Melnikov, Fedor Evfimievich

Born in 1874 in Novozybkov (now Bryansk region ) in the family of an Old Believer priest Evfimy Melnikov, who participated in the joining of the “Beglopopov” communities to the Old Believer church of the Belokrinitsky hierarchy. The exact date of birth (month and date) of F.E. Melnikov is unknown ^[1] . The elder brother - Vasily Evfimievich - is a well-known Old Believer leader.

He received his initial education in the family, even in his youth he began the study of patristic and theological literature. Then he studied with the priest Arseny (Shvetsov) , the future Old Believer bishop of Ural.

Even in his youth, he became a spokesman, participated in disputes with missionaries, held first in Novozybkov and neighboring parishes, and then in the Caucasus , Bessarabia , Altai , and Moscow . Together with him, his brother Vasily and Ivan Usov, the future Metropolitan Innokenty participated in the debates. He published articles in numerous Old Believers periodicals, was a secretary of the Petrograd Old Believer bishop , a member of the Old Believers' Union, the chairman of the commission of committees at the Moscow Brotherhood of the Holy Cross and the Life-Giving Cross, the secretary of the Council of the Rogozh cemetery community, and the secretary of the Old Believer Archbishopric of Moscow and All. Edited the first Old Believer newspapers "Morning" and "Narodnaya Gazeta", which were published after the end of the persecution of the Old Believers in 1905 . In 1916 and 1918 he was a candidate for bishop.

At the end of 1917 he was forced to leave Moscow for Barnaul . On December 30, 1917 (senior article), at a meeting in Barnaul, he was nominated by a deputy to the Siberian Regional Duma from the Executive Committee of the Old Believers , which had been created before the move of Melnikov to Barnaul in July 1917 to the 5th Congress of the Tomsk-Altai Diocese for "uniting all the Old Believers of all consensus on political issues ” ^[2] .

He was the director of the Old Believer Teachers' Institute in Moscow , in 1918, removed from office at the request of the Bolshevik authorities. In Barnaul, he initiated the publication of the Siberian Old Believer magazine, which aimed at “strengthening Christianity and the revival of a great, united and independent Russia,” and lectured on “Faith and Science”, “Christianity and Socialism”, “Man and Religion” in Tomsk , Omsk , Novonikolaevsk , Barnaul, Biysk .

His name appeared on the list of candidates for bishops. The Old Believer Bishop Amfilohiy (Zhuravlev) wrote in this connection:

This person surpassed everyone in activity and knowledge in the Old Believers, and he would have been worthy and righteous even of the Metropolitan or the Patriarch, but from the spiritual side and from the point of view of the rules, he is unacceptable even to deacons . Let him work for the benefit of the holy Church and the entire Old Believers in the simple form of a layman or monk, if he receives monasticism, he aspires to him, but this is in a few years ^[3] .

Underground

After the overthrow of the power of Admiral A.V. Kolchak, he was forced to hide in the taiga monasteries and on the remote estates of Altai, but at the same time continued his writing activities, in 1921 he printed anti-Bolshevik leaflets in the Novo-Arkhangelsk monastery. During this period, he wrote the book “Where did faith in God come from. (Public Dispute in Soviet Russia) ”is a work in the genre of Christian apologetics, in which it refuted the arguments of atheists in literary form. Later this book was reprinted several times (it was first published in Romania after the emigration of the author), including under the title “God be with us”. The protagonist of the book is the village beekeeper Demyan Lukic, who defeats the "militant atheists" at a dispute.

He was sentenced in absentia to execution by the Tomsk provincial people's court, but was able to avoid death. Later he recalled that “they could not find me ... in the impenetrable Siberian taiga ... Three times the Bolshevik detachments came to search for me, and each time they left with nothing.” In 1925 - 1930 he lived in the Caucasus, where he worked as a beekeeper, tried to continue his literary work. He wrote at night until a beekeeper neighbor asked him to stop doing this:

You do a dangerous thing, the clinking of your typewriter in the silence of the night is very far audible and may interest travelers, and those who travel may be red. Then you will get, and they will not have mercy on us.

1930s. Romania

Then he was able to cross the border (crossing the Dniester River at night) and settle in Romania, bringing his manuscripts there. There he was secretary of the Belokrinitsky Metropolitanate, lived in the Old Believer Manuilovsky monastery near the village of Manuilovki, Suceava county . In Romania, continued to engage in literary work. His most famous work of this time is “A Brief History of the Old Orthodox (Old Believer) Church”, which was first published by a 48-page brochure in Moscow in 1918 and in its final form in Barnaul in 1999. He wrote a lot, continued to print his works (including criticizing atheism), and gave public lectures and discussions.

