My first conscious memory of him dates back to the war. We (there were three brothers) together with our mother were evacuated in the city of Bugulma. And in 1942 or 1943 our father arrived there; he served in one of the army newspapers.
And now I remember this scene. We - father, Alexey and I - are standing in the courtyard of the house where we lived. The father is in the uniform of a major, he holds a pistol in his hand and shoots towards the woodpile. And after each shot, Alexey and I run up to the firewood and look for traces of bullets...
The next memory dates back to the summer of 1945. Our family then rented a dacha in Valentinovka, near Moscow. And in one of the nearby houses lived Alexander Vertinsky with his wife and daughters, and he sometimes sang for his neighbors. And so Alexey, who was seventeen years old, skillfully imitated Vertinsky’s singing.
In those years, my father was somewhat concerned about the future fate of his stepson. Watching how he yearned to become an artist, Viktor Ardov feared that he would become a typical representative of the acting tribe. But the fears were not justified; Batalov never belonged to the theatrical bohemia.
His stepfather called young Alexei “the people’s artist of our apartment.” And in 1969, on the day when he was awarded the title of national, Ardov said:
So much for “the people of our apartment”...
Alexey was an unusually gifted person. He drew and painted beautifully with oil paints. The large portrait of Akhmatova he created was the decoration of our apartment. He wrote poetry, and Akhmatova approved of it. I remember she quoted his lines: “The sea always butts the rocks // With the white forehead of a blue wave...”
We can say that his professional career was quite successful, he was in demand, glorified and awarded. But in a country like ours, everything could be different.
In the afterword to one of my books, Batalov wrote: “To a modern reader, our life on Bolshaya Ordynka may seem quite carefree. But this is only at a superficial glance.
In Roman Timenchik's book "Anna Akhmatova in the 1960s" an official memo from the Minister of State Security V.S. Abakumov was published, this text is called "On the need to arrest the poetess Akhmatova" (sent to Stalin on July 14, 1950).
There we are talking about the fact that she “carried out hostile work against the Soviet state”, “grouped hostile literary workers around her and organized anti-Soviet gatherings”... And the last phrase is: “MGB (Ministry of State Security - Ed.) of the USSR considers it necessary to arrest AKHMATOV. I ask for your permission."
Let us imagine for a moment that Stalin agreed with the opinion of his minister. Not only Akhmatova, but also my mother and my stepfather would have gone to the Gulag... In the summer of 1950, I graduated from the Studio School and was accepted into the Art Theater... There is no doubt that I would have been arrested too.
But now, in my declining years, I feel neither anger nor hatred. I can repeat, after Pushkin, the words that the greatest poet wrote four months before his tragic death (letter to P. Chaadaev):
“... I swear on my honor, for nothing in the world I would not want to change my fatherland or have another history other than the history of our ancestors, the way God gave it to us.”
The video version of the program is available on our YouTube channel at the link:
Leonid Velekhov : Hello, Svoboda is on the air - a radio that is not only heard, but also seen. In the studio of Leonid Velekhov, this is a new episode of the “Cult of Personality” program. It is not about history, not about the tyrants of the past, it is about our time, about real individuals, their destinies, actions, their views on the life around them. Today, for the first time in the “Cult of Personality” program, there is a minister of a cult. But the archpriest Mikhail Ardov He is dear to us not only because of his affiliation with faith and church. However, first things first.
Hello, Mikhail Viktorovich. I am very glad to see you in our studio.
Mikhail Ardov : I am also very happy, because I am a long-time admirer of Radio Liberty, a listener for many years. The main thing is that when I served in the villages, I had an advantage - there was no jamming there. This was such an outlet for me.
(Video about M. Ardov. Voice-over text:
Mikhail Ardov was destined to become an artist, like his mother, actress of the Central Theater of the Soviet Army Nina Olshevskaya, or a writer, like his father, the famous Soviet feuilletonist Viktor Ardov. Moreover, two of his brothers, Alexei Batalov and Boris Ardov, followed the artistic path. And in the very family nest where he spent his childhood and youth, an apartment in a house on Bolshaya Ordynka, such a bohemian atmosphere reigned, such people visited that it was difficult to choose a different fate.
And he fell out of the nest. At the age of twenty-seven, Mikhail Ardov was baptized, which then, in the early 60s of the last century, was not just an extraordinary, but a defiant step. And then he decided to devote his life to serving the church. However, here too he fell out of the nest – now the nest of the canonical Russian Orthodox Church: he went into schism. Such a rebellious, storm-seeking nature under the appearance of a calm, gentle man with eyes radiating kindness.
However, in fact, the bohemian-artistic past never lets go of this twice-dissenter. “The legendary Ordynka,” as Anna Akhmatova called the house of his parents, and the shadows of the greats who stayed here, primarily Akhmatova herself, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Boris Pasternak, Dmitry Shostakovich, Joseph Brodsky - all this remained in history thanks to the wonderful memoirs of Mikhail Viktorovich.)
Studio.
Leonid Velekhov : I would like to start our conversation with a question that is not so tactless, but perhaps even blasphemous in some sense. Do you regret that you dedicated your life to serving the church and faith?
Mikhail Ardov : Not one minute! Never!
Leonid Velekhov : I would not dare to ask such a question to anyone from your class of clergy. And I ask this to you, because from the cradle, your childhood, then your youth, were surrounded by a bright, colorful life, talented, beautiful people, in general, life, similar, in a sense, to theater, to a carnival. And exchange all this for a cassock and prayer ?..
Mikhail Ardov : There is one point here. Akhmatova played the most important, leading role in my destiny and in the formation of my personality. She was a believer. However, she very rarely spoke on these topics. For me, she was the first intelligent, intelligent believer, an authorized representative of great Russian literature. She taught me to love Pushkin, and Gogol, and Dostoevsky, in whom, we know, the religious element is important, some more, some less. And that’s how I slowly got involved. I remember when in 1964 I was baptized in the Peredelkino church ...
Leonid Velekhov : Wow, how good!
Mikhail Ardov : Yes, and it was also good because there, due to the fact that the patriarch’s dacha was nearby, his then secretary went to great lengths and made a real font. I was baptized by full immersion, as expected ...
Leonid Velekhov : Not like usual for adults - they just sprinkle it now ...
Mikhail Ardov : Yes. And I remember an autumn evening. I met her. They brought her in a car, I took her by the arm and led her through the dark courtyard. And I told her on the way: “Anna Andreevna, I was baptized.” She said only one phrase: “It’s so good that you told me this.” That's all.
Leonid Velekhov : And besides Akhmatova’s influence, which generally led you through life to a large extent, what made you make this decision, and even in a historical situation in which such things, to put it mildly, were not welcomed?
Mikhail Ardov : Firstly, I was completely fed up, in Russian, despite this root, with the literary day labor that I was doing. True, at Lenfilm, thanks to my relationship with Batalov, I managed to be a co-author of two scripts, something for the radio, something else... But I was already very tired of all this. And then, I did not immediately understand this reason: coming to church was internal emigration. We fell out of Soviet life. We are outcasts. There were two reasons.
My father did not live until 1980, when I received ordination. But when I told him that I simply couldn’t do this nonsense anymore, he told me a wonderful phrase: “You can’t play football with a piece of bread.” He was a wise man.
Leonid Velekhov : But there is also such a prejudice that when a person is baptized as an adult, his life changes dramatically for the better or for the worse. Do you feel like your life has changed for the better after baptism?
Mikhail Ardov : I didn't feel it .
Leonid Velekhov : Were you not afraid when you were baptized and, even more so, when you decided to devote yourself to the faith and the church in the full sense of the word, what would they call baptism?
Mikhail Ardov : No.
Leonid Velekhov : Wasn’t it like that?
Mikhail Ardov : Since my mother is half Polish, half Russian, then, accordingly...
Leonid Velekhov : That's right, Jews count according to their mother.
Mikhail Ardov : Yes. Even, it seems, my grandmother did not know Yiddish, and my father did not know. This was absolutely not the case. Well, once in some cases there were some echoes of the fact that I was not without this blood, but never anything concrete.
Leonid Velekhov : How did your mother, who was an absolutely wonderful person and a good actress, react to this decision of yours? She lived to see you become a priest.
Mikhail Ardov : Yes! Moreover, I have already completely converted her to church. She confessed.
Leonid Velekhov : Have you joined your mother in the church?
Mikhail Ardov : Yes, but this is already in the very last years. She just took it very well.
Leonid Velekhov : But your mother was baptized.
Mikhail Ardov : Yes, sure.
Leonid Velekhov : And, as far as I know, under very interesting circumstances related to Frunze.
Mikhail Ardov : Yes, because Frunze was a friend of my grandmother. I remember when my mother told me this. We were sitting in the dining room on Ordynka (me and several of my friends), and I suddenly asked: “Who was your godfather?” She said: "Frunze." We almost fell! ( Laughter in the studio) So, I thought that I should make a film about Frunze called "Godfather". ( Laughter in the studio)
Leonid Velekhov : Amazing! When a person really finds himself drawn into History with a capital H, the loop, the hook - how everything clings , Yes?
Mikhail Ardov : My father had a younger brother, Mark Efimovich. He was a doctor, candidate of sciences. Unfortunately, he died quite early, in my opinion, in 1962, being younger than my father. And his last position was - he was in charge of the surgical department of the hospital for old Bolsheviks on the Enthusiasts Highway, not far from the House of Stage Veterans. It was the 50s. Old Bolsheviks and Bolsheviks returned from exile. And these were his patients. And he said that, for example, an old Bolshevik woman said to him: “Mark Efimovich, could you transfer me alone?” ( Laughter in the studio) He told her: “I beg you, leave your prison terminology - in a single ward!” So, when they gathered, they discussed how Soviet history could have gone if Stalin had not seized power. And then one day my late uncle asked: “Well, okay. If not Stalin, then who could it be?” And they said in one voice: “Frunze.” Therefore, his fate was sealed.
