Section 06: The War Years and the Stalin Prize

This section holds the central paradox of St. Luke’s life: the exiled bishop who became, in wartime, the chief surgeon of an entire district of Soviet military hospitals, and was then awarded the Stalin Prize, First Class, by the state that had three times exiled him. The two files cover, first, the Krasnoyarsk years (1941–43) — when the third exile turned into chief-surgeonship of the evacuation hospitals and, simultaneously, his appointment as Archbishop of Krasnoyarsk; and second, the 1946 Stalin Prize awarded for his surgical books, the donation of most of its money to war orphans, and the paradox of a prize bearing the name of his persecutor — handled honestly, with the spurious pro-Stalin words attributed to him by later partisans flagged as fabrication.

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

Contents

File Topic
Chief Surgeon in Krasnoyarsk The 1941 offer of his services; appointment as consultant and chief surgeon of the Krasnoyarsk military evacuation hospitals while still an exiled bishop; the conditions of overwork, hunger, and surveillance; the simultaneous appointment as Archbishop of Krasnoyarsk (27 December 1942); the wartime church–state rapprochement
The Stalin Prize (1946) The 1946 Stalin Prize, First Class, for the Essays and the monograph on late joint resections; the 200,000 rubles and the 130,000 donated to war orphans; the paradox of the persecutor’s prize; the fabricated pro-Stalin quotation flagged and refused

How to Use

  • Read Chief Surgeon in Krasnoyarsk for the wartime turn that made an exiled bishop indispensable to the Soviet war effort, and for the rapprochement that briefly reconciled the state to the Church.
  • Read The Stalin Prize (1946) for the honor that crowned his surgery, what he did with its money, and the honest handling of its paradox.
  • The surgical books behind the prize are treated in Essays on the Surgery of Purulent Infections; the Crimean episcopate that followed in Section 07.

Cross-References