Northern Wood Saving Forgotten Churches

Just before sunset, a large, modern bus stopped in the quiet village of Saminsky Pogost. About three dozen women (along with a nun and several men) stepped out onto the dusty, sandy road.

- Andrei Borodulin

This was not a group of pilgrims. They looked a bit more like tourists and were traveling from Vologda to the shores of the White Sea to visit the Solovetsky Islands. This small village on the border of Vologda Oblast and the Republic of Karelia simply happened to be the approximate halfway point of their thousand-kilometer journey, and they had decided to make a short stop to see the ancient wooden Church of the Prophet Elijah.

Built at the end of the seventeenth century, and currently, in a semi catastrophic state of repair, the church is similar to the famous Cathedral of the Assumption of the Virgin in Kondopoga, which was destroyed by arson in August 2018.

The group was in luck. The church’s caretaker, Nikolai – bearing a grey beard and a set of keys – was nearby.

The group stepped inside, where just a single window, from which Nikolai removed a wooden shutter, illuminated the darkened interior.

Suddenly, from the quiet depths of the assembled group, a lone voice rang out: “Why are we wasting time on this ruin?”

The voice belonged to a pleasant-looking, well-dressed woman standing in the front row. She radiated an air of tense dissatisfaction.

The caretaker began to recount the church’s history, even though no one had asked him to. He also spoke of the village’s collapsed Tikhvin Church: volunteers had not been successful saving it, only in rescuing its cupolas from a debris pile.