Holy Spring of Iskitim

It was colleagues in Novosibirsk that first told me about the spring at Lozhok. I was immediately drawn in by the legends surrounding the place.

The spring is reputedly sacred because on its site Gulag guards executed 40 monks and priests. The intersection of faith and Gulag history was intriguing, and my experiences there so compelling, that I have returned every year since to follow the spring’s development.

I first visited the holy spring in Lozhok in May 2007, during a research trip in Akademgorodok, a university town and research center on the outskirts of Novosibirsk, a Siberian city of one million and the geographic center of Russia. My friends and I arranged to meet the parish priest, Father Igor Zatolokin, at the Church of the Life-Bearing Spring in Iskitim. He had promised to give us a tour of the spring and sites associated with its history after that day’s Sunday mass.

On the way to the church, we seemed to be traveling backwards in time, peeling away layers of Soviet and Russian history as we drove. Early in the morning, we left Akademgorodok, with its post-WWII university and research institutes offset by glitzy contemporary architecture and fancy stores. On the way east, we passed through Berdsk, on the shore of the Ob Sea reservoir, the product of a Soviet-era hydroelectric dam project. Berdsk was once dedicated to Pioneer camps, where children from the surrounding area spent their summers swimming, hiking and playing. Now the waterfront features brick dachas, luxury homes, and a boat yard on the bay for yachts and motorboats alongside the Soviet paneled apartment buildings.

We entered the vast plain between Berdsk and Iskitim, a Soviet-era factory town known locally by the denigrating rhyme, snizu griaz, sverkhu dym, eto gorod Iskitim (Mud underfoot, smoke overhead, that’s the city of Iskitim). The road was flanked by huge agricultural fields interrupted by clusters of Soviet-era buildings, especially apartment blocks in a poor state of repair alongside old wooden workers’ barracks (now apartments) and a random mix of factory and residential areas. Soviet signs bore faded propaganda slogans surrounded by frail, rusty frames.

At the entry to Iskitim stood a huge hammer and sickle, the first I had seen since the collapse of the USSR. It seemed as if we had turned the clock back to Brezhnev’s era. A little further along, on a back road, across from some former workers’ barracks, we saw a Soviet-era store that housed the church.

In one sense, we had moved even farther back in time to pre-revolutionary Orthodox belief. Yet in another, we were in the modern world of the Russian Orthodox Church, when a church might share space with a small grocery store. The church had an onion dome and was named for the sacred spring in the neighboring town of Lozhok, in the Iskitim region. We entered and stayed through the end of the service. Father Igor invited us to share lunch with the congregation before our trip out the spring.

On the way to the spring, we stopped at a quarry, the work site of the Gulag that operated here from 1929 until 1956, when the camp was razed to destroy all traces of its existence. The buildings that now stand on the site of the camp barracks include a school built in the 1950s, when Iskitim was created out of four villages, including Lozhok. According to the locals, builders reported that the site was full of the bones of prisoners who had succumbed to the camp’s horrible conditions. As we drove out of the city, the priest pointed out two so-called “monuments to perestroika”: an unfinished indoor swimming pool and a community center, both abandoned after the fall of the Soviet Union. He bitterly described how the town had suffered during perestroika and in the post-socialist period, which would seem to be a strange opinion for a priest, especially one dedicated to studying the most brutal aspects of atheistic Soviet history. But, like his congregation, he must negotiate the complex legacy of the USSR while dealing with present realities.

The quarry, worksite of a Gulag from 1929-1956.

In 2004, the diocese began construction of a memorial park, centered around the Church of the Russian New Martyrs and Confessors, on the site of the spring; it was officially consecrated in 2006. The first Russian New Martyrs and Confessors were canonized in 1996 and include Nicholas II and his family along with many others who were victims of the Soviet authorities for their religious faith.

