 Fr. Igor Rozin Serving a moleben. |
May 13, 2013, marks the twelfth anniversary of the
martyric death of Priest Igor Rozin on the feast day of
St. Ignatius, Bishop of the Caucasus, in the city of
Tyrnyauz in the North Caucasus.
One cannot drive to the foot of Mount Elbrus except
through Tyrnyauz. The road from the city takes a rapid
turn upwards until it reaches Terskol. There it ends:
above that, one can proceed only by cable or on foot.
There is, however, one more way: from the north, from
Kislovodsk, on a mountain road. That is the way that
stubborn mountain climbers took when the road through
Tyrnyauz was closed for nearly an entire year, from
February to November 2011, when a counter-terrorist
operation was underway here. Today this operation is often
still declared, but not for long: usually for a day or
two, during which the news shows stories of how a cache of
explosives was located or an apartment in which militants
were entrenched was stormed. Few people outside of
Tyrnyauz pay attention to this news: today television
shows too much of it. But it is another story when you
live here. People entering the city encounter roadblocks.
Resting his elbow on the butt of a machinegun hanging from
his chest, a solider in body armor smokes next to an
armored personnel carrier. A black mask covers his face.
Other gunmen beside him check the Soviet-era cars parked
at the roadside.
In the distance one can see the empty-eyed skeletons of
buildings belonging to the Tyrnyauz Mining and
Ore-Dressing Integrated Plant, which was once famous
throughout the entire Soviet Union. In the beginning of
the 1930s tungsten-molybdenum ore was discovered and the
city was built, but the plant began to fade in the early
1990s and has since completely shut down. This once
flourishing garden city has been plunged into poverty and
desolate chaos. But what has not been taken away from this
place is the beauty of God’s world, which shows
through the distorted features of modernity.
The unusual, almost radiant air gives the landscape a
certain unreality – perhaps this is a quality of the
mountain, or perhaps of this place. The velvet sides of
the mountain, the ragged cliffs, the grey peak of Totur,
looking down on Tyrnyauz, the eagles pumping their wings
in the air currents – everything is so beautiful
that it is as if you were in one of the fabulous countries
you read about as a child.
To the right, on the mountain slope, one can see the city
cemetery. Over one of the graves is a tall canopy topped
by a cross. It was installed recently, a couple of years
ago, as was the black marble cross, now hugged by a
viburnum bush. Before this, the grave of Priest Igor Rozin
looked like almost all the others, with the exception that
beyond its fence, both then as now, one could often see
people praying.
 At the grave of Fr. Igor Rozin. 2012. |
+++
In the Soviet years, as it still is today, it was called
Elbrus Avenue. Commander Igor Rozin of the avalanche
squad, a rescuer and mountain climber, travelled on it
more than once. Priest Igor hurried the same way from
Terskol to services. He was ordained in 1999, being given
the only surviving building from 1937 as a church.
“Once I happened to meet him—I hadn’t
seen him in a long time. He asked if I could restore an
old Bible for him. I was surprised,” related Dmitry,
a neighbor of the Rozin family in Terskol and a colleague
from the Vysokogorny Institute. “And he said:
‘I’ve become a priest.’
‘Where?’ ‘In Tyrnyauz. We were given the
dirtiest place in the city.’” Is that what he
really said: the dirtiest place? “That’s what
he said. In fact, it was dirty: a bacteriological
laboratory. It couldn’t have been any dirtier: they
brought all the diseases there. But he said:
‘We’ll pray away this dirtiest of places:
nothing’s impossible.’”
I still think that he put it differently: all things
are possible to him that believeth [Mark 9:23].
They did indeed clean and pray away. The entire community
took care of the repairs: there was neither a window, nor
a door, nor a floor. There is a photograph in which the
first rector of the first church in the history of
Tyrnyauz, Fr. Igor Rozin, is captured along with the dean,
Fr. Leonid, and his daughter.
 |
Behind their backs is an icy metal porch, painted blue,
the same color as the decrepit door with its homemade
cross welded together from thin pipes, and a gray and
peeling wall. The word “church” is written in
large, solemn letters on the nameplate. Fr. Igor is just
barely smiling under his moustache. The inscription on the
photo reads: “Tyrnyauz, ‘cathedral,’ Fr.
Igor.”
