Optina Pustyn: The Forest Retreat

The Forest Retreat

By Anastasia Osipova

The monks were descendants of merchants, peasants and the nobility. They came from all over Russia. Humble and seeking answers to life's questions, the first monk came to Optina Pustin in his old age. The last to arrive, before they were all exiled or executed by the Bolsheviks, was 19.

No one knows for certain exactly when Optina Pustin (officially known as “Svyato-Vvedenskaya Optinskaya Pustin”) was founded. According to legend, however, the monastery was founded in the 14th or 15th century by a repentant thief named Opt, who decided to take monastic vows and establish a retreat in the thick forests near Rus’ border with Poland (“Pustin” means a deserted place; “Optina” is a possessive form of “Opt.” Thus, the name means Opt’s Empty Place).

Optina was initially mentioned in local chronicles during the reign of the first Romanov tsar, Mikhail (1613-1645). It was called the “Tsar’s Pilgrimage” (государево богомолье - gosudarevo bogomol'e) and had one church and six cells for monks.

Over the next 200 years, the monastery struggled along as a remote outpost and increasingly fell into disrepair. The residents of the nearby town of Kozelsk took possession of the monastery’s mill, and, as a result, the monks sometimes only had stewed cabbage leaves to eat.

During the reign of Catherine the Great (1762-1796), just three monks lived on the banks of the Zhizdra river at Optina Pustin. But then, toward the end of the 18th century, a hermitage (скит) was built for some of the monastery's elders, where they could meet with visiting pilgrims. As a result, over time, the monastery began receiving visitors and donations from all over Russia, enabling its steady rise to prominence.

In the century that followed, the monastery developed as an important center for starchestvo (a community of wise, monastic elders - startsy - respected for their discernment and prophesy). In fact, Optina Pustin soon became the most important spiritual center of the Russian Orthodox Church – an object of pilgrimage that was unique in appealing not just to commoners, but to nobles as well, particularly famous writers and thinkers like Vasily Zhukovsky, Ivan Kireyevsky, Pyotr Vyazemsky, Ivan Turgenev, Lev Tolstoy, Vladimir Solovyev, Nikolai Gogol, Konstantin Leontyev, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Vasily Rozanov and others.  So popular did the startsy become, that in 1821 a special residence was built from them outside the monastery, so that the pilgrims would not disturb the monastic order. Indeed, over the ensuing century, the remote monastery had a very significant effect on Russian culture and literature.

Elders and Intelligentsia

“They rush to Optina from all over the world, not groaning as before, but roaring. They come seeking consolation and comfort,” wrote Elder Varsonofy in his diary, dated 1911.

In fact, it was Varsonofy who had rushed to Leo Tolstoy’s deathbed a year before. In November 1910, Tolstoy decided to renounce all that he owned and loved, leaving his Tula estate for Optina Pustin. But, falling deathly ill en route, he only got as far as the train station in Astapovo. The Orthodox Church’s Synod sent Varsonofy to Astapovo in hopes of convincing the dying writer to repent and convert (the Orthodox Church had excommunicated Tolstoy in 1901 for his anticlerical views, in particular those expressed in his novel Resurrection).

“The Synod sent me to him before his death,” Varsonofy wrote on December 27, 1910. “I arrived in Astapovo, but they didn’t allow me to come in. I turned to his elder daughter, but she replied to me plainly, with courtesy and refusal. I turned to his other daughter. She was deeply agitated and said that I couldn’t visit the Count, because on seeing me, he would certainly die. In vain I sought to convince them that I would not raise theological debates. I merely asked to be admitted to bless the dying man from afar. They did not hear me.”

Despite Leo Tolstoy’s excommunication, his family’s connections with Optina were many. Not far from Optima was Scharmordino, a nunnery founded by Amvrosy, where Tolstoy’s sister, Maria Nikolayevna, was a nun. Tolstoy’s aunt served there as a Mother Superior.

Yet the intelligentsia’s interest in Optina began long before Tolstoy, during the time of Elder Makary (1834-1860), who was a confessor of Ivan Kireyevsky, the influential literary critic who co-founded the Slavophile movement. With Kireyevsky’s help, Makary started a book publishing operation at the monastery.

Nikolai Gogol’s first visit to Optina with Elder Makary (sometime between 1839 and 1842), turned out to be a life transforming event for the writer. “I came into the father’s cell being one person,” Gogol wrote, “and left being utterly different.”

