If statistics are to be believed, or even half believed, the Russian Orthodox Church has a problem. Almost eight out of ten Russian adults are now baptized Christians – the same number who, by their own admission, don’t pray, fast or celebrate feasts. Russians may identify themselves as Orthodox in surveys, but are little interested in participating in the life of the Church. And yet there is an interesting dynamic that has all but passed unnoticed. Believers might not be keeping the Sabbath by stepping out to church – but they are on the march all the same.
Like the rest of Europe, Russia is witnessing a curious and marked rise in pilgrimage. The rise is most noticeable in mass walking pilgrimages, called krestnye khody, “processions of the cross.” These pilgrimages may last hours, days, even months, and unite hundreds, sometimes thousands of believers in symbolic journeys often perceived as helping to rebuild Russia, or to cleanse the nation of Soviet sins. The reunion of the Russian Orthodox Church with the Church Abroad, for example, was celebrated by a “spiritual-educational program ‘Under the Star of the Mother of God,’” in which processions from eight distant corners of Russia (two of which began in Athos, Greece and Jerusalem) walked to Moscow, inscribing an eight-pointed star across the country. Some participants walked for more than a year.
One of the largest annual pilgrimages in Russia today is the Velikoretskoye procession of the cross. Participants cover some 150 kilometers in a grueling five-day circular walk, with one rest day at the riverbank shrine where they venerate the icon that has led the procession all the way from Kirov. The pilgrimage is promoted as an ancient tradition that commemorates the discovery, on the banks of the Velikaya River, of an icon of St. Nicholas.
According to legend, more than six hundred years ago the inhabitants of Khlynov (now Kirov, although the town is debating a return to its pre-revolutionary name of Vyatka) were anxious to move this wonderworking icon to the security of their regional capital. The icon had other ideas, but finally allowed itself to be moved when the people promised to bring it back to its “birthplace” in the village of Velikoretskoye once a year, for a day of celebrations. This feast, on June 6, is the high point of the pilgrimage, when pilgrims confess, receive communion and bathe in the river or holy spring which marks the spot where the icon was found. The icon is then escorted back to Kirov and reinstalled in the cathedral.
This journey is not for the faint-hearted. Pilgrims rise most days at 2 a.m., and struggle through marshes, fields and forests for up to 18 hours, before collapsing for a few hours of sleep on the floor of a village school or under an army tent. Locals like to tell the story of an American who joined the procession several years ago and – on encountering a particularly impenetrable bog – declared in frustration, “how can you have been walking this route for six hundred years and not laid asphalt yet?” They laugh and shake their heads. “It has to be hard, otherwise it wouldn’t be a procession of the cross.”
Father Vladimir has been filming the pilgrimage for years. “One of the pilgrims asked me – why film this? There’s just mud wherever we go, mud, mud, mud. And people walking, walking, walking. People watching it will wonder why on earth they should come here, when there is nothing but mud,” he says, smiling beatifically. “But the mud is beneficial, it’s healing, it cleanses the soul.” It also bonds people: the going is so difficult in places that the procession thins almost to one or two, and pilgrims form human chains to help each other through thigh-high water and mud almost as deep, collectively heaving baby carriages and wheelchairs over swamps and fallen trees.
The weather, too, purifies the faithful. “St. Nicholas teaches pilgrims with rain, snow, hail, heat, cold at every procession of the cross,” one local woman explains. This year, as last year, the procession leaves Kirov in torrential rain. Thin and expensive hiking slickers are useless against the downpour, and the more experienced pilgrims are easy to spot, wrapped like candies in sheets of builders’ plastic or shower curtains. Children are enveloped in plastic trash bags and secured to pull-along luggage carts.
