Theology and theosis after the Gulag
Varlam Shalamov’s Challenge to Theological Reflection
in Post-Communist Russia
Katya Tolstaya
[Originally published in Fernando Enns, Annette Mosher (eds.), Just Peace: Ecumenical, Intercultural,
and Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Eugene: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 50-69; slightly edited]
In this contribution I wish to touch upon the topic of individual and ecclesiastic
theological accounts in the dehumanization of humans in Auschwitz and the Gulag.
Such an account is a condition to speak about God in the 21st century. “Theology after
Auschwitz” is understood here as exemplary for (theological) reflection about God,
recognizing the singularity of any suffering. There is a tradition in Western theology
for thinking about “God and/in/after Auschwitz”; in post-Communist Eastern
Orthodoxy, however, comparable reflection on the Holocaust and/or on the Gulag
and the Communist past is lacking. At the same time, particularly the Russian
Orthodox Church (ROC) recently published important doctrinal documents on
issues such as human rights and dignity. I will inquire how this lack of reflection
works out in the ROC’s use of the traditional theological notions of imago dei and
theosis. 1
This article is part of an ongoing project. In my forthcoming monograph Theology after Gulag:
Conditions for Reflection on the Soviet Past and Post-Soviet Present (2016), I will work out how theosis may
be applied in theology after Auschwitz/Gulag when confronted with the challenges that Shalamov’s
testimonies pose for traditional theology. Here this challenge will be first introduced.
1
“The Man in Man” in Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn
A question that has occupied me for quite some years regards an essential difference
between two works of literature about labor camps. Both are composed by Russian
writers with some ninety years space between them. The first one is Dostoevsky’s
House of the Dead (1860-1862).2 This work marked Dostoevsky’s comeback into
literature after the ten years he spent as a political prisoner in Siberia, four years of
which (from 1850 to 1854) in servitude. During those years of hard labor Dostoevsky
lived amid the “dregs” of Russian society. In The House of the Dead Dostoevsky
incorporated many biographical observations. Besides its literary value, the book
gives a unique social and psychological portrait of the Russian convicts in this time.
One of Dostoevsky’s Siberian discoveries was that the Russian nation is basically a
Christian nation. It was precisely in Siberia that his religious convictions came to
stabilization. Moreover, it was there that he came to love the Russian people and to
believe that the nation is essentially good, pure, and strong.
Dostoevsky tried to penetrate the essence of humanity his entire life. When he
was eighteen years old he already appointed himself his life task: “Man is a mystery.
It needs to be unravelled, and if you spend your whole life unravelling it, don’t say
that you’ve wasted time; I’m studying this mystery because I want to be a human
being.”3 In 1881, the final year of his life, Dostoevsky sums up the goal of his
authorship: “In full realism finding the man in man.”4
“The man in man” is exactly what I want to highlight here. Dostoevsky was
not a theologian: theological idiom was foreign to him. Still I do not think that a
To place the content of Dostoevsky’s personal faith in relation to his literary oeuvre see: Katya
Tolstaya, Kaleidoscope. F.M. Dostoevsky and the Early Dialectical Theology, transl. Anthony Runia (Leiden,
Boston: Brill, 2013).
3 Fyodor Dostoevsky, Complete Letters, edited and transl. by David Lowe and Ronald Meyer (Ann
Arbor: Ardis Publishers, 1988-1991), I, 55.
4 F. M. Dostojevskiĭ, Полное собрание сочинений в тридцати томах [Complete Collected Works in Thirty
Volumes], edited by V.G. Bazanov et al. (Leningrad: “Nauka”, 1972-1990), XXVII, 65. [Henceforth PSS]
2
theological equation of this “man in man” with imago dei, God’s image, would be
wrong. My working definition of God’s image is: the indefinable essence of humans,
which makes humans human.5
One of Dostoevsky’s most important personal experiences in Siberia was that
in the “dregs” of society the human essence was preserved. In the Siberian camp of
Dostoevsky the basic things which make a human human, such as friendship and
affinity with creation, are maintained; there is even room for celebration of religious
holidays. One may call this preservation of humanity the central idea of the book. In
theological vocabulary, the people of The House of the Dead preserved their image of
God in spite of the severe living conditions and hard labor.
Something similar can be said of the Stalin camp experience of another great
Russian writer, Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Of course, compared to Dostoevsky, there is
a radical change of the ethical norm as a consequence of Soviet state atheism. The
Stalin camps confirmed the truth of Dostoevsky’s expectation that the abolition of the
concept of God will lead humankind to what he calls “anthropophagy”6 and to
crime. Solzhenitsyn’s description of the camps can serve as illustrations of
Dostoevsky’s formulas: “if there is no God everything is permitted,” or “Conscience
without God is horrifying, it can stray into extreme immorality.”7 A certain camp
utility can, nevertheless, still be derived from Solzhenitsyn’s writings. Solzhenitsyn
and Dostoevsky share the same theological anthropology. For both, the camp can, in
principle, have a purifying function, leading to a catharsis. Because of this similarity
between the two, Solzhenitsyn is not the writer I want to concentrate on here.
For a full definition, accounting for the interconnections of a) imago dei, b) soul and c) spirit within a
more technical systematic-theological discourse would be a prerequisite.
6 An equivalent of misanthropy (also an existing word in Russian). Cf. e.g. PSS, XIV, 65, 83, 235; XXVI,
90.
7 PSS XIV, 240; PSS XXVII, 56.
5
“Dokhodyagi” in Varlam Shalamov’s Kolyma Tales
In Varlam Shalamov’s Kolyma Tales8 I find challenges for theological anthropology,
which also can be found in stories about Auschwitz. Without reflection on these
challenges no honest discussion about God is possible.