I was struck by the fact that the Church was so involved in this project, since holy springs are typically not sanctioned to such a degree by Orthodox authorities. There are, of course, exceptions, such as the Cathedral of the Life-Bearing Spring in Constantinople that houses the original icon of the Life-Bearing Spring dedicated to the Virgin Mary. The legend is this: In the fifth century, the future emperor Leo Markell was helping a traveler who had been harmed on the road. He went in search of water for the man to drink and heard the voice of the Virgin Mary telling him that water was close; the voice led him to the spring, which healed the wounded man. Emperor Leo later built the first church of the Life-Bearing Spring in honor of the Mother of God’s miraculous cure in the grove.

The springs at Lozhok, as those in Constantinople, are said to cure illnesses in the sick and to improve a person’s general physical and spiritual condition.

In addition to the cathedral, the park features: a kiosk selling plastic bottles for water, icons and other religious paraphernalia, and souvenirs related to the spring; a small “chapel” bearing the icon of the Life-Bearing Spring framing the site where visitors collect water; a locally-quarried limestone memorial stone near a candle stand and a covered cross; a baptistery; an open-air bathing area with changing rooms; a gender-segregated, covered bathing area; and a wedding chapel dedicated to Saints Peter and Fevronia near the site for water collection. The congregation intends to engrave the names of the 40 religious martyrs executed at the spring on the memorial stone, once they discover their identities.

The chapel on the site of the spring.

The search for the identities of the martyrs has been complicated by several factors. First, history itself argues against such an execution, said Father Igor, himself a trained historian. In his book about the camp he noted that such executions were not unheard of during the Civil War period (1917-1923), but that the camp opened well after that. In an interview this past summer he theorized that there may have been executions of believers during the Civil War, which was particularly violent in this region of the country, and that these were later conflated with Gulag history in the minds of locals. Second, Father Igor has been unable to uncover records referring to a mass Gulag execution of believers in the Federal Security Bureau (FSB) archives. FSB records are organized by last name, so that without first knowing the surnames of the victims, their identities cannot be confirmed. Third, for many years the congregation’s search has been thwarted by the resistance of local authorities to even acknowledge the camp’s existence.

As Father Igor said, “Here, for a long time, even when I arrived in the 2000s, the administration and everyone said ‘there was nothing here, you shouldn’t imagine things.’ So, when we began to collect information, we met with a certain amount of opposition from those former authorities, by then already old men, who said ‘Why do you need all this, there wasn’t anything here?’ And that included the administration, who didn’t want it to be proven.”

As a result, Father Igor has not, despite insistent attempts, been able to gain access to the archives of the Main Office for Interior Affairs where the camp records are held. Finally, even if historical records are discovered, legends, which reflect deeply held social and religious beliefs, are usually more powerful than fact. This execution legend has been established in the consciousness of the local populace, even those who are not Orthodox believers; to counteract it would not only threaten belief in the spring’s power, but the region’s conception of its past. Locals would likely ignore any data that contradicts their convictions about the spot.

In the post-Soviet era, the Russian Orthodox Church has largely supported government policies, but memory and history of the Gulag is one area where it maintains a vehement opposition to official policy. The government remains largely silent on this aspect of the Soviet past. Memorials or publications on camp history have typically been organized and funded by non-governmental institutions, like Memorial, whose charter is dedicated to commemorating Gulag victims, or by local figures who either had served a term in the Gulag or are descendants of those who did. Regional dioceses, because of the persecution of the church and of religious orders by the Soviet government, have supported these groups, a fact which explains why this holy spring, unlike most others, has been adopted by the Novosibirsk diocese.

In fact, the legend of this holy spring is remarkably consistent with current Russian Orthodox policy. As Father Igor said, “ I think that our sacred spring is a natural memorial to all those who perished during the years of repression, and when people come here, we would like them to remember those horrible years, when they receive water and some gifts, maybe good health, they’ll remember those who, in essence, gave up their lives for us, because Lozhok stands atop their bones.”

Despite its terrible history, the spring in Lozhok has become a source of regional pride. One local woman said, “You can’t imagine how wonderful it is to have a holy place where you live and to not have to travel to visit a sacred spot.”

