Russian translation

FROM THE PUBLISHER

At a conference dedicated to the 1000th anniversary of the baptism of Rus' (Leningrad, February 1988), Archbishop. Kirill (Gundyaev) of Smolensk openly raised the question of the intelligibility of the Church Slavonic language in our days. "For those who are concerned with the problem of ecclesiastical witness, the liturgical language used today in our Church seems to be an obstacle to the assimilation by contemporaries of the richness and beauty of Orthodox worship, since this language, not only for the people, but also for the intelligentsia, has lost the share of intelligibility that it undoubtedly possessed in the past."

The Cyril and Methodius tradition, which brought the Holy Scriptures and divine services in their language to the Slavs, inspired in the fourteenth century. St. Stephen of Perm, and in the nineteenth century St. Nicholas of Japan, should be effective in our days in relation to the Slavic peoples: thus the Serbian Church has already to a large extent switched to the living Serbian language.

Whatever the practical solutions to this question may be in Russia (further approximation, by correction, of the Church Slavonic language to Russian, a partial – in the readings – or a complete transition to a modern literary language), it is necessary that the faithful can already now familiarize themselves with the Russian translation of the main texts of Orthodox worship.

For this purpose, we propose a republication of the collection compiled in 1926 by a cleric of the Nizhny Novgorod diocese, Fr. V. Adamenko (later monk Theophanes). As far as we know, this collection is the most complete that has ever been compiled. Published in Nizhny Novgorod in the amount of 2000 copies, at the height of the persecution of the Church, it is an extreme bibliographic rarity.

BIOGRAPHY

Vasily Ivanovich Adamenko was born in 1885 in the village of Poputnaya in the Sotradinsky district of the North Caucasian Territory, not far from Armavir, in the family of a poor Kuban Cossack. He graduated from a one-class school. From an early age, Vasily was distinguished by his religiosity; he often preached on the banks of the Kuban, where many believers gathered.

On the recommendation of the rector of the stanitsa church, Fr. Nikolai Polyansky, in 1909, Vasily left for Odessa, where he entered the courses of anti-sectarian missionaries, at the same time working as a bookseller at the diocese. He lived at the metochion of the Athos St. Andrew's Monastery, since 1910 he served as a psalmist.

After the courses, Adamenko was a freelance missionary in Armavir, Kuban region, then until 1916 - a missionary in Odessa. As early as 1908, he was inspired by the idea of translating Orthodox services into Russian, he even wrote about it to John of Kronstadt, but did not receive an answer, although he believed that he felt a prayerful answer.

From March 13, 1916, he was a deacon in Ekaterinodar (present-day Krasnodar). Exactly a year later, he was ordained a priest. He served in Odessa, but already at the end of July 1917, Fr. Vasily initiated a petition to the Kuban bishop to transfer him from Odessa to his homeland, which was granted in September. Fr. Vasily was appointed a traveling priest-preacher in Ekaterinodar. During his missionary trips to the villages with the church-wagon, he enjoyed great success, sometimes preaching in the open air, in front of a huge crowd. In 1918-1919, he asked for the blessing of Patriarch Tikhon to work on the Russian translation of the divine services, but the latter said: "I cannot give permission, do it at your own peril and risk."

During the Civil War, Fr. Vasily was in conflict relations both with the "White" authorities, which he sharply denounced for their persecutions and inattention to the poor, and with the "Reds." In 1919, being a priest of the Ilyinskaya Church in Ekaterinodar, he was arrested and sent to Nizhny Novgorod to a correctional home. After his release, he worked for some time in Sormovo, issued and issued passes for railway tickets. On December 11, 1920, he was arrested again in Ekaterinodar, where, after the retreat of the "Whites", he continued to serve and conduct missionary activities, and by the decision of the KubcherCheka he was sent to Rostov-on-Don. The townspeople repeatedly sent a petition to the predrevkom of the Kubcherrevkom with a request to release the priest under their guarantee.