Жажда чуда: деревенский интеллигент в годы испытаний

Abstract

The article is devoted to the historical reconstruction of the spiritual experience of the priest Feodor Alexandrovich Yegorov. The materials of archival-investigative case № 21183, stored in the fund 643/2 of Perm State Archive of Social and Political History have been the resource of the article. The complexity of the subject and the scattered nature of the documentary evidence suggest the use of the phenomenological instruments and K. Ginzburg's evidence paradigm. The formation of A.F. Yegorov's personality began against the background of the "era of wars and revolutions", and ended approximately in the "year of the great turning point", which determines the chronological framework of the study. Prior to the revolution of 1917 being the son of a simple craftsman he was able to make a career and became a teacher in a parochial school. F.A. Yegorov became a typical representative of the rural intelligentsia. During the Civil War he found himself in Irkutsk "retreating with the Whites." There he managed to enter the university. Surviving testimonies of that time characterize F.A. Yegorov as a man indifferent to religion or even an atheist. In 1926 he survived his conversion to the Orthodox faith and became a sacristan in one of the churches in Kungur area. From that moment a distinctly mystical component was fixed in his spiritual experience. His new-found faith allowed him to see miracles everywhere,and his contemplation of the miracle strengthened his faith. After becoming a priest, F.A. Yegorov (together with his confessor, N. I. Krylov) took an irreconcilable stand against the church policy of Metropolitan Sergius Stragorodsky. His ecclesiastical dissidence and inner experience of contemplating miracles eventually led him to division of the clergy into "graceful" and "unblessed”. In the article it is drawn a parallel between the fate of Priest F. Yegorov and Archpriest I. Kotelnikov, who was written about by the author earlier.