Leonid Velekhov : We remember Pilnyak’s “The Tale of the Unextinguished Moon,” where everything is told how, on the orders of Stalin, Frunze was stabbed to death on the operating table. When they opened him up, they discovered that the ulcer for which he was operated on had healed in the Caucasus, everything was healed. Everything about him was healthy.
Mikhail Ardov : Yes.
Leonid Velekhov : He was, of course, a strong competitor and a bright figure.
But now let us plunge from the secular world into the church world. Now all these intrigues and conflicts associated with the Russian Orthodox Church are in plain sight. In Soviet times, all this was completely hidden from us. Then the picture was such that, on the one hand, the church was oppressed by Soviet power, on the other hand, it was all saturated, stuffed with employees of the bodies known to us. In what, according to your recollections of that time, were there honest, decent people and two-faced and double-dealing people in the Russian Orthodox Church?
Mikhail Ardov : I can't say that. I was a village priest. I knew that there were recruits there, and there were also sent. And even one KGB officer, now deceased, told me that there was a terrible story with his comrade. He was ordered to become a priest. And his wife said - I won’t be a priest. If you become a priest, we'll get a divorce. Can you imagine the classic conflict between love and duty?!
Leonid Velekhov : Shakespearean collision! And what did he decide?
Mikhail Ardov : I do not know this. I was not informed. They were also sent to the seminary. There was such a Konstantin Mikhailovich Kharchev ...
Leonid Velekhov : Chairman of the Committee on Religious Affairs.
Mikhail Ardov : Council for Religious Affairs. And now, when this Council ended, he spoke and gave interviews. And he said the following: “We have been fighting the church for 70 years. In particular, how? We arranged it so that the most key and important positions were occupied by the most immoral and corrupt people. ( Laughter in the studio) And now we want these people to give us a spiritual revival!”
Leonid Velekhov : What witty cynicism.
Mikhail Ardov : Yes. I just gasped. That's the whole diagnosis for you. They kept it all under control, of course.
Leonid Velekhov : But there were still a lot of sincere, honest and decent people.
Mikhail Ardov : Yes, definitely! This was Comrade Stalin's project, mainly aimed at foreign countries. After all, he gave a new nickname to the church. It was never called the Russian Orthodox Church - Russian. And the Russian Orthodox Church was aimed at fighting the Russian Church Abroad.
Leonid Velekhov : When and why did you start writing? To what extent did the paternal genes work? In your youth, didn’t you want to be like your father, who, in the memories of many, including my parents, on the one hand, was a Soviet feuilletonist, and on the other, very bright, charming, with an absolutely amazing sense of humor, a bon vivant, very elegant , a favorite of women?
Mikhail Ardov : You see, the 50s - 60s, in which I could develop as a writer, are not the 20s or the early 30s. In those days, he could make friends with Zoshchenko, Ilf and Petrov. They had magazines - "Chudak" Koltsovsky ...
Leonid Velekhov : "Crocodile" ...
Mikhail Ardov : Yes. And in my time it was all already dried out, so tortured. It was absolutely unrealistic to realize oneself in this environment. It was necessary to join the party, write the corresponding industrial novels or scripts. What is this play about? About the love and friendship of Soviet people. That's what you could write about.
Leonid Velekhov : There was another term - about the struggle between the good and the best. ( Laughter in the studio)
Mikhail Ardov : Yes. Good with excellent.
Leonid Velekhov : And now I want to talk about your famous parental house - the house on Ordynka. I want to start with Anna Andreevna Akhmatova. How did your parents' friendship with Akhmatova begin? How did your house on Ordynka turn into, essentially, her second home? I read from Viktor Efimovich in his memoir about Akhmatova that in the period from the mid-1930s to 1966 she lived with you almost more time than in Leningrad...
Mikhail Ardov : No, in the 30s it wasn’t like that, but starting from the 40s, especially after the famous decree of 1946 and in 1949 the arrest of Lev Nikolaevich, who was immediately transferred to Lefortovo, she really spent more time on Ordynka, than in Leningrad.
Leonid Velekhov : How did it happen? What brought you so close?
Mikhail Ardov : It happened very simply. Now, alas, the writer's house has been demolished in Nashchokinsky Lane, which was Furmanov Street, where Mandelstam lived in one entrance on the 5th floor, and my parents lived on the 1st floor. And there is such evidence from Emma Grigorievna Gershtein. My mother was pretty. Therefore, Mandelstam, when he took some guest to his place on the 5th floor, on the 1st floor he rang our doorbell and my mother opened it. He said: “A pretty girl lives here.” ( Laughter in the studio) And he led his guest upstairs.
Leonid Velekhov : He was a spontaneous person.
Mikhail Ardov : Yes, absolutely! And such good neighborly relations were formed. And then one day Akhmatova arrived with her son Lev Nikolaevich. The apartments were tiny. And there was no room for two. And they asked Leva to spend the night and stay with my parents for 2-3 days. As his father writes, apparently Leva told his mother that the Ardovs were nice people. Then they had a dinner where they were together, Lev Nikolaevich and Anna Andreevna. And then what happened, as Anna Akhmatova said, happened. Mandelstam was arrested. And she couldn't stop there anymore. And then what was interesting was this. My mother truly became her best friend for many years. Three days before her death, Akhmatova inscribed the book “The Running of Time” - “To my Nina, who knows everything about me.”
Leonid Velekhov : Amazing!
Mikhail Ardov : When she first moved in, my parents were exhausted from respect. And then one evening they were leaving somewhere, and Akhmatova said: “And I’ll sit at home and work.” And the father said from the doorway: “The rhyming dictionary is on the shelf on the left.” ( Laughter in the studio) She laughed and the ice melted. So they joked later.
Leonid Velekhov : They came out on the same wavelength.
Mikhail Ardov : Yes Yes.
Leonid Velekhov : Both had a good sense of humor.
Mikhail Ardov : She had a wonderful sense of humor. When we already lived on Ordynka, my father loved to walk along Pyatnitskaya. All the sellers there knew him. He brought some crushed sweets. And so he somehow came and said: “Again, the candies are crushed,” to which Akhmatova said: “Are they even crushed in front of you?” ( Laughter in the studio). At such an everyday level...
Leonid Velekhov : Nevertheless, not to mention the first small one, but the apartment on Ordynka was also not a palace, was it?
Mikhail Ardov : There was also an intermediate apartment. After Nashchokinsky, my parents received a 2-room apartment in Lavrushinsky. I was brought from the maternity hospital to Lavrushinsky in 1937. By the way, this was in the same entrance as Pasternak, who had two apartments there, I must say.
And here are two stories. The first is connected with Pasternak. I was a newborn, my almost same age was now Pasternak’s late son Lenya. And my parents had scales for weighing babies. And Boris Leonidovich came down, took these scales once a week to weigh Lenya, and brought them back. And thus some kind of relationship began. And one day Pasternak said to his father: “Give me one of your books.” My father gave him some collection of stories. And the next time Pasternak came, he said a great phrase: “You know, I really liked it. It seems to me that you could impose yourself on the era to a much greater extent.” ( Laughter in the studio) Here!
And then my father exchanged this apartment for an apartment on Ordynka, which is considered to be a 4-room apartment. But there is one room four square meters. This room was called "Alyosha's room", but Akhmatova lived there. By the way, there she met and became acquainted with Tsvetaeva.
Leonid Velekhov : But weren’t her such frequent visits burdensome? And she was a person... such a queen.
Mikhail Ardov : Considering how much we all revered and loved her, this was considered in the order of things. She came - Alyoshka was evicted for this. Then later, when she began to earn money through transfers properly, she gave Alyosha her first old Moskvich as compensation. Alyosha called this car "Anechka" in honor of her.
Leonid Velekhov : Royal gift.
Mikhail Ardov : Yes. Alyosha was married to Ira Rotova at that time. And they went to Irina’s mother and stepfather when Anna Andreevna arrived. Everyone huddled together then.
Leonid Velekhov : I remembered how Lev Nikolayevich Gumilyov loved to talk about her - “she reigned.”
Mikhail Ardov : No, not like that: “Mom, don’t be a king.”
Leonid Velekhov : Did she spend a lot of time at your house or not?
Mikhail Ardov : No! The fact is that only sometimes did this happen with some strangers to whom she wanted to inspire or show something. But in general, I read the best definition of it in this sense from a remarkably smart and talented person, Lydia Yakovlevna Ginzburg. There is a large book of her diaries and articles, published by Kushner, I think. This is a wonderful book. And there she writes about how she saw Akhmatova for the first time at a party. It was probably still the early 30s, maybe even the 20s. Her definition is absolutely accurate: “Akhmatova behaved like a queen deprived of her throne at a bourgeois resort.” ( Laughter in the studio)
Leonid Velekhov : What people they were! How they knew how to formulate everything precisely!
Mikhail Ardov : Yes. This is the best definition. She knew her worth. But the housekeepers we had probably considered her their best friend, because she spoke to everyone extremely friendly and politely. And many writers and other people considered themselves close friends of hers, because she behaved so friendly with them. For example, Margarita Iosifovna Aliger, or Natalya Iosifovna Ilyina. And she had friends - my mother and Maria Sergeevna Petrov, a wonderful poetess. And in St. Petersburg, maybe she had some. But I don't know those.
Leonid Velekhov : This, apparently, is real education, real aristocracy.
Mikhail Ardov : Certainly! Certainly! And she brought us up in such a way that she spoke to everyone very simply... Alexey Surkov patronized her, published her small collections...
Leonid Velekhov : Let us remind our audience, Alexey Surkov, one of the leaders of the Writers' Union of those times.
