Source: Moravia, Albertio - Un mese in Urss - 2013

Translation: lamescholar - 2025-05-17

In 1956, Italian writer Alberto Moravia visited USSR and published articles about it in the newspaper Corriere della Sera. Later, in 1958, he published a book Un mese in Urss. Below is the third chapter Il monastero Troizki.

III.

THE TROITSKY MONASTERY

Moscow is situated at the center of a region that, more than any other part of Russia, possesses profoundly and authentically national characteristics. It is an immense, scarcely undulating plain, of sandy ground and formerly marshy, furrowed by countless waterways, largely covered by dense pine forests, lacking color and movement, gray and melancholic beneath vast and often nebulous skies. This region has a beauty that is far from ostentatious, made up primarily of monotony and repetition. We go on for dozens and dozens of kilometers, and the landscape repeats its few effects again and again, until it inspires in the traveler a state of patient and almost voluptuous disappointment, always produced by certain oriental melodies based on a single, constantly recurring motif. It is the rustic Russia, immutable, mysterious, sung by Esenin in so many beautiful poems; the “wood Russia,” the “vegetable Russia,” the “heavenly Russia,” according to the poet’s words, a land of still, mirrored waters among the forests, of peaceful villages, of peasants in blouses and boots, of docile beasts. Pine forests stream past on either side of the road for hours on end, like silent, dense armies; occasionally, here are two rows of izbas with sloping roofs, with framed windows in carved and painted frames; or, on a hilltop, solitary against the sky, a white church topped with a cluster of golden onion domes.

If one leaves the main road for a small, winding track, this countryside reveals itself deep, perhaps because it is always the same: cultivated fields, pine forests, streams that linger in black inundations under the shade of white and slender birch trees, green pastures for grazing, villages with izbas scattered randomly on insignificant hills, and then again, fields, forests, rivers, pastures, and villages. The Russian countryside is like the sea; the further one goes, the more it is the same thing, and yet, as in the sea, one would never want to stop or turn back. Sometimes, the mystery of this countryside seems almost on the verge of revealing itself, for example, one evening when I lingered on the bank of a tributary of Moskva, only a short distance from the capital. It wasn’t just a small arc of sluggish, almost stationary waters to which, from the high sandy ridge, a dense forest of pines looked. It was a landscape simplified to the highest degree, nothing more than the river waters reddened by the lights of sunset and the severe wall of the pines already enveloped in a nighttime shadow. Yet there was in this landscape such a clear and so pathetic appeal that, as I said, I stopped for a long time, almost with the hope of penetrating its most intimate meaning. Instead, all of a sudden, the night fell and I found myself in darkness, tired and almost stunned, as after a futile effort of attention and understanding.

About sixty kilometers from Moscow, at the heart of this region, near the town of Zagorsk, is the famous Troitsky Monastery. I arrived by the road to Yaroslav, on the Monday of Easter. Pine forests accompanied us almost to the monastery, which appeared suddenly, at a turn, atop a hill. I first saw the ancient, dark, battlemented walls, the leaning buttresses, the towers at the corners, as if of a fortress; then, above the merlons, with an Oriental effect similar to that of the Kremlin of Moscow, golden domes, roof peaks, spire tips, tree summits. It was a festive day, with a mild and hazy weather; on the main road, under the monastery, a dense, untamed crowd strolled; on the other side of the road there was a row of houses and cottages, with taverns, innkeepers, and restaurants.

We entered one of these restaurants to have a cup of tea. The room, in its usual rustic neoclassical style, appeared divided into two parts, one larger and one smaller; and in the latter, velvet Turkish curtains concealed dark rooms, like alcoves. The interpreter explained that this hotel had remained the same as it was fifty or more years ago, when the larger room was for commoners and the smaller one for nobles. Today, the differences of class had vanished, but the layout of the rooms remained useless. “In a room like this, Dimitri Karamazov was carousing with Grushenka when they came to arrest him under the accusation of having killed his father.” The room was provincial, with curtains at the windows, vases of flowers on the tables, and a large group of young, prosperous maids in aprons and embroidered caps chattering and laughing, seated in a corner. It seemed to me that this old Tsarist inn room was a worthy anteroom to the monastery, where everything had remained as it was – not fifty years ago, but many centuries back. After drinking the cup of tea, we went out and proceeded to the visit.

