Section 04: Bishop and Prisoner

This section is the spine of the persecution narrative: the secret making of a bishop and the two decades of imprisonment and exile that followed. The two files cover, first, the events of 1923 — the secret tonsure as the monk Luke by Bishop Andrei (Ukhtomsky), the clandestine episcopal consecration in the Tajik town of Penjikent by two exiled bishops, and the first arrest within days; and second, the careful chronology of the three exiles (1923–1943) — Yeniseisk, Turukhansk, and the Arctic village of Plakhino; Arkhangelsk; and the Great Terror’s interrogation “conveyor” leading to Bolshaya Murta and Krasnoyarsk. Because the carceral chronology is contested between his telescoping autobiography and the archival reconstructions, the dates and places are given with their disputes shown.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox / New Martyrs and Confessors (canonized 2000)

Contents

File Topic
Consecration and the First Arrest (1923) The secret tonsure as the monk Luke by Bishop Andrei (Ukhtomsky); the name of the Apostle-physician-iconographer; the clandestine consecration at Penjikent by Bishops Daniil and Vasily (Andrei tonsuring and sending, not consecrating); the consecration date 18/31 May 1923; the first arrest within days
The Three Exiles First exile 1923–1926 (Moscow prisons, Patriarch Tikhon, Yeniseisk, Turukhansk, Arctic Plakhino); second exile 1930–1933 (the Mikhailovsky affair, Arkhangelsk); third exile 1937–1942 (the “conveyor,” hunger strikes, Bolshaya Murta, Krasnoyarsk) — the sequence given with its disputed dates

How to Use

  • Read Consecration and the First Arrest (1923) for how a Tashkent priest-surgeon became, secretly and in danger, a bishop — and was arrested almost at once.
  • Read The Three Exiles for the carefully reconstructed chronology of his twenty years in and out of Soviet prisons and Siberian exile; it is the backbone of the whole life and is cross-referenced from the war years and the writings.
  • The surgery he continued throughout these exiles is treated in Operating in Exile; the third exile’s end in war service in Section 06.

Cross-References