From 1937 to 1953 Shalamov spent seventeen years in the Gulag,9 and it took
two more years before he was permitted to leave Kolyma.10 Like Dostoevsky’s House
of the Dead, Shalamov’s stories are based on biographical observations. They are
testimonies, which is important for my point. Like The House of the Dead, the Kolyma
Tales are not merely a literary masterpiece, but also a lucid sociological and
psychological slice of the Soviet convicts. Totally opposite to Dostoevsky—and for
this part to Solzhenitsyn—is the whole experience Shalamov derives from his camp
years. Whereas the positive side of Dostoevsky’s and Solzhenitsyn’s camp
experiences lies precisely in the depiction of the ineradicability of imago dei,
Shalamov challenges theology by describing a human condition in which everything
human has left the human being.11
Varlam Tikhonovich Shalamov, Kolyma Tales, transl. John Glad (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1994).
Not all of the Kolyma stories have been translated in English.
9 The Gulag was the Soviet Governmental Agency that administered the main forced labor camp
systems. One cannot trust statistics on the number of victims, see a good overview of contestations
and reliable numbers: Michael Ellman, “Soviet Repression Statistics: Some Comments,” in: Europe-Asia
Studies, Vol. 54, No. 7, 2002, 1151–1172.
10 Shalamov had already been arrested in 1929 and spent three years at Solovki prison, being released
in 1932. The Kolyma is not a region in Siberia, but part of the Russian Far-East. See the following
statistics of Memorial (the Russian International Historical-Enlightenment Human Rights and
Humanitarian Society) on victims of the Gulag: http://memo.ru/s/319.html, accessed on 9 March 2012;
for summary data on political charges in 1939-1946: http://www.memorial.krsk.ru/index1.htm,
accessed on 9 March 2012; for e.g. Petrograd-Leningrad: http://memorial-nic.org/terror/16.htm,
accessed on 9 March 2012; for the “great terror” there: http://memorial-nic.org/terror/02.htm, accessed
on 9 March 2012.
11 Shalamov points to this difference with Dostoevsky’s House of the Dead explicitly in many of his
writings. See references to Dostoevsky in Shalamov Valerii Esipov, «В. Т. Шаламов и Ф. М.
Достоевский» [“V.T. Shalamov and F.M. Dostoevsky”] (2010), at: http://shalamov.ru/research/160/,
accessed on 9 March 2012.
8
Such dehumanized “living corpses” are called dokhodyagi.12 This phenomenon
is not solely a Soviet one. The “living corpses” of the Nazi camps are known as
Muselmänner. Unfortunately, there is no room for dealing with the witnesses of the
Holocaust in this article, but Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi, Tadeusz Borowski, Ella
Lingens-Reiner, and many other Holocaust survivors testify the same as Shalamov:
there is a limit of exhaustion behind which no moral laws count. There is a frontier
behind which nothing human is left in a being.13 A survivor of Auschwitz, Isidor
Levin, calls the question “where was God in Auschwitz” almost blasphemous. “The
question should be: ‘where were you, man’?”14
I would like to apply this question to Dostoevsky’s “man in man” as: where
was the imago dei in Auschwitz and in the Gulag? I will not touch upon the executors
because this theme has little to do with the point I want to make and would, thus,
unnecessarily complicate my argument.15
In Shalamov’s experience, two main factors lead to this extreme of
dehumanization. The first is severe hunger:
All human emotions – love, friendship, envy, concern for one’s fellow man,
compassion, longing for fame, honesty – had left us with the flesh that had melted
from our bodies during their long fasts. [In the slight muscular layer which still
remained in our bones (...) differed only anger – the most enduring human feeling.]16
Plural of the Russian “dokhodyaga,” something like “goner.”
Cf. A. van Harskamp, B. Siertsema and B. Voorsluis, Geloof en vertrouwen na Auschwitz (Zoetermeer:
De Horstink, 1995), 24-25.
14 http://www.docstoc.com/docs/71632849/Gulag-Archipelago-II, accessed on 9 March 2012.
15 I intend to address this aspect of the question of evil and dehumanization in my forthcoming
monograph (see fn. 1).
16 Shalamov, “Dry Rations,” Kolyma Tales, 56. Translation between square brackets are mine; this
passage has not been included in the translation by John Glad.
12
13
The second factor leading to total dehumanization is severe frost: “The same frost
that transformed a man’s spit into ice in midair also penetrated the soul. (…) And the
soul shuddered and froze – perhaps to remain frozen for ever.”17
Hunger and frost seem to have a power to totally reduce the human being to a
physical thing:
To eat better, one had to work better. But to work better one had to eat better.
Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians were always the first to die – a phenomenon
that the doctors always explained away by claiming that peoples of the Baltic states
were weaker than Russians. True, there normal way of life was more dissimilar than
to that of the camps than was the world of the Russian peasant, and it was more
difficult for them. The primary reason, however, was quite different: it wasn’t that
they possessed less endurance, but that they were physically bigger than the
Russians.18
The vanishing of all human emotions besides anger and bitterness is repeated many
times in Shalamov’s stories about the Kolyma camps:
Envy, like all our feelings, had been dulled and weakened by hunger. We lacked the
strength to experience emotions, to seek easier work, to walk, to ask, to beg… We
envied only our acquaintances, the ones who were lucky enough to get office work, a
job in the hospital or the stables – wherever there was none of the long physical labor
glorified as heroic and noble in signs above all the camp gates.19
Shalamov, “Carpenters,” Kolyma Tales, 48.
Shalamov, “Shock Therapy,” Kolyma Tales, 30.
19 Shalamov, “Condensed Milk,” Kolyma Tales, 181.
17
18
The narrator in the story “Sententious” testifies: “Bitterness was the last feeling with
which men departed into nonbeing, into the world of the dead.”20 A dokhodyaga plans
his life for the next two hours at the most.
Shalamov writes that by severe frost and hunger and while working sixteen
hours a day seven days a week and being constantly beaten up by convoy and
criminals, healthy young men became dokhodyagi within twenty to thirty days.21
“These terms are repeatedly tested,”22 Shalamov’s narrator adds laconically. Whereas
in Dostoevsky the “dregs” of society preserved their imago dei, in Shalamov the
dehumanization involves anyone, regardless of background, social, educational, or
any other condition. In Shalamov the dehumanization is unconditional.
