Holy Rus' Log Blog

Elena and Matilda, May 2011

We were shocked and very sad to hear of the death of Elena Alexandrovna Opolovnikova on the 23rd June this year. This was a tragedy for Russia, which has lost one of its most determined champions of traditional wooden architecture. It was also a great loss for all her friends and those who worked with her. For us it was a loss, not only because she was a great supporter of our efforts, but also because she was our friend. We liked her very much, she was generous and loving, full of life, passion and wit.

Elena spent her life carrying on the work of her father, Alexander Victorovich Opolovnikov, who was responsible for restoring and saving so many of the wooden churches in Russia, including the ensemble at Kizhi island, which he worked on for many years.

On our trips to Moscow over the last 5 years, we have often visited her in her flat on the Rostov embankment overlooking the river. Stepping across the threshold (as she insisted before we kissed her), was to enter another world – the world of Old Russia – the world she loved. The small space was crammed with folk art, books, photographs, drawings and paintings, telling the story of Russia and its treasures. These artefacts described the Russian landscape, wooden architecture, and her own family history – a portrait of her grandmother in oils, faithfully observed drawings and paintings by her father. The table was always set with the best china and resplendent with treats prepared for our visit, the samovar steaming.

Elena would speak at length and with passion on the subject of Russia’s wooden architecture under threat, of her father Alexander’s work and of her tireless research expeditions to the countryside with her husband and (as she put it) “comrade in arms” Valery Tsyganov. She would speak with fury about the neglect of her beloved churches. Her tirades would often take on a religious tone, as she struggled to explain to us and herself how this collapse of culture in Russia had come about. This desperation to preserve the best of Russian culture and loathing of the worst was all consuming.

I would provide a translation for Richard but Elena was unstoppable, and as her narrative gathered speed like a runaway train there were no pauses for translation. Richard would nod and smile and would stop us to say that he didn’t understand a word she was saying. She said that it didn’t matter, he did know what she was saying, he did understand, because we were all working together towards the same end.

In 2007 she opened our exhibition at the Shchusev Museum of Architecture, together with David Sarkisian. She gave an empassioned speech, and wrote an empassioned foreword to our catalogue, calling us “heroes of the world”. It was extraordinary to us that she, one of the most committed guardians of Russia’s heritage, gave us such support. There is no doubt that she is the hero.

She wrote of her hope that Richard’s photographs would be a “visual exhortation to the cultural bureaucrats entrusted with the care of our monuments, to the modest, wise beauty and the greatness of ancient Russian wooden architecture”.

Her work will surely stand beside that of her father in preserving and celebrating the great monuments of Russian wooden architecture. Her passing is an exhortation to those of us who care for Russia’s wooden architecture to redouble our own efforts.

Matilda Moreton
London July 2011

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http://www.pravoslavie.ru/smi/39238.htm
http://rusvera.mrezha.ru/619/main.htm

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Exhibition poster

10 March – 30 May 2010
Museum of Finnish Architecture
Kasarmikatu 24,
00130 Helsinki, Finland

http://www.mfa.fi

I first met David Sarkisyan in Moscow in 2007. I was there with Matilda Moreton who has travelled with me on many of  my forays to the Russian North in search of wooden churches. By 2007 we felt we had enough images to put on an exhibition. Matilda rang the museum and spoke to David. ‘My name is Matilda, I am here in Moscow with a photographer taking photographs for Norman Foster, we have also been travelling in the north photographing wooden churches’  – David replied ‘Matilda, Norman Foster, Wooden Churches, that sounds interesting come over right away’.  The famous office took our breath away as did the man behind the desk with his energy and enthuiasm. An exhibition was offered and very gratefully accepted – we were shown the various spaces and of course immediately fell for the wonderful Ruina – it was all so simple. David was extraordinary – straightforward, honest, passionate, generous, and delightful. He did a great job for architecture in Russia.

Link to Clem Cecil’s appreciation of David published in The Times, 30 January 2010