Mikhail Ardov : Yes. He was a poet himself. He understood her value and did what he could. Therefore, all the time she was negotiating on the phone with Surkov’s secretary Elena Avetovna and with his wife, in my opinion, Sofia Antonovna. And one day Akhmatova talked to Sofya Antonovna, hung up and said: “Anna Andreevna and Sofya Antonovna are almost from The Inspector General.” ( Laughter in the studio) She had such reactions.
Leonid Velekhov : What a sense of humor! But you had your own young company - both your brother and one.
Mikhail Ardov : We were not in company with Alyosha. He was much older.
Leonid Velekhov : There were also wonderful people there, including Alexander Pavlovich Nilin, who once sat in that chair. How did you young people look at her - idolize her, look into her mouth?
Mikhail Ardov : We treated her with incredible respect, but at the same time, since she valued humor so much, we sometimes entertained her with some of our own jokes. I remember she really appreciated Nekrasov for “Red Nose Frost.” She said that this is a great Russian poem because there is no influence of Pushkin in it. Because all other poems are almost suppressed by “Eugene Onegin”. And she loved these lines: “Whoever took off the plowman’s shirt // Stole the beggar’s bag.” I once walked past her and said: “Whoever took off the shirt from the hahal // Stole the beggar’s bag.” She began to laugh so much that she covered her face with her hands. It became awkward for her to laugh so much at that age. These are the kinds of things we did.
Leonid Velekhov : I read somewhere that Ilf somehow mistook her for your father’s mother-in-law.
Mikhail Ardov : I also recently read this in his notebook. He also lived in Lavrushinsky. And here’s the inscription: “I came in and saw an elderly woman. I thought how strict Victor’s mother-in-law is.” And it turned out to be Akhmatova. ( Laughter in the studio.)
Leonid Velekhov : What a bright, colorful and interesting life it was. What did Pasternak call the meetings in your house? "Train collision at Akhmatovka station?
Mikhail Ardov : Yes. But then the “train collision” was dropped. And just when a lot of people were supposed to come to her, she said: “Today is big Akhmatovka.”
Leonid Velekhov : Parents were also absolutely loyal to this, right?
Mikhail Ardov : Absolutely! Moreover, as a rule, “train collisions” rarely happened, and she received one person at a time in this small room. She was sitting on an ottoman, and there were two chairs there - one by the desk and the other by the door.
Leonid Velekhov : And you won’t put it there anymore.
Mikhail Ardov : No! Usually she received guests there one at a time. Twice in my memory Solzhenitsyn was there, but did not go into the hall. But she took some of them out into the common room, into the dining room, to give them tea.
Leonid Velekhov : Let's return to the meeting with Tsvetaeva. This, in my opinion, was not only their first, but also their last meeting?
Mikhail Ardov : No. A day or two later they met for the second time at Nikolai Ivanovich Khardzhiev’s in Maryina Roshcha. And Akhmatova has this in her notebooks. And it says that when they began to leave, while getting dressed, Tsvetaeva told how Pasternak, while in Paris, took her to help him buy a coat for Zinaida Nikolaevna. But at the same time he said: “You don’t have her luxurious breasts.”
Leonid Velekhov : What tactlessness, considering how Tsvetaeva was in love with him!
Mikhail Ardov : Yes. And I commented on this place in my notes so that it contains a wonderful short story - a bust of Zinaida Nikolaevna and three great poets: one said it, the other remembered it, and the third wrote it down. ( Laughter in the studio) But he was an absolute child. Complete infantilism...
Leonid Velekhov : Their relationship with Tsvetaeva is a very complex interweaving of everything in the world. She was still in love with him, but for him it had already turned into a purely poetic feeling. He was a passionate man.
But their meeting in your house, Akhmatova and Tsvetaeva, was not somehow joyful and cheerful...
Mikhail Ardov : She was completely unhappy.
Leonid Velekhov : Tsvetaeva was in serious condition.
Mikhail Ardov : Both. Efron had not yet been shot, but was already in prison, like Tsvetaeva’s daughter. And Akhmatova has a son.
Leonid Velekhov : And Punin too.
Mikhail Ardov : Well, Punin was no longer a husband.
Leonid Velekhov : Nevertheless, they lived in the same house, in the same apartment. And she also worked for him.
Mikhail Ardov : Yes. My mother treated them to something there and brought them some food there. As my mother recalls, Anna Andreevna, seeing Marina Ivanovna off, it was clear that she was touched by her grief. Then this is reflected in Akhmatova’s poems. She has a poem that begins: “Invisible, double, mockingbird... (...) // Then you scream from Marinka’s tower.” And the “Marinka Tower” in Kolomna – supposedly Marina Mnishek was imprisoned there.
"I returned home today,
Admire, dear arable lands,
What happened to me!
The abyss swallowed up my loved ones,
And my parents' house was looted..."
We are with you today, Marina,
We walk through the capital at midnight,
And behind us there are millions of them,
And there is no more silent procession...
And all around there are death knells
Yes, Moscow hoarse moans
Blizzards, our trail.
This is about that meeting in Maryina Roshcha.
Leonid Velekhov : My question is about the 1946 decree. As far as I know, your parents took a very active part in supporting Anna Andreevna.
Mikhail Ardov : Mom went to St. Petersburg and brought her back. That was a nice detail. From our house on Ordynka and the writer’s house in Lavrushinsky to the Novokuznetskaya metro station you need to go along the same Klementovsky Lane. And so, when my mother walked with Akhmatova, my mother said that if writers walked along Klementovsky, they crossed to the other side of this lane so as not to come into contact with her and not to greet her.
Leonid Velekhov : It was a difficult time for Anna Andreevna. But it seems, according to her recollections, she endured it stoically, somehow completely.
Mikhail Ardov : Regarding the resolution, she said that for Zoshchenko this, of course, is a tragedy, a collapse, but for her it is a repetition of what has been heard for many years. Yes, she accepted it stoically in a sense.
Leonid Velekhov : Zoshchenko was cut down and killed.
Mikhail Ardov : Yes. Then he had hope when the “thaw” began. He has arrived. I adored him and still love him very much. And then in 1954 there was a meeting with English students, where he said that there was injustice in the resolution. He got hit again. That's all.
Leonid Velekhov : He suffered a severe mental breakdown.
Mikhail Ardov : Yes. After the ruling, he visited us twice - once in 1954 and the last time shortly before his death in 1958. In 1954, they were still planning to found some kind of humorous magazine with Ardov. And then - bang! - and they applied it again. And he, apparently, began to have some kind of persecution mania. Because when he came, it was dinner... My mother says: “Misha, why don’t you eat anything?” He didn't eat anything at dinner. He said: “You see, Ninochka, what a strange story. I always feel like I’m going to be poisoned.” And he died... By the way, he wrote a lot about the death of Gogol. He died just like Gogol. Gogol also refused to eat.
Leonid Velekhov : I can’t help but ask about his relationship with your father. Because these are, as it were, two destinies, in some ways similar, in some ways opposite. My father was a successful writer...
Mikhail Ardov : Zoshchenko was a super-successful writer.
Leonid Velekhov : For the time being.
Mikhail Ardov : Yes, just until 1946, until the end of the war. My father admired him so much! He has a story about it - how he met him, how he looked at him. Zoshchenko just smiled and that’s all. And it was a very good story. One day they visited Evgeniy Petrovich Petrov. There was Zoshchenko, my father and Ilf and Petrov. And then they called from somewhere and invited Zoshchenko, Ilf and Petrov to speak. And take Zoshchenko and say: “Vitya, let’s go with us too.” And they got upset. Because they believed that they were Zoshchenko’s equal, and Ardov inferior. ( Laughter in the studio)
Leonid Velekhov : I can’t help but ask about one more guest of Ordynka, although a person of a completely different generation is Joseph Brodsky. What fate brought him to Ordynka?
Mikhail Ardov : And here's what. In 1962, I think, my mother, who came from Komarov from Anna Andreevna, said that four young poets had appeared there. Then Bobyshev called them “Akhmatov’s orphans.” Brodsky was among them. Mom told this story. Brodsky was already distributed in St. Petersburg samizdat. And then some young lady came to Akhmatova in Komarovo. And, by the way, she said: “I have all of Brodsky.” To which Akhmatova said: “How can you say all Brodsky when Brodsky is 22 years old?!” But at that moment the door opened and Brodsky entered, bringing two buckets of water. She said: “Here’s your whole Brodsky.” ( Laughter in the studio) And thanks to Akhmatova, he appeared with us.
Solomon Volkov has a large piece about the legendary Ordynka, where he describes our company, the feast with Akhmatova, and my parents. At the same time, he was an extremely delicate person. For example, if he had breakfast, he did not stay for lunch. And he was an absolute beggar. And then I earned something. And I fed him. We had a pretty decent kebab shop on Pyatnitskaya. And you could go through the passage yard. And we ate pretty decent meat there. And here we are walking through this passage yard. He tells me: “Mikhail! I started writing a poem.” And he began to read to me: “One day Beria comes to the Mausoleum. // And he sees that someone was rummaging through the box. there was none. Only an echo//Little audibly repeated - guts, guts." I say: “Wonderful! Simply excellent! Nothing more is needed.” He says: “And I thought that I should write further.” And further: “The Cheka is in motion. Abakumov...” I say: “No need, no need for anything! That’s it!”
Leonid Velekhov : I read his wonderful phrase when he was already preparing to leave, as he said that “it’s impossible to leave here, but you can’t live either.”
Mikhail Ardov : Yes. But they pushed him out.
Leonid Velekhov : And there you somehow met in the USA.
Mikhail Ardov : Yes once. This was just on the anniversary of Akhmatova’s death on March 5, 1995. Seeing me in a cassock, he could not resist saying: “What a masquerade!” ( Laughter in the studio) And then we went with him to his house.
Leonid Velekhov : He was an ironic man.
And now, having laughed it off, I want to talk about modern events, serious ones.
