Here is a story told from the heart of a man who had been exiled with his family to Karaganda, and lost his faith. But in his most difficult hour, he met Elder Sebastian.
We post this story in memory of the great Optina elder, St. Sebastian of Karaganda, who reposed in the Lord on Radonitsa, 1966, and all the suffering Christians who lost their lives in that inhuman exile to the steppes of Kazakhstan.
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Unbearable anguish is making me almost unable to breathe, and a painful lump Is rising in my throat, stretching out its putrid tentacles. My mind refuses to accept reality, as if I were an outside observer seeing our fate bringing down more and more trials on us, dispelling my conviction that it can’t be more painful. It did become more painful! And, of course, it would be ever worse—I had no doubt about that.
With difficulty I opened my eyes in an attempt to get out of the stupor. How long had I been sitting like this, with my back leaning against the ice-cold wall, now panicking in my mind from horrible memories, now falling into a heavy doze or even half-fainting? It seemed that my bones would turn to dust if I moved. Darkness, cold and hopelessness reigned. Bouncing onto one rail after another, the wheels were indifferently beating out the “anthem” of our new life. Every now and then I woke up the young girl who snuggled up to me with her whole body in an attempt to get warm. I feared she would fall asleep too deeply and would never wake up. I looked at her tiny hands clenched into fists, at her hair, which had once been perky golden pigtails, but now was in shapeless wisps, at her sunken cheeks, and I couldn’t fathom how people could treat their fellow human beings this way.
From my father I knew a little about the strange events that were infecting our country, like a tumor, but for me it was simple: Some bad people had seized power and now were doing away with people like us. But those who had “loaded” us onto the freight train were not high-ranking officials who were swaying destinies. And how were my home, my family, and all these external changes interrelated? I couldn’t get it at all. My mind kept returning to my other family members... My mother was due to give birth at any time. I had no idea where they were taking us, but I prayed to God that we made it in time so that she wouldn’t have to suffer in those dirty, cold trains we had been forcibly put on a few days before (I didn’t know exactly how many). The very thought that what was happening could provoke her labor pains made my ears buzz... I tried to chase this thought away. I tried to comfort myself by thinking that my father was in the same car with my mother and my middle sister and he knew what should be done. Thank God that my younger little sister Alyonushka1 was with me: at least I wouldn’t go crazy from uncertainty. I would do my best to keep her safe...
It seems it had been a long time ago. We had our own house in the Saratov region. We had a religious and closely-knit family. In 1930, they tried to force my father to join a collective farm, but he refused. And then they came...
“Hello, Sergei Andreyevich! You will be subject to dekulakization (dispossession)!”
We were exiled from our native region in 1931. I was thirteen at the time, my brothers were three years my senior, and my little sisters were three and five years old respectively; so there were five of us siblings, our parents and grandparents. Our two older brothers were arrested and served their terms separately from us. Our father was not arrested on account of his disability. Our elderly grandparents were exiled with us. Like cattle, we were “loaded” onto freight train cars and taken to no one knows where.
Alyonushka woke up and started crying huskily, but a loud, hoarse cough coming from her breast, which had sunk in over the previous two days, broke her crying off almost immediately. She had a mild cold when they came to take us. Nothing critical—if only we were at home...
The wheels rattled, making my head ache. Trying to feel her faint breathing, I would wake my sister up over and again. Alyonka would shudder and cling to me even more tightly. There was darkness all around, but I didn’t need any light to see horror in her eyes. And I was ready to give everything I had for my family’s suffering to stop as suddenly as it had begun, and for sparks of joy to appear in my sister’s eyes again—just to hear her laughter. But I didn’t have anything save my mother’s shawl, which she had managed to throw to me at the last moment that day. And I could only cuddle my little sister, wrapping her up to keep her warm. Dear Mother, even now she was with us! We were sitting wrapped in the shawl together. It smelled of home, warmth, and the life that had been taken from us. Howling from sudden braking, the train stopped beating its wistful “anthem” on the rails, and my sister, who was crouching in my arms, shivered all over again.
We were brought to the Karaganda region, to the bare steppe, and thrown to the ground like garbage. The dirty train cars, the dirty sky—it wept along with the mothers who had gotten on the train with their small children and gotten out with small corpses in their arms. We collected rainwater and drank it.