Marina Chuchikova, who works at the icon kiosk, spoke with pride about the quality of the water in comparison to another holy spring in Omsk, “I went to the Achairsky Monastery... It’s also a good place, of course. But the water there is warm. Our spring... it’s just fresher somehow, like spring.... Someone had called the Sanitary Epidemiological Station and said that our water was bad and that they had found the TB bacillus in there. And they came, five of them, from the Sanitary Epidemiological Station in Novosibirsk and they tested the water with some new machine. They were amazed and said, ‘This water is fantastic! It exceeds all their parameters... A bacillus can’t even exist in there.’ ”

“In fact, there are lots of springs in the Novosibirsk region,” said Father Igor, “but it’s hard to drink from them, since the water is full of iron... Not far from us, in Lednevo, there’s a spring also considered to be holy, but the water is brown, brown because of all the iron. But here, thank God, we have an amazing natural phenomenon, pure spring water.” Anna Krylova, who worked at the quarry alongside the prisoners when she first came to Novosibirsk, echoed Chuchikova’s feelings: “I used to go and clean it all the time, but now, now the place has developed so well, then [before the church adopted the spot] we’d come and clean the spring, drink the water, but now it’s so nice.”

The spring has become a site of pilgrimage for people who live in the region. Each year, a congregation in Berdsk walks over 14 miles to the spring, finishing with a service there. The most important religious holiday celebrated on the site is Epiphany (kreshchenie gospodne) on January 19, a Russian Orthodox holiday that commemorates Christ’s baptism in the Jordan. A procession led by the priest and deacons departs from the Cathedral of the Life-Bearing Spring, and Father Igor celebrates a mass at the spring. The Epiphany celebration traditionally culminates with bathing in the holy water. At that time of year in western Siberia, the daily high averages 5º Fahrenheit, falling to lows of -10. In fact, people bathe in the spring year round, regardless of the temperature.

In order to receive the benefits of bathing in a holy spring, visitors immerse themselves three times, no mean feat in water that averages 60 degrees, even at the height of summer. Locals say that bathing in this spring once a year will prevent illnesses for 12 months. Drinking the water will also help cure an illness or maintain general health.

Chuchikova said that when she first came to the spring, she was suffering from deforming arthritis of the joints, “I really could not walk, can you imagine? With canes I could move a little bit. Now my legs still hurt, as do my joints. But I can move like a normal person. Back then I couldn’t walk or move at all. Thank God I bathed here and continue to do so, winter and summer, fall and spring...”

Anna Krylova told a similar story: “I was always weak. Either I had bronchitis or I had a sore throat and the like. And when I climbed into that bathing area, the water was so cold that my heart stopped. I was afraid to go in above my knees. The first time, I went in up to my knees, I climbed out, I stood for a bit, then I went in again. Only the third time did I get up the nerve to dive in all the way. And you know, the tumor on my leg disappeared, and for a week, I felt like I was flying, it was as though I had got a second wind.”

Elena Semyonova said she learned from locals in 1959 that the Lozhok spring was mentioned in the Gospels. She, like many, said it is best to drink spring water on a daily basis to keep healthy and that it must be drunk “raw,” meaning unboiled, to get the full benefits. It should not be used for cooking or in tea (although it is known for being the best water for brining, since pickles and tomatoes preserved in water from the spring never turn brown).

Despite the fact that the legend upon which it is based is unproven, the holy spring in Lozhok serves as the locus of strands of Soviet and Russian history and doctrinal and folk Orthodoxy. It also stands as a memorial to a violent past that many have attempted to cover up and with which few Russians have come to terms.

Indeed, people in this hard-hit region condemn the Gulag yet largely vote for the Communist party in national elections. Apparently, the local populace still values Soviet-era institutions like the academic and research institutes and the industrial and technological infrastructure they represent. The spring, meanwhile, allows them to condemn the brutalities of the Soviet past, without the difficult task of cleansing the present of its harmful remnants. RL