Father Trifiliy was 40 years old when everything changed radically. As a Christian he submitted his will to the good will of God — he became a physician of souls in the pandemic of Spanish influenza and the epidemic of typhus; he guarded the purity of the faith of his flock at the height of the spread of church Renovationism in the troubled years of the schism; he bore witness to God in the period of the bloody persecutions of the Church.
The name of Archimandrite Trifiliy is entered in many martyrologies of persecuted, tormented Orthodox priests who suffered innocently in bonds. But, unfortunately, in his homeland, in Ukraine, almost nothing is known of him.
In this short sketch we shall become acquainted with the main events of his tragic life's path.
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Of Cossack stock
Trofim Arseniyovych Smaha was born into a family of hereditary Cossacks. These were Cossacks who remained on our lands after the liquidation of the Hetmanate (1654−1764). Historians note that the Ukrainian Cossacks were not very content with their position, and social tension in the places where they settled increased. This was particularly noticeable in the Poltava and Chernihiv provinces, where the Cossack population suffered from a shortage of land and from overcrowding.
The forebears of Trofim Smaha, in order to solve the land problem, moved from the village of Svydovets in the Kozelets district of Chernihiv province to neighbouring Kobyzhcha — an enormous village of about 2 thousand hectares in area, in which there are 96 streets, and in the middle of the nineteenth century 4 churches were at work here (today two have been rebuilt). In our own time too it is one of the largest villages in Ukraine.
On 19 September (2 October, New Style) 1877, in the settlement of Kobyzhcha in the Kozelets district of Chernihiv province, the future Father Trifiliy was born. His parents — the retired soldier Arseniy Vlasovych and Kseniya Fedorivna Smaha — baptised the infant in the ancient church of the Nativity of Christ in honour of the martyr Trophimus of Synnada (of Phrygia). Of his family and childhood there is scant information. We know only that the family was a believing one, that the sponsor at his Baptism was the Cossack Volodymyr Knysh together with Anna Klymentivna, the wife of the Cossack Ivan Knysh, and that until he entered the Kyiv Caves Lavra he lived, as they used to say in those years, with his father, was taught to read and write at home, and, having a fine voice, sang from an early age on the kliros of the church in which he had been baptised.
In the Lavra
On 24 February 1894, on the eve of Forgiveness Sunday, the 17-year-old Trofim Smaha entered the Kyiv Caves Lavra on probation. His first duties were the carrying out of errands in the pilgrims' hospice. On 1 November 1896 Trofim submitted a petition to the Spiritual Council to be received, and was accepted as a novice of the Lavra. To his obedience in the hospice was added kliros singing. He was a reader and a singer in the metropolitan's choir.
Let us say a few words about the Kyiv metropolitan's choir as it was at the beginning of the twentieth century, about its traditions, its composition and its repertoire. From the middle of the nineteenth century there existed in the Kyiv Caves Lavra two kinds of choir — the brotherhood choir and the mixed (metropolitan's) choir. The chief difference between them is that the mixed choir consisted not only of the Lavra's monks and novices but included also a group of singers recruited from outside. From the 1880s the services of the Metropolitan of Kyiv and Halych took place with the accompaniment of precisely this mixed choir. Its composition was constantly enlarged, and by 1903, under Metropolitan Feognost (Lebedev) of Kyiv and Halych, it included 45 people. The metropolitan's choir sang chiefly in the Exaltation of the Cross church, and in the Great (Dormition) church more often at hierarchical Liturgies on Sundays and feast days alongside the kliros choirs. According to the testimony of contemporaries, Metropolitan Feognost (Lebedev) valued his choir highly, preferred it to the cathedral choir, and sometimes even demanded that the choir sing at his services in the cathedral of St Sophia as well. A part of the choir always accompanied the Metropolitan of Kyiv on his journeys to St Petersburg and sang at the services in the Dormition church of the Lavra's metochion. In 1903, for example, the travelling group consisted of five boys and four adults.
In 1898 Trofim Smaha performed his military service in the Kozelets district and was enrolled in the militia reserve of the second class.
