Александр Мень: Жизнь, Творчество и Трагическая Смерть Священника и Диссидента

Russian Orthodox priest and human rights activist

Alexander Vladimirovich Men (Александр Владимирович Мень; 22 January 1935 – 9 September 1990) was a Soviet Russian Orthodox priest, dissident, theologian, biblical scholar and writer on theology, the history of religion, the fundamentals of Christian doctrine, and Orthodox worship. Men wrote dozens of books (including his magnum opus, History of Religion: In Search of the Way, the Truth and the Life, the seventh volume of which, entitled Son of Man, served as the introduction to Christianity for thousands of citizens in the Soviet Union); baptized hundreds if not thousands; founded an Orthodox open university; opened one of the first Sunday schools in Russia as well as a charity group at the Russian Children's Hospital. His influence is still widely felt and his legacy continues to grow among Christians both in Russia and abroad. He was murdered early on a Sunday morning, on 9 September 1990, by an ax wielding assailant outside his home in Семхоз, Russia. The circumstances of the murder remain unclear.

Men's father, Volf Gersh Leibovich (Vladimir Grigoryevich) Men, was born in 1902 in Kiev and, as a child, studied at a religious Jewish school, "remembered Hebrew, read the prophets by heart," but "was a non religious person," "graduated from two universities, worked chief engineer of a textile factory." Men's maternal ancestors, originally from Poland, lived in Russia since the 18th century. His grandmother, Cecilia Vasilevskaya, and grandfather, Odessa resident Semyon (Solomon) Ilyich Tsuperfein, met in Switzerland while studying at the Faculty of Chemistry at the University of Bern. There, in Bern, in 1908, their daughter Yelena (Alexander's mother) was born. After graduating from university, Semyon, Cecilia, and their daughter lived in Paris. In 1914, during his arrival in Russia, Semyon was mobilized, and the family settled in Kharkov. Yelena Semyonovna Men (nee Tsuperfein) was drawn to Christianity from a young age. She studied the Orthodox faith at the Kharkov private gymnasium. As a high school student, she left for Moscow to live with her grandmother Anna Osipovna Vasilevskaya; in 1934, she married Volf. When Men was six years old, his father was arrested by the NKVD. His father spent more than a year under guard and then was assigned to labor in the Ural Mountains. Men studied at the Moscow Fur Institute in 1955 and transferred to Иркутский государственный аграрный университет имени А. А. Ежевского from which he was expelled in 1958 due to his religious beliefs. A month after his expulsion, 1 June 1958, he was ordained a deacon and sent to the Церковь Покрова Пресвятой Богородицы (Акулово) in Akulovo.

On 1 Septemeber 1960, Men became a priest upon graduating from the Leningrad Theological Seminary. His consecration took place at the Donskoy Monastery. Men was appointed second priest in the
Церковь Покрова Пресвятой Богородицы в Петровском Княжищеве in Петровское (село, Наро Фоминский район), where a year later he became rector of the temple. In 1965, he completed his studies at Moscow Theological Academy. In 1964 and 1965, Men's father was investigated in connection with his acquaintance with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Men became a leader with considerable influence and a good reputation among Christians both locally and abroad, among Roman Catholics and Protestants, as well as Orthodox. He served in a series of parishes near Moscow. Starting in the early 1970s, Men became a popular figure in Russia's religious community, especially among the intelligentsia. Men was harassed by the KGB for his active missionary and evangelistic efforts; in 1974, Yuri Andropov wrote a letter to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union about the "ideological struggle of the Vatican against the USSR," where he wrote: "A group of pro Catholic minded priests, headed by A. Men (Moscow Oblast), in their theological works pushes through the idea that only Catholicism can be the ideal of church life. These works, illegally exported abroad, are published by the Catholic publishing house Life with God (Belgium) and are then sent for distribution in the USSR." An article published in the Trud newspaper in the spring of 1986 accused him of attempting to create an "anti Soviet underground" under the auspices of Archpriest John Meyendorff, of organizing "illegal religious matinees" and of personally voicing "slide films of a religious propaganda nature, which he illegally distributed among believers." On 11 May 1988, Men's first public lecture took place in the hall of the Institute of Steel and Alloys. As Кравецкий, Александр Геннадьевич noted, "the organizers were completely amazed that a church theme could attract a full hall without any advertising." In the late 1980s, he utilised the mass media to proselytize (he was offered to host a nationally televised program on religion); his days and nights were full of teaching and lecturing at packed lecture halls.

According to Men, "the history of world religiosity begins not with Christianity, but much earlier. Christianity is the highest point in the development of religious experience." He wrote: "The Good News brought by the gospel was a response not only to the aspirations of the people of the era of Augustus and Tiberius. In Christianity, the long world historical process of the religious quest of mankind has ended. Over the centuries, people have walked along countless roads and paths; they tested and weighed almost everything that the human spirit was able to grasp from world denying mysticism to God denying materialism. And only when these paths were traversed and the search was exhausted, did the 'fullness of time' come, to use biblical language. The Revelation appeared to the world the greatest mystery; the path to a perfect life was shown to man." In the introduction to History of Religion, Men characterizes the basic principle of the presentation of the material: "we will seek the truth together with an animist, Buddhist, or Greek thinker, which will help us to grasp the true dynamics of religions that prepared the world for the appearance of the God man. The movement towards this center, or peak, is a truly spectacular spectacle; by following it, we will be able to better understand the meaning of Christianity itself." Moreover, Men hopes that "if the proposed series of books helps readers see in the history of religions not a collection of errors, but streams of rivers carrying their waters into the ocean of the New Testament, the author's goal will be achieved". Men positioned his attitude towards antiquity and paganism as Christian: "even in paganism you will find a presentiment and anticipation of the Good News. It is not for nothing that the Apostle Paul made the altar of the "Unknown God" the starting point of his sermon in Athens. However, this kind of dialogue will often be replaced by a compromise with aspects of ancient beliefs that are alien to the Gospel."

Many Orthodox people positively evaluate the activities and works of Men. Arkady Mahler noted in 2010: "The number of people who came to the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate thanks to the sermons of Father Alexander Men is always greater than we can imagine. Many of them now admit, in a half whisper, "in fact, it was Men who brought me to the Church from the very beginning," and look away, as if apologizing for something. Moreover, we are talking not only about the "intelligentsia" Father Alexander was a real people's preacher, quite ordinary people from all over the Soviet empire sought him out, because it was from his texts, randomly found among acquaintances of their acquaintances, that they first learned about God." Archpriest Ткачёв, Андрей Юрьевич positively assessed the work of Men: "Men was great: he took on the heaviest burden working with atheistic intellectuals." In February 2021, Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeev) allowed the canonization of Men: "Father Alexander Men was an outstanding preacher, catechist, and missionary of his time. His death was tragic, and I think that if it is proven that it was martyrdom, he can be canonized as a martyr."