As soon as I had entered the enclosure, I realized I was suddenly immersed in a dense and typical atmosphere, reminiscent of Mussorgsky’s operas and, in short, of a holy city, albeit in decline and deserted. The place was quiet and monastic, yet crowded with religious buildings like a nativity scene. Here is the Cathedral of the Assumption, with its five strange and fantastic Turkish domes studded with golden stars; here is Rastrelli’s Rococo bell tower, resembling, with its four stories adorned with columns, the wooden towers that were built during Italian carnivals; here and there, another dozen or so Byzantine or Slavic churches, with towers, bell towers, two-story buildings in neoclassical style, chapels and baptisteries. In rivalry with the most excellent domes, large, leafy trees and venerable towers raised towards the sky, like invoking arms, branches laden with enormous nests from which numerous black birds rose in flocks. From the first glance, a precise impression of slow growth, overlap and stratification of styles and constructions was immediately apparent: first the church dedicated to the founder saint, Sergio of Rostov, then the fortified enclosure, then the churches and palaces of Ivan the Terrible, then, gradually, through the centuries, all the other buildings. All of this by chance, or rather according to unpredictable religious or psychological occasions, without plans; however, this is precisely the country today famous for its five-year plans. We entered one of the many churches where, at that moment, Mass was being celebrated: an unremarkable crowd stood in attendance, between the walls covered with the soft, darkened gold of the mosaics, in a shadow where the flickering flames of countless votive candles danced and whispered. The signs of the Cross were profound, the attention focused; however, as in Moscow and elsewhere, I noticed that it was mostly old peasants, with handkerchiefs and felt boots. The Soviet humanity, made up of workers and bureaucrats, was lacking; the men were missing.

We continued the visit: everywhere there was the impression of a place still warm, so to speak, of centuries of devotion, but now undergoing a slow, unstoppable cooling. In the dense shadows of certain decorated and smoky chapels, I even glimpsed small, blond and pale sacristans, with beards on their chin and glazed eyes—characters like those Dostoevsky masterfully described in the chapter dedicated to the convent of Staritsy in The Brothers Karamazov. But precisely the fact of finding everywhere what I expected and already knew through the classics of Russian literature confirmed the idea of an irremediable decline, as if not so much persecuted and oppressed as depleted, anemic. As I moved from one building to another, among the dilapidated, large trees, it occurred to me that the key to this decay could also be found in the legendary, fantastic, folkloristic, astrological character of this place, where everything spoke more to the imagination than to the intellect. It is quite different, I thought, from the effect of similar places in the West, such as Assisi or Chartres, centers of ancient and weathered cultures as well as religious centers. The Divine Comedy or The Betrothed, inspired by orthodox religion, are absolutely unthinkable. And this is because Orthodoxy never opposed the State, never defended man against state power. It was police-like and state-like precisely because it was never either enlightened or intellectual. Once the revolution triumphed, born and sparked by the culture that the Orthodox Church had always combatted, it found itself without roots or living traditions, isolated and abandoned.

More than a century ago, the Marquis Adolphe de Custine published a book titled Russia in 1839 which caused a great stir in Europe. Custine was a perceptive observer, and while his observations, to be sure accurate, about Russian society of the time now have only historical value, those on the Orthodox Church, which remained more or less as it was under the autocracy, can still be read with profit today. After noting that the Church in Russia has always been an appendage of autocracy, Custine says: “This Byzantine religion, born out of a palace to maintain order in a barracks, does not meet the highest needs of the human soul; it helps the police deceive the nation: that is all.”

“She has hastened this unworthy people to the culture to which they aspire. Slave priests cannot lead sterile souls: the Pope will never instruct nations unless they prostrate themselves before force.”

“The crowd… will always be guided by a few men, called priests, doctors, scientists, poets, tyrants, it makes no difference… whoever decides the fate of souls is the freedom of man who performs the office of a priest… In schismatic countries, priests are despised by the people, despite the protection of kings, indeed, rather, precisely because of this protection which puts them at the dependence of the prince even in all that concerns their divine mission… The people know what freedom is and will never sincerely obey a dependent clergy.”

Custine was a fervent Catholic, and one must see in these words especially the Roman polemic against the schism of the East. However, he was right regarding the state control of religion, the subordination of the Church to the Throne, and the totalism of the Tsarist regime. And since these things never remain still within the limits of the past but transcend them through the continuity of psychological and historical habits, one is tempted to observe that the great difficulty the communist regime currently encounters in establishing a dialectic of freedom within the system may also partly derive from the old Russian evil of identifying religion with the state. Marxism, in short, may be felt and understood religiously; and the fact that it is a state ideology may provide the conditions for that absolute dependence of man on state powers that was already one of the characteristics of Russia before the revolution.