Three sections
The first section of the exhibition, entitled, “The Case of Tolstoy,” emphasizes the laceration of individual consciences through the personality of the “grand old man,” around whom all the issues in the period seemed to crystallize. Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) was not only a writer with a worldwide reputation, but he gave voice to issues that troubled broad strata of society. He was the supporter of a new social project (peasant communes intended to recreate the face of society in the period) and a new ethical spirituality, a secular religion inspired by Christianity but disconnected from the historical person of Christ, and in denial of His divine humanity. Tolstoy’s position had an overwhelming effect on the intelligentsia of his time, who were disgusted by the institutional Church. When, in 1901, the Holy Synod declared–with good reason–that the theories practiced and supported publicly by Count Tolstoy were heretical, and so excommunicated him, Russian society responded by largely siding with the writer against the ecclesiastical hierarchy. The second section of the exhibition, entitled, “The Russian Apocalypse,” testifies to the growing tide of the human position exemplified by Tolstoy, the way it encroached on ever larger areas of thought and social customs, flowing into phenomena such as anti-Semitism and social rebellion, generating bloody political and ethnic massacres.
The third section of the exhibition, “Messages from the 101st Km,” is almost an epilogue. It starts from the writings that a former inmate of the Gulag began to send to his family and a few friends from the 101st Km. (Those released from the Gulag were banned from ever moving closer to Moscow than 100 kilometers). These were books, letters, and memoirs that circulated in samizdat form (often anonymous or under false names). They told the younger generation what their fathers and mothers had seen and heard in their lifetimes, giving a voice to the testimony of the “just” who had lived through the years of the revolution and the forced labor system, transmitting the warmth radiated by the “walls of the Church” onto the world.
Sergei Fudel (1900-1977), the author of these writings, symbolizes to some extent the emergence of a remnant from the frozen, blood-stained fog of decades of persecution and horror. His work is not dictated by a desire to denounce the system, but by the urgent need to give voice to his experience of the truth, lived in the torments of the previous decades, to attest that the truth is the encounter with the “Living,” which reveals to man his true face and gives him eternal hope.

When, in September 1957, Fr. Scalfi arrived in Milan, he had no clear idea of the work that awaited him. The Soviet colossus seemed solid and stable. It was nearly impossible to make contact with the faithful (supposing they still existed, given the massive anti-religious propaganda and Khrushchev’s arrogant declarations). Only the official Church had permission to appear at international events, as the standard-bearer of the dominant ideology. But there was one thing that Fr. Scalfi was well aware of: the beauty and richness of the life of faith in the Russian Church, including the unity between Christians which comes before all divisions and the grace of being able to know the martyrs first hand and receive their witness. Starting from this knowledge, Fr. Scalfi created complex media instruments over a span of fifty years. The first was a magazine, today titled The New Europe, and then books, teaching aids, and leaflets, to make the persecutions known but even more important to publicize the desire for freedom of all those who wanted to live “without lies” despite the regime’s apparatus of oppression. Starting from the years of perestroika, Christian Russia was also given a “Russian” face through the Library of the Spirit, a cultural center created in Moscow in partnership with a group of Orthodox Christians, to foster all activities (publications, lectures, round tables, exhibitions...) that promote dialogue and that share the experience of truth and freedom in Russian society today.