On the Occasion of the Deaths of Stalin and Andropov: The Evil That Men Do Lives After Them in the Diaspora

Jacqueline Xenia Nenchin | March 06, 2026

 

Over the past few weeks, we have marked the deaths of the former Soviet leaders Joseph Stalin and Yuri Andropov. Stalin died on March 5, 1953, having been General Secretary of the Communist Party and all around evil dictator for 29 years and Andropov died on February 9, 1984, after 15 years as Chairman of the KGB and 2 years as General Secretary and evil dictator. It would be hard to find anyone from the former Soviet Union who did not know someone who suffered at the hands of one or the other.

Metropolitan Philaret’s father, Archbishop Dimitri (Voznesensky) returned to Russia after the Soviet occupation of Manchuria and retired to the Pskov Caves Monastery. Wary of Stalin’s regime, he had devised a code to exchange with his son to let him know whether it was safe for then Hieromonk Philaret to follow him. The message that the latter received indicated that he should not return, so Bishop Philaret remained in China until 1962, when he left for Australia, and his father died in Leningrad, supposedly from appendicitis, in 1947, without having ever seen his son again.

In the early 1980s when Yuri Andropov transitioned from his position as KGB Chairman to General Secretary, I was working at the Synod of Bishops in New York. I still remember how this news was received, especially by Metropolitan Philaret. He spoke to me about it in a grave whisper, saying, “This is bad news. Andropov is an evil man. But he won’t live long.” And indeed, he did not. In less than two years, Andropov was dead.

The legacy of the two dictators continue for families at home and abroad. Stalin’s effects on my husband’s family included the murder of his great-grandfather, choir director Pavel Turchinov; the incarceration and forced labor on the Moscow canals of his great uncle and reader, whence he returned blind; generations of family trauma; and the destruction of the church in their village. Andropov’s effects on my husband included his arrest and incarceration in the Perm Camp No. 389-3 UTK in Merzlyaki on the right bank of the Kama River, his expulsion from university, his beating, his PTSD, and family trauma.

“The evil that men do lives after them.” (Shakespeare, Julius Ceasar Act 3, Scene 2)

 

Reference

Seide, G. (1984). Biography of Archbishop Demetrius. History of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia from Its Beginning to the Present. https://www.rocorstudies.org/2020/02/17/history-of-the-russian-orthodox-church-outside-russia-from-its-beginning-to-the-present-part-vi/

 

Source: https://jacquelinenenchin.substack.com/p/on-the-occasion-of-the-deaths-of