Not many photographs of him are left. But if one puts them
in chronological order, the dramatic change he underwent
towards the end of his life of forty-five years becomes
obvious. Mind you, the term “dramatic change”
comes from the other, worldly vocabulary of his first,
pre-Christian half of life.
For the second, short, but utterly beautiful part, an
entirely different word is appropriate:
Transfiguration.
+++
He served out his entire, short priestly life—less
than two years—in this church. “It was very
hard for him spiritually, because this was an
unsanctified, unconsecrated place. This was a demonic
area,” says Hieromonk Igor (Vasiliev), then Fr. Igor
Rozin’s altar-server who, twenty days after the
death of his spiritual father, replaced him at his post
(there is no other way of putting it) as rector of St.
George’s Church. He shows me a video: an interview
with Fr. Igor (Rozin) for local television.
Standing in front of the modest iconostas in his little
church, where a week after this was recorded he would
accept his martyr’s death, Fr. Igor tells of the
distant Christian past of his region.
“According to historical records, the local
inhabitants—the Balkars—were Christians before
their forced conversion to Islam.” Unaccustomed to
giving interviews, he staidly pronounces each word
somewhat like a child.
He then remembers the most important thing and lights up:
“Here, by the way— somewhere in this place
where the church is now—was a church dedicated to
St. Theodore. We have two Saint Theodores: the Stratelates
and the Tyro. I don’t know to which Theodore that
church was dedicated, but it’s indeed the case that
there’s good historical evidence that there was an
Orthodox church of Byzantine construction here. The old
people—the very old people—remember its ruins
from before the city was built. The location of the
Christian church was passed on from generation to
generation.”
 This is the church in which Fr. Igor served his entire period as a priest. |
When and who built and consecrated a church in honor of
the Great-Martyr Theodore on this land is not known and
not overly important. The most important thing here is
something else: signs of Divine Providence. Above Tyrnyauz
towers Mount Totur, whose name is a distortion of the
Greek name “Theodore.” Christ, as it were,
left us a note, right on top of the peak of Totur,
terrible and joyful to read. On the screen is a soldier of
Christ from the last times, witnessing to his loyalty and
love for Christ by his blood, shed at the foot of this
mountain at the dawn of the third millennium.
It is strange to catch his gaze now, as he occasionally
looks at the camera: still a simple person in whom,
however, one can make out much more than in the usual
human gaze.
It is rather gloomy in the tiny church: either the old
Betacam film is distorting the color or else the day
really was outstandingly dreary. But behind the walls an
invisible spring is gathering in the lungs: the
house’s windows are open and breathing, a ball is
somewhere evenly striking the asphalt, and life seems as
comfortable and cozy as the clothes one wears at home,
which have long since taken on the body’s shape.
Many parishioners now remember that in the sermons of his
final months he spoke constantly about death and the
Heavenly Kingdom. “I was still unchurched and rarely
went to services. I didn’t understand it. I thought
that the Heavenly Kingdom is somewhere far away and I have
no plans to die… I have children and a husband
here… There are material deficiencies that need to
be addressed… But now the time’s come that I
do think about the Heavenly Kingdom.” This is
Valentina, one of God’s people, whom the Lord found
fit to be in church when Fr. Igor was murdered.
+++
He knew what would happen to him at least a week ahead of
time. The person who killed him on the feast day of St.
Ignatius (Brianchaninov), Bishop of the
Caucasus—whose sermon on death Fr. Igor cited in
nearly every one of his final sermons—first visited
the church on May 6. It was the parish feast day of St.
George the Trophy-Bearer. Fr. Igor did not speak with the
visitor in the overflowing church, asking him to come back
in a week. Did he know that this man would kill him? Of
course he knew, and he was exceedingly sorrowful, even
unto death [Matthew 26:38]. He lit up after serving
the Liturgy, after receiving Holy Communion. The service
came to an end. Firmly sending home his altar-server who
normally accompanied him on pastoral visits and, having
dismissed everyone, Fr. Igor went to take Holy Communion
to a sick parishioner.
Valentina tells the story of how it all happened. “I
remained alone and began to clean up the church. I was
about to get ready to leave when a young man appeared at
the door and asked for the priest. I said that Batiushka
had left, and asked where he was from. He replied that he
was from Nalchik and wanted to attend the service. Balkars
frequently visited us to speak with Batiushka, so this
didn’t surprise me.”