Mikhail Ardov : Fine.
Leonid Velekhov : You have been in opposition to the Russian Orthodox Church for many years. You often criticize her for certain actions and statements of the hierarchs. But that's not what I want to ask. This is the whole story with Ukraine. Firstly, how do you look at these events? Secondly, could the Russian Orthodox Church do something to resolve this conflict, to soften it, eliminate it, or maybe it did something that is unknown to us?
Mikhail Ardov : I'm very upset about this situation. Because we live in absolutely ugly times all over the world, and here it is especially ugly. And I see neither right nor wrong here. Ukraine is the product of Comrade Stalin, who first annexed the Donbass to the Poltava region and Kyiv, and then two more pieces of Poland and one piece of Austria-Hungary. Such a state cannot exist. Stalin, as Gorbachev once said, mined the entire country! In Georgia, who came up with Abkhazian autonomy? Who cut Ossetia into two parts? Who gave Karabakh to the Azerbaijanis? He did the same in Central Asia. Who gave the Yaik Cossacks to Kazakhstan? I have been to Samarkand twice. This is a wonderful city inhabited by Tajiks, which belongs to Uzbekistan. He mined the entire country. For what? In order to always have a reason to send punitive forces. On the one hand, I feel very sorry for the Ukrainians, the real ones, the right-bank ones. But on the other hand, why should these Donbass Russians learn Ukrainian and not use their own language?! This is all a complete nightmare. And there can be no way out of this.
It was not the Democrats who destroyed the Union, but the Communists who destroyed the Russian Empire. And this expression “Russian world” is a new invention. There was no Russian world in Russia. There was the Russian Empire. There was no nationality there either. There was only religion.
Leonid Velekhov : It was a unique empire that grew at its edges. She absorbed everything into herself.
Mikhail Ardov : Yes. As for the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, they cannot do anything.
Leonid Velekhov : Can't or don't want to?
Mikhail Ardov : Can not. They probably want something there, they receive some tasks, but they will not do anything. Because there are more believers in Ukraine than in Moscow, but not so much that this has any decisive significance.
Leonid Velekhov : Nevertheless. There's one thing I can't understand. There is a patriarch, a person of authority among believers. This is on the one hand. On the other hand, in the Catholic world there is a pope who travels on his missions. I remember that, one after another, three popes, beginning with John Paul II, participated in bringing tiny Cuba into the civilized world, extracting it from the isolation in which it found itself. They went to Cuba, where millions of believers listened to their sermons. As a result, the matter was crowned with such great success as rapprochement with the United States and the lifting of the blockade. And the current pope took an active part in this. Patriarch Kirill in the current Russian-Ukrainian situation - is it really impossible for him to go on a goodwill mission to Kiev?
Mikhail Ardov : There are at least three Orthodox churches there. Therefore, many people do not welcome his visits.
Leonid Velekhov : I remember how he was actually booed in Western Ukraine a few years ago.
Mikhail Ardov : This is not your dad.
Leonid Velekhov : The fact that the patriarch is “not your dad,” is this some kind of weakness of the Russian Orthodox Church?
Mikhail Ardov : No. On the contrary, it is the power of Orthodoxy that there is no and cannot be a pope.
Leonid Velekhov : I mean the authority of the individual, the authority of the figure.
Mikhail Ardov : Doesn't matter. The authority of the pope in the Catholic Church is not comparable to any bishop of the Orthodox Church. And this is the advantage of the Orthodox Church.
Leonid Velekhov : Why?
Mikhail Ardov : Yes, because it is cathedral. And the ecumenical patriarch has no power. But now it all ends.
Leonid Velekhov : And the dependence of the Russian Orthodox Church on the secular state, on the current political power - is this also, in your opinion, a unique feature of Orthodoxy?
Mikhail Ardov : No. The Russian Orthodox Church is the brainchild of Comrade Stalin. It was he who founded it in 1943, ordered the election of Sergius as patriarch, and all that. In the book that I gave you today, I have an article that in 1918, when the last legitimate Council of the Russian Orthodox Church elected a patriarch, it was a tactical victory, but a strategic defeat. Because it allowed Stalin to elect a patriarch in 1943. And with the help of bribes and gifts to the Greek bishops, they recognized everything. But this is not a completely canonical structure.
Leonid Velekhov : A non-canonical structure was still created by Peter - the Holy Synod.
Mikhail Ardov : Yes, that was a significant violation. However, not like this, not on this scale.
Leonid Velekhov : Do you think that Stalin interfered more rudely in the fate of the Orthodox Church than even Peter?
Mikhail Ardov : Certainly! There is one more point here. I had a man, a spiritual father, Archbishop Cyprian. He was a Stalinist and Sergianist. He was a Soviet patriot. He was a sincerely religious person. At one time he was the manager of the affairs of the Moscow Patriarchate. He said that in the Council for Religious Affairs it is much more convenient to deal with those who came there from the KGB, and not with those who came from the party bodies. Because the party organs had an idea, they hated the church, and the KGB men were realists. There was some rivalry, sometimes reaching the point of conflict, between the GB and the party. Sometimes the GB exterminated the party. Then Khrushchev imprisoned all the KGB generals, etc. But now we know who won this fight!
Leonid Velekhov : We know. Thank you for this wonderful conversation.
On the air of Svoboda - a radio that is not only heard, but also seen - you watched and listened to the new episode of the Cult of Personality program. Mikhail Ardov, a clergyman, intellectual, writer, guardian of not only the faith, but wonderful cultural traditions and legends of a bygone era, was our guest today.
Leonid Velekhov was with you, all the best to you, we will meet at the same place, at the same hour, in a week.
The Russian Orthodox Church has received a lot of attention in connection with the choice of a new patriarch. How can we explain this interest?
Andrey Kuraev: One of the reasons is that society misses unpredictable elections. In this case there is intrigue, it is interesting. The second reason is that for the first time the Russian Orthodox Church has the opportunity to choose not just a patriarch, but its future.
Mikhail Ardov: I think interest is fueled by television and the participation of top officials. It will be decided anyway by the presidential administration and some government structures.
Different from the face
Which candidate, in your opinion, is more promising for the Church?
Kuraev: In 1990, all the candidates were “seven from the casket, identical in appearance.” Neither society, nor even the Church, by and large, distinguished them much. Today, at least, it is clearly visible that one of the candidates has a bright personal characteristic - this is Metropolitan Kirill. He has a vision for the future of the Church, a program. And the fact that society has such an interest in seemingly purely church topics means that at least in part the Church managed to leave its ghetto and become part of civil society.
Then why does the suspicion arise that everything is decided in the Kremlin?
Ardov: For example, because when Patriarch Alexy died, Medvedev immediately interrupted his state visit. He was not going to a funeral, he was going to Moscow to take part in the appointment of a patriarchal locum tenens. This is how it seems to me and to some observers as well. The fact is that the Moscow Patriarchate, founded in 1943 by Stalin, Molotov and NKVD colonel Comrade Karpov, was from the very beginning conceived as a servant of the authorities. They created the Russian Orthodox Church absolutely in the image and likeness of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks). There still exists an all-powerful, self-forming, unelected and accountable to no one “Metropolitburo” and “General Secretary” - the patriarch.
In 1990, Alexy won by just a few votes. So, there were elections after all?
Kuraev: This is not about the fact that for the first time the patriarch is freely elected, but about the fact that for the first time not only the patriarch, but also the path of development of the Church is freely elected. In 1990, the Church was not yet free enough to determine its own development. Today we see a clear personal contrast between the main candidates - Metropolitan Kirill and Metropolitan Clement. The contrast is both intellectual and in matters of understanding what good is for the Church.
Who does the government support?
Kuraev: It is very fashionable today to believe out of habit that the Kremlin will control the elections. I ask a simple question: what technical capabilities does he have for this? The elections will be secret. In order to control secret elections, the electors must know in advance, before the start of voting, that the Great Terror has begun in the country, and if the wrong one is elected, Comrade Stalin will deal with all the electors, without going into detail about who voted how. Today, thank God, there is no such atmosphere in the country. Therefore, I do not see how anyone - the locum tenens Metropolitan Kirill or the head of the church apparatus, Metropolitan Kliment, or Comrade Surkov, or Comrade Sobyanin - can control secret elections. In addition, control over religious life is not so important for the state today to develop some supermethods. And the principle “the Kremlin has many towers” applies. I mentioned Sobyanin - he is the former governor of the Tyumen region. And in the Tyumen region, the archbishop is the younger brother of Metropolitan Clement. And that’s why the Kapalin family (Climent + Dimitry) has good connections with the head of Putin’s apparatus. And Surkov, judging by the mass media, is more likely interested in supporting Metropolitan Kirill.
How are their programs different?
Ardov: Indeed, there is a very big difference between Metropolitan Kirill, of whom I am very critical, and almost all other bishops of that generation and older. In the 50s, on orders from the KGB, all educational institutions of the Moscow Patriarchate were ordered not to accept boys with B's and A's in their certificates - only C's. And the majority of the episcopate of our Patriarchal Church are these same C students. But there were, of course, exceptions, like Kirill.
Kuraev: I just want to clarify that out of 180 bishops, 140 became bishops in the 90s. Accordingly, they studied at the seminary in the 80s, when the KGB appeal was no longer in effect, if it existed.
Ardov: Nevertheless, senior bishops are just like that. Metropolitan Kirill is truly an unusually capable man - a protégé of the very smart Metropolitan Nikodim (Rotov). I think that Clement is one of the C students. This is a gray horse, which is, so to speak, easier for the presidential administration to look at. Because Kirill is very rich, quite smart, but nevertheless he always gets along with the authorities. I even came up with a special word for him and other rich people - “oligarchs.” Here he is the main “oligarch”.
However, what is the difference between the programs?
