Is Zoe's standing a legend to cover up sodomy in the church?

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Sodom and Gomorrah in Kuibyshev: the transformation of an Orthodox legend

On a cold winter morning in January 1956, when Klavdia Ivanovna Bolonkina was clearing snow outside her house on Chkalovskaya Street, in Kuibyshev, an elderly woman turned to her: “What street is this? And the house? And who is the owner of the fifth apartment? " When it turned out that Klavdia Ivanovna herself lived in the apartment, the old woman began to rush her: "Well, then, daughter, let's go quickly, show her, unfortunate one … Oh, what a sin!.. Oh, what a punishment!" From the words of the old woman, Klavdia Ivanovna understood that a petrified young woman was allegedly in her apartment. As it turned out, the old woman was told a story about a certain girl who did not get a dance partner at a party. Angry, she took down the icon of St. Nicholas from the wall and began to whirl with it to the beat of the music. Suddenly lightning flashed, thunder struck, and the girl was enveloped in smoke. When he scattered, everyone saw that the blasphemer froze with an icon in her hands. (…)

From crisis to legend

The rumors about the "petrified girl" not only reflected the change in the mood of believers after Stalin's death. In a strange way, they fit into the situation of a local church crisis that broke out in a number of cities a few weeks before the events described. Not only rumors of a miracle on Chkalovskaya Street reached the Moscow Patriarchate from the Kuibyshev diocese: in February 1956, the patriarch and members of the Holy Synod got acquainted with a letter from a Kuibyshev priest, which told about the sexual harassment of one hieromonk against a candidate for theological seminary, as well as attempts of the Kuibyshev bishop to hush up this matter.

At the same time, three things are striking. Firstly, although these events, at first glance, are not connected with the history on Chkalovskaya Street, the timing coincidence is surprising: the mother of the injured seminarian immediately announced what had happened - in early December 1956, a few weeks before the wave of rumors and crowds on Chkalovskaya Street. Secondly, in the center of both stories are young, but already quite adult by the standards of that time: in the story of the "petrified" - a factory worker of about eighteen, in the second story - a seventeen-year-old boy, who, however, unlike "Zoe", regularly attended church and thought about training in theological seminary. To prepare for his studies at the seminary, he turned to the hieromonk, the rector of his parish, who began to harass him. Thirdly, the victim's mother made sure that both the fact of harassment and the attempts of Hieromonk Seraphim (Poloz) to buy the victim's silence became public knowledge. The mother not only lodged complaints with other priests, but, apparently, also with the police, since already in December 1955 a criminal case was opened against Poloz, in which the priests of a number of Kuibyshev parishes testified. In church circles and among the parishioners, the behavior of the bishop was actively discussed, who promoted the accused in the church office, and fired the priests who gave testimony or transferred to another place.

As a result, the pressure on Bishop Jerome (Zakharov) intensified, and he was forced to leave the diocese at the end of May 1956. Hieromonk Seraphim (Poloz) was sentenced for "violent […] sodomy" (Article 154a of the RSFSR Criminal Code). In the late USSR, persecutions for real or fictitious homosexuality were an effective method of reprisals against those who disliked them. However, in the case of Seraphim (Poloz), who previously belonged to the loyal inner-church movement of the "Renovationists", there is no reason to believe that this was exactly the case. Since the testimony of the mother and other priests sound quite convincing, and the accusations were taken seriously in church structures, it can be assumed that sexual harassment did take place. Bishop Jerome spoke frankly with the representative for the Russian Orthodox Church about what he was accused of in the Moscow Patriarchate in May 1956:

“Because of Hieromonk Poloz, I am in big trouble. As soon as I came to the Patriarchate for the synod, they immediately attacked me: “What have you done, dismissed Sagaydakovsky, who exposed Poloz of his crimes, dismiss others and did not take timely measures against Poloz, brought the case to court.”