On 14 October 1904, that is, having laboured for 10 years for the good of the Kyiv Caves monastery and having good reports of his labours and conduct, the novice Trofim submitted a petition for his tonsure into monasticism. At the end of December 1906 the Spiritual Council examined the case of the temporary novice Trofim Smaha and took the decision "to include him in the number of the regular novices of the Kyiv Caves Dormition Lavra, with the hope of tonsure into monasticism, and to leave him at his present obedience".
"The novice Trofim Smaha, by the direction of Father Abbot of the Lavra Archimandrite Antoniy, was tonsured into monasticism by the ecclesiarch of the Kyiv Caves Dormition Lavra, Archimandrite Nazariy, on 14 March 1907, and was given the name Trifiliy" — such notifications were sent out to various government departments in the name of the Spiritual Council of the Lavra. The whole term of his novitiate trial lasted 14 years. Let us note that at the beginning of the last century a long probation of one wishing to receive monasticism was the usual practice of our monastery.
It must be said that the initial stage of monastic life is not by chance called the novitiate, since every monk, whatever rank he may hold, is always a novice. One entering the brotherhood must be aware of the importance of this step, by which he expresses the desire to be obedient unto death; he must understand that he is betrothing himself to the brotherhood he has chosen. He sets out on the path of inward obedience to the superior, of submission to the brethren and of accepting the will of God in each particular circumstance. If the novice grasps for himself the true aim of life in the monastery not only theoretically, in the mind, but assimilates it by experience, and if this aim is shared by him with the abbot and the whole brotherhood, then he will remain in the monastery and will ascend from strength to strength. And this is what happened with Father Trifiliy.
He was ordained to the rank of hierodeacon on 30 September 1912 in the Great church of the Lavra at the celebration of the Divine Liturgy by His Eminence, the Most Eminent Flavian, Metropolitan of Kyiv and Halych. It must be said that the examining commission for the testing of those of the brethren who were preparing for ordination to holy orders particularly noted the wide reading of the monk Trifiliy. On 1 June 1913 Father Trifiliy was transferred to the Great church for the regular services and the kliros obedience. He continued to fulfil these obediences right up to the middle of 1919.
The accursed years
From 1917 Kyiv and the Lavra entered upon a particularly difficult period. The turbulent life beyond the monastery gates nevertheless made its corrections to the settled order of our monastery.
This is how the Spiritual Council of the monastery described the events of January 1918: "What Kyiv lived through during its occupation by the Bolsheviks will probably never be erased from the memory of the people of Kyiv. It fell to the lot of the Lavra to endure at that time such horrors as it had not lived through during the Mongol invasion. To the present day (that is, to 5 October 1918. — Editor's note) the buildings of the Lavra have preserved the traces of the bursting of those shells with which the monastery was literally showered from 15 to 23 January, until at last it was taken by the Bolsheviks. The brethren of the Lavra, consisting at that time of 500 men for the most part already of advanced years, could of course offer no resistance whatever to armed men, and were compelled under threat of death to carry out their demands… Only by this submission did the brethren of the Lavra escape wholesale extermination and the destruction of the monastery's holy things."
From the winter of 1918 various infectious diseases began to spread rapidly over the territory of the former empire. After millions of soldiers of the collapsed Russian army rushed home from the front, the freight cars, railway carriages, stations and railway junctions turned into breeding grounds and mass suppliers of epidemic diseases. Added to this, in conditions of total ruin and famine, when there was a catastrophic shortage of soap, clothing, linen and foodstuffs, the population had no possibility of observing elementary rules of hygiene. Everywhere the water supply and sewerage were disrupted and the electricity supply ceased. Because of the shortage of fuel and the impossibility of bringing it in, many dwellings, institutions and even hospitals went unheated. At the same time in Ukraine, as throughout the country that had lived through war and revolution, there was a shortage of doctors, of medicines and of disinfectants; the health service and the sanitary organisations had been destroyed.
Already in January 1918 the typhus epidemic embraced the Don, Ukraine and the Northern Caucasus. But so far this was a "professional disease" of the military (many historians agree that it was precisely the typhus epidemic that was the cause of the defeat of the Ukrainian People's Republic).
By 1921-1922 the typhus epidemic had grown into a pandemic of parasitic typhus fevers, intestinal infections and smallpox. The peak of typhus morbidity was the year 1920, when for every 10 thousand of the population 1 thousand 106 people fell ill with various forms of typhus. People perished from infectious diseases more often than on the fields of battle. Priests were needed.