On the second day of the pilgrimage, the sun beats down hard enough to burn noses and necks, but fails to dry up the rivers that have appeared in the creases and dips of Kirov’s rolling fields. Lyubov, an art historian who has walked in the procession for the last 18 years, recounts how their party of academics, joining the pilgrimage out of curiosity in the late 1980s, was warned that there was a particular section of the journey where it always rains. “We didn’t believe it. We were in sandals and light clothing. It was really hot. And suddenly, as we set foot on that territory, it rained hail.” A storm breaks for us there too, pouring down hailstones like frozen peas and scattering pilgrims into the trees.
The sheer physical struggle involved in the pilgrimage does not deter the infirm or elderly, however. Pilgrims recount the tale of a partially paralyzed man who joined the procession on crutches and, having developed weeping blisters under his arms, sought the blessing of the priest leading the procession to return home. “No,” he was told, “you should keep going. As long as you continue, others will do too.” He made it to Velikoretskoye, so the story goes.
Another pilgrim joined the procession despite being in the final term of her pregnancy, believing that any birth that took place on the pilgrimage would be especially protected by St. Nicholas. She duly went into labor while walking and Father Alexander, the imposing but genial secretary of Vyatka diocese, was obliged to remind pilgrims via the local newspapers that “the procession of the cross is not a suitable place to give birth,” and that sick or pregnant pilgrims must seek the permission of their doctor as well as the blessing of their parish priest before participating.
Some of those who join the procession are seeking miraculous healing. St. Nicholas is reputedly kind to his devotees, and miracles great and small are a regular occurrence. The spring at Gorokhovo, which pilgrims reach on day three, is believed to be particularly efficacious. In recent years, believers have apparently been cured of asthma, leg pain, infertility, eczema, even cataracts. “One woman who had really poor vision undressed and took her glasses off to bathe in the spring,” we are told. “Afterwards she got dressed and went back to the church to read the Akathist,* began to search for her glasses – turns out she’d left them back at the spring. She forgot them because she could see. She didn’t need them any more.”
According to Andrei, who has led the restoration of the ruined church at Gorokhovo since 1998 (“We’ve been building for 12 years, as we can, as we find the means, gradually. Where would we hurry to, with eternity before us?”), the most significant miracle is the increasing number of pilgrims who make their way through Gorokhovo, from all over the world – England, Vietnam, Germany, America.
If you stand still and watch the procession, Father Vladimir tells us, it would be two and a half hours before the last straggler passed you by. Yet back in 1992, a mere two hundred pilgrims participated in the first officially permitted procession following what is believed to be the pre-revolutionary route from Kirov to Velikoretskoye and back. In 2000 the pilgrimage was awarded “All-Russia” status by the Patriarchate, and began to attract thousands of believers annually.
While its appearance in pilgrim guide books and on Orthodox web forums has no doubt contributed to an increase in numbers, the vast majority of the pilgrims we meet say they decided to join the procession after hearing about it from someone they knew. Father Alexander agrees that word of mouth is the main driver of the pilgrimage’s growth. “One, five or six years ago,” he recalls, “one woman from Rostov-on-Don came. Within three years, three busloads came.”
Today, 20-30,000 pilgrims participate – some walking the whole way, others joining in to escort the icon out of Kirov, or simply attending the festivities at Velikoretskoye. While these figures are astonishing, they haven’t yet reached pre-revolutionary heights. In 1915, some 50,000 pilgrims made it to the shrine.
Father Alexander, who has the onerous task of overseeing diocesan arrangements for the procession, says that about four years ago, “the procession of the cross suddenly sharply increased in size… very nearly from four thousand to ten thousand, just like that, in a moment.” While this might appear cause for celebration, Father Alexander recalls that worrying about the pilgrims’ well-being kept Metropolitan Khrisanf up at night. “He came to me and said, ‘I saw women with babes in arms on television! Where will they and their children sleep? Are there enough tents for everyone?’” The diocese and local government now collaborate to ensure that, at the very least, pilgrims’ basic needs are met. While diocesan literature stresses that all pilgrims must take responsibility for their own food, sleeping arrangements and health care needs, at every village in which pilgrims spend the night there are huge army tents, rows of chemical toilets, and free porridge and hot water served from army field kitchens.