In the second half of the 1930s, the Statute was drawn up, which laid out the organizational foundations of the Old Believer church - this document was approved by the government only in 1947 .

During the Second World War

Having lived for more than 10 years in Romania, in the autumn of 1941 he filed a petition for permission to move to Tiraspol . But things have not moved so fast. On April 23, 1942, he wrote a letter to mother Glafira, in which he mentioned: “I’m bothering to let me go either to Transnistria (beyond the Dniester) or to my Homeland - to Ukraine. But I have not yet received permission for this ... I would like to settle in the Slavsky monastery. But firstly, nobody calls me there ... Secondly, as a foreigner, I am not allowed to go anywhere from the place where the war found me. So I’m sitting in one place, the Glory of God, so far safely ” ^[4] .

At this time, Fyodor Melnikov did not stop reading, writing, completing his main work, "A Brief History of the Old Orthodox (Old Believer) Church." His works were also translated into Romanian by Maria Vavilin, who lives in Ottopeni , in particular, in a letter dated August 10, 1942, she noted that she transferred work in relation to the Old Believer church by the deadline of July 24 ^[4] .

Its archive contains a negative response from the Council of Ministers of Romania of May 9, 1942 to a request for permission to travel to Transnistria . According to M.V. Shkarovsky , only on August 27, 1942, Fyodor Melnikov was able to move to Tiraspol , working as a setter at the Old Believer church , where he delivered sermons to denounce atheism. Having resettled in Transnistria , he also visited Odessa ^[4] .

By that time, the persecution of Old Believers had intensified in Romania. On October 18, 1942 in Tiraspol, two old Believers churches with great difficulty were sealed, and on October 20 Melnikov was summoned to the police. In early November 1942 F.E. Melnikov returned to Braila, but at the beginning of 1943 he was again in Tiraspol. Before Christmas, the Romanian authorities demanded that the Old Believers unconditionally switch to the Gregorian calendar , saying that otherwise all their churches would be closed and the priests sent to camps. This demand was rejected, which led to new repression. On January 11, 1943, Metropolitan Beloretsky Tikhon (Kachalkin) was arrested. Melnikov was also arrested, but when exactly is unknown. He was imprisoned in a camp for civilians New Onesti ^[4] .

In September 1943 he was released from the camp, after which he received an invitation to take the post of missionary in Transnistria . He immediately moved to Odessa and began to lecture. The mission began publishing his apologetic writings. By that time, thanks to a radical change in the course of World War II, the tactics of the Romanian government regarding religious policy had changed: the persecution of worship in the old style had ceased, religious broadcasts in Russian began to be conducted, etc. ^[4] .

The last years of life

In the last years of his life, he was under the open surveillance of the Romanian communist secret service Securitate . He died in the Manuilovsky monastery in 1960.

• About the Old Believer Priesthood to metro Ambrose. Big Stone, 2002.
• History of the Russian Orthodox Old Believers Church (short essay). M., 2003.

Collected works

• Volume 1. A brief history of the Old Orthodox (Old Believer) Church . Barnaul, 1999.
• Volume 2. On atheistic and Christian dogmas, sacraments and rites. Barnaul, 2000.
• Volume 3. Does science reject faith in God. About the human soul and its origin. Sectarianism and the Church before the court of scripture. Barnaul, 2001.
• Volume 4. In defense of the Old Believer hierarchy (1 and 2 issue). Wandering theology. About the name-bearing collocation. Barnaul, 2002.
• Volume 5. Research on the baptism and holy dignity of Metropolitan Ambrose. The end to doubts about the legality of the Old Believer hierarchy. About the Belokrinitsky priesthood to metro Ambrose. Barnaul, 2003.
• Volume 6. Companion of a Christian (Companion of a Christian religious; Do you need Faith in God; Answer to the question of atheists: Where did God come from ;; Where did Faith in God come from). Barnaul, 2005.
• Volume 7. The history of the Russian Church from the reign of Alexei Mikhailovich to the defeat of the Solovetsky monastery. Barnaul, 2006.
• Volume 8. What is the Old Believers. Barnaul, 2007 ^[5] .

• Kolupaev V.E. Intellectual heritage of the Old Believer F.E. Melnikov (1874-1960) in the book world of the Russian Diaspora // Russian Culture is Lipovan in the national and international context. - Tulcea, Bucharest: IHTIS, 2009.
• Kolupaev V.E. Books by F.E. Melnikov in Russian Abroad // Lipovan: History and Culture of Old Believers. - Odessa, 2009. - Vol. 6.- S. 246-249.

• Biography
• F. E. Melnikov and his "Brief History of the Old Orthodox (Old Believer) Church"
• Wandering Theology