In the most miserable conditions imaginable, Russian Christians are experiencing the mysteries of prayer.
Da gospodee … Yes, Lord; pomeelooy … Have mercy.
Waves of whispered prayers from the Russian congregation surged through the sanctuary, sometimes submerging the words of the pastor at the pulpit, who was also praying. When the prayer was finished, prayers arose from several in the congregation. All of them stood or knelt. (As a Russian pastor once explained to me, “We would show infinite respect if we were in the presence of an earthly ruler. In prayer, we are in the presence of a heavenly king.”)
I stood between a babushka whose face was mapped by a world of wrinkles and a little girl with prim braids tied with a white bouffant ribbon. Both stood still and straight, punctuating the prayers of others with their own whispered petitions.
During that service as on many other occasions in the Soviet Union, which claims to be the citadel of atheism, I have experienced an immediacy and intensity of prayer that has caused me to ponder it more deeply—particularly its paradoxes.
The Price Of Faith
In the Soviet Union, atheism shadows every citizen’s life. Christians, and especially their children, are deluged with atheistic propaganda but forbidden to proclaim their Christian faith freely. A restricted number of churches registered by the government are the only legally sanctioned refuges in a sea of atheism, and KGB informers often intrude even into these sanctuaries.
For their faith, some Soviet Christians pay the price of imprisonment. An estimated 60 million people, half of whom may have been Christians, perished in Soviet prisons and labor camps from 1917 to 1953.
In his epic, The Gulag Archipelago, Alexander Solzhenitsyn has chronicled the cost of that incalculable suffering. Although the size of the gulag has shrunk in the Soviet Union, it is still inhabited by an estimated 4 million prisoners. Of these, an estimated 10,000 to 30,000 persons are prisoners of conscience.
Reports from contemporary Soviet prisoners reveal that conditions in Soviet camps and prisons have changed little since the Stalinist years. Alexander Ogorodnikov, a Russian Orthodox Christian sentenced to prison for his leadership of the Christian Seminar, a group of young Christian intellectuals, wrote from prison:
“My health, unfortunately, is none too good. I have already lost nine teeth and it looks as though I will shortly lose four more. No dentist is available. My eyesight is deteriorating. The eyeglasses I got in May 1981 are no longer strong enough. This torture by darkness is really refined, for in the semidarkness of the cell, reading is impossible without strain.… I have spent 176 days and nights in punishment and isolation cells. In the Kalinin prison, the concrete floor was deliberately covered with water. In Komsomolsk, the sewage system was deliberately blocked off; therefore, excrement would flow into the cell. The only way to avoid it was to sit on a short concrete post. In winter, the temperature in the cell never rose above 14 to 15 degrees centigrade. You were on the concrete floor without any underclothing. Daily rations are minimal. One day you get 350 grams of bread with water and the next day you get ‘hot’ rations but on ‘reduced’ norm, i.e., practically water.… Your letters are withheld from me because you, Mother, include prayers in them. The censor has demanded that I forbid you to quote prayers. How could I possibly do such a thing?”
Paradoxically, it is from such godforsaken Soviet prisons, where the presence of God might seem most distant, that many believers have testified to his nearness through prayer.
Anatoli Levitin, a Christian writer, historian, and participant in the human rights movement in the USSR, was already 55 years old when he was sentenced to prison in 1970. He returned from the camps physically exhausted, but with a spiritual strength that he attributed to prayer:
“[A]bove all, I am a Christian. I felt at ease and well in prison and I left it, strange as it may seem, with stronger nerves, although I had been subjected to very bad conditions the whole time. I would be terribly ungrateful if I did not say to what I owed my feeling of well-being. Here I have only one word to say: prayer.
“The greatest miracle of all is prayer. I have only to turn mentally to God and at once I feel a force that pours into me from somewhere, into my soul, my whole being. What is it? Psychotherapy? No, it’s not psychotherapy, for where would I, an insignificant old man and tired of life, get this strength which renews and saves me, elevating me above the earth? It comes from outside me—and there is no force in the world which could ever resist it.”
