On the Road...

It's a quiet place. In the park, tree branches sway softly in the spring breeze, birds chirp vigorously. Yet their voices seem muffled by the vast forest. If you were driving past it to the malls that now ring Russia's largest cities like St. Petersburg, you would never know that Levashovo Memorial Cemetery exists. But if you had any relatives who were Ingrians, you would be embarrassed if you were not aware of Levashovo.

Ingrian memorial with an inscription from Ezekiel 37:5-"This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life."

Levashovo is a place where the remains of thousands of those who were shot during Stalin's Great Terror are buried. In 1937-38, close to 40,000 residents of St. Petersburg, then known as Leningrad, were shot. No reason was given. Their bodies were then unceremoniously deposited in this peaceful forest.

Many years ago I read historian Robert Conquest's seminal book on the Stalinist repressions, The Great Terror; but now, here was the evidence right before my very eyes. The only equivalent to this experience which I can recollect is a visit I made to Dachau, the notorious Nazi concentration camp. But the ordinary beauty of this place far surpassed Dachau. In a way it brought to mind Hannah Arendt's famous phrase, "the banality of evil," which she coined to describe the plainness and seeming normality of Adolf Eichmann, one of Hitler's executioners. She wanted to say that so much evil in the world is committed or enabled by normal people rather than by psychotics. Perhaps that phrase could be extended to locations? I'm not sure. Levashovo at times also seems almost normal, peaceful, except for the tragic history associated with it.

I had traveled here with Ingrian pastor Alexander Schmidt, whose own grandfather was among the victims of Levashovo. Along with us were students from Concordia Seminary and Professor Will Schumacher. They were in Russia on a cross-cultural module, an experience in which students learn about ministry and different cultures while studying at the seminary. They were surely getting an unforgettable experience that one could never get in America.

Photos of Ingrian Lutherans shot in 1938

Walking through the forest, we were surrounded by the victims of many nations. Ingrians, Germans, Byelorussians, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Latvians, Italians, Jews, Poles, even Assyrians! Each ethnic group had its own monument, the most recent addition being the memorial to Italians dedicated in 2007. The site itself had been discovered in 1989 by members of the Russian human rights organization Memorial. Soon after it became a memorial cemetery with a small museum overflowing with pictures and memoranda of the victims.

We drifted over to the section on the Ingrians as this is a place where our church partners, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Ingria, often hold a memorial service on October 30, the Day of Soviet Political Prisoners. There we read the nameplates of Ingrians, those holding Russian sounding first names and Finnish last names. In fact the plaques or pictures of the victims do not correspond to their actual burial place. As you can imagine when up to 8000 people were shot by the KGB on one night alone, there was no organized burial procedure. To try to grasp the sheer monumental scope of the Terror is virtually impossible. One can only weep at the bestiality of the Communist dictatorship, a regime that shot people just because of their ethnicity or the fact that they were dissidents or religious believers. Levashovo is a part of the memory of the Ingrian church. It is a calm, beautiful setting where 70 years ago mankind went mad. As the church continues its restoration through the guidance of the Holy Spirit, a spirit of forgiveness is necessary in order to move on. But as we forgive, we must also never forget those who went before us and the reality of evil in this fallen world. Whether evil be banal or not in every instance, I cannot say. But we should never forget that Satan is very real and that he has his cadre of disciples who will continue to carry out his will to make this world a graveyard.

Concordia Seminary meets Ingria-and a return visit to the Sukkonen sisters

Meeting between seminary students

The Concordia students also had the chance to meet with our students from the Ingrian seminary. It was a wonderful time of sharing and learning from one another. As our students learned about life and service in the church in Russia, Prof. Schumacher also related a little bit of the history of The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. My students in the Ingrian seminary were eager for more visits and discussions throughout the week. When can we get together again, they asked? Needless to say, I was up until midnight translating between the two groups. It was one time when lack of sleep didn't trouble me.

Before the Concordia students left we all went on the rickety old bus to the village of Ozerki and a visit to the Sukkonen sisters, whom I wrote about here in my May 2007 newsletter. They are a little bit older and have trouble getting around, but they also gave the students an earful about life in the Soviet Gulag. One of our students taped their song about those sad days on his multi-purpose camera, which I hope to have placed on our website in the near future. Elvira, the member from St. George's in Koltushi who visits many of the former concentration camp survivors on a regular basis, again set up this meeting. When I tried to give her some money for doing the work she politely refused. I thought I had a sure way of forcing her to accept some support since her daughter could always use funds for her college education. But Elvira said, "This is my service to the Church." She, too, came from an Ingrian family that had suffered under communist rule. As I related how my paternal grandparents had left Russia before the Revolution, she said, "They were smart. My family came here from Finland in 1890." Even the Sukkonen sisters answered a student's question by saying that they were dumb not to have left the USSR when they had the chance. But who could know? To a less religious mind, such historical tragedies and blessings (on my part) could lead one to think of God as arbitrarily deciding the fate of peoples and nations as if we were simply puppets. But St. Paul has a response to this in Romans 9, speaking repeatedly of God's mercy when these questions arise.

Me, the Sukkonen sisters and their little dog

No, we don't know why some people suffer more than others. When the Sukkonen sisters asked me, "Why did God let this happen to us?", all I could say was, "I don't know." To offer a flippant answer to their heartfelt question, as if I accurately knew the mind of God in this particular situation would be insensitive. I don't know. But I do know what God tells us in his Word--- "And I know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose" (Romans 8:28). As I prayed with them before we left, I reminded that them even though we can't always see God's purposes, He does not really abandon us. Even our Lord Jesus, the Son of God, cried out on the cross, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?" He was forsaken for us, so that we would no longer live in ultimate fear of death but would know that in Christ we have life eternal. That is the Good News that sustains and holds us firm in our faith in Christ Jesus through all of our earthly sufferings.

God's peace,
Missionary Matt

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