Samarin, Alexander Dmitrievich

Born in a pillar noble family of Samarins . The son of Dmitry Fedorovich Samarin (1831-1901), known for publishing the works of his brother Slavophil Yu. F. Samarin , and Varvara Petrovna Ermolova (1832-1906). In 1891 he graduated from the historical and philological faculty of Moscow University .

In 1891–1892, the volunteer 6th battery of the 1st Grenadier Artillery Brigade.

In 1893-1899 he served as the zemstvo chief of the Bronnitsky district of the Moscow province. In 1893, he was a college secretary . Since 1895 - titular adviser . Since 1898 - college assessor .

In the years 1899-1908 - Bogorodsky district leader of the nobility .

In 1900 he was granted the title of chamber junker .

Since 1905 - a college adviser . Since 1906 - State Councilor .

In 1906 he was granted the title of chamberlain .

Since 1908 - a valid state adviser .

In 1908-1915 - Moscow provincial leader of the nobility .

In 1910 he was granted the title of "ranger".

Since 1912 - Honorary Guardian of the Board of Trustees of the institutions of Empress Maria.

Since 1912 - a member of the State Council (by appointment), was a member of the right group.

In 1914, with the outbreak of World War I , he was appointed Chief Commissioner of the Russian Red Cross Society for evacuation to the interior of the empire.

Samarin had the following awards of the Russian Empire:

• Order of St. Anne of the 3rd degree (1895).
• Order of St. Stanislav 2nd degree (1898).
• Order of St. Anne of the 2nd degree (1901).
• Order of St. Vladimir 4th degree (1903).
• Order of St. Vladimir 3rd degree (1909).
• Order of St. Stanislav 1st degree (1910).
• Order of St. Annes of the 1st degree (1913).
• Order of St. Vladimir 2nd degree (1916).

On July 5, 1915, Alexander Samarin was appointed chief prosecutor of the Holy Synod. According to Protopresbyter of the military and naval clergy Georgy Shavelsky , the candidacy of Alexander Samarin was proposed by the Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich and the head of the military field office of the emperor, Prince V. N. Orlov. According to Samarin's memoirs, during a conversation with Nicholas II on the eve of his appointment, he sharply criticized Grigory Rasputin :

Sire, for several years now, Russia has been under the yoke of consciousness that near you, near your family, there is an unworthy person. His life is well known in Russia, and yet this person influences church and state affairs. Sovereign, this is not gossip, it is a firm conviction of people of believers, people loyal to you.

In the office of I. L. Goremykin, Samarin was a member of the liberal group of ministers, the drafter of a collective letter addressed to Nicholas II of these ministers about disagreements in the government and the inability for them to continue working under the direction of Goremykin. This was one of the reasons for his quick dismissal. The second - direct - reason was the case of the bishop of Tobolsk, close to Rasputin, Barnabas (Nakropin) , who, according to the Tsar’s telegram, but without the sanction of the Synod, allowed the singing of “ greatness ” and prayer (before the glorification in the face of the saints) at the grave of Metropolitan John (Maximovich) in Tobolsk . Most members of the Synod and Chief Prosecutor Samarin spoke in favor of removing the bishop from the pulpit, but the emperor and Metropolitan of Petrograd Pitirim (Windows) sided with Barnabas, who not only retained his post, but was elevated to the rank of archbishop the following year.

On September 26, Samarin was dismissed from the position of chief prosecutor (while remaining a member of the Council of State, an honorary guardian, and as ranger). In this case, the king informed him of the resignation, not during a personal meeting, but after it, in writing. The resignation of Samarin caused a negative reaction in society. The Moscow City Council adopted a resolution which, in particular, stated:

With deep sorrow, Moscow is now listening to the news that the service begun by Alexander Dmitrievich of the Russian Orthodox Church has ceased, that Alexander Dmitrievich, sacredly fulfilling his citizen duty, was forced to leave a business that is dear and close to keeping the precepts of Orthodoxy to Moscow, and that hopes for a speedy settlement are being crushed church life in accordance with the expectations of the devoted Russian people. Moscow with pain and contrition sees this as the influence of dark forces hostile to the cause of the Church and the state.

The nobility of the Moscow province sent a greeting to Samarin. Moscow Theological Academy elected him as its honorary member

in respect for his short-term, but selfless and full of holy zeal for the glory of the Russian Orthodox Church, serving as the chief prosecutor of the Holy Synod.

After his resignation, he returned to work in the Red Cross. In June 1916, the Moscow Provincial Zemstvo Assembly established scholarships named after Alexander Samarin at the Moscow Women's Teacher's Seminary and at the Shchapov Agricultural School for peasant children. Since December 4, 1916 - Chairman of the Permanent Council of the United Noble Societies (his election to this position was considered a sign of growing opposition in the traditionally conservative Russian nobility).