According to Shalamov there is no room for love or friendship for a dokhodyaga
in the camp. This may be qualified by the remark of another Gulag survivor,
Yevgenia Ginzburg, “[t]here are no more fervent friendships than those made in
prison.”23 Both with Shalamov and with Ginzburg, there is a clear differentiation
between the living conditions in a Stalin prison and in a Stalin camp. Camp is
obviously worse, and as I argued earlier, quality of life is the only reason for the
difference of Dostoevsky’s, Solzhenitsyn’s, and Shalamov’s camp experiences.
Shalamov’s testimony reads:
Friendship is not born in conditions of need or trouble. Literary fairy tales tell of
‘difficult’ conditions which are an essential element in forming any friendship, but
such conditions are simply not difficult enough. If tragedy and need brought people
together and gave birth to their friendship, then the need was not extreme and the
tragedy not great. Tragedy is not deep and sharp if it can be shared with friends.
Shalamov, “Sententious,” Kolyma Tales, 75. Cf. 70: “Little flesh was left on my bones, just enough for
bitterness – the last human emotion; it was closer to the bones. (…) What remained with me till the
very end? Bitterness.”
21 See Shalamov, “Татарский мулла и чистый воздух” [Tatarian Mullah and Fresh Air], at:
http://shalamov.ru/library/2/19.html, accessed on 9 March 2012.
22 Shalamov, “Tatarian Mullah”: “Эти сроки многократно проверены.”
23 Eugenia Ginzburg, Journey into the Whirlwind, trans. Paul Stevenson and Max Hayward (New
York/London: Harvest, 1975), 99.
20
Only real need can determine one’s spiritual and physical strength and set the limits
of one’s physical endurance and moral courage.24
A testimony on friendship can also be found in the story, “An Individual
Assignment”:
Cold, hunger and sleeplessness rendered any friendship impossible, and Dugaev [a
main character of the story] – despite his youth – understood the falseness of the
belief that friendship could be tempered by misery and tragedy. For friendship to be
friendship, its foundation had to be laid before living conditions reached that last
border beyond which no human emotion was left to man – only mistrust, rage and
lies.25
Hermeneutics of Real Suffering
A narrator in another story tells: “We understood that death was no worse than life,
and we feared neither.”26 This brings to mind a fragment from a lost tragedy by
Euripides: “Who knoweth if to die be but to live, / And that called life by mortals be
but death?”27 Yet this association does not hold true, not only because Shalamov’s
thought comes from a story with a reality behind it, while Euripides’ isolated
sentence remains open for any interpretation, but also because of a qualification by
Shalamov: for a dokhodyaga life is qualitatively not better than death. Because it has
been severed from its context, Euripides’s sentence does not belong to a genre of
tragedy, but to a philosophical, epistemological discourse, which remains abstract
Shalamov, “Dry Rations,” Kolyma Tales, 66.
Shalamov, “An Individual Assignment,” Kolyma Tales, 20.
26 Shalamov, “Dry Rations,” Kolyma Tales, 57.
27 In Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, transl. R.D. Hicks, vol. II, Loeb Classical Library
185 (London: William Heinemann; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970), 487.
24
25
exactly because its context is lost. Shalamov’s qualitative assessment of life and death
brings the discourse to the level of real tragedy.28
The difference between concrete suffering and abstract reflection is important.
This may be elaborated some more in order to show the connection of hermeneutics
with the very essence of humanities, in particular of theology and ethics. In his
brilliant comparative analysis of Shalamov’s and Solzhenitsyn’s message, the French
philosopher Alain Badiou prefers Shalamov. According to Badiou, Solzhenitsyn is
too much of a Russian to be able to teach the Western readers something they could
discover themselves—that is “that Stalin was totalitarian.”29 I agree with that.
There is, however, a problem with Badiou’s methodology, and the discipline
he chooses to analyse the two writers. He opts for Shalamov because “his art directs
the possibility of political thought.”30 The abstract level of political philosophy is
inappropriate for understanding the difference between Shalamov and Solzhenitsyn.
In any case we cannot start on this level. Our analysis has to start on the level of the
concrete testimonies. An ethical norm, applicable on this level is (to quote Shalamov):
“there are, perhaps, worse deeds than to dine on a human corpse.”31
Anamnestic Culture: Remembering the Forgotten Victims
Departing from this concrete anthropological level, opposite to Badiou’s project, will
immediately clarify what really matters—the question of preservation of humanity in
This evokes a whole spectrum of hermeneutical and heuristic questions on our relation to and
understanding of the texts and the real people of the past, which I can not address here. See my
Kaleidoscope, and F. Bestebreurtje, “Postmodern Orthodoxy? The Problem of Biblical Criticism in
Orthodox Hermeneutics,” in K. Tolstaya (ed.), Orthodox Paradoxes: Heterogeneities and Complexities in
Contemporary Russian Orthodoxy. Proceedings from the 1st INaSEC Conference (Institute for the Academic
Study of Eastern Christianity), Brill: Leiden, Boston 2014.
29 Alain Badiou, Can Politics Be Thought? followed by Of an Obscure Disaster: On the End of the Truth of the
State, trans. Bruno Bosteels (Durham: Duke University Press, forthcoming), 21. I would like to express
my gratitude to Dr. Bosteels for sending me his translation prior to publication.
30 Badiou, Can Politics Be Thought?, 22.
31 Not translated in the English version of the “Dominoes”: “есть, наверно, дела и похуже, чем
обедать человечьим трупом”, cf. at: http://shalamov.ru/library/2/27.html, accessed on 9 March 2012.
