At her graduation ceremony (see Chapter 3) it was announced that Yudina had been appointed to the teaching staff of the Petrograd Conservatoire, and immediately afterwards she embarked on a brilliant concert career. Nevertheless she found time to continue attending university courses, if only sporadically, sing in Church choirs and generally devote much time to Church matters. At the Conservatoire she made it a rule never to speak of religion with students, unless she discovered that they were already practising Orthodox Christians. While not broadcasting her faith, Yudina did not hide her views, as when she compiled an obligatory questionnaire for the Leningrad Conservatoire in 1925. In answer as to whether she belonged to a political party she wrote: ‘The Party is too serious a matter to only have sympathy for it, one needs to be active. In many aspects I agree with the Russian Communist Party, but I cannot join it because of my idealistic and religious views.’31
Yudina also admitted with regret:
I never became an academic, for music claimed so much of my attention at the time. But I am happy that the roots of an intellectual and ethical way of life were deeply embedded in me at that time [. . .] I received the ‘key’ to humanist knowledge, an immense field of thought, of which I can avail myself until my dying day. The teachers and students were such amazing people – the very ‘cream of humanity’! Selfless, hard-working, responsible, actively good. Nobody thought of ‘careers’, everything was genuine, fashioned from ‘pure metal’.32
Later in life, Yudina would express nostalgia for the old St Petersburg ethos, which did not outlive the 1920s:
We often stood near the Palace Bridge after some lesson or seminar, or by the Sphinxes on the University Embankment, waiting while the drawn-up bridges closed again. Our discussions would continue, while we watched the blazing Petersburg sunsets. Everything was enfolded in quiet, rustling autumn mist, as the half-empty ships silently glided by. We were all in a way ‘Flying Dutchmen’! We – meaning [. . .] the Russian intelligentsia, with its many differences in character, aspirations and destiny, united in seeking the Truth.33
Yudina indeed found lifelong friends within the circles of the literary and humanistic intelligentsia. Many, like her, were members of the religious-philosophical circles Volfila and Voskreseniye* while also belonging to the Orthodox Church. The Church paradoxically underwent a form of renaissance after the Revolution, having at last escaped from two centuries of secular control imposed by Peter the Great with the abolishment of the Patriarchate. Only in the last decades of the nineteenth century did ecclesiastical independence from the state become a pressing issue. With Tsar Nicholas II’s abdication after the February Revolution and the Bolshevik takeover of October 1917, the Church gained autonomy, however short-lived. In November 1917, Metropolitan Tikhon Belavin of Moscow was elected Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church – the first for some 200 years.
On 23 January 1918 Lenin issued a decree enforcing the separation of Church from State, and School from Church, while simultaneously enforcing a policy of ‘militant atheism’, which threatened all forms of organized religion and deprived the Church of its institutional rights. From 1920 a period of persecution and martyrdom began; thousands of church buildings were pulled down, most monasteries were closed, while in 1923 the first forced labour camp was established at the great fortified Solovetsky monastery – also referred to as Solovki. Conflict was inevitable when Patriarch Tikhon condemned the atrocities committed by the Soviet regime against members of the Church, and the massacre of the Tsar and his family on 17 July 1918.
Yet conversely the Bolsheviks’ policy of oppression served to stimulate a revival of interest in the Orthodox Church itself. As the scholar and expert on Russian medieval history, Dmitri Likhachov, recalled: ‘The persecution of the Church was so unbearable to any Russian, that many non-believers started frequenting Church services, as a means of distancing themselves from its oppressors.’34 In all this, what rang true for Yudina was Mikhail Bakhtin’s assessment of the human need for religion as a higher goaclass="underline" ‘Without God, without faith in the absolute otherness, self-awareness and self-expression are impossible, and this is not, of course, because they have no meaning in practice, but because trust in God is the immanent constructive factor.’35 She believed that synonymous with baptism was the responsibility to defend the principles of the Orthodox Church. Such commitment was compatible with the intelligentsia’s search for a system of universal belief, combining religious, philosophical and social ideals.
Already from the beginning of the century, circles of discussion, created around a central figure, had brought like-minded people together. As Likhachov observed, ‘The Russian culture of the Silver Age was born in conversations and discussion that were absolutely frank and free [. . .] New discoveries were made during these conversations, in which – according to some unspoken spiritual law – no fewer than three people ever participated [. . .] It was symptomatic that Stalin’s assumption of power in 1928 and imposition of dictatorship on the minds and souls of people coincided with the persecution of these “circles” of the intelligentsia, their meetings and discussions.’36
Spiritual-philosophical circles continued to emerge after 1917, even if they only enjoyed short existences. Exceptionally the circle Voskreseniye kept going until 1928. Its roots lay in the famous Petersburg Religious Philosophical Society, founded in 1907 by the spiritual thinkers Nikolai Berdyaev, Sergei Bulgakov and Nikolai Lossky. Later the Symbolists Dmitri Merezhkovsky and his wife, Zinaida Gippius, became the most prominent members, together with the philosopher, Alexander Meier. A Marxist, active in radical politics from the early 1900s, who underwent multiple arrests, Meier evolved his views on philosophy, becoming increasingly interested in religion in its wider, non-clerical sense.
Because of the diverging interests of Merezhkovsky and Meier, the Religious Philosophical Society did not survive the Revolution. Other circles arose in its place, including ‘The Brotherhood of Saint Sophia of Divine Wisdom’, whose declared aim was discussion of the Gospels. Its members included the philosopher Nikolai Lossky, Mikhail Bakhtin and his followers, and the historians Grevs and Karsavin. Another such circle was ‘The Brotherhood of Saint Seraphim Sarovsky’ (named after the most recently canonized Russian saint), with which Bakhtin was also briefly associated. Yudina was highly sceptical of this particular circle.
No sooner did the Bolsheviks close one circle, than others sprang up in its place. When the Orthodox Theological Academy was shut down, it was effectively replaced by the Institute of Theology, initially headed by the Metropolitan, Veniamin Kazansky. After Kazansky’s execution in 1922, Lev Karsavin became its leader, although within months he himself had been arrested and deported. Yudina attended the Institute’s Higher Theological Courses for several years and conducted its choir until its closure in 1928. These circles were not exclusive of each other, and members moved from one to another, attending lectures and participating in discussions. The authorities regarded any independent initiative with great suspicion. It required a lot of ingenuity to establish a circle and keep it going, although as Likhachov recalled, all that was actually needed was a space to hold lectures or discussions: ‘A room in a flat, the hall of the Tenishev school, a teacher’s schoolroom. The time and place of meetings were communicated by handwritten announcements or by word of mouth.’37