On 16 June 1919 Father Trifiliy was ordained hieromonk. In 1920 he submitted a petition to the Spiritual Council for a long leave of absence on account of the extreme weakness of his health, and he was released to take a cure in the village of Stavyshche in the Tarashcha district. This coincided with the peak of the spread of typhus in the Kyiv province. A little later Father Trifiliy was sent to serve at the parish of Polkovnychyi Khutir in the Tarashcha district of the Kyiv province. We see here the Providence of God, for, leaving for only a couple of weeks, Father Trifiliy remained at the parish for a year and a half, and the fruit of his pastoral work was the preservation of the church community.
It is worth saying that during epidemics the number of the faithful may either diminish or increase, depending on the courage or the irresolution of the pastors. Father Trifiliy was undoubtedly a courageous man and had a pastoral gift, which is confirmed by the documentary testimony of the peasants "concerning the zealous fulfilment by the Lavra hieromonk Trifiliy of his pastoral duties during the typhus epidemic at the risk of his own life while he was, with the permission of the Diocesan authorities, at the parish in the said village in the years 1920-1921", together with a request for his decoration. And this truly carried a risk to life. It is enough to look at the figures of official Soviet statistics, according to which in the years 1919-1922 not less than 5 million people in Ukraine fell ill with spotted typhus and as many again with relapsing fever. About 750 thousand people died of the parasitic typhus fevers.
In November 1921 Father Trifiliy, after the labours he had borne, was returned to the Kyiv Caves monastery. In the following year he became a member of the Spiritual Council and was raised to the rank of archimandrite.
The year 1921 in Kyiv differed from the four preceding ones. If from February 1917 to June 1920 power in the city changed on average once every three months, then in the whole of 1921 it did not change once. Soviet power was finally established in the city, streets and squares were renamed, the restoration of works and factories began, the engineer Yevhen Paton built a new bridge joining the left and right banks of the Dnipro, and the first bus route appeared. In this way economic life was gradually being set to rights.
For its part, by 1921 the Kyiv Caves Lavra had lived through the first wave of Bolshevik persecutions: a considerable part of its movable and immovable property had already been nationalised several times, the brethren had been compelled to enter a so-called agricultural and craft labour commune (in order to preserve the administration of the monastery and its property), to which a part of the Lavra's agricultural property had been transferred, and the enormous monastic library and the printing house were handed over to the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. The pressure of the authorities on the Church kept growing…
In the second half of 1922, under pressure from the new authorities, the Lavra's Spiritual Council ceased its activity, but the monastic community of the Kyiv Caves Lavra was for the time being preserved.
Head of the metochion
By a determination of the Spiritual Council of the Lavra of 23 June 1922, Father Trifiliy was released from the duties of a member of the Spiritual Council and appointed head of the St Petersburg metochion of the Kyiv Caves Lavra, built at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The administration of the metochion was received from its superior, the 79-year-old Archimandrite Feognost (Pomikov), who had directed it for about 30 years and remained there in retirement. Let us note that Archimandrite Feognost (Pomikov), foreseeing his approaching end (he reposed on 5 July 1922), himself sent the corresponding report to the Spiritual Council of the Kyiv Caves Lavra, in which he asked to be released and for a successor to be sent.
Archimandrite Trifiliy arrived in Petrograd in July 1922. By this time the civil war had already ended and a new economic course (the NEP) had been declared in the country, which implied a complete revision of the principles of "war communism". Private trade and private property were again permitted, and the requisitioning of grain was replaced by a tax in kind. Fearing that this might provoke political demands as well, the Soviet authorities began to fight ruthlessly against any social movement and dissent in the country. The Bolsheviks organised the first large-scale campaign of "purging" among those who upheld the principle of freedom of thought and spiritual freedom in their lives. The first to come under the punitive machine were the clergy and the intelligentsia.
In the second half of 1922 about two hundred of the greatest scholars, writers and philosophers (with their families) who had not accepted Soviet power were expelled from the country on special steamships. This measure proved possible because by that time the shooting of such prominent representatives of the scholarly and literary elite might have had an undesirable resonance abroad for the Soviet government. The list of the exiled philosophers, which included I. Ilyin, S. Bulgakov, N. Berdyaev, L. Karsavin, F. Stepun, N. Lossky and others, was drawn up by Lenin personally.