28
the Gulag. Badiou writes that Shalamov’s purpose was to create an artistic world
where “exception becomes the metaphor for normality, and the literary immersion in
this nightmare may awaken us to the universality of a will.”32
Shalamov was, indeed, an artist. But the issue is not at all his interest in
metaphors. His ultimate goal was not a “literary immersion” of his reader into a
“world of metaphors.” Shalamov is writing what he calls “the prose of the future,”
the only criterion of which is “reliability”: “prose of the future demands something
different. Not the writers will talk, but men of profession who possess the writer’s
gift. And they will tell only about what they know, what they saw. Reliability – this is
the power of literature of the future.”33 To some degree the author Shalamov is trying
to exceed a common ontological condition of his narrators. For example, the narrator
of his story “Dry Rations”: “A human being survives by his ability to forget. Memory
is always ready to blot out the bad and retain only the good.”34 Moreover, the
narrator of the story “Sententious” tells about the eviction of language and inevitably
also of memory and emotions in the camp. The goal of Shalamov’s prose can be
described with what the Catholic political theologian Jürgen Manneman in another
context calls a creation of an “anamnestic culture, which remembers about the
forgotten victims.” Shalamov wrote: “I don’t want to forget anything and exactly in
that (…) I see my fate!”35 Because a reader cannot experience what Shalamov has
experienced, his prose is not aimed at “literary immersion.”
Badiou, Can Politics Be Thought?, 23.
Shalamov, “Tie”: “проза будущего требует другого. Заговорят не писатели, а люди профессии,
обладающие писательским даром. И они расскажут только о том, что знают, видели.
Достоверность — вот сила литературы будущего.” http://shalamov.ru/library/2/22.html, accessed
on 9 March 2012.
34 Shalamov, “Dry Rations,” Kolyma Tales, 66.
35 “Я ничего не хочу забывать (…) и именно в этом вижу … свою судьбу!” Shalamov, Новая книга:
Воспоминания. Записные книжки. Переписка. Следственные дела [New Book: Memoires. Notebooks.
Correspondence. Case Investigations] (Moscow: Eskimo, 2004), 593.
32
33
Theology after Auschwitz and Theology after Gulag
The category of memory reminds us that we must find conditions in order to speak
about God in the face of the dehumanization in the Gulag and Auschwitz.
Uncomfortable and leading to aporias (or inability to solve theological questions),
thinking about ‘God and/in/after Auschwitz’ has a tradition in Western theology.
Representatives of this tradition are Dorothee Sölle, Hans Joachim Iwand, Jürgen
Moltmann, Friedrich-Wilhelm Marquardt, Helmut Gollwitzer, Richard Rubenstein,
Johann Baptist Metz, Jürgen Manneman and many others. “Theology after
Auschwitz” was nearly the first topic I learned about when I began my study of
theology in the Netherlands in 1993.
Contemporary Western theology has no answer to Auschwitz. According to
some Christian theologians, God is present in:
1.
the “why” question itself, or,
2.
in the aporia we experience, or,
3.
in our complaint and indictment of the violence, or,
4.
in reason fighting the violence of technique and reflection through
dialogue and reconciliation, through compassion and retry.36
The answers given are not conclusive, exactly because theology (in its primary
meaning of the human capability of speaking about God) reaches its limits here.
Soteriology, Christology, and eschatology are possible directions to reconsider these
aporias. What matters is not the absence of a conclusive answer, but the presence of
systematically validated theological groundwork which can be fruitful for theological
reflection in Eastern Europe.37
The list is taken from an unpublished manuscript on Christian dogmatics by A. Van der Kooi,
whom I thank for her kind permission to use it here. In Part II, I intend to discuss further related
questions.
37 In this respect, a theology after the Gulag could learn much from the theology after apartheid and
South American liberation theology as well.
36
Time, distance and, even more, repentance is required for adequate reflection.
Theologie nach Auschwitz emerged some 20-25 years after the Holocaust. The same
amount of time has now passed since the fall of communism.38 Within the Reformed
tradition in post-communist Eastern Europe a profound reflection on the communist
past has arisen (I only mention Michail Beintker here).39 In post-communist Eastern
Orthodoxy, however, reflection on the Holocaust and/or the Gulag and communism,
comparable with that in the West, is still lacking.40
Given the current Russian church-state relations, a complicating sociopsychological aspect should be mentioned. “Theology after Auschwitz” is, in
general, twofold: one side is given political, historical and theological guilt through
A singular case in this respect is the process of reconciliation in South Africa, where reflection,
introspection, and remission—whether successful or not—lie at the basis of post-apartheid history,
theology, and the legal system. See a valuable contribution from a jurisprudential angle by Wouter
Veraart, De passie voor een alledaagse rechtsorde. Over vergeten, herinneren en vergeven als reacties op
historisch onrecht [The Passion for Everyday Legal Order. About Forgetting, Remembering
and Forgiving as Responses to Historical Injustice] (The Hague: Boom Juridische Uitgevers, 2010). See for
the genesis of “Theology after Auschwitz/Holocaust” in the US and Western Europe: Hans Jansen,
Christelijke theologie na Auschwitz. Deel I: Theologische en kerkelijke wortels van het antisemitisme
[Christian Theology After Auschwitz. Part I: Theological and Religious Roots of Anti-Semitism] (The Hague:
Uitgeverij Boekencentrum, 19822), 17-28.
39 Cf. e.g. Michail Beintker, „Die Neuorientierung nach der Wende des Jahres 1989,“ in: Michail
Beintker, Sándor Fazakas (eds.), Öffentliche Relevanz der reformierten Theologie, Theological Journal of the
Debrecen Reformed Theological University, Sonderheft [Special issue] (2008), 77-82; „Theologische
Neuorientierung: Einführung in das Thema,“ in: EvTh 55 (1995), 211-217; „Die Schuldfrage im Licht
der Barmer Theologischen Erklärung und das Stuttgarter Schuldbekenntnis und die Stellung zur
Deutschlandfrage,“ in: Materialien der Enquete-Kommission „Aufarbeitung von Geschichte und Folgen der
SED-Diktatur in Deutschland,“ Bd. VI,1 (Baden-Baden: hg. vom Deutschen Bundestag, 1995), 47-53
(Diskussion: 53-69); „Das Erbe des Kommunismus und die Kirchen. Theologische
Herausforderungen,“ in: Katharina Kunter, Holger Schjørring (eds.), Die Kirchen und das Erbe des
Kommunismus. Die Zeit nach 1989 – Zäsur, Vergangenheitsbewältigung und Neubeginn (Erlangen: MartinLuther-Verlag, 2007), 383-396.
