The “Orthodoxy and World” portal continues its journey through the behind-the-scenes of religious journalism. The idea of ​​the series of conversations belongs to the publicist Maria Sveshnikova, and the execution is by the editor of the portal Anna Danilova.

“Don’t be afraid to shorten your texts,” Vladimir Legoyda once told me, “the editor of Alpha and Omega, Marina Andreevna Zhurinskaya, is not afraid, and the more she edits texts, the more everyone respects her.”

The Alpha and Omega magazine is one of the most mysterious Orthodox publications. It is not popular in the generally accepted sense, but it is in great demand in parish libraries, it is not dryly theological - but wonderful theologians are published there, there are no glamorous star interviews with pictures, no slogans, no manifestos and open letters. And you can’t call it “A&O” magazine - today you can take the first issues of the publication and immerse yourself in publications outside the bustle and long-forgotten events. The already mentioned V. Legoyda, Archpriest Alexy Uminsky, and Protodeacon Andrey Kuraev, whose style Marina Zhurinskaya called “the logic of a swift jack,” recall their work in “Alpha and Omega,” with a respectful lowering of their voice.

Marina Andreevna Zhurinskaya

Graduated from the Faculty of Philology of Moscow State University. M.V. Lomonosov. For about 20 years she worked at the Institute of Linguistics, in the general linguistics sector. Specialization – general typology, general grammar, grammatical semantics. For 10 years, she was the chief manager of the “Languages ​​of the World” group, whose goal was to create general theoretical principles for describing any language and publish the “Languages ​​of the World” encyclopedia. Candidate of Philological Sciences, has more than 100 publications on linguistic topics. Translator from German (linguistic works, theological texts, as well as Gadamer and Schweitzer). Since 1994, publisher and editor of the Alpha and Omega magazine. Member of the editorial board of the collection “Theological Works”.

“Alpha and Omega” - 17 years of publication, 60 thick issues - in Zhurinskaya’s apartment an entire shelf is dedicated to the magazine. The spring street rustles through the open window of the first floor, there are paintings by Elena Cherkasova on the walls, and collectible cats on the table. The conversation begins without a preface or a long approach to the topic.

Testify

– Mass media must have one property: it must be environment-forming. Like-minded people should gather around him.

Of course, the media can achieve temporary success if it looks for an audience to please, but this is doomed in the long run, especially when we are talking about Christian journalism. Christian journalism is not propaganda, it is testimony.

No one promised us success; they told us: “You will have sorrow in the world.” And then it says, “But take heart, I have overcome the world.” It is not said: I will give you victory over the world, no. I have conquered the world. We live in a saved world.

When there was no political correctness yet, in America in the 19th century, when they advertised for a job, they offensively wrote “Irish people please do not worry.” If we ignore political correctness, the conventional Irish are asked not to worry - there is no need to save the world, it has been saved. And we must testify that he is saved.

We must feel this ourselves, we must experience joy in the Lord and testify to this joy. This, of course, is very difficult, but the ideal Orthodox media will be guided by the thesis of the Apostle Paul: “Pray without ceasing, rejoice always, give thanks in everything.” Do you often see this in the Orthodox media? And “glory to God for everything” by St. John Chrysostom - often?

In the editorial office of the magazine "Foma" with V. Gurbolikov and V. Legoyda

– Evidence is an unusual concept for journalism. Religious journalism is talked about in a variety of words – preaching, PR, analytics….

– A normal Orthodox publishing house is run, forgive me, by laymen (with all due respect to holders of holy orders, they must definitely be present in this matter, but work laymen). Therefore, this is a special case of the apostle of the laity.

What is an apostle to the laity? A very simple thing. We must testify for Christ your life in Christ. If we do not testify with our lives, then the Lord will not give any prosperity - be it even funds, even administrative resources, or anything else. Not everything will. Because witnessing to Christ excludes false witness. And when we say one thing and do another, this is perjury.

This is the only way the media can become environment-forming. Our job is to ensure that the evidence is as adequate as possible.

Where 300 people will be led

– If you look at the most discussed topics in religious and semi-religious journalism, it will be the income of the priesthood, the dress code...

– Then a completely wonderful joke appeared on the Internet, which I cannot but approve of. I'm a big fan of wit. “Once upon a time there was a girl, and it was her fault.” It wasn't about the dress code, it was about the idea that anyone could want to rape a woman who wasn't dressed properly. This was the main disgrace, not the dress code.