This whole story puts the "wonderful" story of "Zoya" in a slightly different light. In the legend of “standing”, traces of a homosexual harassment scandal can easily be found: both stories deal with sacrilege and (sexually connotated) sin, albeit with a characteristic reversal of the characters. While the young man became a victim of the priest's harassment, in the story with "Zoya" the young woman plays the role of a sinner who, as it were, coveted (through the icon) the saint. The traditional notions of a woman as a temptress and a priest's purity are thus restored. Through the transformation of a sinful hieromonk into a blasphemous "virgin" sin was externalized twice: firstly, as a sin committed by a woman who, secondly, could not belong to the clergy. God's punishment over the sinner restored justice at the level of legend. Thus, the legend also contains anticlerical motives, since “Zoe” is punished not by the church, but directly by divine power. The righteous, "innocent" young man in the legend merges with the image of St. Nicholas, thus the shadow associated with homosexuality is dispelled, and the scandal associated with harassment is sublimated into the desecration of the icon. In this form, the story that happened could be told in a church environment. In this context, one more plot layer can be found in the legend of the "petrified" one.

The plot about Sodom and Gomorrah, with which the parishioners (perhaps) compared their diocese in those months, also includes the story of Lot's wife (Gen. a pillar of salt - like a frozen "Zoya". Thus, the "legend of Zoya" broadcast to the surface of society the narrative of the unshakable Christian canon, demanding that believers rally closer around the church. But at the level of “hidden meaning” (), elements of the story of harassment and the diocese shocked by the scandal remain in the legend. If you read these hidden levels of the legend, then the story of the petrified girl appears to be a threefold miracle. On one level, the legend conveys the news of the miraculous intervention of God and his presence: despite the turbulent times for believers, blasphemy is still punished, and party functionaries only demonstrate their helplessness. On the next level, the emergence of this story is a true miracle for the discredited local Orthodox clergy, since Kuibyshev's churches did not become empty after the harassment scandal, as one might expect. The spread of rumors about the petrified girl, on the contrary, led to an increase in the number of people coming to the temples. The third miracle should be sought in the very narrative of the legend, the development of which received another impetus during the crisis post-Soviet 1990s.

Resurrection "Zoe", or Who Owns All the Glory of the Redeemer

One question remained open: what then happened to Zoya? The various options that have been circulating since 1991 (including in countless Internet publications) can be interpreted not only as the result of efforts to agree on relatively plausible versions of what happened (or as a process of agreement in search of a plausible interpretation),but also as an attempt to adapt the "miracle" to local religious identity. The central role here was played (and continues to play) by journalist Anton Zhogolev, who has been writing since 1991 for the regional Orthodox newspaper Blagovest. In early 1992, he published a detailed description of the "standing of Zoya Samarskaya" - the article contained many excerpts from archival materials (however, without references) and the memoirs of witnesses. The subsequent reprint of the material in the collection “Orthodox Miracles. Century XX”helped to further spread the legend beyond the region. The name “Zoya” was finally assigned to the girl, and some elements of the plot also persisted (New Year's party, “Zoya's” disappointment with the fact that her fiancé “Nikolai” did not come); however, some questions about the details of the rescue of "Zoe" in the article remained open. In the 1992 text, Zhogolev makes several assumptions about who was the girl's deliverer: he mentions the fervent prayers of her mother, a letter to Patriarch Alexy with a request to pray for “Zoya,” and finally, the prayer of a certain hieromonk Seraphim, who allegedly managed to remove the icon of Nicholas the Wonderworker from “Zoya's hands. Other versions are cited as well. At the Annunciation, a certain unknown elder appeared in Zoya's house, who miraculously disappeared - and was identified by Zoya as Saint Nicholas himself. Only by Easter, but already without any outside interference, "Zoya" came to life, but three days after the Bright Resurrection, "the Lord took her to him."

Almost ten years later, Zhogolev presented a new version of the deliverance of "Zoya", where hieromonk Seraphim was placed at the center of the narrative, whom the author identified as Seraphim (Poloz). Allegedly, “the name of Father Seraphim (Poloz) became known to believers throughout the country,” and “Moscow” decided to apply a proven method of prosecuting him for homosexuality to him. In fact, under this pretext, oppositionists began to be persecuted only in the 1970s, which Zhogolev himself hints at. According to Zhogolev, after the expiration of the sentence, Patriarch Alexy (Simansky) appointed a hieromonk (despite all the "slander") to the only parish in the Komi Republic at that time. Before his death in 1987, Poloz told only two people about his participation in the Kuibyshev events, who, in turn, did not want to directly confirm this fact. Zhogolev himself admitted that one longtime employee of the Samara diocese is still convinced of the legitimacy of the charges against Poloz. However, the verdict was passed by a Soviet - that is, hostile to the church - court.