Since 2001, the procession has been accompanied by ten to fifteen volunteers from Peresvet, the national search and rescue organization. The bulk of Peresvet’s work is rather mundane – hunting for lost children or elderly relatives, administering first aid to 100-150 persons daily – yet conditions are such that, on occasion, they must think creatively. “This year a man collapsed with a bad heart,” says Sergei, a young Peresvet worker. “There was no ambulance nearby, since there are no roads at that point, so we improvised a stretcher from materials in the forest and took turns carrying him the five or six kilometers to Monastyrskoe, where a cardiac ambulance was waiting for him.” While Peresvet volunteers carried him, doctors – regional volunteers seconded to the team – monitored his blood pressure and administered medicine.
There are also small threats that loom large. Almost every year someone is bitten by one of the potentially lethal ticks that lurk in the region’s otherwise Eden-like landscape. Rest areas and campsite places are sprayed in advance with tick-repellent, but there is plenty of untreated undergrowth to brush against.
While the bishop no doubt sleeps easier with Peresvet volunteers among their pilgrims, not everyone approves of the increased concern with health and safety. Vladimir Krupin, a writer and local celebrity who believes that democracy is “killing Russia,” cites one of the women who continued to make the pilgrimage throughout the Soviet persecutions: “Ambulances came to meet the procession around 1994. And straight away people began to feel bad. Margarita – you will of course have heard of her, she made the pilgrimage 70 times – she said that if they weren’t here, people wouldn’t feel bad. But they see the ambulances and collapse immediately.” When there is no other option but to rely on the Holy Spirit for support, pilgrims keep walking.
According to Sergei, the Peresvet volunteer, the number of casualties has indeed increased, but not because medical services are more visible or even simply because pilgrims are more numerous. “The fact of the matter is that earlier pilgrims were better prepared, morally and spiritually. They walked with faith in the Almighty. Now there are a lot of people who themselves don’t know where and why they are walking. For many it’s simply a tourist excursion, an adventure. Many come for a break in the countryside, some for company’s sake, others are forced along by their parents. Therefore, there are more demands on us, and on the doctors.”
Today pilgrims are greeted with biscuits and cups of water – even hot tea and pies in some of the villages – but locals have not always been so hospitable. In the Soviet era, pilgrims were castigated as locusts destroying the newly planted crops, or as charlatans deceiving honest workers with their talk of miracles. Under Khrushchev the procession was banned, Velikoretskoye church was closed and the holy spring boarded up. The mere handful of pilgrims – mostly local women – who attempted the journey were hunted down with dogs. This bitter legacy is reflected in the fact that, when the pilgrimage was once again permitted, barely any of the villages the procession passed through welcomed the pilgrims. Father Vladimir recalls searching for somewhere to sleep one night in the early nineties, with a child under one arm and a semi-paralyzed grandfather in tow. Turned away from every door, eventually “a family of Azerbaijanis took pity on us, and took us in. Not Russians, not even Orthodox Christians, but Muslims... They fed us well, and wouldn’t take a kopek from us.”
Many locals now willingly host pilgrims – the lucky ones may get a bed or sofa, but most arrange themselves, sardine style, on the floors of living rooms, attics, or barns. Churches and schools are also opened, so that pilgrims can have somewhere dry, if not warm, to sleep. Olga, a soft-spoken woman who works in a local kindergarten, is caring for 30 pilgrims in a house that has been loaned to the local monastery for the duration of the Velikoretskoye festivities. “Naturally, we have to feed the pilgrims. It’s a good work – earlier this doing of good works was a tradition, people just did it… we are doing it because the abbot has asked us to.”
Olga and her helpers see their good works as “obedience” to the church, using monastic terminology to explain their role. That they have been asked to help does not diminish the fact that for days they have shopped and hunted down extra crockery, prepared soup and buckwheat porridge. On June 6, when the small village of Velikoretskoye is inundated with pilgrims (many arriving in buses to join those who have arrived on foot), they keep the bathhouse – a traditional wooden affair in the garden – heated, and quietly feed pilgrims in shifts on the verandah at the back of the house. “Everything is changed by the procession, not just those who walk it, but those who take in pilgrims too,” Father Vladimir muses, considering how things have changed in the last decade. “Everyone has become kinder.”