We must testify not to the inadmissibility of women's pants (By the way, His Holiness Patriarch Alexy once asked at a diocesan meeting, when one priest denounced this matter: “Well, okay, but when the skirts are completely worn out, what will you do?”).

We confess Christ Crucified. For the Jews, as you know, it is a temptation, for the Hellenes it is madness. It is impossible to please tastes, to follow people, because the same Apostle Paul said: “I am in my madness...” about what and how should be affirmed: contrary to generally accepted misconceptions and our own “too human” fears.

It is very difficult to talk about the success of the Orthodox media. This is God giving. What does God give? - Salvation, but not necessarily success; Let's not adhere to prosperity theology, it is, after all, unorthodox. To whom does God give? To those who are faithful to Him. Such generally accepted things as mass circulation and so on are not so important.

– But don’t publishers of Orthodox literature and media want to convey the Word to the widest possible audience?

– There is a saying: “France will go where 300 people lead it.” The world went where the 12 apostles led it. It’s not a matter of mass participation, but of standing before Christ. At one time, Father Gleb Kaleda said: why do we honor the saints? Not for their teaching (they were wrong, they had theological errors), not for their lives (they were all sinners, and some sinned gravely), but for their standing before the Lord. For their position, which was impeccably formulated in his time by Abraham. The Lord called Abraham, “Here I am!” said Abraham. All. This is the primary form of faith, its first position: “Here I am!” Here I am before You, my Lord and my God. Everything starts from this.

– It turns out that we need to reduce everything to one topic, to one direction?

– We know about the salt of the earth, and we remember the continuation that if the salt spoils, then nothing can be done with it, you can only throw it away. But the salt of the earth also has a second side. There should be a dough into which salt is poured; salt is not food, salt is a seasoning. Nobody said make everything salt and then everything will be fine. If everything becomes salt, it will not be good. It was Lot's wife who became salt...

– But how many people might be interested in the evidence? After all, Orthodox media do not exist in a vacuum; next to them there are hundreds of much more fascinating publications...

Naturally, it may interest you - after all, people really love the inaccessible, interesting, and unusual. And this, which is a temptation for the Jews, and madness for the Greeks, must be presented in an unusual way. This is really interesting. As S.S. Averintsev once said: “Why not encourage young people to a brilliant, exciting adventure of a chaste life" This is truly a brilliant and exciting adventure. Why not show it like this? Why does it have to be some kind of gray-brown-raspberry skirts with hanging hems?

– This is very difficult to understand and implement. Writing about life in Christ, but in such a way that it captivates the reader, is a colossally difficult, unrealizable task... But we need to somehow CHANGE society...

Should Orthodox media shape public opinion? We have completed our formation. When my book about the cat Mishka came out, it appeared on one cat website: and Although The book is Christian, you can read it. Do you understand what kind of reputation needs to be earned with all these dress codes and so on for people to write like that?

I’ve just written an article that will be published in the 60th issue of Alpha and Omega. By the way, her father Alexey Uminsky highly approved of her. It's called "Overkill Turn". When the ship turns upside down, that's the end. I'm writing about a historical ship and I start by saying that we all love to talk about how the world is changing for the worse, but when it comes down to it, the only thing we can talk about is that young people dress crazy provocatively. But excuse me, this is a sign of stability. This has always been the case. But the signs of deterioration are different. Unwillingness to live, unwillingness to live with God, unwillingness to eternity, satiety, fear. Everyone lives in fear. And false witnesses and false preachers who frighten people with the torments of hell.

Thank God we can't change society!

When I see photographs of these St. Tikhon maidens, who have already become legendary, I remember one incident.

When detente in society and foreign trips had just begun, Olga Sergeevna Akhmanova went to England with a group of students and teachers. Her English was brilliant, she was an incredible beauty: tall, slender, long-legged blonde, with blue eyes and dimples on her cheeks. In England she created a sensation and was written about in the gossip columns.

Naturally, when she arrived back, she ended up at the party bureau. Evdokia Mikhailovna Galkina-Fedoruk, who could be accused of everything except beauty, said: “Olga Sergeevna, how could you forget that a Soviet woman should inspire disgust in capitalists?!” In this sense, she was one hundred percent Soviet woman; True, it was not only the capitalists who were disgusted by it.

