“May the God of Peace and Love always be among us!”: Archimandrite Ioann (Krestyankin) and his “Letters from Imprison­ment”

Abstract

The article presents the author’s historical, cultural and philological observations on the epistolary of Archimandrite Ioann (Krestyankin) and an analysis of his “Letters from Imprisonment”, which includes materials from the investigative case, messages from the time of exile (1950–1955) and the memoirs by V. R. Kabo “Free Spirit”. The largest part of documents consisted of letters from Kargopollag, where Father Ioann spent the first three years in GULAG in Arkhangelsk region. They show the everyday and spiritual atmosphere of camp life, expose the moral qualities of the personality of the prisoner: humility, religious tolerance, spiritual fortitude, high human culture, compassion, the desire to help strangers and loved ones, pedagogical talent. Special attention is paid to the consideration of Father Ioann’s epistolary in the context of the formation of the author’s idiosyncrasy in secular communication. It is said that, being in harsh conditions, he remained faithful to God’s commandments and principles of life, in fact he was a confessor and mentor of his spiritual children. The letters testify to Father Ioann’s deep faith, the power of his grace given to him, openness to people and love of God. He was constantly improving in spiritual practice and enlightenment (he read the Gospel and other books, asked for the “Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate”, etc.) and actively passed on his spiritual experience to his students. The linguistic personality of Father Ioann is characterized as follows: the features of his writing manner are given, the typical words and expressions, the stylistic details of the epistolary are noted. The “Letters from Imprisonment” contain reliable information on the history of the Russian Church in the 1950s. The analyzed book is a unique source on the spiritual life of the Soviet era. It provides a vivid portrait of one of the most prominent confessors of the 20th–21st centuries — Archimandrite Ioann (Krestyankin).