The subsequent events were imprinted in my memory forever and they hit me hard. We never saw my grandmother again. My parents, who were miraculously found after our “unloading”, began, like others, to pull down the planks, on which we had lain in the train, so as not to sit on the frozen ground. We didn’t sleep for two more days. A couple of days later, some people arrived on horse-drawn carriages (I presumed they were Cossacks) and took us to some “Fifth Settlement”. All my life I have recalled how Alyona asked while we were being driven, “Daddy, will we have a home?” He would answer: “We will, we will. Wait—you’ll see it shortly.” At last, we arrived. A field, tall Siberian peashrubs (caragana), a pole with the inscription: “The Fifth Settlement”; and soldiers to keep us from running away.
They put up tents for the guards, but nothing for us. Some boss was walking and measuring the plot for each family by steps: “Four meters this way and four meters that way. Your address is 12 Reconstruction Street—you can write home.”
There was nothing with which to cut down the Siberian peashrubs. We began to dig a hole in our plot with our hands. After that we found some sticks somewhere, placed them over the hole like a shelter structure, covered it with peashrubs, and put some withered grass on the bottom. All of us lay down on top of each other.
Our mother didn’t survive the birth. Two days later, the newborn Lyoshenka (Alexei) died too. A week later, pneumonia killed Alyonushka.
We lived in our “home” until the feast of the Protection of the Mother of God. It snowed on that day. There was so much snow that it seemed that nature itself wanted to ease our suffering and bury us under it. In the morning my only surviving sister woke up and shocked me. “Grandpa has frozen to death,” she said. “I feel cold next to him...” I jumped up: our grandfather had already passed into eternal warmth.
We built barracks for ourselves. Teenagers and adults carried turf on their backs. Later, we were housed in these barracks with no windows or doors. We didn’t have time to put up any roofs. My father poured water into a trough, it froze, and then he took out a round piece of ice, which served as a “window” for our new “home”. 200 people would be housed in each barrack. Some got up from under the snow after surviving yet another night and providing themselves with a new day full of torments. There was always a lot of work in the morning: ten people dead here, five more there, etc. They were lying under the snow. They were pulled out of the snow and put onto a cart. While some men were drawing it, one of them would suddenly fall. They would lift him up, put him onto the cart, and pull it on. 18,000 people had been brought to the “Fifth Settlement”, and by spring only 6,000 of them were alive.
In March 1932, our father contracted typhus. We had no beds or bunks, so there was nowhere to put him except on the floor. During one of the nights, he froze to death on the floor...
All that remained of our family were me, my six-year-old sister, and our older brothers, about whom I would hear nothing for many years.
Seven years passed. The horrors of the barracks became a thing of the past, along with most of my family. I kept returning to them in my memory, to our happy Sundays, when we attended the Liturgy in the morning, and then spent the whole day together; and to little Alyonka, gaily and clumsily running towards me to hold out a piece of prosphora, all crumpled in her hot palms.
I worked at a factory, trying to erase the events of the previous decade from my memory. My church background was gradually becoming almost mythical. Occasional mention of the Orthodox feasts provoked intense anguish, reminding me of my losses.
Several times I heard my fellow factory workers discuss some priest who celebrated services despite the ban. He was rumored to be a miracle-worker. Pascha was coming. I don’t know what motivated me, but I decided to go and see him.
They served in the woods near a small community consisting of exiled church people. There were many monastics among them, mostly nuns. Their spiritual mentor was Fr. Sebastian, of whom I had heard much.
I couldn’t come at the beginning of the service, so when I arrived, they were singing the third antiphon. I saw a small thin old man in worn priestly vestments. He served very attentively, and I began to listen to the words of prayers that I had known in my past. The sun rose higher and higher, with its beams filtering through the crowns of trees and illuminating the worshippers. Many years have passed since my life in the barracks, but I still feel cold in any weather.
Fr. Sebastian was an orphan from the age of five. His parents passed away, leaving three children orphans, aged five, eleven and seventeen. The eldest married, and Sebastian (then Stephen) began to live with his family, and the middle one became a novice at Optina Monastery. While living with his brother, Stephen graduated from a parish school, where he showed good learning abilities. Subsequently, he often visited his brother at the monastery. On March 15, 1912, at the age of twenty-eight, Stephen joined the brotherhood, and five years later he was tonsured a monk with the name Sebastian.
Monk Sebastian My surviving sister was the only ray of light in my life. Having a poor health, she endured all the hardships of life, often much more courageously than me. I lived for her, but there was not a single day I didn’t think back to the time we were on that train—that dark, terrible night when my little Alyonushka began to lose her vitality. I didn’t remember what sound sleep is like. Every night I saw my dear little sister struggling with death and losing the battle.
