Victor Sokolov
Victor Sokolov (Russian: Виктор Владимирович Соколов) (February 21, 1947 – March 12, 2006)[1] was a Russian-American former dissident Soviet journalist and an Eastern Orthodox priest.
He wrote articles critical of the Soviet government that were clandestinely distributed throughout the Soviet Union and abroad.
After moving to the United States in 1975, he was stripped of his Soviet citizenship by an ukase of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet on September 7, 1976, for "activities discrediting the rank of a Soviet citizen", becoming only the fifth person around that time to be so penalized, among them Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1984.
Biography
Early life and dissident activity
Born in Tver (at the time named Kalinin), Sokolov served his obligatory stint in the Soviet Army before graduating from the Moscow Literary Institute and working as prose writer and editor for a monthly literary magazine. He became involved as a dissident in 1968 when he copied out his first samizdat, an appeal from five Soviet intellectuals objecting to the invasion of Czechoslovakia.
In the early 1970s, as a writer then unknown to the KGB, he was able to covertly report on the trial taking place in Leningrad of a dissident writer, which was distributed via samizdat and eventually broadcast via Radio Liberty and Voice of America.
As he became more active in the human rights movement, joining the Moscow branch of Amnesty International, he came to the notice of the authorities who kept a close eye on his activities.
Marriage and emigration
Sokolov was baptized into the Russian Orthodox Church in 1975, for the most part as a political statement. He married U.S. citizen Barbara Wrahtz, then employed by the U.S. Embassy, in a church service that same year, but her visa expired in August.
She was forced to return without him to the United States, but he received permission from the Soviet government to join her in November.
In the United States, Sokolov accepted a post as an instructor in advanced Russian at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he continued to write for international anti-Soviet journals.
In November 1976 he wrote to the Soviet consulate to begin the process of obtaining permission for his parents to visit. Instead of a reply to his application, he received a letter informing him of an action taken by the Supreme Soviet two months earlier to strip him of his citizenship.
At the time he remarked that this action was "rash" since it placed him on the same level as "...Solzhenitsyn, Vladimir Maximov, Valery Chalidze and Zhores Medvedev", but that he would strive to merit this "high honor".
Church life
Over time, his church membership became more a matter of faith than politics. Sokolov was ordained to the priesthood in 1984, and in 1985 graduated from Saint Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary with a Master of Divinity degree.
He served for a time in Canada at Holy Resurrection Church, Vancouver, British Columbia, where he also occupied a post as Lecturer in Slavonic Studies at the University of British Columbia, and then as rector at the Orthodox SS Peter and Paul Church in Buffalo, New York starting in 1990.
In 1991 he was assigned as rector of Holy Trinity Cathedral in San Francisco, California, the oldest Orthodox Christian parish in the continental United States, where he was "well-received" by the congregation. He served with distinction, and in June 2000 was elevated to the rank of archpriest by Bishop Tikhon of San Francisco.
Death
Late in 2004, Father Victor was diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma of the lungs, which had already metastasized. He succumbed to the disease on March 12, 2006, the Sunday of Orthodoxy, at age 59. His wife Barbara succumbed to a similar disease two years later at age 56. (10/12/2008)
References
- ^ "In Memoriam: The Very Rev. Victor Sokolov". www.oca.org. 13 March 2006. Retrieved 6 January 2020.
External links
Archived material
- "UC Student Married In Moscow". San Francisco Chronicle. June 16, 1975. Retrieved May 19, 2018 – via holy-trinity.org.
- "Letter from Soviet consulate informing Sokolov of his loss of citizenship". holy-trinity.org. Retrieved May 19, 2018.
- Wilson, Dan (November 19, 1976). "Soviet Rebuff 'Honors' Santa Cruzz Prof" (PDF). San Jose Mercury News. Retrieved May 19, 2018 – via holy-trinity.org.
- Cardinale, Anthony (April 22, 1990). "Father Sokolov finds a home in sister city". Buffalo News. Retrieved May 19, 2018 – via holy-trinity.org.
- "Sokolov to head Orthodox cathedral". San Francisco Chronicle. October 6, 1991. Retrieved May 19, 2018 – via holy-trinity.org.
- Coop, Krystal (April 1992). "From Dissident Soviet Writer to Priest: The Journey of Father Victor Sokolov". Marina Times. Retrieved May 19, 2018 – via holy-trinity.org.
- "Photographs from June 11, 2000". holy-trinity.org. Retrieved May 19, 2018.
- "A Personal Announcement from Fr. Victor Sokolov". holy-trinity.org. January 15, 2005. Retrieved May 19, 2018.
Other
- "In Memoriam: The Very Rev. Victor Sokolov". The Orthodox Church in America. March 13, 2006. Retrieved May 19, 2018.
