It lies two hundred miles south of Moscow, in a remote and thickly forested region of Kaluga province. The local people have not forgotten either episode, and especially not the one they lived through. The church was gone, along with every animal and every able-bodied man. The women survivors lived in cattle-sheds, and rebuilt the farmhouses, plank by plank, with their own hands. The communist authorities in nearby Kirov would not let them erect another church.
Today there is still no church.
It was a privilege to sit with some of these old women, and admire their sense of humour and philosophy. On being introduced to a foreigner, they might begin with the charitable thought that, Never mind, we all serve under one God - and then aver slyly that God invented the name of Russia long before he thought of giving one to America. Decades of self-reliance have accustomed the villagers to forthright speech. I especially enjoyed her gloss on Communism. Western scientists invented and exported it, she thought, as part of a secret plan to ruin Russia - just like the Colorado beetles that have been plaguing her potato crops for the last 25 years.