Kuraev: Look what the locum tenens says in the presence of Putin and Medvedev over the patriarch’s coffin. He says that Patriarch Alexy accepted the Church as a weak and disabled person, but in 20 years the Church became popular, became strong. These are very serious words. If translated into traditional Byzantine language, this is the speech of Patriarch Nikon to Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. What the word “God” meant to a medieval man means “people” to a modern political scientist. The source of power, the source of absolute authority is God and the people. Nikon said - the Church is from God, and we will anoint you. That is, the Church is above secular power. Actually, Metropolitan Kirill said the same thing in modern political language. Much of it 
what Metropolitan Kirill said and tried to do was connected with an attempt to find a foothold for the independent life of the Church in the country. For example, his idea that it is necessary to develop the church economy and introduce a church tax. This is the way to make the Church economically self-sufficient and independent of the annual whims of those in power. In all the actions and actions of Metropolitan Kirill, there is a bet on the fact that the Church will be an independent participant in the political situation in Russia. In this sense, tactically he scares the inhabitants of the Kremlin. But the pocket-puppet patriarch will not add authority to them and will not be able, if something happens, to preserve at least the remnants of civil stability in society.
Is Clement pocket?
Kuraev: Clement has always made a career out of agreeing to hardware orders. He is a non-public person. He cannot conduct public discussions. And he failed the main project that Patriarch Alexy entrusted to him - promoting the foundations of Orthodox culture in schools. His negotiations with the Ministry of Education ended with Minister Fursenko simply removing from the ministry all the people from Filippov’s team who were more or less sympathetic to this idea. It turned out that the intellectual Fursenko was not a KGB general, so the resource of persuasion of Metropolitan Kliment and his team was not enough. It is obvious that every year we will increasingly be hostages of the patriarch’s ability to conduct dialogue with people of other beliefs, other religious views.
Church for image
There was a lot of criticism about Metropolitan Kirill’s speech on Christmas, when he began by talking about the crisis, then turned to Medvedev: “Dmitry Anatolyevich, you know how the people support you...” Somehow it really hurt people that on Christmas - about the crisis...
Kuraev: Patriarch Alexy would also talk about this. Another thing is that there could be more rounded words. Then, the situation is such that if a representative of the Church speaks about what worries secular society, then he is accused of excessive secularization, and if he does not speak, then he will also be accused...
Ardov: I will first object to the nationality of Orthodoxy in Russia. We live in post-Christian times. In Russia, no more than 5% of practicing Orthodox Christians...
But 70% call themselves Orthodox!
Ardov: You never know what anyone calls themselves. On Easter in Moscow, a maximum of 200 thousand people come to Orthodox churches, and anyone who did not go to church on Easter is certainly not Orthodox. It's like this all over the world. Nowhere is it predicted that there will be a golden age, chiliasm. Therefore, we need to look realistically. But, unfortunately, politicians really want to use the Orthodox Church for their image, which is what we have seen since the 90s. And these servile speeches are a shame. People tell me all the time: how is this possible?! Why does he say “Your Excellency”?! I answer that the patriarchy is a servant of the authorities. And it’s not for nothing that another patriarch, Denisenko 1, quite wittily said: the Russian Orthodox Church MP is the Russian Orthodox Church of Medvedev-Putin.
But the point is precisely that Metropolitan Kirill wants to make the Church independent of secular power. What's wrong with that?
Ardov: I'm not saying it's bad. The state of this Church is bad...
Who is separated from whom
Many believe that the Russian Orthodox Church's proximity to the state is detrimental to it. Shouldn't she "separate herself" from power?
Kuraev: There must be certain boundaries in relationships. We are not against cooperation with the state. But different entities must cooperate. They must remain different. And there must be certain taboos. Namely: the state does not interfere in religious doctrine, in personnel issues, in liturgical issues, or in the internal life of the Church. For its part, the Church should not interfere in matters of police, economic, and internal life of the state, including the personnel policy of the state. And then, having outlined these boundaries, depending on a particular social situation, public demand, cultural situation, questions can be resolved about in what projects cooperation between the Church and the state is possible.
Ardov: I once came up with a formula that in our country the Church is separated from the state, but the state is not separated from the Church. It is my deep conviction that the Church should distance itself from the authorities as much as possible. Millions of people will not come to us - tens, hundreds, maybe thousands will come. But the only important function of the Church is a moral assessment of what is happening, including the actions of the authorities. This is where Christianity began. So John the Baptist denounced King Herod, for which he paid with his head. The Lord Jesus Christ denounced the Pharisees, the high priests...
Kuraev: Still, the apostles were not engaged in denouncing the policies of the Roman Empire. As for the incident with John the Baptist, from here grew one of the unnecessary and even more strange tragedies in the history of Christianity. John the Baptist suffered not because he denounced Herod’s despotism, but for trying to control his family life. And from that time on, all conflicts between Orthodox patriarchs and kings were exclusively “bed conflicts.” Not a single Orthodox (I’m not talking about heretics) Russian or Byzantine tsar was excommunicated from the Church for lawlessness, for terror, but only for bed affairs. Alas, this is not politics.
Ardov: This is the first time I have heard from the lips of a priest the condemnation of St. John the Baptist.
Kuraev: This is not a condemnation of John the Baptist. We are talking about the mentality of church life, in which this act of John the Baptist became a justification for authoritarian control over people’s family life. And this control, in turn, became one of the reasons that we entered the post-Christian period of history. The beauty of the Gospels has been rejected by so many people because of the overly rigid stance of the Church in condemning divorce. Remember the rebellion of Vasily Rozanov.
Ardov: About Vasily Rozanov is a separate story. And I can tell you about the indignation that the servile speeches in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior cause among ordinary people. They say: what about your patriarch - what is he with the president?! What is he with Luzhkov, who dragged him to the opening of some piece of the ring road? Why did he go there? But he received quite a large number of acres of land in Peredelkino and all that.
Do you think the role of the Russian Orthodox Church will grow or decline?
Kuraev: Depends on who is chosen as patriarch. If a person is of the school of Metropolitan Clement, then this is the path to the gilded ghetto. Such, you know, anniversary-banquet life under the guise of piety. But this means a lack of dialogue with society, with the intelligentsia. If the choice falls on Metropolitan Kirill, then this is the path of dialogue.
Ardov: From my point of view, no matter who is chosen, the role of the Moscow Patriarchate in political life and in government PR campaigns will increase from year to year. And the influence of the Church on the population will decrease.
Queue to the confessor
What should the Church do today to be attractive to people?
Ardov: Well, for example, support the drivers' riot in Vladivostok; demand from the government that they sell gasoline to their population at real prices, and not the way they are selling now...
You just condemned Metropolitan Kirill for speaking about the crisis on Christmas Day.
Ardov: Don't talk about it on Christmas Day. The point is that the Church must stand up for people, protect...
Much has been written about the role of priest Tikhon (Shevkunov), who was called Putin’s confessor: a line of officials lines up to see him. Isn't this a demonstration of the intertwining of Church and state?
Kuraev: In the same way, actors and directors seek communication with Father Ivan Okhlobystin, and members of the Writers' Union seek communication with Father Mikhail Khodanov, who is also a writer.
Don't you think they are using Tikhon to lobby their interests??
Kuraev: Someone is trying. It’s a matter of the priest’s tact to recognize them. I think Father Tikhon understands his place in Putin’s life, what is worth talking to him about, what is not. And it is clear that Putin probably does not need an alternative chief of staff in a cassock to advise him.
Ardov: I can only say one thing: Rasputin died, but his work lives on under Putin.
Andrey Kuraev is a deacon, professor at the Moscow Theological Academy. Publicist, secular and church scientist. Author of many books.
Mikhail Ardov - cleric of the Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church, archpriest; rector of the Moscow Church of the Holy Royal Martyrs and New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia at the Golovinskoye cemetery. Formerly a professional writer.
1 Patriarch Filaret, in the world Mikhail Denisenko - former metropolitan of the Russian Orthodox Church; since 1995 - Patriarch of Kiev and All Rus'-Ukraine (Primate of the UOC-KP).
Ardov clanHumorist writer, screenwriter, cartoonist Viktor Ardov - Jewish
Viktor Efimovich Zigberman (writing under the pseudonym Viktor Ardov) was born in 1900 in Voronezh, in the Russian Empire. In some sources, Radov's real surname is given incorrectly - Zilberman. That's right - Siegberman. Viktor Efimovich Zigberman is Jewish by nationality. Father - railway engineer, graduate of the Kharkov Institute of Technology - Jewish Efim Moiseevich Zigberman. In those years, he was a member of the economic board of the Voronezh Jewish community.
The city of Voronezh was located outside the “Pale of Settlement,” but gradually the clever Jews penetrated there, multiplied greatly, and strengthened themselves. For example, the famous Jew Vladimir Aleksandrovich Goldstein in Voronezh ended up here around 1840. At first a printing worker, then he converted to Orthodoxy, was assigned to the guild artisans, at the end of 1850 the Jew became a merchant of the 2nd guild, then he opened “lithography and metallography,” and already in May 1859 he founded the first private printing house in the city. Goldstein was the publisher of the first private newspaper in the province, “Voronezh Leaflet,” and then published the “Voronezh Inquiry Leaflet.” Since 1869, this Jew became the publisher of the Voronezh Telegraph newspaper, the largest and most respectable newspaper in the city, published until June 1918. He successfully zombified the Russian population of the province, especially the upper class. There were pogroms in 1905, but in Voronezh they were small. In Voronezh, Jewish merchants, Jewish bankers, Jewish doctors, Jewish engineers, Jewish officials multiplied... The ancestors of the children's Jewish writer Marshak and the Soviet Jewish writer Baklanov lived here... When the Cadet Party appeared, the Jews rushed there too. The Jewish Efim Zigberman also became a member of the Cadet Party...
