Aleksey Lukich Khvoshchev was a personal nobleman (a kind of knight) in the rank of State Councilor, a candidate of theology and an outstanding teacher. He was well known among educated people of the Sura region as a classical scholar of local history who shed light on landmarks in the history of Penza. His works on the history of church are still referred to by diocesan researchers.
Aleksey Lukich Khvoshchev was born on February 1, 1870, in the family of a priest of the Nizhny Novgorod diocese. He became an Orthodox Christian believer thanks to his parents upbringing as well as the churchly environment he was raised in. Over the years, his faith did not weaken, in fact, it strengthened, and that is why in 1890, after graduating from the Nizhny Novgorod Theological Seminary, he decided to continue his studies at the Moscow Theological Academy. Here Aleksey Lukich was lucky to become a student of our fellow countryman, a great Russian historian V. O. Klyuchevsky, who had a great influence on the young man. Besides, it was Klyuchevsky who wrote a positive comment on one of Khvoshchev’s student papers. In 1894, Aleksey Khvoshchev graduated from the Academy with a degree of candidate of theology and the following year was assigned to the Penza theological seminary where he served until its liquidation in 1918.
For the first ten years Aleksey Lukich taught expository theology and the history of the Russian schism, and in 1906, he was transferred to a chair of dogmatic, moral and basic theology. It was at his initiative that historical-archeological and statistical committee, as well as the church’s archive, was created under the authority of the seminary. In addition, Aleksey Lukich performed a number of management activities: for several years he was inspector of the seminary, supervisor of the students living in the seminar hostel, a member of the audit committee for the inspection of seminary buildings.
Aleksey Lukich Khvoshchev promoted historical research in the seminary and, in fact, in Penza and the entire province. Being really keen on church history he constantly studied various local archives and collection works, those belonging to the seminary itself, different monasteries, provincial statistical committee and the Penza scientific archival commission, of which he was an active member.
The result of his painstaking historical research was the following works: “Essays on the history of the Penza region” (1922), “Several additional comments to the program of historical and statistical description of churches and parishes of the diocese – about existing Penza monasteries and abolished ones.” In the latter work he made a description of more than 20 monasteries of the Penza diocese. It was A.L. Khvoshchev who pointed out the year of 1663 as a true date of Penza foundation. In some aspects his works excelled those of previous Penza researchers, for instance, V. Kh. Khokhryakov, and gave fresh impetus to the next generation of local historians, such as B.N. Gvozdev and M.A. Lebedev.
Here is an excerpt from the memoirs of a seminary student Mikhail Anatolyevich Lebedev: “Aleksey Lukich was very intelligent and well-read and his lessons were fascinating and exciting. His habit was that, after listening to a student he asked him a question which, though relevant to the lesson, required an independent thinking. All the students were trying to find the answer. Aleksey Lukich asked one student after another, eliciting ideas. It so happened that I did well at his lessons from the very beginning, in the 4th grade. Having listened to lots of students Khvoshchev referred to me and got a satisfying answer. My achievements in Khvoshchev’s lessons raised my self-awareness and self-esteem. At the end of the term Aleksey Lukich gave me an excellent mark on continual assessment basis, as a result of all my brief comments which he always marked in his class register with a circle. One day, at the end of my study in the 6th grade Aleksey Lukich said to me: ’You’d better go to the St. Petersburg Academy than to the University of Warsaw. You’ll have a chance to live in the capital, learn a lot, work on your self-development.‘ <…> Due to his words I made up my mind to go to St. Petersburg.” “I remember with gratitude my teachers from religious school and seminary who gave me profound knowledge. I have very special memories about a teacher of theological disciplines A.L. Khvoshchev, a brilliantly-educated person. He will remain in the memory of the clergy, and, in fact, of the entire Penza community as a person who initiated the study of the Penza region history… “.
