PREFACE

My interest in Gleb Yakunin emanated from two sources. First, this interest began during the writing of my biography of Father Aleksandr Men. The two became friends in their student years and continued when both were young priests in the early 1960s. A few short passages about Yakunin could be found in books about religious dissidents in the Khrushchev and Brezhnev periods, but with few exceptions, little substantial information about Yakunin appeared in print beyond his protests over the Soviet state’s persecution of religious believers. His association with Aleksandr Men and the letters Yakunin wrote to Western leaders raise many questions. What motivations lay behind the actions and positions he took? What political and religious context underlay them and produced the consequences that followed? Why did the Soviet government and powerful members of the Orthodox hierarchy go to such lengths to disparage Yakunin and erase his memory from the history of his time?

The second reason relates to an initial encounter with Gleb Yakunin. In May 2007, thanks to the assistance of his friend and colleague, the Russian scholar Elena Volkova, I interviewed Yakunin in an apartment in the Moscow suburbs. The interview took place over most of an afternoon. Although the purpose of our conversation primarily focused on his relationship with Aleksandr Men, it could not have avoided touching on various aspects of Yakunin’s own life and perspectives. The person I interviewed did not match the stereotypes of him portrayed earlier in Soviet and post-Soviet accounts as a quarrelsome, ambitious, self-serving, and judgmental individual, but a mild-mannered, open spirited, and humble person, who had a lively sense of humor and a curiosity about all manner of subjects. He made no effort at self-aggrandizement. When asked whether he intended to write an autobiographical account of his many exploits, he rejected that possibility. He had no desire to relive the past, but in the little time he had left, he hoped to contribute in some small way to Russia’s future. He expressed neither the wish nor the will to write his story, but hoped that someone else might have an interest in his saga and his efforts to defend the constitutional rights of those who were persecuted in an extremely harsh political environment.