(Brief history of the Voronezh Jewish community of the 19th-20th centuries). http://base.ijc.ru/new/site.aspx?IID=47933&SECTIONID=47912&STID=248594
Actress and “TV star” Anna Ardova recalls:
- My grandfather Viktor Ardov had ancestors on the one hand, German Jews, on the other, Sephardic Jews. (Sephardim are a subethnic community of Jews formed in Spain). By the way, my grandfather’s real name is Siegberman. That is, I, in theory, was supposed to become Anna Borisovna Zigberman. Sounds nice. But since in Soviet times it was not very welcome to be a Jew or have a Jewish surname, the grandfather-writer first decided to become a Sephardov, and then the first three letters disappeared by themselves and it turned out to be Ardov...
(International Jewish Magazine ALEF).
http://www.alefmagazine.com/pub2159.html
http://base.ijc.ru/new/site.aspx?STID=245090&SECTIONID=244679&IID=779323
From the memoirs of Ernst Edel, a former employee of Crocodile magazine:
Who are you, Viktor Ardov?
Drunk A. Tvardovsky saw Viktor Ardov in the House of Writers: “Somehow I don’t like your last name...” Ardov immediately answered: “That’s because it is the middle of yours!” Probably, the author of “Terkin” meant that “Ardov” is a pseudonym. It seems that Ardov himself forgot his real name, a Jewish one? He was generally known as an ideological assimilationist, believing that Jewish names and surnames were unpleasant to the Russian ear. By this logic, all nationalities (nationalities) of the USSR should become Ivanovs and Petrovs? I didn't agree with this. But writers and other Jewish figures, hiding behind Russian pseudonyms, remained, as it were, in eternal underground, under nicknames like criminals.
(Ernst Edel. Intellectual tales from Edel. Archive, No. 10 (22), October 2002).
http://www.florida-rus.com/archive-text/10-02edel.htm
Maybe Ardov was an “assimilate”, maybe he was embarrassed by the surname Zigberman, maybe he changed his surname in the interests of his career... Ardov preferred to keep a low profile on this topic.
Voronezh is a good city, but Moscow is better. The Zigberman Jews move to Moscow at the beginning of the war. In 1918, Victor Zigberman graduated from the First Men's Gymnasium in Moscow.
His son Mikhail Ardov wrote in his memoirs: “By the time of the revolution, at seventeen years old, Viktor Ardov was already an established person and quite consciously shared the program of the Cadet Party. I remember a funny episode that took place in the early sixties. A certain artist, whom his father had somehow benefited, came to Ordynka and expressed his gratitude in these words:
- Thank you, Victor, for helping me out... You are a true Bolshevik-Leninist... since 1920. In 1947-1951. Deputy of the Supreme Council of the RSFSR.
- You are an idiot! - Ardov answered him. - What kind of Leninist do you think I am? I've been a liberal all my life! I am a supporter of bourgeois democracy..."
Of course, he didn’t openly say that then.
Mikhail Ardov:“In the nineteenth and twentieth years he had the opportunity to serve in some Soviet institutions, but he had a desire to study at the institute. However, there was an obstacle to entering a Soviet university, namely, being “from the civil servants” or even “from the philistines.” At that time, a workers' faculty already existed, and the institutes recruited mainly “proletarians” and “peasants.”
But here Ardov’s patronage helped: one of his aunts was married to the Marxist historian, later academician V.P. Volgin...”
This is wrong. Mikhail Ardov is lying. Proletarian and peasant origin then, of course, mattered when entering college. But Jewish origin was also very significant. After all, the majority of the Jews who filled the institutions, as well as the governing bodies, were not of proletarian and peasant origin. But, of course, it mattered if Viktor Ardov’s father, Efim Zigberman, was an owner and a rich man before the October coup, and also a cadet.
In 1925, Viktor Ardov graduated from the Faculty of Economics of the Moscow Plekhanov Institute of National Economy. But if you believe the words of his son Mikhail, he did not receive a diploma. The fact is that the Komsomol committee demanded that he, as the son of rich relatives, donate some money for general needs. Ardov refused, then they threatened him that he would not receive a graduation diploma.
- You can wipe yourself with my diploma! - Ardov told them and left the institute building forever.
He didn't really need a diploma. Zhidovin Viktor Ardov did not intend to work as an economist. It’s good to be an economist, but it’s better to be a “Russian writer”.
When he was studying, he was already working as an actor and entertainer in the “Don’t Cry” cabaret. In 1921, he began publishing his own cartoons with accompanying text in the magazine “Spectacles.” In order to hide his Jewish roots, he already performed under the name Ardov. Then he began to illustrate his humorous collections himself. He was regularly published in the humorous magazines “Crocodile” and “Red Pepper”. Together with L.V. Nikulin he wrote the comedies “Squabbles” and “Article 114 of the Criminal Code” (1926), “Cockroachism” (1929). (Many Jewish biographers classify Nikulin among the Jews). Together with the Jew Massom, he composed the comedy “Birthday Girl,” and independently composed the comedy “Small Trumps” (1937). Altov often wrote humorous monologues for pop artists (for Zhidovin Khenkin, Rina Zelenaya, for Zhidovin, Raikin, for Zhidovin, Petker and others). Since 1927, the Jewish Ardov was in charge of the literary part of the Leningrad Satire Theater. The name of the theater, of course, is incorrect; there could and was no legal satire under the dictatorship. Therefore, the Jew Ardov cannot be classified as a satirist. He was just a Jewish humorist.
This Jew Ardov (Zigberman) composed in Russian in the USSR - more than forty collections of humorous stories, feuilletons, theatrical sketches, essays, film scripts for the films “The Shining Path” (1940) and “Happy Flight” (1949) and theoretical works on conversational techniques genre on the stage and in the circus. A book of memoirs, “Studies for Portraits” (1983), about Mayakovsky, Bulgakov, Akhmatova, Zoshchenko, Ilf, Petrov, Svetlov, Olesha, Koltsov, Ilyinsky, Ranevskaya and others was published posthumously. The book of this Jew, entitled “The Great and the Funny,” was republished in 2005. And until now there is not a single study on the stultifying effect of this zombie Jew and similar Jewish comedians on the consciousness of the Russian people.
Viktor Ardov (Zigberman) died in 1976. The coffin with his physical body was buried at the Preobrazhenskoye Cemetery (Moscow). A photograph of the grave monument is given on the Jewish Memorial website.
http://jewish-memorial.narod.ru/Ardov.htm
Wives, children, grandchildren.
Ardov's (Sigberman) first wife was Irina Konstantinovna Ivanova. The already famous actress Nina Antonovna Olshevskaya became his second wife in 1933. By nationality - half-Polish. Her five-year-old son Alexei Batalov (future artist) became Ardov’s stepson. A little later, the successors of the Ardov family were born. In 1937, the future writer-memoirist and priest Mikhail Viktorovich Ardov was born, and in 1940, the actor and cartoon director Boris Viktorovich Ardov was born. The granddaughter of Viktor Ardov, actress Anna Borisovna Ardova, will also become famous. Great-grandchildren, actors Anton Shavrin and Sonya Ardova, will also become a little famous.
Actor, animation director Boris Ardov -
son of Viktor Ardov (Zigberman)
Boris Ardov was born in 1940 in Moscow. By nationality - Jewish on his father's side. Father - writer and screenwriter - Jewish Viktor Ardov (Zigberman). Mother - Moscow Art Theater actress Nina Olshevskaya, half-Polish.
In 1961 he graduated from the MXAT Studio School. He worked as an actor at the Sovremennik Theater. In 1972 he graduated from the Higher Directing Courses. From 1974 to 1987 he worked as a director and production designer at the Multitelefilm studio of TO Ekran. Since 1975 he taught at VGIK. He was an associate professor of the acting department, a candidate of art history. He headed the Akhmatova Cultural Center in Moscow (although Akhmatova was not a Jew).
Died in 2004 in Moscow. His physical body is buried in the Preobrazhenskoye cemetery along with his father. A photograph of the grave monument is given on the Jewish Memorial website.
http://jewish-memorial.narod.ru/Ardov.htm
Wives and children
Zhidovin Boris Ardov was married four times and fathered seven children. The first wife is Mira Ardova (née Kiseleva), an artist of the Youth Theater (then she is the wife of the actor Igor Starygin, then she is the wife of the theater director Lev Davydovich Vaisman). From his first marriage there are two children - designer Nina Ardova and actress Anna Ardova.