The chief aim of the expulsion was to frighten the intelligentsia and to force it into silence. It was a warning: do not speak out against the authorities. The article in "Pravda" devoted to the expulsion was in fact entitled "A First Warning". The expulsion of the intelligentsia was an act unprecedented in world history: the spiritual and intellectual potential of a people was deliberately and voluntarily lowered — the most educated, talented and creative people were driven out of the state. The authorities were thereby saying, as it were, that thought had become unnecessary and perhaps even harmful to the new Soviet man — and what then is to be said of prayer…
In the summer of 1922 there also took place in Petrograd the first show trial of the St Petersburg clergy, instigated by the Petrograd Bolshevik leadership for the clergy's resistance to the confiscation of church valuables from the churches for the needs of the starving of the Volga region. There were 86 people in the case, of whom 10 were sentenced to be shot. On the night of 13 August 1922 there were shot: Metropolitan Veniamin of Petrograd (the chief accused at the trial), Archimandrite Sergiy (Shein), and also Professor Yu. P. Novitsky of the University, the lawyer I. Kovsharov and others.
The see of Petrograd was beheaded. Patriarch Tikhon was under arrest. A schism within the Church had been instigated. The authorities supported the Renovationists. Moreover the centre of Renovationism lay precisely in Petrograd. The Renovationists tried to seize the Orthodox churches and, against the will of the parishioners, conducted services with violations of the order of service and with a variety of innovations. When the parishioners and the clergy protested, the modernist churchmen turned to the new authorities for protection. In all conflict situations the Chekists took them under their protection, on the ground that "our red priests are being wronged".
Having taken over the direction of the Lavra metochion in July 1922, that is, at the height of the events described above, Father Trifiliy at once threw himself into resolving the current problems of the metochion's life. On the one hand, the church valuables had to be preserved as far as possible, since the state's campaign for their confiscation had not yet ended. On the other, the Renovationists were "on the offensive", and their local leaders demanded the liquidation of the metochion of the Kyiv Caves Lavra as a community independent of the local Renovationist church authority.
Until the arrest in 1923 of all the Petrograd vicar bishops, apart from Bishop Artemiy (Ilyinsky) of Luga, the new superior of the metochion succeeded in withstanding the Renovationists. The chief argument was the fact that the metochion, as part of the Ukrainian Church, was autonomous. The situation, however, became ever more tense; Father Trifiliy applied three times to the Kyiv Caves Lavra with detailed reports on the church situation in Petrograd, the demands of the Higher Church Administration (a Renovationist organisation) and the intentions of liquidating the metochions of other dioceses in the northern capital. Father Trifiliy asked what concessions might be made, but from Kyiv came only indefinite instructions, which left the brethren the right to decide questions of church subordination on the spot.
In 1923 Archimandrite Trifiliy, having consulted the brethren (As of August 1923 the monastic brotherhood of the metochion consisted of 10 men, − editor's note) and the parish council, in order to preserve the metochion made forced concessions with regard to the demands of the Renovationist Higher Church Administration (HCA), namely he ordered that Bishop Artemiy (Ilyinsky) of Luga be commemorated, that the general assemblies of the Vasilyevsky Island clergy be attended and that money be paid over for diocesan needs. In September 1923 Bishop Manuil (Lemeshevsky) arrived in Petrograd and, with the blessing of Patriarch Tikhon, headed the struggle against Renovationism in that diocese. As a result of Bishop Manuil's activity, within a few weeks 83 out of 115 Renovationist churches passed into the jurisdiction of the Patriarch. The monastics of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra and the Novodevichy monastery also returned to the Patriarchal Church. Even the head of the Renovationist Petrograd diocese, Metropolitan Artemiy (Ilyinsky), went over to the Patriarchal Church; he offered repentance in several churches and was received in the rank of bishop, which he had held before going over to Renovationism.
For his part, Father Trifiliy had to explain to the leadership of the Lavra the motives of his forced compromise (a denunciation had reached the Lavra accusing the metochion of going over to the Renovationists). It is telling that, just as two years earlier in the Tarashcha district (after the typhus epidemic), his flock came out in defence of Archimandrite Trifiliy. The parishioners of the metochion sent to the Kyiv Caves Lavra a letter and petition of their own asking that the undeserved accusation be lifted from the superior and the brethren. The misunderstanding was shortly resolved in the father's favour.
