At the end of the letter Yudina asked Shaporin to lend her a book by the jurist Lev Petrozhitsky, The Theory of Law and Morality – she needed to consult it on procedures of registering protest against the sentences in the Petrogradsky Trial. As an afterthought she mentioned that it would be safest to remove herself from the scene. ‘Father is waiting for me in Nevel’; he is afraid that I might cross somebody because of my work, and find myself liable for trial. Destroy this counter-revolutionary epistle immediately.’50
Yudina was careful not to tell even her closest friends when she left on a mission to visit imprisoned clergy members or join protests against the treatment of Church leaders. In a letter to Yevlaliya Kazanovich dated 12 September 1923 she signed off as ‘Your truly devoted Moscow madwoman’, allowing her friend to understand she had gone to the capital to protest against Patriarch Tikhon’s house arrest. A situation of extreme delicacy was being played out, whereby Tikhon attempted to maintain the allegiance of believers, walking a tightrope of political neutrality. He appealed for loyalty to the Soviet regime, stating that civic duty was to the state, while spiritual duty was to God. Such honourable compromise was necessitated as a means of self-preservation, although in the future it proved unsustainable.
Upon Tikhon’s death on 7 April 1925, the process of finding a successor was initiated – not without the interference of the OGPU, as the Cheka had been renamed in 1923. The election was complicated by the fact that of the thirteen appointed ‘locum tenens’, twelve were now in prison. Amongst them was the Moscow Metropolitan, Sergei Starogorodsky, who negotiated agreement with the security organs in order to save the situation – the whole hierarchy of the Patriarchal Church was in peril of extinction. On his release on 27 March 1927, Starogorodsky became effective head of the Russian Orthodox Church, as the single ‘Locum Tenens’. Yet when he declared absolute loyalty to the Soviet state in July, he provoked enormous controversy. A large proportion of bishops and congregational believers refused to accept his declaration, with its words ‘Your joys are our joys, your cares are our cares!’ smacking of sycophancy. The controversy proved irreconcilable, and it resulted in schism. This in turn provided the Bolsheviks with an excuse to initiate a wholesale campaign against religion, while maintaining control of the Patriarchy. Of the various separatist movements that sprung into being, by far the most important was the ‘Josephite movement’ (Iosiflyanskoe dvizhenie), named after the Leningrad Metropolitan Iosif Petrovykh, who had declared himself absolutely against compromise with the authorities. Petrovykh was arrested and not allowed to return to Leningrad, but he continued to direct the movement through his messengers. It was then that Leningrad’s Church of the Resurrection of Christ – more commonly known as the Church on Spilled Blood – took on the status of a cathedral church of the eparchy, and became the centre for Josephite supporters.
For Yudina, the Church on Spilled Blood was a second home; she had been singing in its wonderful choir since 1922. There she got to know the priest, Father Fyodor Andreyev, whose lectures on divinity and Christian Apologetics she had attended at Petrograd’s Theological Institute. Andreyev served briefly at the Kazan Cathedral, until it was taken over by false Renovationists in 1923. He then served as a junior priest at Petrograd’s Sergiev Cathedral until its closure. At that stage Father Fyodor started holding services at the Church on Spilled Blood, and became the effective leader of the Josephite movement after Metropolitan Iosif’s arrest. From early 1927 he became Yudina’s confessor, and had an enormous influence on her. She deeply admired Andreyev as a wonderful preacher and considered him ‘a man not of this world’ for his rigour in Christian practice.51 He in turn nurtured the greatest respect for Yudina, although, as he told his family, ‘she wasn’t sufficiently baptized’52 – referring to her difficulty in relinquishing her independent views. Naturally she became a confirmed Josephite.
On 14 July 1927, Andreyev was arrested, accused of ‘counter-revolutionary agitation’. He was released six weeks later on account of his ill health. His twin daughters, Maria and Anna, were only four at the time, but retained a clear memory of the dramatic events of their early childhood. ‘Father was still in prison when Metropolitan Sergius made his famous declaration, stirring up real antagonism [. . .] The Church was the highest of everything for him, and he played an active part in the movement against the ecclesiastic policies of Metropolitan Sergius.’53 From prison Father Fyodor wrote letters on behalf of the clergy to the Metropolitan in an attempt to dissuade him from his divisive policies. As Anna Andreyeva recalled, the security organs believed that their apartment was the Josephites’ headquarters. She emphasized that ‘the Josephites’ efforts were directed at the preservation of the purity of spiritual life and not at struggling with the Soviet authorities, as was subsequently claimed at the trials of clergy’.54
Just before his arrest, Father Fyodor introduced Yudina to his friend, Father Pavel Florensky, who was to assume an enormous spiritual influence over her. Florensky was that rare breed of polymath whose knowledge ranged from mathematics, applied and theoretical physics to art history and theology, all of which, however, were subordinated to his religious faith and spiritual interests. Florensky had remained on the periphery of the current troubles of the Church, detached from politics and ecclesiastical intrigue. While he regarded the 1917 Revolutions as the beginning of inevitable persecution, he also believed that freedom of the spirit outside religion was a mirage, unattainable even under democracy. His submission to the Bolsheviks was effectively a pose. ‘For authorities issuing forth from the belly of Leviathan, I have no recognition other than the toes of my boot!’ he had declared in 1917.55
Submission inevitably meant cooperating with the regime, for it was precisely his brilliance as a scientist that made Florensky indispensable to the Soviet state. Ironically, from 1921, he found himself a full-time researcher on Lenin’s pet project – the State Plan for electrification of the whole Soviet Union – working for the Experimental Electro-Technical Institute and the Carbolite Commission in the sphere of mechanics and chemistry, and in the investigation of high-voltage techniques. Father Pavel started his work as an electro-technician still wearing his priest’s cassock, a remarkable sight in such times! In the following years his inventions led to no fewer than ten patents deposited on behalf of the Soviet state.
Despite great differences in character, Florensky and Yudina developed a strong friendship, reinforced by Father Pavel’s intimate knowledge of music. Yudina would play for him for hours on end at her apartment on Palace Embankment. She recalled the joy of accompanying him to the antiquities department of the Hermitage, visiting the Botanical Gardens, hearing his thoughts on Dutch painting, on Mozart and Bach, on the poet Karolina Pavlova. ‘He explained his own works, his views on Khlebnikov, on plants in general. His synthetic all-embracing universality, a silence, transparent as dew in a crystal goblet, enveloped his whole personality.’56 It was this luminous ‘silence’ that impressed Yudina most.
Sergei Trubachyov, Florensky’s son-in-law, identified the defining differences between these two towering personalities: ‘In Yudina, emotion was dominant, in Florensky – reason. Yudina’s stormy temperament and unruly nature were pacified by Florensky’s presence. That which aroused protest in Yudina, provoked submission in Florensky. In life, Yudina was restless and rebellious – Florensky was stable and pure-minded. The contrast in their personalities was evident at a much deeper level. In her questing, Yudina moved from the past towards the contemporary; Florensky from the present day back to the past.’ Father Pavel understood that ‘her meteoric character has to be accepted as a fact of life; one must take each appearance of hers as it comes.’57