40 The international conference on “Theology after Auschwitz and its Connection with Theology after
Gulag ” in St. Petersburg (1998) is a unique event, see Natalia Petcherskaya (ed.), Богословие после
Освенцима и его связь с богословием после Гулага: Следствия и выводы [Theology after Auschwitz and its
Relation to Theology after the Gulag: Consequences and Conclusions] (St. Petersburg: High ReligiousPhilosophical School, 1999). See the detailed report of Anton van Harskamp, “Controversen rond
Auschwitz, Goelag, Joden en Christenen” [Controversies Around Auschwitz, Gulag, Jews and
Christians”],
http://www.bezinningscentrum.nl/indemarge/ssi_indemarge/pdf_indemarge_hor/marge197.pdf,
accessed on 9 March 2012.Harskamp describes some awkward situations during this scientific
conference; for example, that a man shouted “Zjid, zjid, zjid” (“yid”, or “kike” in Russian) during the
presentation of Isidor Levin, the Auschwitz survivor mentioned earlier.
38
complicity with the genocide of the Jews (the chosen people) simply by association of
their identity as Christians. The second is the problem of speaking about God after
this evil and suffering. These two aspects are, of course, reciprocal.
For the post-soviet society—given the political, historical, and theological
dimensions—the question of complicity is more intricate because the borders
between enemies and victims were extremely blurred. Within the communist system,
which ideologically implanted the idea of brotherhood, any citizen/comrade could
become an “enemy of the people” just as anyone could be or become an NKVD
(former KGB) informant.41 The repressive system sorted enemies inside society. By
contrast, the complicity in Auschwitz (and for that part, for instance, in apartheid)
was that of guilt against a clearly defined outsider (Jew, Gypsy, homosexual, black,
or colored). Paradoxically, this “otherness” apparently makes confession and sense of
complicity easier to accept. Reciprocity, not (necessarily) confinement to one
stigmatized group or people, of the communist legacy, makes complicity
unconditional. This is, however, on another level than the unconditional destruction
of imago dei as described by Shalamov.42
Three further factors are important to consider the content of theological
reflection in the Russian context. First, that the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) is
adopting doctrinal documents after more than 70 years of enforced silence; second,
the disruption with the pre-revolutionary tradition of academic theology; third, the
For example: “Various statistics, which are difficult to verify in terms of their accuracy, show the
Gestapo having 1 regular member per 4,800 citizens in 1938 compared to the Soviet Union with the
KGB's 1 per 5,830 in the late 1930s.” Steve Hewitt, Snitch! A History of the Modern Intelligence Informer
(London: The Continuum International Publishing Group, 2010), 105. At my inquiry, however,
“Memorial” (see note 11) answered that no statistics have ever been gathered on the “snitches” due to
inaccessibility of sources. No personal files were disclosed in Russia, and archives with dossiers where
such information could be found are still locked. In investigational dossiers that can be obtained by
researchers, this information is blocked, or these documents are not given out because they contain
such information. On this level, too, the remnants of the closed Soviet system hinder remembrance
and repentance.
42 In my forthcoming monograph on Theology after Gulag (fn. 1), I will argue that unconditionality of
guilt can become theologically functional in the project of “Theology after Gulag.”
41
growing rapprochement of church and state where the successors of the repressive
apparatus hold power and are, thus, not inclined to repentance.43
Below I will relate the question of destruction of imago dei to the official theology of
the ROC.
The Absence of Memory in New Doctrinal Documents
of the Russian Orthodox Church
One of the new doctrinal documents adopted by the ROC is “The Russian Orthodox
Church’s Basic Teaching on Human Dignity, Freedom and Rights,” issued in 2008.44
As can be expected, within the above mentioned socio-political and sociopsychological setting this document is not based on introspection, but on
mirroring—that is, re-flection turned outwards. As stated in the “Introduction,” it is
an address of the ROC to “the world today.”45 The whole address to “the world”
regarding human dignity, freedom, and rights lacks any direct reference to or
account of recent Russian history—decennia of suppression and injustice.46
See, by contrast, the preamble to the South-African Constitution of 1996: “We, the people op South
Africa (…) [h]eal the divisions of the past (…).” Quoted in Veraart, De passie, 35. In contemporary
Russia the current course is to reinforce patriotism and create a positive image of the communist
governmental structures. A sort of conspiracy theory emerged through this that claimed: because of
the high percentage of former KGB employees in the current Russian administration, the government
demanded that former KGB people, or members of the party, or of government bodies be portrayed in
books and films as pious and courageous people—people who are able to guide the country in
harmony with the Orthodox revival. In the slipstream of the increasing confluence between church
and state in Russian society, this would lead to a better popular image of the KGB[/FSB]. I touch upon
this problem in Katya Tolstaya, Peter Versteeg, “Inventing a Saint: Religious Fiction in PostCommunist Russia,” 2012 (forthcoming).
44 See discussions in e.g.: Alfons Brüning and Evert van der Zweerde (eds.), Orthodoxy and Human
Rights (Leuven: Peeters, 2012, forthcoming); John A. McGuckin, “The Issue of Human Rights in
Byzantium and the Orthodox Christian Tradition,” in: John Witte, Jr., Frank S. Alexander (eds.),
Christianity and Human Rights: An Introduction (New York: Cambridge UP, 2010), 173-190, there 184190; criticism in: Igor Gordyi, “The Ukrainian Churches and the Europeanisation of Ukraine,” in:
Juliane Besters-Dilger (ed.), Ukraine on its Way to Europe: Interim Results of the Orange Revolution
(Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2009), 309-329, there 312-314.
45 http://www.mospat.ru/en/documents/dignity-freedom-rights/introduction/, accessed on 9 March
2012.
