Chief Surgeon in Krasnoyarsk (1941–1944)

When Germany invaded in June 1941, the sixty-four-year-old exiled bishop offered his services to the wounded, and the state — desperate for surgeons — accepted: still serving the term of his third exile, Bishop Luke was made consultant to all the Krasnoyarsk-region hospitals and chief surgeon of a great military evacuation hospital, operating on the war-wounded in conditions of overwork, hunger, and surveillance. In the same period the wartime thaw in church–state relations restored him to his episcopal office: on 27 December 1942 he was appointed Archbishop of Krasnoyarsk, expressly without being taken from his hospital work. This file covers the wartime surgery, the conditions, the simultaneous archbishopric, and the rapprochement that made both possible.

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

The Offer of His Services

In June 1941 the German invasion threw the Soviet medical system into crisis, and the wounded poured eastward to the hospitals of the rear. Bishop Luke, then in his third exile at Bolshaya Murta in the Krasnoyarsk region, did not wait to be asked: he sent the authorities a telegram offering to put his surgical skill at the service of the wounded soldiers [Disputed: the addressee of the offer — Russian and devotional sources frame it as an active telegram (some name Mikhail Kalinin); the English Wikipedia frames it passively, that he "asked to be sent to the front" and was kept in exile but set to hospital work. The active-offer framing is the Russian-source version] (johnsanidopoulos.com, Saint Luke the Surgeon; ru.wikipedia, Лука (Войно-Ясенецкий)). The state, short of experienced surgeons and unable to afford the luxury of leaving a world-class one idle in a Siberian village, accepted — and so an exiled bishop, still under sentence, was set to work as a chief surgeon of the war effort.

Chief Surgeon of the Evacuation Hospitals

From the autumn of 1941 he was brought to Krasnoyarsk and appointed consultant to all the hospitals of the Krasnoyarsk region and chief surgeon of a large military evacuation hospital (эвакогоспиталь) — the English devotional sources name Evacuation Hospital No. 1515 — handling the most difficult cases, above all the infected gunshot wounds of bones and joints in which he was the foremost specialist (pravmir.ru, Святитель-хирург; johnsanidopoulos.com) [Disputed: the start of the Krasnoyarsk hospital work is variously placed in July or October 1941; late 1941 is the safe reckoning]. He thus carried into the war effort the very expertise his Essays on the Surgery of Purulent Infections had codified, and the wartime work in turn enriched the book’s second edition and produced his monograph on the late resection of infected joint wounds — the two works that would shortly win the Stalin Prize (see Essays on the Surgery of Purulent Infections and The Stalin Prize (1946)).

The Conditions

The conditions were hard and carried the marks of his continued disgrace. He was in his mid-sixties, with a heart weakened by years of imprisonment, yet he kept a punishing schedule — long operating days of four or five major operations and shifts of eight or nine hours (pravmir.ru; johnsanidopoulos.com). He lived in a narrow, damp room; for a time he was barred from the hospital canteen, and nurses smuggled him food because the exiled bishop was not to be fed with the staff; he remained under surveillance and met the mistrust of colleagues wary of the prisoner-priest in their midst (pravmir.ru). The wounded soldiers, by contrast, are reported to have revered him — saluting the surgeon who had healed them, in the war’s grim phrase, “with their legs” (pravmir.ru) [the soldiers'-salute detail is carried in the Russian devotional press (pravmir.ru) and is reported as such]. He was later given the medal “For Valiant Labour in the Great Patriotic War” (ru.wikipedia, Лука (Войно-Ясенецкий)).

Archbishop of Krasnoyarsk — and Still at the Hospital

The war years brought the great reversal in Soviet church policy: under the pressure of the national catastrophe, Stalin’s government relaxed its assault on the Church, permitting the restoration of the patriarchate in 1943 and the reopening of churches (see Russian Orthodox Tradition). Bishop Luke was a beneficiary of this thaw. On 27 December 1942 he was entrusted with the Krasnoyarsk diocese and raised to the rank of Archbishop of Krasnoyarsk — and, pointedly, the appointment was made without taking him from his hospital work, the Church and the state alike agreeing that the surgeon-archbishop should continue both offices at once (the Russian sources record the appointment as made «не отрывая его от работы в военных госпиталях») (nsmu.ru, wartime-medicine PDF; ru.wikipedia, Лука (Войно-Ясенецкий)) [Disputed: the date of the Krasnoyarsk archbishopric — precise Russian sources give 27 December 1942; English devotional accounts often give 1943, conflating the appointment with his first public Liturgy in Krasnoyarsk on 28 February 1943]. He held the see of Krasnoyarsk and Yenisei until February 1944, when his hospital was moved forward and he was transferred to the Tambov and Michurinsk diocese (7 February 1944), where he again combined archbishopric with hospital surgery until his appointment to Crimea in 1946 (ru.wikipedia, Лука (Войно-Ясенецкий); see Crimea (1946–1961)).

For a period of months and years, then, one man was simultaneously a ruling Soviet-recognized archbishop and the chief surgeon of a military hospital district — the exiled confessor of one decade restored, by the next, to honor in both Church and state, without ever having recanted a word. The Krasnoyarsk years are the hinge on which his life turns from prisoner to laureate.

