Mikhail Efimovich Gubonin was born on this day in 1907. Greetings on the nativity of St. John the Baptist to those of us who celebrate it today! The work of a historian can be explained by one single phrase as a deep analysis of sources. To collect and assess all the sources in all their complexity and controversiality is the basis of any quality research. Therefore, the work of Mikhail Efimovich Gubonin preserved his name for posterity. Mikhail Efimovich was born on June 24/July 7, 1907, in the village Boloshevo, now a Moscow suburb within the city of Korolev. He was a descendant of the famous industrialist Peter I. Gubonin, who received the dignity of nobility. In 1928, Mikhail graduated from the Moscow Art School (painting department), and worked in various publishing houses. In his youth, Mikhail made a friendship with Sergei Izvekov (later Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus' Pimen). While having utmost respect to Holy Patriarch Tikhon, Mikhail also respected Holy New Martyr Archbishop Theodore (Pozdeevsky) of Volokolamsk, who at times, with the monastery in Moscow, was in opposition to His Holiness. Being a subdeacon of Bishop Peter (Rudnev), Mikhail repeatedly participated in patriarchal services. After the repose of Patriarch Tikhon in 1925, Mikhail every year strove to order a memorial service to be served at Patriarch Tikhon’s burial place at Donskoy monastery in Moscow. On October 28, 1929, Gubonin was arrested, accused of “anti-Soviet agitation” and imprisoned in Moscow Butyrka prison. On May 15, 1930, he was sentenced by a special meeting of the Collegium of the OGPU of the USSR to exile in Central Asia for 3 years. He served his time in Turkmenistan. Then he lived in Uzbekistan in the cities of Shakhrisabz, Termez and Bek-Budi (now Karshi). There he continued his “mission” communicating with repressed bishops and priests. On May 15, 1933, he was released with restrictions on his place of residence (he could not reside within 101km to Moscow). He lived in different places in the Moscow region and worked as an artist in the design of buildings of various factories, as well as the State Historical Museum. On July 22, 1941, Gubonin was called up for military service. During his service, he graduated from the Tula Weapons Technical School and, as part of the 7th Guards Cavalry Corps, reached Berlin as head of the topographic service. He was discharged from the Army with the rank of senior lieutenant and was awarded 3 orders and 5 medals. In 1947, Gubonin was invited by the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church to take part in the creation of the shrine of St. Alexis, Metropolitan of Moscow, in the Epiphany Cathedral in Moscow (at that time the major cathedral of the Russian Orthodox Church). He made sketches for the reliquary and for the carved wooden canopy, which was installed in 1948. As samples the artist used works of Russian woodcarvers of the 16th-17th centuries. Subsequently, Gubonin worked a lot on the restoration and painting of churches in Moscow and other cities. In the beginning of 1960s Mikhail Efimovich received an order from the Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus' Alexy I to design the patriarchal kukol (a non-liturgical daily headgear). The Russian Church had a limited pool of skilled human resources and Gubonin was invited to work for the Publishing Department of the Moscow Patriarchate designing the Orthodox church calendar and performing other artistic works. Gubonin’s main work was collecting materials dedicated to Patriarch Tikhon (covering the entire period of his church service) and the history of the Russian Orthodox Church in the Soviet period. He copied the texts of documents, collected detailed information about the life of the Patriarch, his decrees, speeches, messages, acts, and correspondence devoted to the issue of canonical succession of the supreme church authority, and materials about repressions against the clergy. Despite his illness, until the last days of life, Gubonin continued to compile this source book, with a total volume of approximately 14 thousand pages of typewritten text. All this was done illegally and at great risk. After the arrest, the first collection of documents was confiscated. Upon his release, Guboning began to collect materials again. To preserve the most complete information, he mentioned documents whose texts he could not obtain, but he had reliable information about their existence and time of writing. He also conducted work on dating the collected materials and revealing the names of the hierarchs. He strove for maximum objectivity, abandoned a selective approach to documents, their processing, and cited the texts of forged messages and letters if they influenced the views and behavior of a certain group of clergy. On October 9, 1971, Mikhail Efimovich Gubonin passed away. Many documents on the history of the Church from Gubonin’s archives were published by Lev Regelson as an appendix to his book Tragediia Russkoi Tserkvi: 1917-1945 (Paris, YMCA-Press:1977) [The Tragedy of the Russian Church, 1917-1945]. When posting these materials, the author did not name Gubonin’s last name, but referred to his collection as “Archive-1” (part of Gubonin’s collection). Later, the archive ended up in the St. Tikhon's Orthodox Theological Institute, and in 1994, a collection was published on its basis under the title Acts of His Holiness Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, Later Documents and Correspondence on the Canonical Succession of the Supreme Church Authority. For me, Mikhail Efimovich Gubonin is a proof that under any totalitarian regime there are always people who do things for eternity and not just for their own survival. Alexander Isaeevich Solzhenitsyn is another one, although Gubonin’s collection of the documents might be of better quality than that of GULAG Archipelago. Source: Archpriest Vladimir Vorob’ev, “Gubonin,” Pravoslavanaia Entsiklopedia |
