Monastery

This article publishes notes written in 1979 by Tatiana Goritcheva, a Russian intellectual who converted to Christianity after a period of atheism, during stays in several Orthodox monasteries still surviving in the USSR — mainly in the Baltic countries and the Pskov region. In the form of a spiritual testimony addressed to a correspondent, the text describes the liturgical and ascetic life of these communities, the figure of the startsy, the reality of the struggle against demonic forces, and the practice of secret monasticism in the Soviet world. The main contribution of this document is twofold: it illuminates the spiritual journey of a part of the contemporary Russian intelligentsia and attests to the hidden vitality of Orthodox monasticism in a context of persecution, emphasizing that monastic prayer, far from being a withdrawal from the world, constitutes an intercession for its transfiguration.