After the February Revolution, Alexander Samarin, as "a fighter for the independence of the Russian Church from oppression," was elected chairman of the Moscow diocesan congress. In June 1917, he participated in the elections of the Metropolitan of Moscow and Kolomenskoye at the Extraordinary Diocesan Congress of the clergy and laity. His candidacy was put forward at the Moscow congress of the diocesan clergy and laity at the Moscow Metropolitan Department by a group of lay delegates led by M. A. Novosyolov with the participation of N. D. Kuznetsov, Prince E. N. Trubetskoy, S. N. Bulgakov. An unprecedented case in the history of the Russian Orthodox Church of the 20th century, when a lay person became a candidate for one of the highest church posts ^[1] . At the initial vote, Archbishop of Lithuania and Vilensky Tikhon (Belavin) and Samarin received an equal number of votes - 297. In the final election, 303 delegates voted for Samarin (481 for Vladyka Tikhon, elected Metropolitan).

A member of the All-Russian Local Council in 1917-1918, at which he was proposed as a candidate for election as a patriarch (received 3 votes during the initial nomination of candidates ^[2] , although before that the Council had decided to elect the Patriarch only from persons of holy dignity ^[3] ); from March 1918 he was the second deputy chairman from the laity. At the beginning of 1918 he was elected chairman of the Council of the United Parishes of Moscow.

On March 15, 1918, he headed the deputation of the Council, which presented to the People’s Commissar of Justice Dmitry Kursky a declaration of the Council regarding the decree on separation of the Church from the state. At a meeting with Kursky, he said: “If the fate of the Orthodox Russian Church, which participated in the very construction of the state and for centuries formed the basis of religious and moral life for you, does not matter to you that the religious comfort of one hundred million Russian Orthodox people, without doubts necessary for the public good can be achieved only by canceling all the orders that encroach on the life and freedom of the people's faith. ”

In the summer of 1918, under the threat of arrest, Alexander Samarin was forced to leave Moscow (security officers came to him with an arrest warrant in his absence) and lived in Optina Desert for some time. On September 25, 1918 he was arrested in Bryansk , and a letter from Patriarch Tikhon was seized from him with an order to conduct negotiations in Kiev on the problem of autocephaly of the church in Ukraine . He was imprisoned in Orel prison. In November, he was taken to Moscow, initially held in the Cheka at the Lubyanka prison , then transferred to Butyrskaya prison. On Easter 1919 he participated in the service in prison as the leader of an impromptu choir. April 19, 1919 was released.

He continued to work as chairman of the Council of the United Parishes of Moscow, in the case of which he was arrested on August 15, 1919. He was one of the main defendants (together with Professor Nikolai Kuznetsov ) at an open trial in this case, which took place in the October Hall of the former Noble Assembly. Sentenced to be executed by replacing this measure with “imprisonment until the final victory of the world proletariat over world imperialism” (then the term was successively reduced to 25, 5 and 2.5 years). He was imprisoned in Tagan prison, was the secretary of the pedagogical council at the "Department of juvenile delinquents."

In the spring of 1922 he was released. He lived in Abramtsevo , where he actively participated in the work of the museum. Participated in church affairs. In the story of G. I. Chervyakov “Samarin in the Donskoy Monastery” it was said: “It was reported that A. D. Samarin was in the company of another, the same as himself, a former high-ranking official, in 1923, after the release of the Most Holy from prison Being very sensitively affected by the well-known statement of the Patriarch addressed to the Supreme Court of the RSFSR about changing his preventive measure, etc., he decided to personally verify the authenticity of this document published in the world press, which very many people in our country, and especially abroad, treated as the most obvious fake . To this end, they went to the Don monastery. <...> Having come to Donskoy for an audience with the Holy One and making sure from his unambiguous words that the statement was really written by him personally, although, of course, not without coordination with whom it should be <...>, the “tall” visitors defiantly left, leaving goodbye the following phrase: “Then this is our last visit and, excuse me, we will no longer continue to disturb Your Holiness.” In response, His Holiness the Patriarch, as if, didn’t answer anything and only slightly shrugged his shoulders, spreading his hands: you know better! ” ^[1] .