The Brotherhood of the Saviour
At the beginning of the 1920s the Orthodox brotherhoods came to enjoy particular strength and influence: at the Petrograd churches there existed more than 20 of them (the Alexander Nevsky, the Saviour's, the St Andrew's, the St Zachariah's, the Icon of the Sign, the St Symeon's, the St Methodius's and others), uniting active believers.
They took upon themselves those spheres of church life which, under the conditions of the state's new religious policy, the traditional church institutions could not carry out: the teaching of the Law of God, theological courses, missionary work, spiritual education, educational and publishing activity, preaching and so on.
Gradually the leaders and members of some brotherhoods came to hope that they might contribute to the preservation and revival of the Church. In 1923 Bishop Innokentiy (Tikhonov) wrote to his spiritual children from exile: "…[You] must bind yourselves by strict obedience towards her (the Church), and only this obedience, joined with self-sacrifice and the labour of prayer, can save and truly revive the Russian Church…".
It is quite understandable that the authorities could not leave these processes without attention. And so the "Case of the Orthodox Brotherhoods" was begun by the Chekists at the same time as the preparation of the trial of Metropolitan Veniamin. More than 30 people — representatives of the clergy and the laity — were accused of anti-Soviet activity. The arrests of members of the Brotherhoods began in the spring of 1922 and ended at the close of 1924.
Archimandrite Trifiliy was arrested on 3 February 1924 as part of a large group of clergy headed by His Grace Manuil (Lemeshevsky) in the case of the "Brotherhood of the Saviour".
Archpriest Nikolai Chukov, the future Metropolitan Grigory, wrote the following in his diary "One Year of My Life" on Tuesday 19 (6) February 1924: "There is news of new arrests: Fr M. Yavorsky, M. Tikhomirov, Vl. Lozinsky, Fr Archimandrite Dosifey, Archimandrite Makary (of the Lavra) and Archimandrite Makary (of Athos), Fr Trifiliy (the Kyiv metochion), Hieromonk I. Yegorov (the Tvorozhkovo metochion), Archpriest Filonenko, Archimandrite Nikolai Muravyov, Fr Vertogradsky, Fr Alexander Sakharov and many laypeople besides. They are all being held in the DPZ (the house of preliminary detention. — Editor's note) on Shpalernaya. Yesterday news was brought that Fr T. Nalimov and several other priests had been released. According to their report, they are held three to a cell (a Jew, a Communist and a priest…); the investigator Shibov (a good man) questions them about the following: 1) whether they were at the gatherings on Kirpichny (probably at Fr Libin's services), 2) whether they served in private houses, 3) whether they visited Fr Prozorov, and 4) whether they visited Bishop Manuil? From this one may conclude that the initiative for the arrests comes from the 'Living Church' men, who need 1) to make an end of 'Manuilism' and 2) to protect their own material interests, which are damaged by services in private houses."
Archimandrite Trifiliy (Smaga) was sentenced to two years in the camps with a subsequent three years of exile. He served his term on the Solovki islands, to which there were also sent by administrative order Bishop Manuil (Lemeshevsky), Archimandrite Dosifey (Stepanov), Archimandrite Nikolai (Muravyov-Uralsky), the hieromonks Anatoly (Tolstopyatov) and Varlaam (Satserdotsky), the priests N. K. Libin, V. A. Prozorov, A. N .Sakharov, D. D. Filonenko, I. I. Chokoi, M. S. Yavorsky; and there were exiled to remote regions of the country Bishop Innokentiy (Tikhonov), the archimandrites Guriy (Yegorov), Lev (Yegorov) and others.
As we see, in comparison with the way the reprisals against Metropolitan Veniamin (Kazansky) ended, the punishment of the members of the Orthodox brotherhoods that surrounded him was relatively mild, and few were convicted in that case. Meanwhile the Bolsheviks succeeded in putting an end in Petrograd to the legal activity of the parish brotherhoods, which were undoubtedly a support for the clergy and the laity.