*****

Predtecha February 2007

Predtecha August 2009

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Selfridges, Birmingham 2003

Jan Kaplicky had no reason to love Russia. In 1968 when Soviet tanks invaded Czechoslovakia he was forced to leave his homeland and become a refugee in London. I met him when he worked for Norman Foster and moonlighted as Future Systems. Jan had a very special idea of the world he wanted to create – a world he knew we would all enjoy. He was a romantic. Like all people who are loved as children he understood that the world was an exciting place  filled with beauty, passion, love and laughter. But to people like Jan, who are ahead of the game the world can never deliver that promise and a protective persona was created. From the outside he was the archetypal dour, paranoid Central European. But inside and to his close friends he was a free-thinking lover of life as his bright and wonderful designs show. How on earth can we have been so dumb not to have made a reality of more of his extraordinary life-enhancing joyful designs. What pleasure they would have given to future generations. When Jan left Fosters to set up Future Systems proper with Amanda Levete, I took photographs of their always surprising architectural models that showed the world how it should be and later the projects that were built that showed the world how it could be. I was very nervous when I first showed Jan my photographs and expressed my enthusiasm for the wooden churches of Northern Russia – what would this 21st century + man and victim of Soviet Russia think of these archaic objects? He of course embraced them as an expression of men pushing the technology and the imagination of their age to the limit and creating an architecture of sublime beauty – as he did.

The exhibition Remembering Jan Kaplicky – Architect of the Future runs at the Design Museum in London until the 1st November 2009

*****

“On his way back to the airfield, Viktorov turned off towards the edge of the forest.

The squadron had been in reserve for a month, replacing men and material.

The Northern countryside seemed very strange to Viktorov. The life of the forest and the young river that wound between the steep hills, the smell of mushrooms and mould, the rustling of the trees were all somehow disturbing.

When he was flying, the various smells seemed to reach right up to his cabin. From forest and lakes came the breath of an old Russia Viktorov had previously only read about. Ancient tracks ran among these lakes and forests; houses and churches had been built from the tall upright trees; the masts of sailing ships had been hewn from them. The Grey Wolf had run through these forests. Alyonushka had stood and wept on the very bank along which Viktorov was now walking towards the mess. This vanished past seemed somehow simple-minded, youthful, naive; not only maidens in towers, but even the grey-bearded merchants, deacons and patriarchs seemed a thousand years younger than the worldly-wise young pilots who had come to this forest from a world of fast cars, machine-guns, diesal engines, radios and cinemas.”

Vasily Grossman Life and Fate translated by Robert Chandler pub. 1985 The Harvil Press – Life and Fate

Grossman working as a reporter for the army newspaper Red Star was an eyewitness to the story he tells of Soviet society during World War II in this epic novel completed in 1960 – before he died in 1964 he was told that it could not be published for at least 200 years but the manuscipt was smuggled to the West in 1980.

Grey Wolf and Alyonushka are allusions to Fairy tales collected by Alexander Afanasiev (1826-1871) – Both stories were illustrated by Ivan Bilibin in his famous Skazki childrens books - The Tale of Tsarevich Ivan, The Fire-Bird and Grey Wolf was published in 1901, Sister Alyonushka and Brother Ivanushka in 1903.

The Tale of Tsarevich Ivan, The Fire-Bird and Grey Wolf – p.1 illustration by Bilibin

The Tale of Tsarevich Ivan, The Fire-Bird and Grey Wolf – p.9 illustration by Bilibin

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Icon of St George slaying the dragon ‘Black George’

On a recent visit to the British Museum I came across this beautiful icon.
It was found in 1959 in a small village in the district of Ilinsky on the Pinega river in Northern Russia by Maria Rozanova, wife of the prominent dissident author Andrei Sinyavsky. It was being used to shutter a barn window. When found all that was visible was an eighteenth century folk painting. Later in Moscow, under the hands of a professional restorer, various layers were stripped off to reveal this extraordinary image of St George slaying a dragon. Experts dated it to the end of the fourteenth century and attributed it to an artist from Pskov. St George sits astride a black rather than the usual white horse, hence Black George, cooly lancing a dragon in the mouth. The red cloak encircling and billowing behind his halo gives him flight.

When in 1973 Sinyavsky and his wife  were allowed to leave the Soviet Union they were able to take their possessions with them. The British Museum purchased the icon from them in 1986.

In his book Ivan the Fool Russian Folk Belief Andrei Sinyavsky (translated by Joanne Turnbull and Nikolai Formozov published by Glas Moscow 2007) tells us that……. In Old Russia George, like Nikola, had two feast days, April 23rd – Spring Egory, and November 26th – Cold Egory: important dates in the agricultural calendar marking the beginning and the end of summer labours. On Egory’s day in spring, the peasants began to plough the fields and sow the first spring crops. The weather on that day was considered an omen. Common folk sayings went like this: “Frost on egory means millet and oats.” Or: “Dew on Egory means good millet.” Or: “If it rains on Yuri, the cattle will have an easy year.”………everything in nature begins with spring Egory………

Yuri, get up early and unlock the earth,

Let out the dew for a warm summer,

And a riotous wheat harvest….