On November 30, 1925 he was again arrested and kept in solitary confinement in an internal prison in the Lubyanka and in Butyrka prison. The role of Samarin in the church life of Moscow is stated in the indictment in his case: “... a) with the goal of maintaining the church as an active [ontr] / revolutionary organization, since 1917 he has been trying all the time to keep the church under the authority and influence of individuals, belonging to the Black Hundred group, in which Samarin played a leading role. b) He directed the anti-Soviet work of Patriarch Tikhon until the latter repented of the power, giving a line and tone on all the most important issues, such as during the seizure of church values, and after Tikhon's change of policy towards the power put forward and organized the Black-Hundred core, the so-called Danilovsky Synod “, with the help of which he constantly exerted pressure on Tikhon, forcing him to turn him on the old road. The Patriarchal Administration and the OGPU (1923-1924) c) Supervised the activities of the Black-Hundred group led by him in the mountains. Sergiev Posad, consisting of former people, enforcing the decisions and decisions of the latter ” ^[1] .

On May 21, 1926, he was sentenced by the Special Conference of the OGPU Board to three years of exile in Yakutia “for participation in the Black-Hundred-monarchist group“ Danilovsky Synod “”. Since September 1926, he was in exile in Yakutsk together with Archbishop Guriy (Stepanov) , was engaged in translation from the German book of O. Boetling on the scientific grammar of the Yakut language and teaching the German language.

In Yakutsk he continued to participate in divine services. April 26, 1927 wrote to relatives:

Passion Service: all the readings and singing that I performed in our life gave a particularly favorable opportunity for perception not only by the mind, but also by the heart of their deep and touching content. On Friday and Great Saturday, since the hours of our service do not coincide with the cathedral, I had the opportunity to be here and there. There are no readers at all in the cathedral - my reading is appreciated. And for me reading on such days is a great consolation, and, therefore, I had the good fortune to feel the beauty of the service twice. Singers, quite unexpectedly, brought me the notes of the 3rd voice when they came to the Shroud to sing the trio "Resurrect, God."

In September 1928 he was transferred to Olekminsk , where he taught German to doctors at a local hospital. In June 1929, after the expiration of the term of exile, he moved to live in Kostroma, where he was a reader, singer and regent in the church of All Saints. In its church-political views, it was close to " unremarkable " - the opposition to the course of Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) . In the spring of 1931 he was arrested for the last time, kept in a Kostroma prison, but was released. After the closing of the Church of All Saints, I visited the church of Saints Boris and Gleb.

He was buried in the Alexander Nevsky cemetery of Kostroma. Rehabilitated in 1989 by the investigative department of the KGB of the USSR. ^[four]

Wife - Vera Savvishna Mamontova (1875-1907), daughter of the entrepreneur and philanthropist Savva Ivanovich Mamontov , depicted in the painting " Girl with Peaches ." Children:

• Yuri (1904-1965), philologist ^[5] .
• Elizabeth , in the marriage of Chernyshev (1905-1985), author of memoirs.
• Sergey (1907-1913).

Son Yuri was accused by his colleagues and acquaintances of collaborating with the organs of the OGPU. So, the writer Oleg Volkov , a former prisoner of the Solovetsky camp , recalled that all the philologists detained in Solovki “believed that they owed their placement to the island to Yuri Alexandrovich Samarin, an employee of their institute who regularly served as an informant ... he utterly slandered everyone during the investigation, drowned confrontation ” ^[6] . The artist A.P. Artsybushev, arrested after World War II , wrote in his memoirs:

I knew the houses and families in which he happens to be, and in which he is accepted as his own, while he is sexually hot ! ... Yusha Samarin, the son of that incorruptible and honest Samarin ... we all trusted him as our own, as honest, your man. Yusha Samarin - sexot ... In 1946, at the very first interrogations , the investigator took out a thick folder and began to read out from me all my conversations with this sexot ^[7] .

• Samarin Alexander Dmitrievich // List of civil ranks of the fourth class. Corrected on March 1, 1916. Part one. - Petrograd: Publication of the Inspection Department of His Imperial Majesty’s Chancellery . Senate Printing House, 1916 .-- S. 1298.
• Samarins. Mansurovs: Memoirs of relatives. M., 2001.
• Shilov D.N. State figures of the Russian Empire. Heads of higher and central institutions. 1802-1917. Bibliographic reference. St. Petersburg, 2001. S. 587-589.
• Патриаршее управление и ОГПУ (1923—1924 ГГ.) Выдержка из письма А. Д. Самарина деятелям Зарубежной Церкви с изложением событий церковной жизни в России // Вестник ПСТГУ II: История. История Русской Православной Церкви. 2010. Вып. 4 (37). С. 57-69

• Самарин, Александр Дмитриевич на « Родоводе ». Tree of ancestors and descendants
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• Письма из тюрем и ссылки
• Biography
• Витязь веры. Из воспоминаний об Александре Дмитриевиче Самарине его дочери Елизаветы Александровны Самариной-Чернышёвой
• Воспоминания о. Георгия Шавельского