So, when I look at our standard Orthodox girls, I remember this incident at the party bureau. An Orthodox girl should disgust everyone, including her husband. An Orthodox young man is the same. When you see a particularly dirty and shaggy head in a temple, you must conclude that its owner is especially devout. What a disgrace? Who might this attract except perverts?

Vladyka Anthony was asked what an Orthodox family should be like, he answered in one word: “Happy.” And what kind of happiness is written on these faces distorted with anger? And the face of our media is for the most part the same: wretched and distorted. And we complain that we cannot change the atmosphere in society. So thank God that we cannot change it in this way. It is the Lord who watches.

Commonwealth. Marina Andreevna and the cat Mishka are both at work. Photo by priest Igor Palkin

Set up a Church?

– Today, media conflict after media conflict is breaking out around the Church. We incite many of them ourselves. Anticlericalism is on the rise mood, and certainly - the old reproaches replicated by the new media are no less becoming...

– Recently, responding to the comments of the “Russian Reporter” about “how can we organize the Church?”, I remembered Vertinsky “Will he be a prophet or just a deceiver, but what kind of heaven will they drive us to then?” Such questions remind me very much of the project of Solovyov’s Antichrist: we should have cultural Orthodox Christians, enlightened Muslims, and so on. After Vertinsky, Galich spoke out: “The only thing you should be afraid of is the one who says, ‘I know how to do it.’”

They tell us how to do it, but we are afraid and we are right to be afraid. And I ended with a quote from a song sung by Slava Butusov; this is the triumph of personal testimony: “maybe I’m wrong, maybe you’re right, but I saw with my own eyes how the grass stretches to the sky».

We see with our own eyes that the Lord is in our Church, that He has not left us. And to Him we testify. We should not all be pioneers and Komsomol members. Who said that all our bishops must be candidates for the patericon? It was under Soviet rule that there were candidates for the Central Committee. We have no candidates for sainthood. The Lord chooses saints among sinful people. This is what we must say - we do not claim to be saints. The Lord did not come to the righteous, but to sinners. And He remains in our Church. We are aware of this, and this greatly distinguishes us from those who do not recognize themselves as sinners. We are better in this sense, because we are with the Lord, He is with us.

There is an absolutely wonderful poem by Timur Kibirov about how righteous citizens will be shocked if they go to heaven. Who will be there? - Motya from the tax police, Magda from the massage parlor.

How could we not get angry?!
They sat down next to Him shamelessly
Motya from the tax police,
Magda from the massage parlor!
How can we not prefer Dennitsa
The vaunted carpentry company
Motke from the tax police,
Masha from the massage parlor?!
After all, even in this damn province
Could choose Flavius, Philo,
Even though Varrava is still not from the police
And not from a massage parlor!..
I imagine our faces
On the day of judgment, when, having violated the laws,
The fisherman, and the publican, and the harlot
They will shine at the throne of the Lord.

Do you remember Gumilyov?

To enter not open to everything,

Protestant, tidy paradise,

And where the robber is, the publican

And the harlot will shout: get up!

We believe in a God who does not give excellent marks to excellent students, but washes away the sins of those who turn to Him for this. He is so great, powerful and good that as soon as we turn to Him, our sins disappear.

– Yes, but people expect fruits of faith from us, it’s difficult to talk about them. As a result, many stories in the media are associated with the unsightly behavior of believers, which pushes people away from Orthodoxy. How to choose the right style here, and your attitude towards all this negativity?

– One day a Pentecostal woman came to me and began to talk about the personal sins of the Orthodox clergy. And then I got angry and said: “You don’t understand one thing. Even if the Russian Orthodox Church disappears somewhere - which is impossible, but even if it disappears somewhere and only one priest remains in it - a bitter drunkard and a notorious informer - I will remain his last parishioner and we will mourn our sins together.” And she didn't appear again.

And the Orthodox also believe that all our priests should be young pioneers, all bishops Seraphim of Sarov. Moreover, in fact, no one knows anything about the life of the priests or the life of the bishops. Or rather, everyone knows that the entire episcopate is in gold, but no one knows what diagnoses they have. Remember Chekhov’s story “The Bishop”, about how Vladyka did not live to see Easter and died from bleeding, from typhoid fever. And then it turned out that he served with typhoid fever. Chekhov was a doctor and knew that it was impossible to stay on his feet with typhoid fever. But in his story, Vladyka was up and serving with typhoid fever, and collapsed literally a day before his death. No one knows these things because they hide it.