I visited the Pinega river in search of wooden churches in February 2005.

Diary entry 26th Feb 2005 – Early start – the sun (red, beauteous & wondrous) has just risen – the landscapes tingles with sparkling frost – we pass four lads setting off to the forest with an auger, fishing tackle and a kettle – we drive over the Pinega river and through the forest – the road twists and turns and careful Leonide drives with caution, 80 km and two and a half hours later we arrive at Pirenem to learn that it’s beautiful 17thC church which had stood on the embankment overlooking the river burnt down twenty years ago (my reference book was printed in 1976) – do the other two churches beside the Pinega river survive – at Yedoma I am relieved to spot the church in the distance across the river – a young fellow tells us the route to the church is only suitable for horses – Leonide sees a horse and runs off to make arrangements with its owner – Slava fixes a sleigh to the horse and Alex and I (Leonide stays with his YA3) are soon on our way – in my excitement to photograph Alisca’s (the horse) backside I lose my balance and tumble into the snow – the ride is wonderfully exhilarating – on arrival in the village we learn that the church is a kilometre further on and that the snow will be up to our waists – one of the five winter inhabitants of Yedoma an old man in need of cosmetic dentistry kindly offers us two pairs of skis which we gratefully accept – mine are not a matching pair and the fixings are not the latest but who cares – Alex sets off at quite a pace and Slava gamely follows in his felt boots sinking deeply into the snow whenever the frozen crust breaks - I proceed cautiously but not cautiously enough and soon topple, floundering like an upturned beetle – I eventually right myself and continue – before reaching the church I have toppled a few times more and arrive dressed as a snow man – the fully extended legs of my tripod sink into the snow but enough sticks out to take the camera – the next trick is manoeuvring around a tripod with barely controlled skis – the Church of St Nicholas (1700) is without the stunning tent roof shown in the photograph published 1976 but the bell tower standing to the side looks handsome in the gently falling snow -

 Bell Tower Yedoma February 2005

on our way back to the sleigh Alex asks Slava to follow me and to pull me out when necessary – I’m pleased to say it wasn’t necessary – Slava is a good looking 25 year old with blue eyes and ruddy cheeks, he is married with a two month old daughter – he works as a truck driver but work is difficult to come by – his last employer (the bastard) strung him along for three months without paying him even the pittance he had agreed – Leonide has been told that the Church of the Prophet Elijah (17thC) at Verkola still stands so we pay Slava (generously) and set off – the church is sited above the Pinega river near an old monastery – a monk chopping wood gives us directions – the church has been restored, no doubt by the enthusiastic monks, in a very DIY fashion and the double glazing wide boy who sold them the replacement windows was obviously not cognizant of the fact that he was dealing with a 350 year old Grade 1 listed building – at least the weather has been kept out for a few more years.

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Rain

“It’s raining,

and still people say there’s no God!”

So Granny Varya,

an old woman from near us, would say.

Now the people who said there was no God

are lighting candles in churches,

ordering masses for the dead,

shunning those of other faiths.

Granny Varya lies in her grave,

and the rain pours on,

immense, abundant, relentless,

on and on,

aiming at no-one in particular.

Olga Sedakova (b.1949)

Translated by Catriona Kelly

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Yuri Gagarin – time in space 1hr 48mins

“Yuri Gagarin really has given a headache to believers! He flew right through the heavenly mansions and did not run into anyone: neither the Almighty, nor Archangel Gabriel nor the angels of heaven. It seems, then that the sky is empty!”

Izvestia – editorial  23rd May 1961 – cited in Russian Society and the Orthodox Church : Religion in Russia after communisn – Zoe Knox published 2005 Routledge Curzon

The quote  from Izvestia led me to this short film on You Tube of Yuri Gargarin preparing to be launched into space on the 12th April 1961. He famously whistled the tune, composed by Shostakovich in 1951 to the words  Motherland hears…. written by Yevgeniy Dolmatovsky, while circling the earth.

Motherland hears, Motherland knows,
Where in the clouds her son is flying.
Full of friendly caresses and tender love,
With eyes of ruby stars in the towers of Moscow,
The Kremlin towers, she watches you,
She watches you!

Motherland hears, Motherland knows,
That her son does not conquer easily,
But yet he shall, daring and true!
As you fight against fate,
Defend the great cause of peace,
The great cause of peace!

Motherland hears, Motherland knows,
What her son meets on the road.
As she moves the clouds and brightens the way,
Not even the black storm will stop her.
No matter what happens, be steadfast, Comrade,
Be steadfast, Comrade!

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