He began working on his second volume of Dead Souls after visiting Optina and then returning to Italy. But, unable to overcome his striving for perfection and in emotional crisis as a result of his newfound spirituality, he burned the manuscript to the second volume.

Abbot Varsonofy, writing half a century later about the events, said “A great change occurred in Gogol. As a man of integrity, he, unbroken, was not able to compromise. Having understood that he couldn’t live anymore the way he had lived before, he turned to God without any hesitation. From Rome and the sacred places he wrote to his friends about it. These letters were assembled in a book [Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends (1847)], which Gogol was condemned for by his contemporaries. Gogol hadn’t begun living according to Christ yet, he just yearned for it, and the world hostile to God persecuted him and sentenced him, declaring him half-mad.”

In fact, the book was a self-righteous homily brimming with wide-ranging ideas on literature, morality and social reforms – Gogol's attempt to show the masses the “right and true path.” Needless to say, the writer was out of his element and the work was met with almost universal disdain and venom, particularly from the liberal critic Vissarion Belinsky. Emotionally wrought by the controversy surrounding the book, Gogol wrote, “In my thoughts, I must ever be above life’s petty squabbles, and wherever my travels take me, I must ever be at Optina Pustin.” [For more on Nikolai Gogol, see Russian Life April/May 1999.]

Each elder prepared his own successor. When Makary died in 1860, Amvrosy took his place, serving as abbot until 1891. It was Father Amvrosy whom Fyodor Dostoyevsky met when he visited Optina in 1877 to alleviate his sorrow after the death of his son Alyosha. Reputedly, Amvrosy’s gift of prophesy so amazed Dostoevsky that he modeled the elder Zosima (in The Brothers Karamazov) on Abbot Amvrosy.

Leo Tolstoy spoke many times with Amvrosy about politics and religion. Their last meeting was in 1890. Biryukov, the writer’s biographer, wrote that neither was satisfied how the meeting ended. Tolstoy left the cell upset and Amvrosy went to his bed with the words: “He is so proud.” Yet Tolstoy’s wife, Sophia Andreyevna, remembered differently, saying that Tolstoy “was very satisfied... he acknowledged the elders’ wisdom and the spiritual power of elder Amvrosy”.

The last of 14 elders at Optina Pustin was Nektary. A poet and an artist, he was renowned for his ability to read sealed letters. He also was once visited by a young army officer named Georgy Zhukov. Nektary reputedly blessed him and foresaw his magnificent future. Yet while Zhukov went on to fame for breaking the blockade of Leningrad and crushing Hitler, Nektary was arrested in 1923 by the Bolsheviks and exiled.

Prior to the Bolshevik Revolution, some 300 monks lived in Optina. In 1918 the monastery was closed and turned into an “agricultural artel.” It later passed to Glavnauka as a history museum. Most all of the monks were sent to their death in the gulags.

In 1987, Optina became one of the first properties returned to the Russian Orthodox Church.

Optina Today

Optina Pustin hides among huge fir trees, surrounded by a cool, grey forest, in a remote section of Kaluga region.

It used to be that the only way to get to the monastery was to thread your way through this forest on difficult roads, or to take a ferry across the Zhizdra river. But today there is a winding, recently paved road from the main highway.

I have stopped at a local’s house. Baba Anya lives a hundred meters from the monastery and charges just 150 rubles a night. She has been hiring out an apartment for many years. Other villagers sell honey and vegetables to passing pilgrims.

The apartment resembles a barn: clefts in the walls, low ceiling, tiny window, cobwebs inside and all “facilities” outside. In the corner of the room there are icons and a small icon-lamp.

Baba Anya spends her days doing household chores and rarely attends services, though she said she prays at home.

“There have always been many people, especially during festivals,” she says. “Young people arrive from Tula, Moscow and neighboring towns. They rush to the monastery to meet with confessors or visit our famous spring.”

A man stands at the entrance to the monastery. He is holding a heap of large kerchiefs and closely examining women’s attire. His kerchiefs, it turns out, are not for tying around heads, but hips - to cover exposed legs. Women in jeans or pants are not allowed. Expecting this, I had dressed in a skirt and took a kerchief.

Vespers were winding down as I went into the church, hoping to talk to a monk. In the faint light, I met Father Nestor, sitting on a bench.