Fr. Sebastian was arrested and sent to the Tambov Prison in 1933. At that time, over fifty clergy, monks and laypeople were arrested: they were charged with allegedly creating a counterrevolutionary church-monarchist organization that aimed to “overthrow the Soviet Government by arranging an uprising with a declaration of war. The population, offended by the Soviet authorities, was being trained for this... In order to involve more people in the counterrevolutionary activities, the organization was sending its members to villages of the districts with the task of urging the population not to obey the authorities as the servants of the antichrist, not to sow crops, not to hand over their bread, and not to go to collective farms. Members of the counterrevolutionary organization who walked through villages attracted the religious populace, reading the Bible and engaging in anti-Soviet agitation, predicting the imminent fall of Soviet power,” as the accusers stated.
Standing at the service, I, as usual, was thinking about her—about Alyonka—and about my poor family. A wave of murmuring rose in me, and burst out. “It shouldn’t be like this! They must be here with me—happy and alive. Alyonushka, my little Alyonka...” Pictures from my childhood flashed before my eyes again, like a flock of bright birds with sharp claws, mercilessly attacking and wounding me, and a lump in my throat made it hard to breathe… “Why did God save my life? For this?!”
In prison Fr. Sebastian was exposed to the cold for a whole night dressed only in his cassock. They demanded that he renounce his faith. Miraculously, he didn’t freeze to death. In the morning, when he was taken for interrogation, the investigator pronounced the verdict: “If you refuse to renounce Christ, then go to prison.” During the interrogation Fr. Sebastian said: “I view all the activities of the Soviet Government as the wrath of God, and this regime is a punishment for our people.” He was sentenced to seven years of labor camps.
Immersed in my grief, I did not notice how the confession began. Soon it was my turn. I was silent, staring at the analogion, without knowing what I ought to say. Instead of repentance, despondency and resentment for the unbearable cross were breaking out from my soul. On coming to my senses, I looked at the elder, but he was just standing with his eyes closed and, as it seemed to me, praying. I started speaking, at first hesitantly, but then words poured out of me in a continuous stream. Despite my efforts, it was more like a complaint rather than a confession—a long and painful one. I spoke on and on, removing splinters, one by one, from my soul, which seemed to be dead. I was speaking about how I had promised myself to keep Alyona safe, that I should have done it, about her bloody cough, about how I had lost her— my little Alyonushka. I lost everything with her. About how tears had been freezing on my face, leaving dirty furrows on my hollow cheeks as I had been knocking together a small box for her out of some horrible planks. About my dear pregnant mother. About my grandmother, who (I was sure of it) had not even survived the freight train. About how the world had shaken when I had seen my father’s glassy eyes. And the elder kept listening to me... silently.
Fr. Sebastian was released in 1939. He lived in Karaganda, where he supported many of the former exiles and “special settlers”. The members of his monastic community would get up early in the morning and read the prescribed prayer rule, then everyone went to work, while Fr. Sebastian stayed at home to go and get water, cook dinner, and repair and clean shoes. When circumstances permitted, he celebrated the Liturgy; he would read the whole daily cycle of services.
My face was wet with tears. There were no more words to say. Fr. Sebastian was silent for a while, then for the first time he looked into my eyes and said softly and distinctly, “To God all are alive.” His answer stunned me. I stared blankly for a few moments, then lowered my head and thought that I had come there in vain. No, I hadn’t expected anything miraculous or unusual, but now it seemed that the elder didn’t even know what kind of pain I was talking about. “Can he be a miracle-worker? Just an ordinary old man.”
At one stage of his ministry in Karaganda, Fr. Sebastian went to the Tambov region, and some of his spiritual children, who had been waiting for his return from the camps for many years, hoped that he would stay with them in Russia. But, after living for a week in the village of Sukhotinka, batiushka returned to Karaganda. He realized that it was here, on a land saturated with human suffering, that his place of service was; it would be the place of his salvation and here he would live, God willing, until ripe old age.
To God all are alive... My Alyonka is dead. She was killed. Only the small remnant of my family survives, not knowing how to live with the burden of its past tragedy. And yes, to God all are alive. A picture from my childhood crossed my mind. Angry and blubbering, with my heart pounding, I was standing in front of my father with a small fluffy, shaking, and faintly squeaking little lump in my arms. I had taken it away when some older boys were trying to hang the kitten by the tail, laughing and mocking. I got it then... I’ve never been physically strong, but there had been three of them... My father heard me out, patted me on the head gently, and I felt his big hand on my thin shoulder. I was calmer immediately. Startled, I opened my eyes. Fr. Sebastian was looking directly at me with his clear, wise eyes, which were not those of an old man. He stood two heads shorter than me, but his warm hand was gripping my shoulder tightly. I heard my father’s voice: “To God all are alive! I will pray.” Or rather, it was Fr. Sebastian’s voice. I walked away from the analogion with peace of mind.
