The Presidential Library showed and discussed a movie of Nikolai Shelyapin “The recluse Passion” (about Matvey Tatomir)

A movie of Nikolai Shelyapin entitled “The recluse Passions” (about Matvey Tatomir) was screened and discussed during the next in turn scheduled meeting of the cinema club of the Presidential Library. The co-organizers of this screening were the Presidential Library, the Lennauchfilm Studios, the St. Petersburg Documentary Film Studios and the Russian Institute of Art History.

In the second half of the 1920s and the beginning of the 1930s, in the post-revolutionary Russia, a ruthless struggle began, aside the clerical community, with the laypeople who have attended to churches and temples and seeing how the new power was destroying these sights, “redeveloping” it for warehouses, gyms, third-rate institutions, desecrating them with impunity. People were facing all kinds of obstacles, not allowing them to Orthodox shrines. And at this harsh time, in the northern capital, among the most visited places were the burials in the cemeteries of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. The most famous was the chapel over the grave of Blessed Matvei Tatomir (1848-1904) at the Nikolsky cemetery of the monastery.

“Our film explores the topic of seclusion as an attempt to self-identity of an individual in spite of a lawlessness prevailing around, the desire to approach God through a solitary prayer, - director Nikolai Shelyapin said, opening the meeting of the Cinema Club. - It does not happen by itself and occurs with people of great purity of the soul, which the hero of our film Matvei Tatomir possessed. We also tried to talk about people close to him in spirit who wound up paying high for their support of Blessed Tatomir.”

26-minute documentary by Nikolai Shelyapin reveals the story of life and spiritual pursuits of Matvey Tatomir, born on November 16, 1848, in the family of a parish priest of the Podolsk Province. In 1871 he entered the Imperial St. Petersburg University, where he began to study at the Oriental faculty. The revolutionary events that gripped the university at that time affected his future destiny. At a rally of students he defended his beloved professor. In the same year he was dismissed from the university and expelled from St. Petersburg. Matvey's secular education ended on this, the period of pilgrimage to holy places began. According to the testimony of laurels monk-priest Matthew (Chelyuskin), “Tatomir was famous for being a pilgrim to the worship of holy places, both - Russian and Palestinian.”

Literally another person returned back to St. Petersburg from the pilgrimage – utterly harden to his faith Orthodox Christian. Matvey distributed his property without regret and completely immersed himself in the religious life of St. Petersburg. Many were addressing him with difficult questions, to which he was giving surprisingly accurate answers, using the deepest knowledge of Holy Scripture. Once Emperor Nicholas II visited the blessed Matvey in his enclosure, where he remained in constant prayers. From the reminiscences of Archpriest Victor Golubev, rector of the Holy Trinity Church of “Kulich and Paskha”: “Tsar Nicholas visited him when he worked in the crypt at the Lavra Cemetery.

It so cold in here!” - the astonished Sovereign exclaimed. “I, Your Imperial Majesty, warm myself up making the bows,” - the ascetic answered. And the Tsar gave him an apartment on 22 Ivanovskaya Street.”

The last seven years of life, Tatomir spent in the enclosure in this very house, in apartment 18. In the film, it is explained that Ivanovskaya Street in the old days was called the present Socialist Street, which rests on Zagorodny Prospect.

After the end of the screening and discussion of the movie, a solemn ceremony of awarding the winners of the “Memory of Heart: the Siege of Leningrad” V All-Russian Patriotic Action, dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the Sacred Procession (April 5, 1942) was held. Winners from the amount of the blockade city residents received commemorative signs named “The Petersburg’s personality” from the organizers of the action.