When Boris Ardov was married to Mira, he met a student at the Textile Institute, Lyudmila Dmitrieva, who dreamed of becoming an actress. Ardov began to prepare her for a theater university and at the same time began to mate with her. And his wife at that time began dating theater and film actor Igor Starygin. The artist Lyudmila Dmitrieva later admitted publicly that she had several abortions from Ardov. He injected his seed into her body without thinking about the consequences. When she was in her third year at the Moscow Art Theater, she became pregnant again, but decided to give birth. Daughter Maria was born. Lyudmila Dmitrieva knew that Boris Ardov was very lustful, he had a lot of ladies, he loved to copulate with different ladies... “And one day she returned home and found her husband in the company of several ladies at once. She couldn’t restrain herself and shouted: “Prostitutes, get out of here!” However, for the time being, Borya respected and loved me. And then for a long time I couldn’t choose between me and the animator Olga, the daughter of the famous cameraman (Jew) Eduard Rozovsky, who shot “White Sun of the Desert” and “The Three Musketeers.” I cried, and my mother-in-law reassured me: “Don’t cry, you stay, and let him go.” Divorced when Masha was 6 years old. With (the Jewish woman) Rozovskaya, who now lives in America, he had a daughter. After the separation, Ardov married for the fourth time and had three more daughters. His last wife is no longer alive, as is Bori himself, who died in 2004 from cirrhosis of the liver. Both were killed by alcohol, their girls were left orphans and live with their grandmother.”
http://www.peoples.ru/art/cinema/actor/ludmila_dmitrieva/
Writer of memoirs and priest Mikhail Ardov -
son of the Jew Viktor Ardov (Zigberman)
Mikhail Ardov. photo: Alexander Astafiev (www.mk.ru)
Mikhail Ardov was born in 1937 in Moscow. By nationality - Jews. He is the son of the Jewish writer-humorist Viktor Ardov (Zigberman). Mother is actress Olga Olshanskaya (according to the memoirs of Mikhail Ardov, she has Polish roots). “My mother, Nina Antonovna Olshevskaya, was born in Vladimir on July 31/August 13, 1908. Her father, Anton Alexandrovich, was the son of the chief forester of the Vladimir province. And the wife of this great-grandfather of mine was a Polish aristocrat, born Countess Poniatovskaya.”
http://modernlib.ru/books/ardov_mihail/vokrug_ordinki/read/
In 1960 he graduated from the Faculty of Journalism of Moscow State University. But being a Soviet propagandist-journalist was not tempting. But writing satire is not given, and it’s scary, I also didn’t dare to write novels and stories, I also didn’t dare to become a professional comedian, to make the goyim laugh, because they would compare me with my then famous father-humorist... It’s obedient and completely standard to live in the USSR in a mask “ I'm very tired." And in 1964, Mikhail Ardov was first baptized. Then, from 1967, he was already a subdeacon at the Sorrow Church on Ordynka. In 1980 he was ordained a deacon in Yaroslavl in the church in the name of St. Innocent, Metropolitan of Moscow. On Easter 1980 he was ordained a priest by Metropolitan John (Wendland). He served in village parishes of the Yaroslavl and Moscow dioceses.
And in the summer of 1993, the Jew Mikhail Ardov left the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate and transferred to the Russian Church Abroad. He became a cleric of the Suzdal diocese, which was then headed by Valentin Rusantsov. Together with Rusantsov he went into schism. Since 1995, Mikhail Ardov has been a cleric of the Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church, which is administratively and canonically independent from the ROCOR. In 1998, this church was renamed the Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church.
And it is clear that he did not become a hieromonk for higher reasons. There is nothing interesting about Faith, about God, about the Supreme Meaning of Life in his writings and speeches. He became a hieromonk not only because he was “very tired of it.” Some biographers noted that “to go into religion meant in those years one of the forms of protest against Soviet power and Soviet reality.” And he himself admitted: “And then, I didn’t immediately understand this reason: coming to church was internal emigration. We fell out of Soviet life. We are outcasts. These were the two reasons.”
http://www.svoboda.org/content/transcript/26842631.html
Moreover, it was no longer dangerous to walk around with a beard and a cassock. Even serving in the Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church was no longer dangerous.
The Jewish poet Joseph Brodsky responded correctly to the new appearance of Mikhail Ardov when they met in 1995 in New York. Seeing an old friend in a cassock, he said:
- What a masquerade!
http://www.svoboda.org/content/transcript/26842631.html
Long before this, back in the mid-60s, in Moscow, answering the question of the convert Ardov whether he was thinking of being baptized, Brodsky said in English:
- I am Jew. (I am Jewish).
http://sta-sta.ru/?p=15251
The Jew Mikhail Ardov, of course, began to stupidly yap at the Russian Orthodox Church.
“The Moscow Patriarchate, the Russian Orthodox Church, is to a large extent fulfilling what the propaganda department of the CPSU Central Committee did in Soviet times. This also includes the desire to introduce the Law of God in secondary schools. It seems to me that this decision is not only not very correct, but, I would say, not very smart. Because the tragedy that occurred in the Russian Empire was largely predetermined by the fact that Peter I turned the Orthodox Church into a spiritual department and an appendage of the state. And, by the way, the Law of God was taught in all educational institutions. We know how it ended in 1717...”
The poor fellow did not even understand that the point, first of all, was that the Christian Religion came into conflict with Big Science in all countries. It is really too late to teach the law of God, but, of course, it is necessary to teach a brief history of the main religions. Every Russian schoolchild should know the basics of paganism, Orthodoxy, Islam and Buddhism. And you should know a little about Judaism, the Torah and the Talmud. You should know a little about the Russian-Jewish question.
In the 1990s, the Izvestia newspaper published his article against the construction of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow. The Jew Ardov vowed to himself never to enter this temple. Don't go. At least go to the synagogue. Mikhail Ardov publicly spoke out against the Olympic Games and any sports competitions. Christians are not even allowed to engage in physical exercise and sports. Physical education and sports are “caring for the flesh,” and the supreme apostle Paul warned us against this (Romans 13:14). He spoke out against imprisoning girls who were jumping half naked in a Christian church...
On September 22, 2006, Mikhail Ardov was “attacked” on the air of the Author’s Television (ATV) program “New Time” by the Deputy Chairman of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate (DECR MP), Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin. The incident was covered in some media. Chaplin called the priest Mikhail Ardov a “schismatic.” Chaplin called on clergy and laity to refuse to jointly participate in television and radio programs with Mikhail Ardov, a cleric of a schismatic group centered in Suzdal. Chaplin noted that in the journalistic community the ROAC has been given the title of “pedophile sect.” This sect is famous for scandals with pederast priests and pedophile priests.
Zhidovin Mikhail Ardov wrote a dozen books in Russian for Russian goyim: “Little things of the archi..., proto... and simply of priestly life”, “Return to Ordynka. Memoirs, journalism”, “Around Ordynka”, “Legendary Ordynka. Portraits", "Monograph about a graphomaniac. Memoirs”, “Notes of a Cemetery Priest”, etc. But he is dissatisfied.
Mikhail Ardov: “I have an unhappy fate... the clergy consider me a writer, and the writers consider me a clergyman, and both of them do not show me the slightest respect.”
(Mikhail Ardov. Monograph about a graphomaniac. - M. 2004, p. 528).
Rusantsov declared himself in 1995 the head of the Russian Orthodox Free Church. He managed, with the support of local authorities, to seize 19 churches in the city of Suzdal, where the center of this schism is located. On February 19, 1997, he was deposed by the Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church. On March 15, 2001, by decision of the Synod of Bishops of the ROAC, Rusantsov was elevated to the rank of metropolitan and recognized as First Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church. He is the Metropolitan of Suzdal and Vladimir, died in 2012. And this church has no prospects. And the Jew Mikhail Ardov has no prospects. Few people know Mikhail Ardov as a priest or religious preacher of the “Russian Free Church”. He is a boring and timid priest.
And, of course, the pop-Jew Mikhail Ardov stubbornly ignores in his memoirs and appearances in the media the important topic of homosexuals and pedophiles in robes... He has never spoken out in favor of introducing a law in Russia prohibiting pederasty in Russia and increasing the terms of punishment for pedophilia. And, of course, he never spoke out on the topic of the danger of the expansion of the Jews into the Christian Church... He did not say a word in his memoirs about the First Great Leap of the Jews into power, into cinema, into the stage, into publishing houses, and then into the TV Box... But he should have known well that the Soviet stage was overflowing with Jews, and even now there are tons of Jews on the stage...
He scolds Stalin on Radio Liberty, who “who first annexed the Donbass to the Poltava region and Kyiv, and then two more pieces of Poland and one piece of Austria-Hungary. Such a state cannot exist. Stalin, as Gorbachev once said, mined the entire country! In Georgia, who came up with Abkhazian autonomy? Who cut Ossetia into two parts? Who gave Karabakh to the Azerbaijanis? He did the same in Central Asia. Who gave the Yaik Cossacks to Kazakhstan? I have been to Samarkand twice. This is a wonderful city inhabited by Tajiks, which belongs to Uzbekistan. He mined the entire country. It was not the Democrats who destroyed the Union, but the Communists who destroyed the Russian Empire. And this expression “Russian world” is a new invention. There was no Russian world in Russia. There was the Russian Empire. There was no nationality there either. There was only religion..."
http://www.svoboda.org/content/transcript/26842631.html
Zhidovin Mikhail Ardov hides that the reduction of the Russian Empire, the collapse of the Russian Empire and the stupid stitching of pieces into a “Soviet blanket” - in the USSR began under Lenin and Trotsky, under the dictatorship of six Jewish dictators, and not under Stalin. Stalin then completed and remade Lenin's work. Zhidovin Mikhail Ardov is not able to consider the historical process also from a national perspective. It is the pop Jews who do not see or hide the Great Leap of the Jews into power after 1917. This pop-Jew does not see or does not want to see the Second Great Leap of the Jews into power after 1991. He doesn’t see that the “democrats”, and if we look at events from a national perspective, then it was the Jews and other nationalities who ruined the country. And they even eliminated the nationality column in passports and application forms in order to make the Second Great Leap to power easier for themselves. Eh, poor priest, thick forehead... or smart-ass priest...
Actress Anna Ardova is the granddaughter of the Jew Viktor Ardov (Zigberman)
The granddaughter of the Jewish Viktor Ardov, Anna Borisovna Ardova, was born in Moscow in 1969. Her mother, Mika Ardova (Kiselyova), worked at the Youth Theater at that time, and her Jewish father, Boris Ardov, was a director and animator. The girl received her name in honor of her grandmother's friend, poetess Anna Akhmatova.
Anya Ardova's mother divorced her Jewish father. Afterwards she married famous men from the artistic community. Anya even became friends with Igor Starygin, but she could not find a common language with director Lev Davydovich.
Anya Ardova was able to enter GITIS only on her fifth attempt. Graduated from GITIS in 1995. Since 1995 - actress of the Moscow Academic Theater. V. Mayakovsky.
Anna began acting in films in 1983. She starred in several films.