The potential of the pilgrimage to transform those involved with it is welcomed by the church, and Father Alexander sees it as “a very powerful tool for catechism… You may start the procession not knowing how to pray – some even join not knowing how to cross themselves – but after walking the whole way, you return a different person.” This “walking Sunday school” offers, Father Alexander believes, an informal and supportive environment in which to learn Christian practices. Orthodox church services are long and complicated, and the numerous reprimands dished out by the self-appointed guardians of Orthodox behavior found in most parishes can put off less experienced worshippers. The Velikoretskoye pilgrimage, although punctuated by liturgies and regular prayers, is a more relaxed affair, and those on the spiritual and physical margins of the procession don’t have to join in with everything.
Many initially join the pilgrimage to test their physical strength, or out of curiosity, but are drawn back year after year. The process of “becoming churched,” of moving from curiosity to regular church attendance and an “Orthodox lifestyle,” is – local librarian Tatyana believes – a gradual one, and “everyone travels at their own speed.” Although Tatyana’s grandparents were born in Vyatka well before the Revolution, she first heard about the Velikoretskoye pilgrimage from a local author. Her first procession of the cross, in 1996, “wasn’t that of a believer, but that of an ethnologist: to understand the sort of local tradition that a person working in the local history department of the town library should know about. So it was a strictly academic interest. And I can’t say that on the second procession I began to be ‘churched’ either… It’s a long path to God, along which you somehow or other make your way.” Tatyana started taking her son along with her when he was 11 or 12. Now, at the age of 20, she says, he goes by choice, “although not every year.”
Lyubov found herself recalling her grandmother, a deeply religious woman who lived in a village seven or so kilometers from Velikoretskoye. “When I walked over that ground… I understood that my ancestors walked here, my grandmother, my great grandmother. And I suddenly understood that I am that link in my line, in my family. My grandmother, my great grandmother, gave to me, and I must give to someone. And that chain doesn’t break… and the procession of the cross is that kind of chain.”
The number of children and young people on the pilgrimage is testimony to the success of pilgrims like Tatyana and Lyubov, and the diocesan clergy, in ensuring that the next generation of “the Vyatka land” continue to fulfill their ancestors’ promise to St. Nicholas.
Yet the revival of the pilgrimage has significance beyond Kirov region, and not simply because the Patriarch deems it of national importance. Nadezhda, a pilgrim from Samara, highlighted the modern miracle of Velikoretskoye – if in the Soviet era police cars barricaded the route so that pilgrims could not access the riverside shrine, today pilgrims are escorted by policemen, and barricades stop the traffic so that pilgrims can pass in and out of Kirov safely. Local government authorities, the police and other state employees work in concert with the clerical hierarchy to ensure that the pilgrimage prospers, and in this the Velikoretskoye procession reflects a broader trend.
The Russian Orthodox Church is on the march, metaphorically and – in some senses – literally reclaiming Russian soil. This year legislation was drafted that promises to return to religious institutions property confiscated by the Bolsheviks. In reviving processions, the Church is reminding Russian society of its Orthodox heritage by very publicly re-enacting it – they travel through what is now predominantly secular space, halting traffic in city centers, passing though villages without functioning churches, praying at springs and semi-ruined buildings which once had religious significance but were desecrated or demolished during the Soviet period. The processions are gradually (Why hurry, with eternity before us?) transforming the landscape, just as surely as they are transforming the pilgrims themselves. RL
* A hymn celebrating a saint, the Mother of God, a church feast, or one of the persons of the Holy Trinity.
Holding Out: Khlynov, as Kirov was known until 1374, after which it became Vyatka, was founded in 1181 and mostly retained its independence from Moscow until 1459.
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