Fr. Igor soon returned. He went into the altar to place
the tabernacle containing the Holy Gifts on the Holy
Table. When he exited, his killer met him on the threshold
of the altar. Valentina heard how Fr. Igor led him into
the sacristy—a room adjacent to the altar—and
how he said: “have a seat.” A short time
passed, and then there was a noise. She lifted her head
and saw, in the open door, how Fr. Igor fell down and the
other man stood over him with a knife. Just like the New
Martyrs of Optina—Vasily, Fr. Trophim, and Fr.
Ferapont—as well as like St. Seraphim of Sarov, Fr.
Igor was a man of great physical strength; he was, no
joke, a rescuer and master mountain climber who scaled the
highest peaks and lifted people out of crevices, but he
did not resist. This was conscious suffering for Christ:
this person had come to kill Fr. Igor for being a
priest.
“This was incomprehensible. This was impossible. I
screamed ‘Batiushka!’ and ran to him through
the church. I began to open the door. This man bent down
over Batiushka and I couldn’t understand that
he’d come to kill him. I pushed him toward the door
and said: ‘What do you need from Batiushka? Leave
Batiushka alone! Leave!’ He again bent down, I again
pushed him toward the door, and he turned toward me with
the knife, but I had nothing in my hands and so had no way
of helping Batiushka. It seems that he struck him twice
with a knife in my presence. I began to scream terribly.
He stepped over Batiushka, who was lying down with his
right hand lifted: he wanted to cross himself, and he did
not resist. I heard how he said: ‘Into Thy hands,
O Lord, I commit my soul.’”
She remembers the rest vaguely: how the killer ran away
(“He ran like a demon,” says Valentina, and
for some reason I know just what she means) and how she
called someone. She called Andrei the altar-server. When
Andrei came running, Fr. Igor’s soul had only just
departed.
Today this former altar-server, who carries out his
ministry here as before, again remembers this day. When
Hieromonk Igor talks about this, his voice becomes very
quiet.
“There was, of course, the smell. I’ll
probably never forget the smell of his blood. The blood of
a martyr. There was a special smell… For some
reason a lot of blood was shed… The floors are
uneven… We had a font – we still have it,
it’s just in a different place – and almost
all the blood flowed under the baptismal font.”
 The place where the baptismal font stood. Behind the glass in the blood-stained shirt the Fr. Igor wore when he was killed. |
Then, twelve years ago, Metropolitan Gideon (Dokukin) of
Stavropol and Vladikavkaz blessed the altar-server Andrei
to be tonsured to monasticism and ordained to the
priesthood in order to replace Fr. Igor Rozin in the place
of his ministry. Andrei was tonsured in honor of the Holy
Right-Believing Prince Igor of Chernigov. “They
killed one Fr. Igor—so here is another Fr. Igor for
you” Vladyka said then.
Twelve years have since passed. The community decided not
to leave the place where the blood of the new witness to
Truth had been shed. The ramshackle church was rebuilt.
Today, by God’s mercy, this small flock still lives
and carries out its ministry here.
 The Church of Great Martyr George today. |
“Christ is Risen! In the Name of the Father, and of
the Son, and of the Holy Spirit! Seven years have passed
since Fr. Igor’s tragic death. This is a
church-on-the-blood. There is a great deal of red here.
The Lord said: they drove Me away, and they will persecute
you. It is said that, at the Mystical Supper, Satan
entered Judas. Who killed Fr. Igor? Satan himself. He is
the adversary: the adversary of Christ and the adversary
of faith. He is the adversary of truth.” Fr. Lev
keeps silent for a long time, looking somewhere off to the
side. When he turns back around, one can see that he is
weeping. “But the blood of martyrs is the seed of
the Church. Here, on an empty place, Fr. Igor began his
ministry. He was successful, for which reason the envier
of the human race could not stand it and decided to
eliminate him, so that Christian singing and the preaching
of the Gospel would die down here… A beautiful
church has been erected on this place. I repeat
Tertullian’s maxim: ‘The blood of martyrs is
the seed of Christianity.’”
 Priest Igor Rozin, murdered in his church after the Liturgy on May 13, 2001. |
24 / 05 / 2013
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