What sorrows our priests bear. We know ourselves, we know that we are not treasures. And we blame all this lack of treasure on our priests, we eat them.

Father Gleb Kaleda died very hard. And he, dying, said, “It’s impossible otherwise, I confessed the murderers.” No one thinks about this, and we view them as consumerism: we will blurt out something, the priest will wave his stole and I will have the right to take communion so as not to get sick. Instead of saying: “I, damned father, am so and so,” it begins, “Yes, you understand, but you understand me, this is the situation here, because I’m like this, and I’m like this... I’m all so nervous, so delicate ..."

So Orthodox journalism should focus on Christ and its standing before Christ and on the fact that it is impossible to lie. This is the main thing.

Alpha and Omega

ANDThe magazine "ALPHA AND OMEGA" was founded in the spring of 1994. A 400-page quarterly magazine published in a circulation of 2,500 copies. and spreading throughout all CIS countries. Its readers were priests and active laity, working to form a truly church consciousness among that generation of Russian Christians who came to the Church in recent decades.

– Marina Andreevna, tell us how “Alpha and Omega” was created? It was such an interesting time of synchronous outburst - several Orthodox publications appeared at once - “Thomas”, “Meeting”...

I had a desire to publish an Orthodox magazine. I looked at what Vestnik RKhDD began to do then. He fell into nostalgia for Russia, and I saw the need to feel nostalgia specifically for the diaspora. At the beginning, we published a lot of Schmemann, Meyendorff, Florovsky - we wanted to convey to the Russian reader, who knew none of this, the feat of the Orthodox diaspora.

These were great people, they were great precisely in their position. Light to the world. At the same time, they were deprived of their homeland, they were always bitter about this, but this did not affect their position in any way. It was absolutely a miracle that I received some stupid money, I don’t understand how it was enough for anything, but then I started publishing and that’s it.

– You have a great editorial board, but is the editorial board itself great?

There were two of us: me and my goddaughter. And two sick old women are still doing this.

– Who came, who was invited. For example, I once had my eye on the very young, but smart, thoughtful and handsome father Alexei Uminsky and said that God himself told him to write something about education. He became very excited and said: “Marina Andreevna, I must warn you, I am not a professional teacher.” To which I answered him that it was very good that I would not have invited a professional teacher.

I once suggested that Father Gleb Kaleda, who was completely dying, use his articles on the Shroud of Turin to make a general one. He blessed us to make a summative text while he was in the hospital, where he finalized it. He was dying, the issue had not yet come out, and we asked the printing house to make separate prints for us, and the priest signed them: “for children,” “for friends.” Then this article was published in an incredible total circulation (in separate editions, re-publications), it seems about 200,000 copies. And then we began to print everything from Father Gleb - chapters of the “Home Church”, sermons and so on. And they prepared all his works for publication.

It also happened with Bishop Anthony - we once ran into Elena Lvovna Maidanovich, and she fell in love with us. Since then, we have not had a single issue in which Vladika Anthony would not be present.

To the holes

– Remember the first number?

The first issue... The first issue still needs to be seen. It was thin, absurdly laid out, in some stupid paper cover. It was gradually that the cover became not entirely paper, and then we added some beauty to it, then it became colored. We were wildly scolded for this beauty; there were whispers that the magazine was not Orthodox, because the Trinity was depicted in four persons. And there is depicted the world-famous miniature “Epiphanius the Wise with the brethren writes the life of St. Sergius.” This is such Orthodox enlightenment.

We have never had a large circulation, but I know that every copy is read to its core. In the library of the Trinity-Sergius Academy and Seminary they asked us for two copies instead of one, because they immediately sold out one and there was a waiting list for it.

One day one of our non-Moscow authors came to me, began to talk about some diocesan troubles, and then somehow fell silent, looking at the shelf where all the “Alpha and Omega” books were, and said: here. In 200 years this will remain the case. Everyone will forget about our squabbles.

This is how we live.

– Did you want to give up everything and live in peace?