46 The so-called “Darmstädter Wort” of the Bruderrat der Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland was
adopted on the 8th of August 1947. „Der von Hans Joachim Iwand entworfene und unter Beteiligung
43
One of the few indirect references is in Ch. II, Section 4 to the “martyrs who served
God even to death and the (…) confessors who refused to renounce Him in face of
persecutions and threats.”47 One might see this as an allusion to the Orthodox victims
of the Soviet repressions.48 Exactly this allusion brings me to my main question of
theological account for dehumanization in the Gulag.
Other than the secular Human Rights Declaration, “The Basic Teaching”
derives human dignity from the biblical notion of the endowment of man with God’s
image and likeness (Gen. 1:26).49 “The image of God can be either darkened or
illumined depending on the self-determination of a free individual, while the natural
dignity becomes either more apparent in his life or obliterated by sin.”50 I constrain
myself here to only one remark: this chapter (II) of “The Basic Teaching” is entitled
“Freedom of choice and freedom from evil.” The fate of the Muselmänner and
dokhodyagi of respectively Auschwitz and the Gulag has disclosed a possibility of
what I would call a total loss of any dignity and of the image of God.51 Free will was
von Martin Niemöller, Karl Barth und anderen überarbeitete Text galt der Konkretion eines
kirchlichen Schuldbekenntnisses nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg.“ [“The text, designed by Hans Joachim
Iwand and revised under the participation of Martin Niemöller, Karl Barth and others, served the
concretion of a confession of guilt of the church after the Second World War.”] Beintker, Die Kirchen,
388. Beintker discusses the import of this document for reflection on Protestant post-communist
theology and “Theology after Auschwitz.”
47 http://www.mospat.ru/en/documents/dignity-sfreedom-rights/iv/, accessed on 9 March 2012. In this
regard the question of dehumanization can be pursued on the examples of two of Shalamov’s stories
concerning clergymen—a pastor, Frisorger (“The Apostle Paul”), and an Orthodox priest, Zamiatin
(“A Day Off”).
48 Between 1992 and 2000 “at least thrice as many” saints have been glorified and canonized as in the
entire previous history of the Church. Vladislav Cypin, Церковное право [Church Law] (Moscow: Fond
“Christianskaya zhisn’,” 2002, at: http://www.klikovo.ru/db/book/msg/4203, accessed on 9 March
2012), there § 48.1. In 2000-2008 the ROC’s Synodal Commission for Canonization of Saints proceeded
with canonizations in comparable proportions. Most people recently glorified and canonized are
martyrs of communist rule. See Fr. Nektarios Serfes, “Glorification Of The Assembly of Russian New
Martyrs And Confessors August 2000 In Moscow, Russia” (7-11-2000, at:
http://www.serfes.org/royal/glorification.htm, accessed on 9 March 2012).
49 Ch. I, section 1: “According to the Biblical revelation, God not only created human nature but also
endowed it with qualities in His image and after His likeness (cf. Gen. 1:26). It is the only ground
which makes it possible to assert that human nature has an inherent dignity.”
50 Ch. II, section 1.
51 I find a similar observation in David Patterson, “Nazis, Philosophers, and the response to the
Scandal of Heidegger,” in: John K. Roth (ed.), Ethics after the Holocaust: Perspectives, Critiques, and
Responses (St. Paul, Minnesota: Pargon House, 1999), 148-172, there 152: “The divine image in man can
out of order in these circumstances. Another layer forms, in this regard, the question
of freedom of the ‘free’ Soviet society at large; for example, given state imposed
atheism. As far as the radical evil of dehumanization of the dokhodyagi in the Gulag
represents suffering and injustice in general, the question seems appropriate whether
the ROC preserves its veracity/reliability in not accounting for the recent history and
its own role in its newly adopted documents.52
Revival of the Concept of theosis
Dehumanization of the Gulag and Auschwitz forms a fundamental challenge for
Christian theological anthropology as such, and especially for Eastern Orthodoxy,
considering the importance of deification (theosis)53 and the current theological
revival of this doctrine. Given that contemporary interest in theosis is certainly not
confined to the Orthodox context, but “is perhaps the hype of twenty-first century
theology,”54 the link between the concepts of imago dei and of theosis in the newly
adopted doctrinal documents of the ROC becomes important for our discourse on
be destroyed. No more threatening proof to this effect can be found than the so-called Muselmann in
the Nazi death camp…” Patterson draws on the Jewish theological anthropology of Torah and
Talmud and describes the destruction of imago dei as an “attack” on God and man. His overall
approach, however, is rather abstract.
52 I intend to discuss this question in Part II. Cf. the opinion that rejection or ignorance of the
Holocaust “is foreclosed to ‘us humans’ not just qua Europeans, Americans or Westerners, but qua
members of humanity – in this case understood as a community of all human beings that have gone,
are going, or will go through a human life. (…) On the plane of justice on a global scale, the adoption
of conceptions that fail to condemn the perpetration of new holocausts under different names (…) can
then be rejected as something, that undermines humanity’s possibility of maintaining a sense of selfrespect, and each of its members’ ability to regard humanity within himself [I read: imago dei, K.T.] as
worthy of respect.” Alessandro Ferrara, “The Idea of Charter of fundamental Human Rights,” in:
Claudio Corradetti (ed.), Philosophical Dimensions of Human Rights: Some Contemporary Views
(Dordrecht/Heidelberg/London/New York: Springer, 2012), 173-190, there 185.
53 I use both terms here as interchangeable.
54 Maarten Wisse, Trinitarian Theology Beyond Participation (New York: T&T Clark, 2011), 301. See there
interconfessional bibliography, 301-312. Wisse expresses a common opinion (302) that “Lossky
introduced Eastern Orthodox theology to Western readers as early as the 1950s.” It was, however, M.
