How I Was An Altar BoyI not only encountered the anti-Soviet underground. I also encountered the Red Church – an important part of the Soviet Union.
At the age of four, during Easter Week, I found myself at the altar for the first time. In the church of the Consolation of All Sorrows, which resembled a stone cake, large and resonant, with a round dome and dramatic marble angles on the walls inside.
Years later I recreate this picture for myself.
Archbishop Kiprian was a true actor (by profession and calling). A grey, short, stout wizard. He liked the theater, restaurants and the bathhouse. Kiprian was Soviet and worldly, although they said he was passionately devout. He was a charming sort of pushy holiday-maker. He went up to the pulpit and denounced the neutron bomb, which kills peopl