The Wartime Thaw as Context

The reversal of Bishop Luke’s fortunes cannot be understood apart from the larger reversal of Soviet church policy in the war years. Through the 1920s and 1930s the state had pursued the Church with closures, executions, and the near-extinction of the episcopate, and it was that policy that had sent him three times into exile (see The Three Exiles). The German invasion changed the calculation: facing a struggle for national survival, Stalin’s government sought the loyalty and the moral authority of the Church it had been destroying, and in 1943 it permitted the convening of a council, the election of a patriarch, and the reopening of churches across the country (ru.wikipedia, Лука (Войно-Ясенецкий); see Russian Orthodox Tradition). It was within this thaw that an exiled bishop could be raised to an archbishopric while still serving out a sentence — a juxtaposition unthinkable a few years before and barely thinkable a few years after. The restoration of the patriarchate and the elevation of Bishop Luke belong to the same brief opening, and the surgeon-archbishop became one of its most visible beneficiaries and ornaments (pravmir.ru, Святитель-хирург).

The Paradox of the Exiled Surgeon

There is a deliberate strangeness in the arrangement that the sources do not soften. Here was a man under sentence, his movements watched and his food withheld, set in charge of the surgical care of an entire hospital district and answerable for the lives of soldiers the state could not afford to lose (pravmir.ru; johnsanidopoulos.com, Saint Luke the Surgeon). The state needed his hands and his expertise in the surgery of infected wounds too badly to leave him idle in a Siberian village, yet it could not bring itself to treat him as a free man; so it used the prisoner as a chief surgeon while continuing to mark him as a prisoner. The same incongruity ran through his daily life: barred from the canteen where his own staff ate, smuggled food by nurses who would not see him go hungry, lodged in a damp and narrow room, he nonetheless held the senior surgical authority of the district and was deferred to on the hardest cases (pravmir.ru). The contempt of the system and the indispensability of the man were held together in one person, and the contradiction was never resolved — only outlived.

Surgery and the Altar in One Life

What the Russian phrasing of the December 1942 appointment preserves — that he was given the archbishopric without being taken from his hospital work — is the key to these years (nsmu.ru, wartime-medicine PDF; ru.wikipedia, Лука (Войно-Ясенецкий)). He did not choose between the scalpel and the omophorion; he carried both at once. By day he operated, four or five major operations in a sitting and shifts of eight or nine hours, on the infected gunshot wounds of bones and joints in which he was the country’s foremost authority (pravmir.ru; johnsanidopoulos.com). When churches reopened, he served the Liturgy as the ruling hierarch of the see, beginning with his first public Krasnoyarsk Liturgy on 28 February 1943 (ru.wikipedia, Лука (Войно-Ясенецкий)). The two vocations that had been forced into conflict for two decades — the state had repeatedly demanded he choose the medicine and abandon the priesthood — were here allowed, for a season, to run in harness, and he refused to the end to regard them as rivals. The wartime labour and the wartime worship were, for him, a single service of the suffering, the body healed on the table and the soul fed at the altar (Voino-Yasenetsky, I Loved Suffering).

Recognition and Transfer

When the front moved west the rear hospitals followed, and in early 1944 his Krasnoyarsk evacuation hospital was redeployed; on 7 February 1944 he was transferred to the Tambov and Michurinsk diocese, where he once more combined the archbishopric with hospital surgery until his appointment to Crimea in 1946 (ru.wikipedia, Лука (Войно-Ясенецкий); see Crimea (1946–1961)). The state’s recognition of his wartime labour took two forms. The first was the medal “For Valiant Labour in the Great Patriotic War,” awarded for his hospital service (ru.wikipedia, Лука (Войно-Ясенецкий)). The second, larger, was the Stalin Prize that would shortly follow, resting in part on the very Krasnoyarsk work — the second edition of the Essays on the Surgery of Purulent Infections and the 1944 monograph on the late resection of infected joint wounds, both deepened by what he had seen and done in the evacuation hospital (see The Stalin Prize (1946)). The prisoner-surgeon of 1941 was, by 1946, a decorated laureate; the Krasnoyarsk years are where that improbable arc gathers its momentum.

References

Voino-Yasenetsky, Valentin (Archbishop Luke). «Я полюбил страдание» [I Loved Suffering]. Autobiography. (azbyka.ru.) — The wartime offer of his services and the Krasnoyarsk hospital work.
Святитель-хирург, епископ, лауреат Сталинской премии [The Holy Surgeon, Bishop, Stalin Prize Laureate]. pravmir.ru. — The conditions of the Krasnoyarsk work: the operating schedule, the damp room, the canteen bar, the surveillance, the soldiers’ reverence.
“Saint Luke the Surgeon, Archbishop of Crimea.” johnsanidopoulos.com. — The 1941 offer; Evacuation Hospital No. 1515; the conditions.
Лука (Войно-Ясенецкий). ru.wikipedia.org. — The Krasnoyarsk and Yenisei archbishopric (27 December 1942, “without taking him from hospital work”); the transfer to Tambov and Michurinsk (7 February 1944); the wartime labour medal.
(Wartime-medicine PDF), nsmu.ru. — The 27 December 1942 appointment “without taking him from work in the military hospitals,” and the precise diocesan dates.