During 68 years of Soviet rule, Marxist-Leninist leaders have attempted to resist God and silence his voice. While whispers of religion are for the present tolerated in Soviet society (with the assertion that such sounds will not be heard in a future Communist society), no manifestations of religion are permitted in Soviet prisons and camps.
There are no prison chaplains or prison ministries in the Soviet Union. Christian prisoners are not permitted to listen to religious broadcasts. For practicing their faith while in prison, and particularly for speaking to others about the gospel, Christians may be severely punished and even have their prison terms extended.
The Reality Of God’s Presence
And yet, in these places where Soviet officials have taken great care to exclude God, he is still present, speaking to his children in the silence of suffering. And through his children his voice is amplified to unbelieving prisoners.
Although she is only 26 years old, Galina Vilchinskaya has spent almost five years in Soviet prisons and camps. Galina was arrested for the first time when she was 21, for helping to organize a Christian summer camp for children of Baptist prisoners. By the end of her first term, Galina was suffering from scurvy and had begun to lose her hair and teeth. She was released from prison in 1982, but rearrested a few months later on false charges of transporting drugs. She was released from her second prison term in November 1984, but she remains under police surveillance in the city of Brest.
Even before her first court trial in 1980, the KGB major assigned to Galina’s case threatened her: “I’ll send you to where there are polar bears, and no one will find you there. You’ll rot.”
Seemingly, Galina should have perished during her first prison term. She went through nine transit prisons and months of cold, hunger, bedbugs, fleas, lice, and stench. She lived with 30 other prisoners crowded into cells designed to hold 10. Political prisoners were mixed with criminals, who stole Galina’s few belongings.
Galina felt her sufferings. From Siberia she wrote of pain in her lung, and of scurvy, aching joints, and emaciation. She reported that her hair and teeth were falling out. But through her suffering Galina also discerned a divine assignment:
“They want to punish me, to do me harm. But I rejoice that even here I can witness about my Lord. Already I have listeners. I feel that I won’t last long here. But it doesn’t matter; I rejoice. They are providing me the opportunity to evangelize my camp, and more people can hear about the Lord.… I’m needed here more than in freedom. So many starving, suffering outcasts are here.… I rejoice that in some small way I can help these Russian people who are drowning in sin.”
Nijole Sadunaite, a Lithuanian Catholic imprisoned for her faith, is another of the many Soviet Christians who have regarded their years among the hidden peoples of Soviet prisons as a missionary calling and who have written compellingly about this astonishing commitment:
“How good it is that the small craft of my life is being steered by the hand of the good Father.… When he is at the helm, nothing is to be feared. Then, no matter how difficult life may be, you will know how to resist and love. I can say that the year 1975 has flown by like a flash, it has been a year of joy for me. I thank the good Lord for it.…
“We have many old women and sick people, so I rejoice that I have been brought here in accordance with my calling—to nurse and to love. Although I long greatly to see you all, it will be hard for me to leave here. It will be distressing to leave people who have become so near and dear to me, but the good Lord does indeed care for us most of all.…”
Although they are the source of such triumphant testimonies, Soviet Christians would be the first to insist that they are not spiritual supermen. As second-class Soviet citizens, they recognize their human helplessness. But paradoxically, it is in such a position of impuissance that God’s power reverberates. “We can’t protest, but we can pray—until the building shakes as it did in the Book of Acts,” a Russian Christian once told me.
The Supernatural Power Of Prayer
Letters from Christian prisoners often refer to the earthshaking power of prayer. They also contain an awareness of supernatural power flowing from prayer. Prisoners also repeatedly stress their constant and continuing reliance on prayer. They request prayer from other believers—the invisible thread that can tie even a prisoner in solitary confinement with the church worldwide.
