Revisiting a Ukrainian Hero After Forty Years
Eight years ago, someone in Ukraine sent me an electronic copy of a detailed biography of Alexander Bulatovich (AKA Father Anthony) that he had written and self-published. At the time, I was involved in other matters and only gave it a cursory look. Now, prompted by others interested in Bulatovich, I’m returning to that story.
Blank Spots in Biographies of Bulatovich is a fascinating, fact-filled account of an extraordinary man and those around him. Bulatovich was the hero of my historical novel, The Name of Hero, published by Tarcher/Houghton Mifflin in 1981.
The author of the biography, Alexander Kiselev lives near where Bulatovich grew up — Lutsikovka, near Sumy, in Kharkiv province, an area that has frequently been in the news in accounts of the Russian invasion.
Bulatovich was a Russian cavalry officer in the Tsar’s Life-Guard Hussar Regiment in the 1890s. He became an explorer in Ethiopia, fought in the Russo-Chinese War of 1900 (when Russia used the excuse of the Boxer Rebellion to seize control of Manchuria). Then he became a monk, went to a monastery in Mount Athos (Greece), and became the leader of a religious movement that was opposed by the Russian Holy Synod. Russian troops besieged the monastery in 1912 and shipped 880 monks to Siberia, for believing that “the Name of God is part of God, and therefore in itself divine.” They were practicing the “Jesus Prayer” as described by Salinger in Franny and Zoey, repeating a simple prayer so often that it was expressed by the rhythm of their breathing and the beating of their hearts, so they could pray perpetually and thereby always be in the presence of God.
Bulatovich championed the cause of the Name-Glorifiers, lobbying on their behalf in Petersburg, until the outbreak of the First World War. Then he volunteered to serve as a priest-chaplain a the front, and earned medals for bravery, rallying retreating troops and leading them to charge the enemy.
With the end of the war and the outbreak of the Bolshevik Revolution, he returned to his family’s estate in the Ukraine. The house had been burnt down in an uprising in 1905, so he lived in a shack in the orchard there and preached the Gospel as he believed it, until he was murdered on his doorstep in December 1919.
I met his sister Princess Mary Orbeliani in 1973, when she was nearly 100 years old, living in a nursing home in British Columbia. I recorded over 20 hours of interviews with her. After my novel was published, I posted on my website the transcripts of those conversations as well as copies of letters from her and her son. (Check here for those materials ).
Kiselev quotes my novel and my research material extensively. He provides details that I was unaware of and offers corrections based on other sources. He also provides photographs I had never seen that make vivid the man and his time.
I was both gratified and spooked by the author’s closing words, that imply that I was fated to write about this man of many lives.
“And this summer a shard was dug up in the garden [where Bulatovich was buried]. Washed, it turned out to be a piece of an old glassbottle. For a long time, it lay in the ground, covered with oxides, but part of the inscription in the glass remained — “ELT,” from “Selterskaya,” a mineral water, produced in Tsarist Russia, following the example of the German source “Selters”. And that is how Galina Orbeliani-Bulatnikova writes the surname of Richard Seltzer — Selters. And that’s why I quoted “The Name of Hero” so often. Many shrug off his book, “What can an American understand about the Russian soul!” But he wrote what Russian souls are embarrassed to voice, what actually happened, and what for us it seems not to have happened. There are no random people and events in Bulatovich’s biography.”
The Name of Hero focused on Manchuria, with flashbacks to Ethiopia and his youth. I originally planned to write a trilogy. The Name of Man would cover events during his religious awakening and his decision to become a monk. The Name of God would cover Mount Athos, the heresy conflict, World War I and events leading to his murder. Now I’ve decided to write a single novel covering the entire saga, including a revised version of The Name of Hero and with a frame connecting to the present-day.
I’ve posted what may become the prologue of the saga here on Medium. Mazepa! Layers of Legend
Another Medium post describes how I chanced upon this intriguing story. A Hero of Ukraine and of Ethiopia
The original novel is available on my website
I also translated two books by Bulatovich about his experiences in Ethiopia. That was published as a single volume entitled Ethiopia Through Russian Eyes by Red Sea/Africa World Press in 2000. Old Africa, a magazine published in Nairobi, called that book “the most important book on the history of eastern Africa to have been published for a century.” They will soon be issuing a second edition, this time including photographs that Bulatovich took in Ethiopia in 1897.
