In Lubianka’s Shadow: The Memoirs of an American Priest in Stalin's Moscow, 1934-1945 - Hardcover

Braun AA, Léopold L. S.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0268021996 ISBN 13: 9780268021993

Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006

Synopsis

In Lubianka’s Shadow chronicles the extraordinary life of a young American Catholic priest, Father Léopold Braun, who, as pastor of a small Catholic church near the Lubianka political prison in the heart of Moscow, witnessed Stalin’s purges, the Soviet government’s campaign against organized religion, and the destruction of World War II. These memoirs, recently discovered in the archive of Fr. Bruan’s Assumptionist order by Soviet scholar Gary Hamburg, offer an intimate account of Fr. Braun’s valiant effort to uphold Christian worship in the only Catholic church allowed to operate in Stalin’s Moscow.

Posted to Moscow in 1934 as chaplain of the United States embassy, Father Braun served the embassy staff and local parishioners in the Saint Louis des Français Church at a moment when Stalin’s anti-religious campaign was reaching a crescendo. He describes the Soviet government’s intimidation and arrest of his parishioners, police surveillance of the church building, and personal harassment designed to force him out of the country. Father Braun’s responses to these pressures―sometimes amusing, sometimes heart-rending, but always intelligent and soulful―tell us much about the capacity of ordinary people to respond to extraordinary circumstances. Under his pen, Soviet society comes alive, with its citizens’ poverty, cynicism, humor, and courage on full display.

Accompanying the memoirs is an introductory, historical essay by G. M. Hamburg. In Lubianka’s Shadow is required reading for anyone interested in modern Russian history and for those concerned about the survival of religious faith under political assault.

About this title

About the Authors

Father Marie-Leopold Braun (1903-1964), an American Catholic priest of the Augustinian Assumptionists Order, was ordained in 1932 and appointed to Moscow as a chaplain at the US Embassy in Russia in 1934. He was the de facto head of the Catholic Church in Russia from 1936-1945. He left the Soviet Union because he had received word that Premier Stalin had given an order to “exterminate” him. Father Braun left shortly after Christmas of 1945 in the private plane of James F. Byrnes, then Secretary of State, who had been attending a conference in Moscow. Braun served as spiritual adviser to American diplomats as well as Catholics of many nationalities, until his death.

G. M. Hamburg is the Otho M. Behr Professor of European History at Claremont McKenna College. He is the author of numerous books, including Boris Chicherin and Early Russian Liberalism, 1828-1866.

From the Back Cover

"This is an astonishing memoir: astonishing for the story it tells of the ordeal of an American priest in sustaining the only Catholic church in Moscow during the terrible years of the Great Terror and World War II; astonishing for its account of 'Soviet reality' in those years, perhaps unparalleled in range and depth among foreigners' memoirs of this period; and astonishing for the author's unsuccessful attempts to get his Moscow memoir published during his lifetime, as recounted in Gary Hamburg's expert introduction." --Terence Emmons, Professor Emeritus of Russian History, Stanford University

"This memoir is one of the most remarkable historical documents to come to light in an era of major archival revelations in Soviet history. Because of the unique nature of the circumstances of Father Braun's tenure in Moscow, his memoir reveals a previously unilluminated side of Soviet existence. Father Braun's personal commitment and courage enabled him to achieve a familiarity with Soviet society and officialdom that leads to incidents, by turns, movingly affirmative of human capacity for nobility and selflessness, chillingly reminiscent of the worst sides of human nature, amusing in a Kafka-esque fashion, and breathtaking from an historian's perspective for the internality and intimacy they reveal." --Thomas Sanders, United States Naval Academy

From the Inside Flap

"Father Braun's memoir is a remarkable document, a compelling testimony to faith and personal courage. At the same time these recollections present a unique window through which to view life in Russia during that country's most difficult times--the Stalinist terror and the Great Patriotic War." --Richard G. Robbins, Jr., Professor of History, University of New Mexico

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0268021996
• ISBN 13: 9780268021993
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 454
• Editor: Hamburg G. M.