“The good name of Father Seraphim (Poloz) has been restored. A provocation concocted by atheists against the great Samara miracle collapsed under the pressure of irrefutable evidence."

However, Zhogolev was not the only one who tried to link the miraculous deliverance of "Zoya" with the Kuibyshev priests and thus increase the authority and prestige of the local diocese. Far from Samara, there was another contender for the glory of the savior of "Zoya" - Elder Seraphim (Tyapochkin), who died in 1982, was especially revered in the Belgorod and Kursk dioceses. The first edition of the elder's biography contains the memoirs of "spiritual children" who claim that Seraphim himself hinted that it was he who was able to take the icon out of the hands of "Zoya". The new, revised 2006 edition in a special chapter "Father Seraphim and Zoya from Kuibyshev," however, explains that in 1956 Tyapochkin did not live in Kuibyshev and himself openly denied his participation in the deliverance of "Zoya". Nevertheless, later both versions were disseminated on the pages of other publications. Zhogolev's version of Seraphim (Poloz) as a true deliverer was joined by the country's largest weekly "Argumenty i Fakty":

They say that he was so bright in soul and kind that he even had the gift of prediction. They were able to take the icon from Zoe's frozen hands, after which he predicted that her “standing” would end on Easter. And so it happened.

A new version of the answer to the question about the deliverer "Zoya" was suggested by director Alexander Proshkin in the film "Miracle", released in 2009. Proshkin adheres to the version of a pure, still "innocent" monk who saved Zoya from daze. Comically, according to the cinematic version, Nikita Khrushchev, who happened to be in Kuibyshev, is also included in the salvation of Zoya, who, acting in the role of a good tsar, takes care of all the needs of his subjects and initiates the search for a virgin youth (who turns out to be the son of a priest persecuted by the authorities). He, like a fairy-tale prince, awakens the sleeping beauty Zoya. From that moment on, the film, which until then quite seriously narrated about the miracle as a documentary fact, turns into a parody.

the film "Miracle", which collected in Russia (according to the KinoPoisk portal) $ 50 656:

Another source about the origin of the legend is as follows:

Little has changed on Chkalov Street for half a century. In the center of Samara today, not even the 20th, but the 19th century reigns: water in the water heater, stove heating, amenities on the street, almost all buildings are in disrepair. Only house No. 84 itself reminds of the events of 1956, as well as the absence of a bus stop nearby. “As they liquidated it during the Zoya Troubles, they never rebuilt it,” recalls Lyubov Borisovna Kabaeva, a resident of the neighboring house.

- Now at least they began to come at least less often, but about two years ago everything fell off the chain. The pilgrims came ten times a day. And everyone asks the same thing, and I answer the same thing - the tongue has dried up.

- And what do you answer?

- And what can you answer here? All this is nonsense! I myself was still a girl in those years, and the deceased mother remembered everything well and told me. This house was once occupied by either a monk or a priest. And when persecution began in the 30s, he could not stand it and renounced the faith. Where has gone, it is not known, but only sold the house and left. But from old memory, religious people often came here, asking where he was, where he had gone. And on the very day when Zoya allegedly turned to stone, young people really walked in the Bolonkin's house. And as a sin on the same evening, some other nun arrived. She looked through the window and saw a girl dancing with an icon. And she went through the streets to lament: “Oh, you ohalnitsa! Ah, blasphemer! Ah, your heart is made of stone! God will punish you. You’ll be petrified. You're already petrified! Someone heard, picked up, then someone else, more, and off we go. The next day the people went to the Bolonkins - where, they say, a stone woman, let's show it. When people completely got her, she called the police. They set up a cordon. Well, what about our people as they usually think? If they are not allowed, it means that they are hiding something. That's all Zoino standing.