Repeatedly. Many years ago I had a conversation with Father Alexy Uminsky. I approached from afar and said: Father Alexy, is it true that for a priest the salvation of human souls is above all? True, says Father Alexy. I say: Father Alexey, bless me to give up all this extremely soul-harming burden and start saving my soul. “What else!” said Father Alexey, in these very words. And also an intelligent person, I thought bitterly... and continued my activities.

I have come to terms with the fact that editing is an extremely soul-damaging job. True, the worst thing is editing the translation. Because the editor is between two language systems and between two consciousnesses: the author and the translator. Such a monstrous load that you can somehow cope with it only by heating up to the state of a berserker. Cut left and right. And this state is harmful to the soul.

Without Moscow swearing

– Can you tell us the most memorable stories from the life of the magazine?

The magazine has become an environment-forming magazine. People came, and it gradually became clear that we no longer need to publish the diaspora, we already have our own.

After the first issue came out, the doorbell rang and one of my students appeared on the threshold, he was about 18 years old at the time. But they didn’t come to me without calling me first. The boy came, leaned against the ceiling because he couldn’t stand on his feet, and said: “Marina Andreevna, yesterday I bought Alpha and Omega, read it until 4 o’clock in the morning, and then I went out and went, came to you.” . I lived in the very center, and he was in the far southwest. So, you see, from 4 o’clock in the morning he walked around Moscow for many hours, overwhelmed by feelings and thoughts, to say that this was his magazine. Now he is a hieromonk.

And one day an absolutely fantastic person came to see me, a priest from eastern Siberia. It was a miracle that I made it to Moscow, because it’s wildly expensive. Such a huge hero, with an incredible shock of light brown hair, with incredibly clear gray Russian eyes, very serious. He decided that once he came to Moscow, he would buy as much literature as possible to carry on himself, and not pay for shipping, because shipping to eastern Siberia was something. That’s how he came to me, deciding that it was better to get to the editorial office to buy the magazine without any extra charges. He told me a phrase that when I die, I will remember with gratitude. “Why do I like your magazine? Because there is a lot of useful stuff in it and there is none of your Moscow swearing.”

If only the fighters for the purity of Orthodoxy knew that Siberia considers all this to be Moscow abuse!

– And how do you manage to avoid all these sensitive topics and “swearing”?

– We don’t have Moscow swearing, because we are about Christ. From the very beginning, the magazine was Christocentric and ecclesicentric, since the main thing that exists in the world is the Church, which will endure and smoothly enter eternity. And the Church exists because it is Christ-centric. That's all, here's the alpha and omega, the beginning and the end.

One day, the son of my goddaughter, when he was 12 years old, came up to me in church and said: “Marina, they sell a book about the Antichrist.” I tell him: “Alyosha, never read about the Antichrist, always read about Christ.” I remembered it for the rest of my life.

We would talk more about Christ. At first there would be a completely terrible reaction that you just have to overcome.

– Are there any topics that you don’t raise as a matter of principle?

- The fact that nothing can give to save the soul is that very Moscow swearing. Something that can give something is worthy of consideration. That is, here, to these two points (ecclesiocentricity and Christocentricity), anthropocentricity is also added. More precisely, psychocentricity. What is good for the soul. But Christ and His Church are useful for the soul. This is how it closes.

– Yes, we have to take out the already promised article from the author. Here all means are good. You see, in American legal proceedings, as is known, terms are added up. And there, therefore, they can easily sentence a person to two centuries in prison. And I somehow began to summarize the time that I spend talking with the authors when preparing an issue. 48 months if you add it all up.

Not all authors are like Vasily Glebovich Kaleda, who himself can be a psychotherapist for an exhausted editor. I reviewed his performance at Pravmir. He was very happy then. Please note that this is not a very trivial form for such a journal: a review of an online publication.

– Who are your favorite contemporary publicists?

– I really like to print Volodya Legoyda. This is very strange, but people don’t look at his columns in Thomas, but in Alpha and Omega they do. What is this? That's how it works.

I will name Father Alexy Uminsky, I think he is a wonderful author. But we have another wonderful author - Abbot Savva from Belarus. His publications always evoke a deep response. He writes beautifully and somehow touches people's heartstrings. We had his article about virginity, people read it and are amazed. There is simply no other word. And I really love his sermons. He is young, educated, a real quiet monk, sitting quietly in a small monastery. He's also a regent.