Lot-Borodine who in a series of articles introduced the Orthodox concept of deification in the West in
1932-33. See Norman Russell, The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2004), 4; Heleen Zorgdrager, “A Practice of Love: Myrrha Lot-Borodine (1882-1954)
and the Modern Revival of the Doctrine of Deification,” in: JECS (forthcoming, 2012).
searching directions for 21st century theology. Within Orthodox theology, and thus in
these documents, deification is a soteriological consequence of the anthropological
and ontological presuppositions of imago dei. Precisely with its notion of theosis
Eastern Orthodox theology bears a great potential to make theological thinking about
God more or less sufficient, or, perhaps, together with the Western solutions more
comprehensive. In this contribution I will restrict myself to some comments on the
ROC documents.55
The Basic Teaching states: “Human life therefore lies in seeking ‘God’s likeness
in all virtue so far as it is possible for man’, as St. John of Damascus says in his Exact
Exposition of the Orthodox Faith. The patristic tradition describes this elicitation of
the image of God as deification. The God-given dignity is confirmed by a moral
principle present in every person and discerned in the voice of conscience.”56 The
Bases of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church (2000) calls deification the
“ultimate goal and calling of man”: “The body, free from slavery to sinful passions and
illnesses as their consequences, should serve the soul, while the spiritual powers and abilities,
transformed by the grace of the Holy Spirit, should aspire for the ultimate goal and calling of
man which is deification” (Bold in the original).57
I will indicate this direction for interpreting the concept of theosis my forthcoming monograph (see
fn. 1).
56 Chapter I, Section 1.3, at: http://www.mospat.ru/en/documents/dignity-freedom-rights/i/, accessed
on 9 March 2012.
57 Ch. XI.1, at: http://orthodoxeurope.org/page/3/14.aspx. Cf. I.1; IV.4; XII.1, accessed on 9 March 2012.
This document advocates the symphonia model of the ROC’s relationship with the secular state
(guided by the principles of reciprocal support and non-interference and patriotism of the national
church, “The Social Concept,” III), and delineates in III.2 its position through a non-theological use of
“deification”: “According to the teaching of the Church, power itself has no right to make itself absolute by
extending its limits up to complete autonomy from God and from the order of things established by Him. This
can lead to the abuse of power and even to the deification of rulers.” (At
http://www.mospat.ru/en/documents/social-concepts/iii/, accessed on 9 March 2012, bold in the
original.) For discussions of this document see Josephien van Kessel, Olga Hoppe-Kondrikova and
Evert van der Zweerde, “Compendium en Osnovy: Een Orthodox contrapunt” [Compendium and
Osnovy: An Orthodox Counterpoint”], in: Marcel Becker (ed.), Christelijk Sociaal Denken. Traditie.
Actualiteit. Kritiek [Christian Social Thought. Tradition. Actuality. Criticism] (Budel: Damon, 2009), 130160; Alexander Agadjanian,“The Social Vision of the Russian Orthodoxy: Balancing between Identity
and Relevance,” in: Jonathan Sutton and Wil van den Bercken (eds.), Orthodox Christianity and
Contemporary Europe: Selected Papers (Leuven: Peeters Publishers, 2003), 163-183; Zoe Knox, Russian
Society and the Orthodox Church: Religion in Russia after Communism (London: Routledge, 2005), 111-132.
55
In both the Basic Teaching and in the Social Concept the notions of imago dei and
theosis are used from a sort of timeless perspective, in factual oblivion of the recent
past (I suspend both the question of complicity and the problem of dehumanization
and evil here).58 Whereas the “Theology after Auschwitz” church based antiSemitism can—up to a certain extent—be identified as non-compliance with
Christian doctrines, for the Orthodox context, concepts like theosis and imago dei
prove incommensurable for the complicity of the Gulag and dehumanization when
they are not confronted with historical reality. A timeless perspective is not adequate
to address the “world today.”59
An additional question should involve the perception of theological notions
by a common (i.e., not theologically skilled) reader. The official doctrine of theosis
came into being as result of controversies.60 Since then this notion has become
theologically loaded and multi-interpretable throughout church history.61 Within the
scope of contemporary systematic theology, discourse on theosis involves a scale of
loci (dogmatic themes such as the concept of God, ontology, anthropology,
Christology, soteriology); the interpretation of which will lead to differences in the
The same can be said of other documents, published on the official web site of the ROC:
“Metropolitan Hilarion addressed the brethren of Filotheou Monastery with a homily dedicated to St.
Simeon the New Theologian” (27.10.2010), at: http://www.mospat.ru/en/2010/10/27/news28950/, and
Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeyev), “Theology of Icon in the Orthodox Church. Lecture at St. Vladimir’s
Seminary, 5 February 2011” at: http://www.mospat.ru/en/2011/02/06/news35783/, accessed on 9 March
2012, “‘Church hierarchy as a source of authority in the Church’,” at:
http://www.mospat.ru/en/2011/06/28/news43952/, accessed on 9 March 2012, and “Inter-Orthodox
Cooperation in the Preparations for a Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church,” at:
http://www.mospat.ru/en/2011/11/03/news50923/, accessed on 9 March 2012, where the concept of
deification is limited to the patristic teachings without any relation to modern history.
59 There is a broader aspect to it that is connected with the Orthodox notion of tradition as
unchangeable and with theological hermeneutics. Positioning oneself at an odd hermeneutical point
(of view) is also not foreign to Western theologians. See my criticism of Karl Barth and Eduard
Thurneysen for (literally) taking a position “from God” [“von Gott aus”] in Part III of my Kaleidoscope
(see n. 2), and my “Literary Mystification: Hermeneutical Questions of the Early Dialectical
Theology,” in: Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie 54/3 (2012), 312-331.
60 Roughly: in the first phase with Barlaam of Calabria, in the second phase with the group lead by
Gregory Akindynos, in the third phase with Nicephorus Gregoras, and in the fourth and last phase
with Prochorus Cydones. See e.g. Russel, The Doctrine of Deification, 304-309.
61 Cf. the four modes of approaching deification (nominal, analogical, ethical, and realistic) as
distinguished by Norman Russell, The Doctrine of Deification, 9.
58
completion of one’s interpretation of theosis.62 Thus, a functional explanation of its
application in the official ROC documents is needed for theologians, and especially
for the common readers.63 Deification is not considered in a theological (historical)
context in any of the documents published on the official web site of the ROC.64 Thus,
in the documents discussed, the goal of deification and the concepts of human
dignity—“church- state relations and a number of problems socially significant
today”65—remain, similar to Euripides and Badiou, on the abstract level. For a
doctrinal document to be reliable—I recall Shalamov’s demand of reliability—
deification could only be prescribed as a norm to “every person”66 within a thorough
theological account, which is now lacking. When our theology loses its context, the
tragedy of the concrete testimonies becomes as abstract as Euripides’ discourse.