One day, Fr. Sebastian came with Nuns Maria and Martha to the cemetery beyond Tikhonovka (the now defunct village in the Karaganda region), where there were common graves in the middle, into which 200 dead “special settlers”, who had died of hunger and diseases, would once be tossed every day, and buried without funerals, and without crosses. On looking around the graves and listening to eyewitness accounts, the elder said: “Candles are burning day and night from earth to Heaven over these martyrs’ common graves.”
I started attending services regularly, and I brought my sister to the Church. As she grew older, her faith only grew stronger, and I marveled at the courage of this very young lady, who took after her mother. Thanks to conversations with Fr. Sebastian the wounds of my soul gradually healed. He reminded me of my father. My sister and I came to love him.
It was a warm summer morning. As usual, I went to the factory, escorting my sister to the hospital where she worked part-time as a nurse. Suddenly, I spotted a little girl who was about five years old, who was sitting on the side of the road. She was drawing with a twig on the dusty road. Dirty hair bunched into shapeless wisps, very thin shoulders... I came over and sat down next to her. She recoiled and cowered, but looked up at me with her big, clear, sky-blue eyes. I felt buzz in my head and the lane started spinning—luckily, I wasn’t on my feet. “What’s your name, little girl?” I couldn’t allay tremor in my voice.
Her golden pigtails bounced teasingly every time she ran merrily towards us or laughed. Very soon her face was not pale anymore and the dark circles below her eyes disappeared. Her tiny hand so trustingly squeezed my and my sister’s palms when the three of us took a walk somewhere. And her big eyes were shining whenever I came home from work. She knew neither her name, nor where she was from, nor who her parents were, nor why I sometimes stared at her for so long while smiling. But I knew everything. I was aware that our little sister would never suffer again.
Time flew by. The war with its horrors was behind. But we overcame everything together: my family and I.
Fr. Sebastian with parishioners
I’m forty-eight now. From January 1966 on, our batiushka’s health deteriorated sharply, and his chronic diseases became exacerbated. Fr. Sebastian was very frustrated that now it was hard for him to celebrate the Liturgy. During the service he often coughed and was short of breath. The doctors suggested that he get injections in the morning before the service. Fr. Sebastian agreed with delight. After an injection and a short rest, he could, albeit with difficulty, go to the church and serve. But the disease was growing progressively worse, and soon he could no longer walk to the church even after an injection. Seeing his suffering, the doctors suggested that novices carry him to church in an armchair. At first he did not agree, but when, after much persuasion his physician was upset and reduced to tears by her patient’s disobedience, he put his hand on her head and said, “Don’t cry—let them carry me.”
As days went by, Fr. Sebastian’s condition worsened with each day. When people asked him, “How are we going to live without you?”, he replied sternly, “And who am I? What? God was, is, and will always be! He who has faith in God, even though he lives thousands of miles away from me, will be saved. But he who, even if he clings to the hem of my cassock, but does not have the fear of God, will not be saved. After my death those who know me and have seen me will appreciate me less than those who did not know and did not see me. Close, but slippery; far, but deep.”
In the final days of Fr. Sebastian’s life, many of his spiritual children, unwilling to leave the elder, spent the nights at the church. Schema-Archimandrite Sebastian reposed in the Lord on Radonitsa, April 19, 1966.
Fr. Sebastian was buried on the third day after his repose at the Mikhailovskoye Cemetery. Most of the way the coffin was carried on people’s outstretched arms. It was “floating” above a huge crowd of people and was visible from everywhere. All traffic on the road was stopped, and people were walking in a line along the road. The windows of houses were open, with people looking out. Many stood at the gates of their houses and on benches. A choir of girls, singing “Christ is Risen”, followed the coffin. “Christ is Risen” was sung by the entire concourse of thousands of participants. The people tried to make their way through the crowd to the coffin to touch it with their hands. Many had gone ahead and now were waiting for the coffin at the cemetery.
The grave for Fr. Sebastian was dug at the edge of the cemetery, with the vast Kazakh steppe stretching beyond. The coffin was placed by the grave, and Vladyka Pitirim (Nechayev) celebrated a memorial service. Fr. Sebastian wanted to be buried in a kamilavka, and so Vladyka took off his miter and put on a kamilavka. The coffin was lowered into the grave, and a cross was set up.
During the memorial service I saw a little girl who was standing, gazing skyward and smiling. I looked where she was looking, but I didn’t see anything. But I knew that to God, all are alive.