Khvoshchev was a great lover of the book considering it both a symbol and source of knowledge. So it was quite predictable that he was twice elected a member of the board of the Lermontov library (in 1899 and 1902). In 1918, Aleksey Lukich donated his book collection consisting of 3000 items to this library. He was a member of the Council of the Penza Innokentyev Educative Confraternity and from 1900 to 1917 he was in charge of the Innokentyev library located on the ground floor of the cathedral. For this library he acquired all the newly published books without scruples concerning censorship. In 1908, A.L. Khvoshchev, as a member of the confraternity, was sent by order of the diocesan authorities to the All-Russian Missionary Congress to Kiev. In 1907, he started to teach history at the Women’s gymnasium named after Serdobolskaya, working at the same time in the seminary. In 1916, he was admitted to the newly opened Penza teachers’ institute and became one of its first teachers. There he taught the history of Russian culture and was promoted to the rank of professor. For his works he was awarded the Order of St. Anna of 2nd and 3rd degree and the Order of St.Stanislaus of 2nd and 3rd degree.
Aleksey Lukich Khvoshchev was married to Antonina Alexandrovna Vostokov, whose father was an honorary citizen. They had four children: Nina (1898), Sergei (1901), Vera (1902) and Varvara (1910).
His peaceful life and creative work ended in 1918. The main place of his research activity, the Penza theological seminary, was closed; the very “spirit of church” was fought against, the archiving system was reorganized, and the political climate itself did not favour the development of science.
In 1919-1921, Aleksey Lukich served as an authorized representative of the main archive and his activity in the sphere of documents preservation was of inestimable worth. Then from 1921 he worked as a teacher in several schools in Penza and had to live and act with great discretion. In a relatively quiet first half of the 1920s, he managed to publish some works on purely historical subjects, for example, “A Brief Historical Essay of the City of Penza,” which was published in 1925.
The last period of Professor Khvoshchev’s life was the time of persecution and further ostracism due to his sincere religious beliefs, which he was not going to renounce just to please the crowd. The way he suffered indignities revealed his nobility of a true intellectual and courage of a true confessor of the Orthodox faith, as he enforced the Christian ideals that he had been teaching Penza youth for so many years.
The campaign against Khvoshchev began with a letter of the Penza District Council of Militant Unbelievers to the Public Prosecutor of the Penza District on October 18, 1929:… on the basis of materials from the Penza Diocesan Sheets No. 20-21 published in 1917 it could be concluded that A. Khvoshchev was an editorial board member of the of this journal that supported Black-Hundred gang, their ideas of violence and was directed against the October Revolution. Now this very person, Khvoshchev is entrusted to teach social science in schools No.1 and 3 to junior and senior students. The Penza District Council of Militant Unbelievers consider this situation impossible and ask the Public Prosecutor to fire A. Khvoshchev and exclude him from teaching in Soviet schools. We shall be notified of the decision on this matter. ”
A few days later, on October 23, in the Trudovaya Pravda newspaper No. 243 there appeared a feuilleton named “A dress-coat survivor” in which a certain Peter Averyanov accused the professor of all conceivable and inconceivable sins, applying such epithets as “a white guard pen”, “pedagogue-sadist”, “faithful dog”, “human blood lover”, etc. At the end of the feuilleton the author made a metaphorical statement that” some large fragments of the shattered ship have drifted ashore in quiet backwaters of local institutions” and suggested putting such” inspirers “of the counter-revolution into prison.
Aleksey Lukich had to defend himself, explaining that he had no connection with the counter-revolution and suggested questioning the residents of his house number 5 on Libersona Street, besides, his colleagues and pupils could confirm the fact that he had never laid a finger on any pupil during the entire time of his teaching. He even showed readiness to undergo a medical examination for the charge of sadism. “Since the revolution,” he wrote, “I have been working at the pedagogical (former teacher’s) institute of public education and in schools number 21, 27 and 3 (with junior and senior students). I am still teaching in school number three. I claim that for 12 years at my work place I have been honest and scrupulous, following the guidelines of the party and the Soviet authorities. <…> I also claim that since 1918 I have been involved in social activity in the Council of Public Education, at the government, district, and instructors courses, at schools and provided consultancy service in the central library. “I can say about my work in the Penza Diocesan Sheets that I was charged with the responsibility of administering income-expenditure documents and ensuring that the publication did not exceed the budget. <…> As for the articles that I put earlier in this paper, many of them I can submit. They touch neither any violence matters nor politics at all: they concern the statistics of schism, sectarianism, history of some local institutions and organizing matters of Russian clerical community.”