- v
- t
- e
- Human rights movement in the Soviet Union: Initiative Group for the Defense of Human Rights in the USSR
- Committee on Human Rights in the USSR
- Solzhenitsyn Aid Fund
- Moscow Helsinki Group
- Ukrainian Helsinki Group
- Lithuanian Helsinki Group
- Working Commission to Investigate the Use of Psychiatry for Political Purposes
- Helsinki-86
- Memorial
- Mikhail Agursky
- Vasily Aksyonov
- Lyudmila Alexeyeva
- Andrei Amalrik
- Chabua Amirejibi
- Anton Antonov-Ovseyenko
- Gunārs Astra
- Mykola Bakay
- Anna Barkova
- Vasile Bătrânac
- Arkadiy Belinkov
- Nikolai Berdyaev
- Yuri Bezmenov
- Larisa Bogoraz
- Alexander Bolonkin
- Yelena Bonner
- Leonid Borodin
- Vladimir Bougrine
- Joseph Brodsky
- Vladimir Bukovsky
- Valery Chalidze
- Lev Chernyi
- Boris Chichibabin
- Viacheslav Chornovil
- Lydia Chukovskaya
- Yuli Daniel
- Vadim Delaunay
- Andrey Derevyankin
- David Devdariani
- Ivan Drach
- Yuri Druzhnikov
- Mustafa Dzhemilev
- Ivan Dziuba
- Abulfaz Elchibey
- Alexander Esenin-Volpin
- Eliyahu Essas
- Efim Etkind
- Benjamin Fain
- Viktor Fainberg
- Moysey Fishbein
- Ilya Gabay
- Balys Gajauskas
- Yuri Galanskov
- Alexander Galich
- Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev
- Zviad Gamsakhurdia
- Vladimir Gershuni
- Alexander Ginzburg
- Yevgenia Ginzburg
- Anatoly Gladilin
- Semyon Gluzman
- Natalya Gorbanevskaya
- Pyotr Grigorenko
- Sergei Grigoryants
- Vasily Grossman
- Igor Guberman
- Tengiz Gudava
- Paruyr Hayrikyan
- Ivan Hel
- Oleksa Hirnyk
- Mykola Horbal
- Bohdan Horyn
- Mykhailo Horyn
- Grigory Isayev
- Boris Kagarlitsky
- Romas Kalanta
- Sofiya Kalistratova
- Ihor Kalynets
- Iryna Kalynets
- Vitaliy Kalynychenko
- Dina Kaminskaya
- Ivan Kandyba
- Ephraim Kholmyansky
- Yuliy Kim
- Nikolai Klyuev
- Lev Kopelev
- Boris Korczak
- Anatoly Koryagin
- Nahum Korzhavin
- Merab Kostava
- Lina Kostenko
- Sergei Kovalev
- Zoya Krakhmalnikova
- Victor Krasin
- Yuri Kublanovsky
- Jüri Kukk
- Anatoly Kuznetsov
- Eduard Kuznetsov
- Malva Landa
- Alexander Lavut
- Mikhail Leontovich
- Alexander Lerner
- Yaroslav Lesiv
- Eugene Levich
- Veniamin Levich
- Eduard Limonov
- Jüri Lina
- Pavel Litvinov
- Levko Lukyanenko
- Nikolay Lossky
- Kronid Lyubarsky
- Michail J. Makarenko
- Vasyl Makukh
- Guram Mamulia
- Nadezhda Mandelstam
- Anatoly Marchenko
- Valeriy Marchenko
- Myroslav Marynovych
- Grigorii Maksimov
- Roy Medvedev
- Zhores Medvedev
- Naum Meiman
- Mykhailo Melnyk
- Alexander Men
- Yosef Mendelevitch
- Vazif Meylanov
- Andrei Mironov
- Ion Moraru
- Viktor Nekipelov
- Viktor Nekrasov
- Alexander Nekrich
- Valeriya Novodvorskaya
- Vasile Odobescu
- Alexander Ogorodnikov
- Yuri Orlov
- Raisa Orlova
- Yulian Panich
- Lagle Parek
- Boris Pasternak
- Konstantin Paustovsky
- Gleb Pavlovsky
- Zianon Pazniak
- Yekaterina Peshkova
- Viktoras Petkus
- Alexander Piatigorsky
- Leonid Plyushch
- Alexandr Podrabinek
- Grigory Pomerants
- Vladimir Pribylovsky
- Dmitri Prigov
- Anatoly Pristavkin
- Boris Pustyntsev
- Irina Ratushinskaya
- Eliyahu Rips
- Arseny Roginsky
- Maria Rozanova
- Mykola Rudenko
- Yuly Rybakov
- Ain Saar
- Valery Sablin
- Andrei Sakharov
- Dmitri Savitski
- Shmuel Schneurson
- Iryna Senyk
- Victor Serge
- Efraim Sevela
- Igor Shafarevich
- Varlam Shalamov
- Avital Sharansky
- Natan Sharansky
- Alexander Shatravka
- Vladimir Shelkov
- Yurii Shukhevych
- Danylo Shumuk
- Andrei Sinyavsky
- Vladimir Slepak
- Victor Sokolov
- Sergei Soldatov
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
- Pitirim Sorokin
- Galina Starovoytova
- Vladimir Strelnikov
- Aleksandras Štromas
- Vasyl Stus
- Nadiya Svitlychna
- Ivan Svitlichny
- Vasyl Symonenko
- Les Tanyuk
- Alexander Tarasov
- Valery Tarsis
- Enn Tarto
- Lev Timofeev
- Valentin Turchin
- Andrei Tverdokhlebov
- Tatyana Velikanova
- Tomas Venclova
- Georgi Vins
- Georgi Vladimov
- Vladimir Voinovich
- Michael Voslenski
- Anatoly Yakobson
- Gleb Yakunin
- Venedikt Yerofeyev
- Yevgeny Zamyatin
- Alexander Zinoviev
- Yosyf Zisels