Vladimir Poresh, a member of the Christian Seminar who is now in prison, wrote from prison to a friend:
“Sanya, don’t forget to pray at 10 o’clock in the morning, or later. This has very great mystical significance.… Despite the heavy blows we have borne, we are all strong as never before. You would be very glad if you could see us. Prayers are a great help to those going through an ordeal.… The inner conflict continues. We are sent these trials for our enlightenment and transformation.”
From prison, Alexander Ogorodnikov wrote to a friend: “I put my trust in God and firmly believe that all my trials carry his blessing and that he will lend strength to my weakness by his merciful grace. My faith in the Lord is indestructible. I do feel the support of your prayers, and they are of the greatest assistance to me.…”
A poem written by a Russian Baptist prisoner expresses the significance of supportive prayer from the church in freedom to the church behind bars:
Behind the bars of a murky prison
Days and nights with prayer I
meet.
And in the presence of resentment
and evil I feel the prayers of my
friends.
God gives me quiet sleep,
Though the restless people don’t
sleep.
And although the hours to me are
unknown,
During the night he awakens me
twice,
So that I’d hear him in the quiet,
At three or four every night.
Someone, somewhere from his
whole heart
For me before God is interceding.
And tears run down my cheeks,
And to God ascends a grateful
prayer.
I’m in prison often interrogated;
Through the prayers of friends I’m
strengthened.
Do not carelessly waste your days,
My dear friends, for you know
yourselves
In bonds, strength and power are
seen,
For a prison is a real exam.
Often Russian Christians quote a proverb, “The darker the night, the brighter the light,” to describe the paradox of their position in Soviet society.
Miraculously, it is from that society, shrouded by atheism, that the gospel is shining with a surprising radiance in the 1980s.
Malcolm Muggeridge noted this contrast when he said, “God always gives us a sign relating to the particular situation in which we live. And for me the sign I see most clearly is that it is in the Soviet labor camps, in the most miserable conditions imaginable, that people have seen this light most brightly.”
In the darkest of prison camps, God’s light sometimes shines with dazzling power.
The Mystery In Prayer
There is an oft-told story about a Christian named Yuri, who was sentenced for his faith. Confined to a Siberian prison, Yuri had no contact with other believers. He prayed for the impossible: other believers with whom he might pray and partake of Communion.
It is said that one night Yuri was awakened from his sleep when he heard a voice commanding him: “Come with me.” He opened his eyes, expecting to see a prison guard, but he was startled to see a stranger instead.
Puzzled, he followed the stranger through the door of his prison barracks into the courtyard. To his amazement, the stranger led him outside the prison gates onto the road of a nearby village, and then he disappeared.
Yuri hurried down the road toward the village. There he discovered a cottage brightly lit and crowded with people. Coming closer, he heard hymns. Entering, he discovered a prayer meeting in progress. He entered the house, prayed, sang, and took part in the Lord’s Supper before he sensed a voice telling him to return to the prison.
Surprisingly, the guard at the first checkpoint was asleep. Even more surprising, Yuri was waved without question past the other checkpoints to his barracks, where his absence had been discovered and his reappearance could not be explained.
The experience of prayer of Russian prisoners often defies rational explanation. How can the presence of God be palpable in the horror of a Soviet prison? How can the voice of God speak to Christian prisoners and even resound through them to others in a place where every human effort has been made to silence God? How can a band of helpless prisoners shake the world with the power of the gospel from the cells of Soviet prisons? How can the presence of God blaze brightly in the darkness of Siberian prisons?
Our logical selves prod us either to reject such mysteries or to probe and try to fathom them. When we find them unfathomable, we sometimes search for a formula that will explain the paradoxes, particularly the underlying paradox of joy in suffering, which counters our human preferences.
Approached only on this plane, a certain dimension of prayer will always elude us. There is a sphere of mystery in prayer. There is a place where the paradoxes, while they can be explored, cannot be totally explained in human words, but only with the divine vocabulary of a compassionate father who cares infinitely for his children.
It is only the security that flows from the relationship that can enable us to embrace the paradoxes of prayer—of encounter with God—and empower us to truly pray, “Thy will be done,” the paradigm of all prayer.