For five seasons she played in the sketch comedy “Women's League” on TNT (a sketch comedy is a small play of comedic or poignant content with two, less often three, characters). Gained some fame. In 2009, Ardova was offered the main role in the show “One for All” on the Domashny TV channel. Biographers write that the project became one of the main hits of the channel. Adova received the TEFI Award for Best Actress in a Television Series in 2010.
Started acting in TV series. In 2004, she played in the TV series “Only You”, and also got the main role in the film “The Secret of the Blue Valley”. In 2006, she was offered a role in the TV show "Women's League." The series was popular with undemanding viewers, and Anna began to be recognized on the streets. She began work on a new project, “One for All.”
Her husbands and children
Anna got married for the first time when she was still in her second year, to actor Daniil Spivakovsky. His last name on the Jewish website 7:40 is highlighted in blue (“Know ours”!).
http://www.sem40.ru/index.php?newsid=216602
“My grandfather, Semyon Davidovich Spivakovsky, was a Jew,” Spivakovsky himself admitted in an interview,”
http://www.jewish.ru/culture/cinema/2009/09/news994278227.php
For her, the granddaughter of a Jew, it was normal to marry a Jew. But the marriage lasted less than a year. Anna: “We got married in our second year. We separated without living together for even a year. I don’t know how we didn’t kill each other with our temperaments.”
Then she had an affair with Georgian Georgiy Shengelia (son of a famous director). But they also soon separated.
In 1996, the actress again had a whirlwind romance. With journalist Sergei. “Sonia’s father, journalist Sergei, left me when I was six months old,” Ardova said in an interview with Express Gazeta. “I blamed myself for everything: “What a bad person you have to be to be abandoned in deep pregnancy.” Her second husband was the artist Alexander Shavrin. They met a long time ago and were friends, but he confessed his love when she was pregnant. From journalist Sergei she gave birth to a daughter, Sonya. From Shavrin she gave birth to a son, Anton, in 2001. Sonya also became an artist. Anna Ardova starred with her son Anton in the TV series “Women’s League”...
Actress Sonya Ardova -
great-granddaughter of the Jew Viktor Ardov (Zigberman)
Sofya Sergeevna Ardova - daughter of Anna Ardova, great-granddaughter of the Jewish writer-humorist Viktor Ardov (Zigberman) - was born in 1996 in Moscow.
Studied at the Architectural and Design Studio. Then a student at Oleg Tabakov’s Moscow Theater School.
Since 2004, Sofya Ardova has played about 10 roles in films. The most famous are the main roles in the films: “The Roof”, “Everything for the Better”.
Anna Ardova and her son Anton Shavrin, great-grandson of the Jew Viktor Ardov (Zigberman).
Anton Shavrin was born in 2000 in the family of actors Anna Ardova and Alexander Shavrin. She acts with her mother in the sketchcoms “Women’s League” and “One for All.”
The collection “Jewish TV Box” in a more complete volume and the Fundamentals of Russian Cosmism can be read here:
http://forum.17marta.ru/index.php?board=81.0 (admin censorship here))
http://17m.forum24.ru/
“Get up, Russian people!”
The little boy was born and raised in love. Received a good education. I learned all the good and not so good things. And he was able to process knowledge into a completely unpredictable result. Not everyone likes what happened. It doesn't strive to be smooth and predictable. His fame and originality of views speak of his powerful willpower and unbending character.
Family
Family always leaves a deep mark in a person’s life. This is a kind of start. The further trajectory of the development of fate depends on what the beginning was like. Ardov Mikhail Viktorovich was born into a creative family. His father, Viktor Efimovich Zigberman, was a writer. At one time he was forced to take a different surname - Ardov. Mom is the famous actress Olshevskaya Nina Antonovna. The family had three sons, as in a Russian folk tale. In addition to Mikhail, his brother Boris and half-brother Alexey Batalov were growing up in the family. Both brothers chose their mother's path and became actors.
Creative impulses were in the air and were absorbed by little Misha along with his mother's milk. But he didn’t want to become an artist. Decided to follow in the footsteps of his father. And he became a writer-publicist.
Childhood and youth
The year for birth was not the best. He was born in Ardov on October 21, 1937. The family has not lived in one place since the birth of the baby. They left Lavrushinsky Lane in 1938 to exchange an apartment. Here he came of age. Mikhail begins independent life at a new address. He spent the sixties in Golikovsky Lane. One thing remained unchanged: Moscow.
My childhood passed like that of all my peers during the difficult war and early post-war years. In the last war year of 1944, he goes to first grade in one of the schools in Zamoskvorechye. He has been studying at this school for three years. Then the parents transfer the boy to school No. 12, which was located on Staromonetny Lane in the Yakimanka area. The second school became the last.
In 1954, Ardov received a certificate and entered the MGBI (Moscow State Library Institute) named after Molotov. He didn’t study there for long, something went wrong and he had to quit his studies. The next year he becomes a student at Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov. The Faculty of Journalism became for the young man exactly what his soul was in. In 1960, he received a diploma and became a writer.
Professional path
The young specialist did not look for work for long, starting to work as an editor at the All-Union Radio. The work is exciting, but I wanted to write. In 1962, Mikhail Ardov became a professional writer and wrote selflessly and a lot. The result of his creative path is his membership in the Committee of Moscow Playwrights.
Spiritual development
1964 radically changed the writer’s views. He is baptized into the Orthodox faith. By the end of the sixties, Mikhail Ardov completely abandoned journalism and stopped appearing in bohemian companies. Three years after baptism, he was churched. Since 1967, he has served as a subdeacon in the “Joy of All Who Sorrow” Church on Ordynka. A huge number of believers come to venerate the icon of the Mother of God. The young deacon on Bolshaya Ordynka attracted attention with his eccentricity.
Two days in 1980 became a turning point in the fate of this man. A week before Easter, on Palm Sunday, Mikhail Ardov was ordained to the rank of deacon in the Church of St. Innocent, which is located in Yaroslavl. A week after this important event, on Easter, Metropolitan John (Wendland) ordained him to the rank of priest.
With the blessing of the Metropolitan, Archpriest Mikhail Ardov goes to serve in village parishes. Small villages of the Yaroslavl diocese, then the Moscow region of the Moscow diocese. Thirteen years of faithful service as a priest in the parishes of the Moscow Patriarchate flew by unnoticed.
Gap
1993, summer. An unexpected event occurs: priest Mikhail Ardov breaks off legal relations with the Moscow diocese. Foreign Orthodoxy is becoming closer to him. He is appointed clergyman of the Suzdal diocese of the ROCOR (Russian Orthodox Church Abroad). The diocese was headed by Bishop Valentin (in the world Rusantsev). Together with his mentor, Mikhail goes into schism.
In 1995, he became a clergyman of the ROAC (Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church). Until 1998, this organization had a different name: Russian Orthodox Free Church. The ROAC is considered independent from the ROCOR both administratively and canonically. Its organizer and Eminence Valentin was in charge.
Special views
Father Mikhail has his own point of view on many things. This can be seen very clearly in relation to the Olympic Games and sports in general. He believes that it is unacceptable for a true Christian to engage in physical education, let alone sports. He finds an explanation for this in the Holy Scriptures: a Christian should not attend mass spectacles. There is another proof: sport is caring for the physical, for the flesh. A true believer must take care of spiritual elevation.
Mikhail Ardov (archpriest) has special views and believes that the Russian Orthodox Church interacts too closely with secular authorities. Father Mikhail explains this in a unique way. In his opinion, the modern Orthodox Church was formed during the Great Patriotic War to unite the people of the USSR against fascism. Stalin created two organizations based on the same model - the CPSU and the Russian Orthodox Church. When the party alone could not resist the Wehrmacht troops, support was required. The difficult year 1943 became the year of the birth of a new assistant of the CPSU - the church. At the same time, he provides evidence of his point of view. Both organizations have similar features: church councils are party congresses; heretics are enemies of the people. There are martyrs-heroes and leaders: the Patriarch - the General Secretary.
Conflict between the official and autonomous churches
Archpriest Mikhail Viktorovich Ardov does not consider it necessary to hide his views. And he expresses them openly. Back in the nineties, through the Izvestia newspaper, he expressed his negative attitude towards the restoration of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, which was initiated by the mayor of Moscow, Father Mikhail, publicly promised to never cross the threshold of the resurrected temple.
The beginning of the twenty-first century was marked by open criticism of the Russian Orthodox Church. In 2006, the activities of the ROAC, which he headed, aroused sharp criticism from the Deputy Chairman of the Department for External Church Relations, Archpriest. Live meetings became an arena for discussions between Mikhail Ardov and Deacon Andrei Kuraev. Ardov considers both of them “ideologists of the Moscow Patriarchate.” The September 2006 broadcast of one of the Friday programs “New Time” found a response in the print media and caused a great resonance in society.
Literary achievements
All the years of serving God, priest Mikhail Ardov has not left the literary field. The biography of many celebrities is reflected in his works. He presented the life and creative path of the poetess Anna Akhmatova in all its grandeur and diversity. The publicist was interested not only in Akhmatova, but also in other giant creators. The titles of his books speak eloquently about the content: “The Legendary Ordynka. Portraits", "Great Soul. Memories of Dmitry Shostakovich."
The author managed to describe it clearly and interest the reader in the plot. Reading and discussing the main ideas of such books as “Little things of the arch.., proto... and simply of priestly life”, “Capital truths”, has become a necessary need for the thinking intelligentsia.
Summary of today
It was as if Mikhail Ardov had been striving for this all his life. The biography of the son of creative parents, a journalist, is full of sharp turns. Today he is the rector of the temple in the name of Tsar Martyr Nicholas II and all the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, which is located at the Golovinskoye cemetery in Moscow. He is a cleric (archpriest) of the Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church.
He is known first as a Soviet and then as a Russian memoirist and publicist. His works are read not only by believers. Ardov’s extraordinary publications help you consider your opponent’s position, form your own opinion, and find support for your quests.
Loading...