Father Ilya Shapiro turned out to be an amazing expert and lover of divine services - he feels it very subtly. In the current issue we have his article about the royal watches - you must admit that no one writes about this.

It’s a pity that Bishop Longin writes very little, because he is all about breaking. By the way, he published a very good book, and it should be especially noted that a very large part of it is occupied by questions and answers on the Internet. And not once in all his answers is the word “humble yourselves” used. Agree, it is valuable.

Another of my favorite authors is Sergei Khudiev, who cannot be called anything other than a brilliant apologist, and Andrei Desnitsky, a very deeply educated and thoughtful biblical scholar and an absolutely reasonable person at the same time. And this is not combined as often as we would like. Others can be found on the pages of the magazine.

– Is there a problem with “overspending” yourself? When it seems that you have already said everything, have exhausted yourself to the extreme, and you urgently need to replenish, renew the exhausted resources?

I don't know, it's not a problem for me at all. Firstly, I absolutely cannot read and listen more than I read and listen. I say that the Chukchi is not a writer, nor is he a reader. Chukchi editor. This is completely different. But when I want, I read, and when I want, I write. For some reason I have no need to compensate. Maybe because my life is generally very interesting. God forbid I have time to write everything... and a lot more (and who) to read. In the last article I made a completely boorish note for my age that I was leaving the most fascinating topic of joy in the Apostle Paul for later. And I really do.

So, my job is this: I am a completely free person, and therefore, at the age of 70, I turned to the topic of rock culture, wrote a huge article about Tsoi on two and a half printed pages. Perhaps a book will be made from it. Butusov read this article and liked it, and I liked it too. Moreover, I am editing his next book of prose. And he invited me to his concert, for the first time in my life I was at a rock concert.

Moreover, we talked for a long time in the artistic room, and then he did the incredible, he said that he had left some good places for me and those accompanying me and wanted to see me off. The security was absolutely petrified. We got there, sat there for a while, chatted - and only after 20 minutes did people begin to realize that Butusov was alive among them. Here he signed a certain number of autographs and quickly ran away, because it was time to go on stage.

And you say compensation. And this is my job. And what else should I compensate for, you ask? Of course, not on such an extravagant level, but for me every meeting with the author is a holiday, since everyone has long understood that there is simply nothing to argue with me about.

And I also love readers, they don’t come to me often, and sometimes they come from abroad. This is valuable not because they are foreign people, but because they took the trouble.

Which publications will the Internet kill?

- Today everything and everyone goes to the Internet...

I cannot stand the argument that all inventions of the twentieth, and especially the twenty-first century, bring us spiritual death and destruction. Because exactly the same thing could have been said about paper at one time. And about the printing press! Everything that exists in people’s lives has a mutual dimension: there is no such thing in the fallen world that cannot be abused.

That all inventions are for the benefit and benefit - I am more than sure of this. Opiates are a great means of reducing human suffering and a terrible weapon of human destruction. The basis of drug addiction is drugs! The same is true with all human inventions, including the Internet. I don’t need to talk about porn sites for a simple reason - there is a large amount of porn literature, I don’t read it. It's the same with porn sites: they don't bother me because I have absolutely no idea what they are. And I don't want to know. This is a fact of the biography of not the Internet, this is a fact of the biography of me.

I hate it when students download essays from the Internet. And you can learn it on your fingers - there is no output data. And when I tell the young creature where it comes from, and the creature answers: “I don’t know, I took it from the Internet,” he flies out of me at the speed of a pig squealing, as O’Henry said.

But at the same time, the Internet can be masterfully used to obtain and check information - I, of course, can get up from the table, take an encyclopedia and shut up in it, but it’s easier to do this if there are three buttons. For pure information, the Internet has no price. I say this as a person who writes a little.

Electronic libraries can replace paper ones. Reader - electronic book - convenient system - you can download something for yourself and go for a walk with a small book. But nothing can replace the pleasure of being with a paper book. I recently sent a text to an acquaintance in electronic form, and then said: “I wish a book would come out soon, because I want to give you this text in the form of a book. So that you lose it somewhere!”

- To lose?!

This is such a pleasure! This is part of our life - we always lost books somewhere. Sometimes it was irreparable, and it was not pleasure, but tragedy, but it was still adrenaline.