The return
On 26 September 1926 Archimandrite Trifiliy completed his first term of imprisonment and was released from the concentration camp on Solovki. His place of exile was fixed as the town of Lyuban in the Leningrad region. The town's chief landmark is the church of the holy apostles Peter and Paul, erected in 1867 to the design of the well-known Russian architect Konstantin Andreyevich Ton; services in it were not interrupted until 1939, so that we may confidently suppose that Father Trifiliy served in it too.
After three years of exile, in 1929 Father Trifiliy returned to the Kyiv Caves metochion in Leningrad (let us recall that the Kyiv Caves Lavra was closed in 1926).
At the time of Father Trifiliy's return the Lavra metochion had no head, since the organs of the GPU had categorically rejected the candidacy of Archimandrite Feodosiy (Mikhailovsky), presented to the brethren a year earlier in person by Archimandrite Yermogen (Golubev). In December 1929 Father Feodosiy (Mikhailovsky) was expelled from Leningrad.
It was impossible to confirm Father Trifiliy officially as superior, since he had a conviction under article 58 of the Criminal Code, which established liability for counter-revolutionary activity, and this was an obstacle for anyone wishing to hold an administrative post. He therefore took a deliberate risk and headed the brethren, so to speak, in a private capacity (his second period as superior lasted until the autumn of 1930). This bore witness to the great respect on the part of the brethren and to the trust on the part of Father Trifiliy.
Father Trifiliy at once took measures to set the monastic way of life in order — in the first place he gave instructions that a common meal be prepared (borshch, kasha, tea). The provisions were bought at the market by a monk-cook with money from the common purse, the distribution of which was managed by Archdeacon Yevmeniy (Khorolsky).
Each of the brethren was given 30 roubles a month for rent, taxes and private expenses. In those years all the clergy, as persons deprived of rights, had no ration cards and bought the necessary food and things at three times the price in the markets, wherever they could, and the traders preferred to be paid in silver.
On the night of 22 to 23 August 1930 Father Trifiliy was arrested for the second time and held in custody. The charge was brought on 11 December 1930 "for systematically retaining small change and thereby undermining the circulation of money in the USSR"; he was sentenced by a "troika" of the Plenipotentiary Representation of the OGPU in the Leningrad Military District under articles 58-10 and 59-10 of the Criminal Code to 3 years.
He was again sent to the Solovki camps. It is known that there, among other things, he worked as a watchman. In accordance with the resolution of the Central Commission of the OGPU No. 68 of 1 April 1931 on the unloading of the Solovki camps of the NKVD of the sick, the disabled and the aged, Father Trifiliy, on account of illness — chronic myocarditis — was sent for the remainder of his term to the Northern Territory, to the town of Kotlas, about 600 kilometres to the south-east of the city of Arkhangelsk.
A little later Father Trifiliy moved to the city of Novgorod, where he lived until 1937 at 23 Volodarsky Street. The Book of Remembrance of the victims of political repression of the Novgorod region also testifies that in 1935, that is, on the eve of the era of Stalin's Great Terror, he was deprived of his electoral rights as a former minister of religion. Let us note that, by depriving churchmen of their electoral rights, the Soviet authorities strengthened the blocking of the church's activity.
From 1937 to 1946 Archimandrite Trifiliy lived in Malaya Vishera. We do not know the exact reasons for which he remained so long in that small town. But with a high degree of probability we may suppose that here he held a priest's place in the St Nicholas cathedral.
The last information known to us about the life of Father Trifiliy testifies that on 16 January 1946 Archimandrite Trifiliy was appointed superior of the church of the village of Sable in the Batetsky district of the Novgorod region. On 13 February of the same year he consecrated that church. And already at the end of February 1946 Archimandrite Trifiliy became a member of the Spiritual Council of the Kyiv Caves Lavra.
But we know for certain that the Lord called His servant to end his earthly path in his own monastery.
In November 1946 Father Trifiliy became dean of the Kyiv Caves Lavra. But, unfortunately, his health kept growing worse. He received the schema with the name Theodosius.
On 24 December 1946 Schema-Archimandrite Theodosius departed to the Lord.
He was buried in the garden of the Near Caves of the Kyiv Caves Lavra; later his remains were transferred to the Zvirynets cemetery in Kyiv.
From the materials of the archive service of the Kyiv Caves Lavra
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