How the St. Petersburg church at Varshavsky railway station united 140 thousand teetotalers

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

An interesting temple is located near the Varshavsky railway station in St. Petersburg (now turned into a shopping and entertainment complex). And it is remarkable not only for its architecture, but also for its amazing fate. During the tsarist years, the temple gathered tens of thousands of teetotalers, the wives prayed here for the deliverance of their husbands from drunkenness, and alcoholics - about finding the strength to quit drinking. And in Soviet times, parachutists made jumps from the bell tower.

Temple for teetotalers

At the end of the century before last, workers of the railway and local factories settled in this part of Petersburg, on the Obvodny Canal. There were not prestigious poor quarters here, on the dusty embankment there were taverns - almost the only entertainment of the local population, not counting fistfights.

Wanting to distract the local people from drunkenness, the Society for Religious and Moral Education wrote to the authorities a petition for the allocation of a plot of land for the construction of the temple.

The request was granted, and in 1894 a wooden church of the Resurrection of Christ appeared near the Varshavsky railway station - it was moved here from Nikolaevskaya Street. The work on disassembly and relocation was supervised by Archpriest Mikhail Sokolov, the author of the project was the architect S. P. Kondratyev.

The foundation stone of the temple became an important event for local residents. Processions of the cross arrived at the same time from different parts of the city to Varshavsky railway station, and a large crowd formed. The believers were met by the Bishop of Kostroma and Galich Vissarion. With a huge crowd of people on the site of the future throne, a mortgage board was strengthened.

The temple was assembled very quickly and immediately opened to the parishioners. In addition to divine services, priests held talks with workers about the dangers of alcohol, spiritual readings were held here, and, I must say, the new church quickly gained popularity. Four years later, by the efforts of the rector of the temple, Father Alexander Rozhdestvensky, the Alexander Nevsky Sobriety Society was organized here - a larger-scale organization than the previous one. A parish school and a library were opened on the territory of the temple, and singing was also practiced here. Gradually, the need arose to build a larger, already stone church, because the wooden one could no longer accommodate all the teetotal parishioners.

The stone church of the Resurrection of Christ was founded in the summer of 1904, in honor of the tenth anniversary of the wedding of the emperor and his wife Alexandra Feodorovna. Nicholas II personally approved the project of the new building and gave 25 thousand rubles for the construction.

The merchant was promoted to general

The pillarless temple was built according to the project of the architect Hermann Grimm with the participation of his colleagues Gustav von Goli and Andrei Hun. The building was erected in such a way that it could accommodate four thousand people. The temple had a large spherical dome and a reinforced concrete vault. As the Zodchiy edition wrote in 1905, this was the first experience of using reinforced concrete in Russia in the construction of church domes of such a large size.

Inside, the temple turned out to be very light, and from the outside - elegant: the facades are faced with brick, and the architraves and the tent - with sandstone. The architecture of the building successfully combined modern and traditional Russian style.

The building was built quickly. In May 1906, a thousand-pound bell was raised on the hipped-roof bell tower. In memory of the founder of the Temperance Society, the rector of the church, who had already died by this time, the bell was named "Father Alexander".

The decoration of the temple was completed in 1913-1914, after which the internal oil painting was completed, the basis for which was the cardboard used to create the mosaic of the Savior on Spilled Blood (the author of the painting is Professor Perminov).

The temple was built with public money, and there were enough donors, but the main contribution was made by the famous merchant-patron of the arts Dmitry Parfenov. He took responsibility for the construction and brought the matter to the end, despite the difficult times for the country (there was a war), for which the emperor subsequently elevated him to the rank of general, bypassing intermediate "steps".

After the opening of the temple, a printing house was located here. Teetotalers published three magazines, hundreds of thousands of books, brochures, propaganda leaflets, which they generously distributed to the townspeople. Fighters against drunkenness regularly held conversations with parishioners, instructing them on the path of sobriety, both on the territory of the temple and in preaching centers.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the Society of Temperance (later it became known as a brotherhood) consisted of more than 70 thousand people. During the organization, clubs and kindergartens for children of Orthodox teetotalers worked, and choirs functioned. At the main shrine of the temple, the Inexhaustible Chalice icon, people prayed for deliverance from drunkenness - for themselves or their loved ones. The corresponding prayers were regularly served in the church, and annually on December 19, on the day of St. Boniface (the patron saint of people who decided to get rid of alcohol addiction) performed solemn episcopal services. About a million believers attended the church every year.

By 1917, more than 140,000 residents of Russia had joined the ranks of the temperance organization organized at the church …

A very successful tower

Everything changed with the advent of the revolution. In 1918, the Society (brotherhood) of temperance was abolished. The Bolsheviks plundered the temple, and in 1930 it was closed. A warehouse and a cinema were tripled in the premises, and a parachute platform of OSOAVIAKHIM was opened on the bell tower. The townspeople again reached for the temple, but now not for spiritual food, but for thrills.

As a certain N. Sergeev wrote in the newspaper "Gudok" in those days, in the first days after the opening of the tower, more than a hundred people risked jumping from it with a parachute. Speaking about its merits, the author cynically remarked that this is perhaps the best tower in Leningrad and that it is very well arranged: they say, the visitor first climbs a gentle staircase, not feeling heights and not experiencing a fear of space, but having climbed up and found himself in an open area, immediately faces the need to jump.

In Soviet times, the devastated church also housed the services of the tram fleet.

Sobriety society revived

Divine services in the Church of the Resurrection of Christ were resumed only in 1990. Currently, here, as before, the teetotal movement is active. As indicated on the website of the temple, members of the sobriety society gather on Mondays after reading the evening akathist "The Inexhaustible Chalice" in room 122 of the parish house.

Several years ago, restoration work began in the temple, part of the work has been completed.

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