From God's Vineyard - Priest Dmitry Dudko
Priest Dmitry Dudko is a contradictory personality.
An ardent and consistent fighter against the communist godless regime, and later just as ardent a defender of it: he received his first prison term for anti-Soviet activity in the 1950s. He was arrested a second time in 1977.
After two months, he could not withstand the new, refined interrogations in the dungeons of the KGB — he broke down and gave the testimony the investigation needed — which was broadcast on TV across the entire USSR. After that, he was released and withdrew from human rights activity — he began to revile dissidents and Christian human rights defenders.
After his inglorious arrest and release, he began to claim that the opposition to Soviet Power was being funded from abroad. But for all his contradictions, in the area of his attitude toward the godless regime, he was a profound theological thinker.
“From God’s Vineyard — Priest Dmitry Dudko (Memoirs. Vinogradov Sermons 1980–1983).” — Moscow: Church of St. Nicholas, 2009, 364 pp., 1,000 copies.
Of course, such a book was bound to see the light of day. Sooner or later — that is another question, since all earthly times and seasons are determined by the synergy of man with God’s Providence. On this score there is a wonderfully wise aphorism: “Do what you must, and let come what may.” Or, in the words of Seraphim of Sarov, “save yourself, and thousands around you will be saved.”
To go toward salvation through all trials and chastisements — that is what a person must do according to the commandments of the Orthodox faith. And on this path, an unwarranted good can prove far worse than a warranted evil. More precisely, that which we perceive as evil is merely a manifestation of a higher good we do not recognize.
“Do not look at how a person lives, but look at how he dies,” says another popular proverb on this matter. And both the life and the death of Father Dmitry Dudko, who for many years was the spiritual father of the newspaper Zavtra, leave no room to doubt that he walked this earthly path as he should, right to the very end.
The book’s editor, Vladimir Smyk, recalls: “Father Dmitry was dying. In his fate, the days arrived about which he, who had described his life in books in sufficient detail, could no longer tell. What he felt, what he experienced then… those who witnessed his final hour do not know and can judge only by outward signs. But even that — the outward — is staggering in the height of his humble passing.
…Two days earlier, a certain hope still flickered in us — no longer for the natural course of events, but for a miracle, in which Russian people trust even in the most hopeless situation. Batiushka still could sometimes speak, though extremely little. He was even witty, fending off with a joke all our attempts to slow his departure.
— Many hands, but only one mouth.
This — to our intentions to feed him from a spoon: he had not accepted food for four days. — Batiushka, you are lying uncomfortably. Perhaps we should lift you up?
— Where to? Higher than heaven?”
Viktor Grigoriev: “I asked him (Father Dmitry — G.S.), ‘Is it frightening to die?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘to die is not frightening. I have almost died already, my breath stopped at my throat, one more inhale and the soul would leap out. But my body was insensible. I lie as if resting, fully conscious. There was no fear, only the desire to say goodbye to everyone. So dying is not frightening, but something else is. How shall I stand before the Lord? Indeed, face to Face. How will I answer for the life I have lived and for all of you? That is frightening. But I believe the Lord, the Righteous Judge, will forgive.’”
Father Dmitry’s son, Priest Mikhail Dudko: “The last step of the earthly journey is also the first step on another road. I do not at all wish to say that our path here means nothing. But here we see with earthly eyes only the earthly path, while there will be another sight and a wholly different perspective will open. In his last days, Papa prepared himself to take that step…”
Again Vladimir Smyk: “The funeral service was held in the Church of the Holy Trinity at Pyatnitskoye Cemetery. At the petition of Metropolitan Juvenaly and with the blessing of the Patriarch, the requiem was served according to the bishop’s rite — by Bishop Tikhon of Vidnoye and another 42 priests, a good half of whom were spiritual children of Father Dmitry Dudko… After the coffin was carried around the church, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people followed it to the grave.”
Such was the completion of this pure and ascetic life. When, quite recently, I reread the sermons of Father Dmitry that he delivered in the early 1980s, at the apogee of Brezhnev’s “stagnation,” with sausage at two-twenty, nearly free apartments and other blessings of socialism, I could not help but marvel at the main thought that he strove with all his might to convey to his flock: that without Christ, without His Resurrection, all earthly life is but the threshold of death, and nothing more. And that our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ constantly stands beside each one of us, as the only Way and Truth in this life, and therefore we can fail to notice Him only because of our own blindness.
And a second thought, exceedingly important today: that everything is accomplished according to God’s will and according to human faith; that Russia’s path is unbroken and faithful to Christ. “Dmitry Dudko was, perhaps, the first of those who challenged the (Soviet — G.S.) regime to understand what Alexander Zinoviev, Mikhail Nazarov and others understood later: that those who fought against the KGB, the CPSU, against the Soviet state machine — fought against Russia…
By breaking with the dissidents, Father Dmitry was ahead of his time by almost a decade: dissidence became the ideological prop of the liberal camp that was destroying the country…
He forgave his persecutors, saw in Stalin the Restrainer of world evil, and was convinced that today’s communists are closer to God than the democrats…”
Father Dmitry Dudko was a representative of the indestructible, “grassroots,” “popular” Orthodoxy in Russia, which from time immemorial has existed, exists, and will exist here under the holy Protection of the Mother of God until the end of time.
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