy in Russia is living its own life separate from Putin, politics and sometimes even from spirituality itself.
On December 22, 2003 the city court of Mozdok (Chechnya) had an out session in Moscow and gave a repeated hearing of the case on the demise of special purpose police unit soldiers from the Russian city of Sergiyev Posad in Chechnya in spring of 2001. Higher commanders - former Deputy Chief of the Moscow Interior Ministry"s Department Major-General Boris Fadeyev and former Detachment Chief of the united group of troops in Chechnya, Colonel Mikhail Levchenko are blamed for negligence that entailed death of the soldiers.
Lyubov Markelova, the widow of detachment commander Dmitry Markelov brought an icon to the court session. She says: "The icon was painted in memory of the soldiers killed in the Stavropolsky district of Grozny on March 2, 2000." There are the 17 killed soldiers dressed in camouflage and traditional mantles depicted in the icon. The icon was painted several months ago in the Troitse-Sergiyev Monastery. Relatives of the tragically killed soldiers hope the icon will help the court to get to the truth.
Saint Yeugeny - private Rodionov
Yeugeny Rodionov was drafted in 1995; in winter of 1996 the soldier was sent to an outpost on the Ingushetia-Chechnya border. On February 14, together with three young soldiers Yeugeny stopped a minibus for examination. Terrorists headed by brigadier Ruslan Khaikhoroyev got out of the minibus and defeated the young soldiers. At the same very period, older soldiers and officers were celebrating The Saint Valentine's Day; they could not hear the sound of the fight. However, when it turned out the soldiers were gone, the officers decided to accuse them of desertion to avoid any responsibility for the fate of the guys. The terrorists offered private Rodionov make choice: either to adopt Islam and fight for independence of Ichkeria or to die. The soldier refused to adopt Islam. The Chechen brigadier severely tortured him for three months, and cruelly decapitated Yeugeny on May 23, on the day when the young soldier just turned 19. The Chechens preferred the atrocious method of execution because they followed a legend saying that a decapitated victim would not come for the murderer after death. Terrorists demanded that Yeugeny's mother must pay $4,000 for the dead body of her son. The father of the young soldier died as soon as the family received the tragic news about the death of the son. The cruel murderers of Yugeny Rodionov were killed within the past years either by federal forces or by terrorists themselves.
Many people know the tragic story of private Rodionov. There are icons where Yeugeny is depicted dressed in camouflage form and with a halo around his head. The icons are popular with soldiers in Russia, Ukraine and even Yugoslavia where Russian and Serbian soldiers ask Saint Yeugeny to defend them from NATO bombing. There is even an unofficial prayer in commemoration of Saint Yeugeny. Servicemen built a chapel at one of frontier posts in Altai in memory of Martyr Yeugeny and his divine patron. During a religious procession in commemoration of Martyr Yeugeny on November 20, 2002 the icon with the image of the soldier started secreting myrrh. The official Orthodox Church is so far rather cautious about the new saint. Deacon Sergey from the Moscow Patriarchy Department for law enforcement structures and the army says: "Private Yeugeny was martyrized. In the course of time this fact may become the demonstration of his sanctity. Now, documents and evidence are being collected concerning probable canonization of the soldier. Indeed, activity of a saint is characterized with some obvious wonders he works. The only fact that some icons with the image of the soldier started secreting myrrh does not prove his sanctity."
Christ and Coca-Cola
On January 14, 2003 an exhibition called "Be careful! Religion" was opened in Moscow's Andrey Sakharov Museum. Works of 40 artists from Russia, Cuba, the US, Japan, Georgia and Armenia were exhibited in the framework of the exhibition. Some of the exhibits were extremely unusual. For instance, there was a mirror instead of Christ's head in the copy of The Lord's Supper so that any visitor of the exhibition could imagine himself in the role of the Savior. There was also a full-length icon with a cut instead of the image so that visitors could put their faces and become part of the icon. The image of Jesus Christ was depicted against the background of Coca-Cola advertising with the inscription This Is My Blood in it.
The faithful strongly criticized the exhibition, the same way as Christians often receive typical projects. In 2001, during the exhibition Art-Moscow-2001 children under 18 were not allowed to one of the exhibition halls. An icon with the image of a soldier killed in Chechnya and standing with his decapitated head in the hands and an icon with the Vladimir Mother of God dressed in camouflage uniform were exhibited in the hall. In 2002, a group of Orthodox students of the Russian State Humanitarian University brought an action against the university management because they posted a picture representing Christian apostles together with Egyptian gods. The court rejected the suit.
The exhibition in Sakharov Museum ended quite differently. On January 18, six middle-aged men (they claimed themselves to be ardent Orthodox Christians) came to the exhibition to crush the glass, the installations and spray paint on the pictures. The police detained the hooligans. Metropolitan Kirill, the chairman of the church department for public relations commented upon the incident and called the exhibition "an obvious provocation intensifying tension in the society." Even though he said that the hooligans acted inadmissibly, he was still puzzled why that exhibition was organized at all.
The exhibition was closed before the appointed time. Zamoskvoretsky Court of Moscow declared the prosecution of the six men illegal. Criminal proceedings were started instead against the organizers of the exhibition on the charges of spreading religious hostility; the investigation is not yet over.
These are not the only examples of interaction between the religion and the society. A public committee "For moral revival of the society" has been recently created to fight against organization of "bad" exhibitions on the legal basis. Unification of the Russian Orthodox Church with the Orthodox Church abroad is being actively discussed. This is important that today the Russian Orthodox Church can exert much influence upon the leadership of the country as compared with Boris Yeltsin"s epoch. It is said that President Putin has a confessor of his own, archimandrite Tikhon (Shevkunov) from Sretensky Monastery. However, some processes do occur among the people as well. The exhibition crushing and canonization of soldiers martyrized in Chechnya reveal that Russians do need the faith and their own heroes.
Nikolay Dzis-Voinarovsky
Read the original in Russian: (Translated by: Maria Gousseva)
Bump for a true hero and martyr.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.