Scientists, military men, writers, old Bolsheviks, intellectuals of various professions, workers, collective farmers write. They write about their life in camps and prisons, about interrogations, but no one has yet told us about the millions of believers who died in these camps, prisons or experienced unprecedented suffering during interrogations.

They suffered and died for their faith, because they did not renounce God and, dying, glorified Him, and He did not abandon them.

To put a seal on one's lips means to consign to oblivion the sufferings, torments, selfless labor and death of many millions of martyrs who suffered for the sake of God and for us living on earth.

We must not forget, but tell about these sufferers, this is our duty to God and people.

The best people of the Russian Orthodox Church perished in this difficult time: priests and bishops, elders, monks and simply deeply religious people, in whom burned the inextinguishable fire of faith, equal in its power and sometimes surpassing the power of faith of the ancient Christian martyrs.

In these memoirs, only one of the many ascetics appears before us. And how many of them there were who died for us!

For twenty centuries mankind has been accumulating numerous knowledge, Christianity has brought Light and Life to people, but in the twentieth century people have selected only evil from the numerous arsenal of knowledge and, multiplied by the achievements of science, have brought millions of people the greatest and longest suffering and painful death. The Lord led me to walk a small part of the camp path with Father Arseny, but even this is enough to find faith, to become his spiritual son, to follow his path, to understand and see his deepest love for God and people, and to know what a true Christian is.

The past should not be lost, the past is based on the new, so I considered it my duty to put together a part of Fr. Arseny's life.

In order to gather precious information about Fr. Arseny, I had to turn to the memory of his spiritual children, the letters he once wrote to friends and spiritual children, and the memoirs written by people who knew him.

Fr. Arseny's spiritual children were numerous, and wherever the Lord settled him, they appeared around him, whether it was the city where he, an art historian, was ordained to the priesthood and organized a community in a half-forgotten parish, a village where he was exiled, or a small town lost in the boundless forests of the North, or a terrible camp of a special regime.

Intellectuals, workers, peasants, criminals, political prisoners, old Bolsheviks, and employees of the organs, coming into contact with him, became his spiritual children, friends, believers, and followed him. Yes! Many, recognizing him, followed him.

Everyone who knew Fr. Arseny told me what they saw and knew about him.

When I met with Fr. Arseny, I tried to learn about his life, but although he had many conversations with me, he told me little about himself. I managed to write down some things during his lifetime, and when I gave him notes to look at, I asked: Was it so? and he always said to me: Yes, it was, but he always added: the Lord led us all along many roads, and every person, if you look closely at his life, has much worthy of attention and description. My life, like that of every living person, has always been intertwined or walked next to the lives of other people. There were many things, but everything was always from the Lord.

Often several times he corrected inaccuracies in writing. For the convenience of recounting memories, I have shifted some events in time, changed the names of places and the names of almost all the participants, since many are still alive, and time is changeable.