Nestor came to Optina from Sochi at the age of 23, after graduating from a medical university.

His hands constantly count a rosary and he never stops repeating prayers in his mind, even when speaking to someone. He has been absent from the world for 15 years and has never regretted it.

“I have always known my vocation,” Father Nestor says in his calm voice. “When I was a child, I saw a photo of a monk on the page of a journal and said that I would be like him.”

Like almost all the monks here, Nestor has a beard. His day begins and ends with prayer and he always keeps the fasts. He never looks into your eyes - this is considered unseemly for monks, for whom humility is one of the greatest virtues. He says that Optina is very special to him.

“It is the air I breathe; it is my life. Here a person comes out of his shell.”

I ask whether people living close to monastery are believers and whether they attend services.

“Not all of them are believers,” Nestor says. “There are less than a hundred locals as a matter of fact. The elder generations seldom attend church, while the children cadge money from pilgrims. They know that visiting believers cannot refuse. And that’s their business.

“But in recent years believers from big cities have begun buying homes here so that they can stay in their own homes when visiting, or so they can simply live here. So relations with locals are two-sided. Moreover, Kozelsk is about two kilometers away, and, on the one hand, its population is also local. But there are many drinkers and cults. That is another problem, because from time to time cult followers have their ceremonies right near the monastery.”

The next morning I am awakened by the sound of passing pilgrims. I go outside and walk to the monastery’s famous spring, dug by Amvrosy over a century before. It is a small pool with flowing water. Women stand around the pool, laughing and encouraging people to jump in. The water temperature is 4 Celsius (40 Fahrenheit), which reputedly remains constant year-round. The spring was sanctified in the 19th century and believers assert that diving in can help cure certain diseases. I decide to follow their advice and dive in it. The next day I woke in a perfect mood and was greatly surprised that I had neither a runny nose or a cough.

A forest path leads from the monastery to the hermitage once visited by so many famous Russian writers. On each side of the hermitage were two shacks, used as waiting rooms. Elders came there to talk to women, who are not allowed in the hermitage.

I stood in front of closed gates. There was not a soul to be found. But I knew what was inside from photos I had seen in books. Even here, outside the hermitage, I began to feel something eternal and truly Russian stir within me as I recalled how this humble monastic community had witnessed hundreds, thousands of conversations with great writers and thinkers.

Suddenly the weather turned cold and I returned to the church. Greek motets whirled in my mind; the service there was being held in Greek.

The next day I visited the refectory, which sits outside the monastery gates. All pilgrims come here for a free meal. Long rectangular tables are laid with monastic bread and herbal tea; a pan brims with pearl barley kasha. To my great surprise, it was quite tasty. People prayed and then ate silently. I relaxed a bit only when I saw some girls with make-up on and nearby a few young guys talking in a whisper.

Sasha Kokorina came here from Moscow as a Laysister. She was given tasks of obedience for three days and had to clean the church. She stayed in the women’s hotel for pilgrims and slept on the third berth in a plank bed.

“In the early morning, I needed to attend the service. After that, we had a breakfast at 8 a.m. and then we were sent to weed in the vegetable garden. After dinner I went to clean the church and after supper I had to wash dishes until one o’clock. It was the hardest of my obediences, but it was a great experience. I remember those three days as if it occurred last week,” she says. “It was as if I entered a different world, as if it were a fairy tale. I wish everyone could feel the same thing just once in life. As for me, I found peace in my soul and felt Grace.”

Monks never use paid labor. All the obedience and field or kitchen labor they do themselves. There is no official requirement to attend every service, but the day is arranged around them. Monks allocate their free time as they wish.

I asked many pilgrims why they had come to Optina, as there are hundreds of other monasteries in Russia today. No one offered detailed arguments. Some said that is just how it turned out; others pointed out that the place was unique and had a rich history.

Today, the letters, memoirs and books written by Optina’s former leaders are in print, both in Russian and in translation. They are held in a special library at Optina, where modern monks can use them in present studies.

But what about the intelligentsia, which a century and a half ago made the monastery so famous. I asked Nestor if Russia’s modern intelligentsia ever stops by for a visit.

“I know that recently some scientist from the Russian Academy of Science came,” Nestor said. “I don’t remember his name. He came with his wife. Sometimes we hold meetings with different cultural representatives; they come to Optina. But you know, history goes in circles, but it never repeats itself.”