Aleksey Lukich expected that with the help of this exculpatory article he would clear his name; his actions had the wrong effect though. A commission was set up to investigate this incident and representatives of educational organizations and departments of the city, administration of the school, the trade union and Youth Communist League served on a panel. This commission started gathering compromising information about Khvoshchev, and those ready to jump through hoops were quick to find. So, the head teacher of school No. 3 reported that Khvoshchev was not involved into anti-religious propaganda before the Christmas holiday and did not make a report, which was compulsory for all social science teachers, concerning the class nature of the holiday. Responding to this claim, Aleksey Lukich displayed an exemplary courage and explained that a report on the given topic was not made because he could not comprehend the class origin of Christmas, but he read a report on the history of religion instead; at the same time he asked to be exempted from the reports in the group of unbelievers.
A feedback of the pupils of the school № 3 was quite ambiguous. On the one hand, he was well spoken of as a teacher, but then again they could not leave out of consideration Khvoshchev’s religiosity and consequently Averyanov’s article; besides they made remarks about his murky past. As a result, this feedback played along with so-called self-cleaning of the school from ideological and class aliens. And Aleksey Lukich Khvoshchev appeared to be one of those.
At a school meeting of social science teachers on October 25, 1929, where the point of discussion was Khvoshchev’s teaching, which was out of line with the school curriculum and academic schedules, the participants agreed on the necessity to debar their colleague from teaching social science. Two days later, at a meeting of the teaching staff involving representatives of educational organizations and departments of the city, the Youth Communist League and the school committee, it was decided to dissociate themselves from comrade Khvoshchev, who “wrote articles for the Penza Diocesan Sheets that supported Black-Hundred gang”: “Since we are now going fast along the way of socialism construction, the teaching staff believe that comrade Khvoshchev cannot be our fellow traveler.” This decision absolutely conformed to the appeal of the school principal Tutenkov, who proclaimed the following: “Since there is no cleanup campaign among educational workers, who are a powerful incentive of the Cultural Revolution, a cultural force themselves, they should arrange their self-cleaning and brush away all unwanted things.”
Today one could arise a fair question concerning the kind of cultural society those people want to build, brushing away the students of a great scholar Klyuchevsky as “unwanted things”.
Aleksey Lukich Khvoshchev was debarred from teaching at school No. 3 by the local educational authority order No. 14 of November 2, 1929.
Alexey Lukich was still trying to restore justice and began to complain to many instances. In his application he provides a detailed description of his social, educational and pedagogical work under the Soviet government, when regardless of his health he wholly devoted himself to public education, willingly fulfilled all the tasks assigned to him and could do more if it was required. Then he describes 12 years of work in Soviet schools, at the Lermontov library and the methodological group (he made a curriculum on history and social science for junior schools) as well as hours of overtime work.
Some of Khvoshchev’s students from the theological seminary tried to help their teacher. They wrote extensive petitions emphasizing the point that Alexey Lukich did not prohibit, but in fact promoted their introduction to revolutionary literature as he collected for the Innokentyev Confraternity library the books forbidden by the censorship as well. Moreover, his lessons on basic theology were reportedly extremely popular among the revolutionary youth. However, all attempts to defend A.L. Khvoshchev were futile. His case was closed on December 20, 1929; the reports were sent to the regional department of the Educators Union, as well as to the editorial office of the Teacher’s Newspaper in Moscow, where they were apparently used for propaganda.
Alexey Lukich had to leave Penza for Samara, where he worked as an accountant in a timber yard, and then in a library. Later, he moved to one of the daughters in Ashgabat, where he died from stomach cancer on July 18, 1935, in complete obscurity.
Sources: State Archives of the Penza Region, f. 21, op. 1, d. 1143, p. 55-60; Tyustin AV, Shishkin IS Penza personalities. Glory to Penza multiplied. T. 3 (Y-H), additions (A-T): [biogr. words.]. – M.: Locus Standi, 2013. P. 132-133; Lebedev MA, Archpriest. Essays on the history of the Penza region / Ed.-compiler AI Dvorzhansky. – Penza, 2007. S. 34, 36, 121, 122, 222; Zimenkov VN Aleksey Lukich Khvoshchev // The Penza era of lovers of antiquity: a scientific and popular scientific collection of the Church-Historical Committee of the Penza Diocese. Issue 14. Penza, 2004. pp. 81-86.
