Vsevolod Tchapline

This article is devoted to the figure of Archpriest Alexander Men, a Russian Orthodox priest murdered in September 1990, on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of his death. Initially published in the Russian daily Izvestia, the text takes the form of commemorative meditation and retrospective testimony. The author, Vsevolod Chaplin, argues that the legacy of Father Alexander goes beyond the singularity of his tragic death or the theological controversy surrounding his work: what endures is a pastoral model founded on availability, intellectual dialogue, and the centrality of Christ in preaching. The article also situates Men within the historical context of the mass conversion of the Soviet intelligentsia, particularly of Jewish origin, to Christianity during the 1970s and 1980s, a phenomenon without equivalent in the West. The principal contribution lies in a balanced reassessment of the priest's theological and pastoral influence, neither canonized nor condemned, but subjected to the test of time and synodal reason.