Father Alexander Men

From the beginning, Fr. Alexander was no ordinary priest. He did not fit the standards set by the authorities and knew the spiritual needs of some believers, especially Moscow intellectuals and students, better than more conventional Russian Orthodox priests. Prominent literary scholar Sergei Averintsev, in his article about Alexander Men, even called him “a missionary for the intelligentsia tribe.”

In the church in Novaya Derevnya (30 miles north of Moscow), where Fr. Alexander served for 20 years, there was an odd mix of urban intellectuals (mathematicians, biologists, doctors, writers etc.), youth, pious elderly women, blue-collar workers, and peasants from nearby villages. Men was a beloved pastor to thousands and had the ability to win people’s trust, from highly-educated intelligentsia like Andrei Sakharov, to the simplest of believers. He also brought many people to the Church, including Alexander Galich and Alexander Solzhenitsin.

And yet today, even though Fr. Alexander has been dead for 14 years, many still revile his memory. Anti-Men pamphlets are still sometimes distributed in churches and it is difficult to publish anything in his defense in official Orthodox magazines and newspapers.

The Russian Orthodox community is divided on Alexander Men’s role. For some, including his former friends and parishioners, Fr. Alexander became a symbol of a free-minded, ecumenically open, intellectual Russian Orthodoxy. Men’s opponents are conservative Russian Orthodox priests and laymen who consider Men the symbol of Jewish (sometimes “Judaic-Masonic”) efforts to destroy Russian Orthodoxy from the inside, with the help of Biblical criticism. Men’s opponents often misrepresent his views and deliberately forget that he was a brilliant apologist who could explain Christian truths in a simple, lively manner.

Alexander Men was born on January 22, 1935, in Moscow. Later that year, he was baptized alongside his mother, Yelena Men, a Jew and a non-believer. Men’s mother became a member of “the catacomb church” in Russia during the years of Soviet repression. They were baptized by Fr. Seraphim Batyukov, who lived a clandestine life so that he could avoid being coopted by Soviet authorities. Batyukov, together with a few other priests who had not been put in prisons or concentration camps, founded this “catacomb church.”

From childhood, Alexander Men wanted to be a priest, but resolved to first get a secular education. He entered college in order to study biology (at the time, one of the most atheistic sciences), but was expelled before he could graduate, when it was found out that he had been attending church. Nevertheless, his love for biology remained with him the rest of his life. “God has given us two books,” Men said, “the Bible and Nature.”

When, in 1958, at the age of 23, Fr. Alexander decided to be a priest, it was an extraordinary event. Much stood in his way: he was a biologist by education, a young intellectual by inclination and a Jew by birth. But these were overcome by the fact that the Church faced a new wave of persecution under Khrushchev: Church authorities needed all the priests they could get.

Men received his formal training at the Leningrad and Moscow Theological Academies, was ordained as a deacon in 1958 and as a priest in 1960.

Fr. Alexander was a happy and extremely gifted man of many talents. He had a phenomenal intellect, an inexhaustible sense of humor and the ability to say the right thing at the right time. From his ordination until his death, Fr. Alexander had a clear vision of his aim and his hierarchy of values. Foremost was the creation of a parish, of a church society. Perhaps that is why he preferred not to risk being involved in political activities – he tried creating human beings while others were struggling for human rights.

Men established a living parish, which was one of the most active in Moscow and, perhaps, in all Russia. “I tried to unite the parish, to make it one community. I wanted all the members to help each other, to pray, to study the Scriptures,” he said. Fr. Alexander generated a movement of small brotherhoods or groups, gatherings for common prayer and study of the Gospel. He recommended that his parishioners read the works of great Russian philosophers who belonged to a cultural tradition snipped off in 1917: Vladimir Solovyov, Nikolai Berdyayev, Fr. Sergei Bulgakov.

Men himself was a remarkable biblical scholar. It is hard to name a modern European language he could not read or an important book in the fields of philosophy, history, literature and religion that he was not familiar with. Yet he also found time to write prolifically, penning books on all areas of religious thought. Until the mid-1980s, much of this was published abroad under pseudonyms (Son of Man is among his most famous books). Men also wrote countless articles and recorded soundtracks for films used in religious instruction.

Fr. Alexander was always open to ecumenical dialogue. He believed that grace and truth could be found in all Christian traditions as well as in traditions outside Christianity. As he once said: “The walls we erect between ourselves are not high enough to reach up to God.”    

Men represented not only the old Russian church tradition but also belonged to modern Russian life – which could be why KGB agents, anti-Semites, atheists and even some churchmen despised him so vehemently. By the 1980s, the KGB had increased their watch on Fr. Alexander, whose activity was already very difficult in the conditions of an atheistic, totalitarian state. He was under almost constant surveillance and pressure by the KGB.

With the liberty granted by perestroika, Fr. Alexander began to preach to large groups of people. He addressed packed audiences and lecture halls and gave talks on radio and TV. He founded an Orthodox University in Moscow and helped establish a charity group for children with life-threatening diseases. When he was asked how he found time to do all this, Fr. Alexander explained that he had a contract with God – he gave everything he had, including all of his time, and, in return, God gave him whatever measure of strength he needed to get everything done.

Unfortunately, Fr. Alexander was on the public scene only briefly. On September 9, 1990, while walking to catch the train to Novaya Derevnya, where he was to lead a Divine Liturgy in his small wooden church, he was killed by an axe-blow to the back of his skull.

Fr. Alexander’s murder became a political event. Many were sure it was the work of the KGB (Men had received many anonymous threats), while others suggested that it was the work of a proto-Fascist or ultra-Nationalist group. The KGB declared that Men was most probably killed by anti-Semitic opponents within the Church or by a relative or parishioner. To this day, Men’s killers have never been found and no suspects have been charged.