Thus, the question remains: how can we speak theologically reliably of theosis
and imago dei after Auschwitz and the Gulag? For our discussion of theosis to be
reliable, a confrontation with the reality of one´s own past and guilt is required. One
could even say that such self-reflection is a precondition for the practice of theosis, on
an ecclesial level as much as on an individual level (in this case for complicity in the
Gulag). With F.W. Marquardt—who was led by the Nie wieder! (‘never again
Auschwitz’)—we are determined by the primacy of ethics over dogmatics and of
practice over theory, the historical over the metaphysical.67 In its official documents
the ROC heretofore fails to connect the appeal to theosis to the theological Orthodox
tradition regarding theosis.
Wisse gives relevant examples in his Trinitarian Theology, 305-312; cf. Williams, The Ground of Union,
142.
63 A short questionary I held under 15 Russian respondents—none of them a theologian; all had at
least an university degree; seven were church attendees; eight were from a more secular
background—showed that they expected something “very elevated” («очень возвышенное») and
“mystical” by the word «обожение» (“deification”). No respondent would connect it with the
Orthodox doctrine or practice, nor with deeper theological strata.
64 See note 58.
65 “The Basis of the Social Concept,” at: http://www.mospat.ru/en/documents/social-concepts/about/,
accessed on 9 March 2012.
66 I refer to Chapter I, Section 1.3 of the “Basic Teaching” (see quote above).
67 “Inleiding door de redactie” [“Preface by the editors”], in: Friedrich-Wilhelm Marquardt, Bij de slip
van zijn kleed… Een christelijke theologie na Auschwitz (Baarn:Ten Have, 2003), 15.
62
Theosis and Memory of the Gulag
The amnesia of the Gulag experience in the new adopted doctrinal documents of the
ROC brings to memory Shalamov’s driving force. As Juri Drumi says:
In memory [Shalamov] sees ‘a symptom of humanity’. Memory is also a safeguard of
immortality and resurrection.68 As follows from the story ‘The procurator of Judea’, to
forget the names and faces of martyrs, or equally to consign to oblivion their
executors, means to forget Christ and His torturers. With all might of his nature
Shalamov resists ‘the terrifying human force – the will and ability to forget’.69 Only
having overcome in himself the temptation of unconsciousness, he calms down and
goes to sleep: a right to sleep quietly has only he, who remembers the faces of the
cripples, who did not forget the insane shine of their hungry eyes.70
To recall Badiou once again, the awakening from “this nightmare” should have
nothing to do with “the universality of a will” or with political philosophy. An
allusion to Pascal’s “Jesus will be in agony until the end of the world, we must not
sleep during that time”71 seems more appropriate. I also think of Yevgenia
Ginzburg’s testimony that memory in the prison “reaches virtuosity”—as she calls it,
she writes that she literally knew pages from difficult books, she read only once, by
heart:
During the long months and years I spent in various prisons, I was able to observe
the virtuosity that human memory can develop when it is sharpened by loneliness
and complete isolation from outside impressions. One remembers with amazing
Drumi refers to Shalamov’s story, “Resurrection of the Larch.”
Drumi quotes from Shalamov’s story, “Train.”
70 Juri Drumi, «По десяти заповедям». Религиозно-нравственная основа «Колымских рассказов»”
[“‘According to the Ten Commandments’. Religious-moral base of the Kolyma Stories”], I.P.
Sirotinskaya (red.), К столетию со дня рождения Варлама Шаламова [For the hundredth birthday of
Varlam Shalamov] (Moscow: n.p., 2007), 73–84.
71 Blaise Pascal, Pensees, transl. A.J. Kralsheimer (Harmondsworth: Penguin books, 1966), 313.
68
69
accuracy everything one has ever read, even quite long ago, and can repeat whole
pages of books one had believed long forgotten. There is something almost
mysterious about this phenomenon.72
We live in different times than Shalamov and Ginzburg. Despite different socio- and
church-political differences and positive steps toward European integration, we still
can say with Johann Baptist Metz that we lack the “anamnestic spirit” required to
comprehend what in “such a disaster” happened “also with us, with Europe and
eventually with our talk about God.”73 In these times amnesia or a dormitory
stupefaction is, probably, not merely an ecclesiastical, but a broader cultural
phenomenon: I have read Shalamov’s stories at least five times and each time I forget
the concrete content. The paradox is that theology is, on the one hand, a normative
discipline, and, on the other hand, it is a hazardous enterprise that demands—as a
norm—the individual voice of the theologian. It is only with individual voices of
theologians that theology after Auschwitz was initiated in the West.
Theological rethinking of theosis (and imago dei) might give the Church (and,
foremost perhaps, the individual believer) a means to confess and accept this guilt,
but also to find a way forward to a faith and theology after the Gulag. In what way
the doctrine of theosis can be a theological basis for individual and ecclesial account
in the shadow of radical evil requires elaboration. It will involve a discussion on the
related Orthodox doctrine of divine essence/energies.74
Eugenia Ginzburg, Journey into the Whirlwind, trans. Paul Stevenson and Max Hayward (New
York/London: Harvest, 1975), 71.
73 J.B. Metz, “Theologie als Theodizee?“, in: Willi Oelmüller (ed.), Theodizee – Gott vor Gericht?
(München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1990), 103-118, 113: „weil uns jener anamnetische Geist fehlt, der
nötig wäre, um wahrzunehmen, was in einer solchen Katastrophe auch mit uns, mit Europa und
schließlich mit unserer Rede von Gott geschah.“
74 I shall expound my vision of this positive potential of Orthodox thinking on theosis-essence/energies
to become a theological basis for this individual account in the shadow of radical evil in my
monograph (see fn. 1).
72