Peace in the Face of War

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When the Shostakovich score was flown into the city, Ksenia and other surviving members of the radio symphony orchestra practised under the direction of Karl Ilych Eliasberg. Ksenia said the musicians had to be helped up the stairs and could rehearse for only fifteen minutes at a time. Nevertheless, the symphony was performed publicly in Leningrad’s Astoria hotel on August 9th 1942, the day Hitler had chosen to celebrate the fall of the city. It was broadcast both to the city and the besieging forces. August 9 th made a great difference. The shelling and bombing and hunger continued but I knew I had accomplished an important deed – that I was of use to the city. A less well-known spiritual gift was broadcast live the previous November 1941 to the besieging forces: Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, with a choir of 120 starving men and women summoning all their strength to sing Ode to Joy to the German troops surrounding the city. The ability of siege survivors to harness deep spiritual reserves was perhaps most vividly expressed by a 70 year-old doctor, Professor Svet Tikhvinskii. Svet was twelve at the outbreak of war. After my family left for the front, I gathered lumps of coal from the railway line. I made wick and oil lamps to light my room. I went to the Neva for water. I slept on a metal bedstead with a board laid across it. I had one thin blanket for covering. I was used to austere conditions. I was brought up in a military family. I cut up my leather boots, boiled and ate them. I ate all the carpenter’s glue in the house and then boiled sawdust. There was a vegetable warehouse in the neighbourhood. In the course of decades vegetables had rotted and formed a layer over the floor. I dug up that earth and ate it. Then as winter approached I went to the army and asked them to take me in. I told them my father was a general and I didn’t want to die. I said I was prepared to do anything, any work at all, if they would just let me live with them.They agreed, even though my father was not a general but a colonel in the medical service. I stayed with them for a few months. In the end they sent me away to study. I left my comrades with tears in my eyes. Their parting words were, ‘Lad, live for us, study for us.’ Of 900 men, only one returned from the war. Svet began to train as a gymnast in the Empress Elizabeth’s former palace that had been converted into a school and orphanage. Each day I cycled all the way across the city from the Vyborg Side, sometimes through shelling and artillery fire. I was very serious about my training. I became a gymnast, performing with my troupe in hospitals, schools and 18
theatre halls. There was a strong sense of collectivism among us, which more than anything else helped me to survive. I was a communist then. And I remain one today. I cannot betray my ideals. I joined the party in 1948; I have been a member for over 50 years. Like my parents before me, I live for society. The siege set the Professor on a trajectory of inner exploration that lasted his whole lifetime. He told me: Two months ago I skied to the North Pole. Our success in that expedition was due to outstanding organisation, self-discipline and mutual cooperation. For that I owe a debt of gratitude to the war. It accustomed me to front-line conditions, in which nothing is your own, you hold everything in common. We visited some schools in Arctic towns to give talks about our experience. Yesterday I received some letters from the children who heard me speak. It’s hard to read them, I get emotional… They show that we signify something to them as people. In their eyes we have led extraordinary lives. We survived the war; we come from a different society. I am very happy that we are able to inspire young people with their whole lives ahead of them. I believe that we need human solidarity and spiritual inspiration, not only in the sense of following Christ’s sermons but in building a strategy for the future. If we are able to raise our children as we ourselves were brought up, then all that we lived through will not have been in vain. Life is an eternal conflict, a battle to overcome obstacles. Positive and negative emotions arise all the time – but within this it is possible to achieve equilibrium. You do not achieve this equilibrium by doing nothing. We who have faced hunger and cold understand this. Professor Tikhvinskii was preparing to ski to the South Pole the following winter – a journey of 3,000 kilometres. * * * The faith of those siege survivors has never left me. It sparked the first glimmerings of a faith that enabled me to turn my own life around. And four years after my return to London from St Petersburg, I met and married a man who turned out to be the grandson of a woman who survived the siege of Leningrad. I do not believe that was coincidental. Caroline Walton, Associate CSWG Caroline Walton is a Russian to English translator and author of several books on Russia. She and her Ukrainian husband are frequent visitors to the Monastery. Her 5-Star book, The Besieged – a Story of Survival (Biteback), from which this article is précised, may be ordered from Amazon. 19
Page 1 and 2: Winds From the East Pursuing Peace
Page 3 and 4: Journal of the Community of the Ser
Page 5 and 6: who was married to Ruth, the Rector
Page 7 and 8: Our Associate, Caroline Walton, pro
Page 9 and 10: peace is easy. To the contrary, it
Page 11 and 12: heart reaches the limits of our phy
Page 13 and 14: has now become beyond their strengt
Page 15 and 16: establishment of this border allows
Page 17 and 18: Performers received slightly higher
Page 19: Never in my life, whether before th
Page 23 and 24: An eschatological understanding of
Page 25 and 26: and relish the cruel punishments to
Page 27 and 28: with a messianic consciousness, wit
Page 29 and 30: Eschatological Creativity The disti
Page 31 and 32: grim endlessness. 1 The End of the
Page 33 and 34: one concerned with women, religion
Page 35 and 36: the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Ro
Page 37 and 38: embassies need to know how these pr
Page 39 and 40: - regrettably, for security reasons
Page 41 and 42: need to ‘strengthen the moderate
Page 43 and 44: Do not repay anyone evil for evil.
Page 45 and 46: Wilson, had warned against it. Prob
Page 47 and 48: Brother John of the Cross CSWG 6 Ap
Page 49 and 50: He came to monastic life having ful
Page 51 and 52: the ups and downs - ‘up to the sk
Page 53 and 54: and it lifted high the waves of the
Page 55 and 56: Are religious conflicts today then
Page 57 and 58: And here, in order for the descript
Page 59 and 60: Alex (above) steps out into the lig

Peace in the Face of War

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