The Internet has no value when we can correspond. There are citizens, usually young, who have made a drug habit - they sit for hours on ICQ and exchange absolutely meaningless remarks. And they enjoy it... I really love writing letters. I wrote meaningful letters, and when I write them, I receive meaningful responses. I print out especially outstanding letters. I have entire folders of correspondence with different people - I keep letters that have value - friendly, sincere, intellectual. Thanks to e-mail, I can free myself from buying envelopes, stamps, sending them to the post office, waiting – it will arrive or it won’t – you read in 19th century novels it took a day for a letter to travel from Moscow to St. Petersburg and back, but for us it took two weeks! And on the Internet everything comes through.

I can’t stand discussions on the Internet – they are pointless. I rarely read them, but every time I read them, I think: thank goodness for censorship! Glory to this cumbersome editing mechanism! A free exchange of opinions is simply meaningless. Discussions on the forum go sideways after three steps. Instead of discussing on the merits, someone clung to the word, someone clung to the fact that they clung to the word - the result is meaningless swearing that has nothing to do with the topic. Ideally for me, if I see that someone has written something interesting, I will go and call! Breaking out of the web!

- Will the Internet kill printed publications?

The ones he kills are the ones who go there. If you want to exist in paper form, release it in such a way that people want to keep it. People keep “Alpha and Omega” - everything is calm in this regard.

On a blue eye

– You have worked in science all your life, graduated from the Faculty of Philology of Moscow State University...

The department was German, and I had a diploma in Hittite studies. Then I ended up at the Institute of Linguistics as an intern and was assigned to linguistic typology, which was a complete nightmare.

- Why?!

– Because people usually study typology because of their seniority, and I was a girl. And it so happened that at that time a three-volume book on general linguistics was published, the chapter “Typology” was mine. In general, no one felt sorry for me. For example, once they invited 19 girls to give a lecture to graduate students at INYAZ. I come, and they tell me, in this auditorium (a huge auditorium, with a stage, with a pulpit), and the women are sitting - in English suits, in jersey, with hairstyles. I ask what is this? And they tell me that the FPK was also invited. Two hundred heads of foreign language departments from all over the Soviet Union. And I graduated from university two years ago. And they are all in English suits, but I am wearing such an advanced dress with a single pattern over the entire dress, in the style of Hokusai, and Indian braids as a hairstyle - a straight parting and two long ponytails over the ears. I mounted the pulpit on completely weak legs.

And then all these women take out their notebooks and look at me. I suppressed the cry of “Wait to write it down, maybe I’m still lying.” And then I saw the path to salvation - two male people, relatively young and Uzbeks, sitting apart. So I quickly rattled off the introduction and said that we would start with agglutinative languages. I wrote an Uzbek example from Polivanov. Right? – I ask the Uzbeks. They beamed and nodded their heads, because it was correct, truly Uzbek.

– Did everything go well in the end?

“These Uzbeks immediately surrounded me with such respect from a distance. And aunts are cowardly people, if they see that there is a female lecturer, strange, of course, but here are two men sitting and respecting, then they must respect.

– How long did you work at the Institute of Linguistics?

– For almost 20 years, I was already engaged in some general semantic and grammatical matters.

I stopped keeping a list of my scientific works when he crossed one hundred, because it became boring. And then they took me and threw me into “Languages ​​of the World”. And then, a few years ago, my beloved Legoyda called me and said: “Marina Andreevna, you have a double namesake. There is an article in the Itogi magazine dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the World Languages ​​project, and it says that Marina Zhurinskaya broke the Soviet academic bureaucratic system.”

Marina Andreevna Zhurinskaya in the memorial workshop of sculptor Lazar Gadaev. Photo by Evgenia Shavard.

- How did you break it?

- I don’t know. On a blue eye. I simply said that I needed Vitya Porkhomovsky (an absolutely wonderful Africanist), Vitya Vinogradov (he is now the director of the institute), Andrei Korolev (an outstanding celtologist) and two weeks. And we sat with me and wrote the original program for these languages ​​of the world. And they wrote. I have been doing them for a very long time, these languages ​​of the world. And she did quite a lot.

And then my mother was very ill... And I somehow heard in passing: “Can you imagine, we come from the theater, and my mother is lying in the corridor.” And then I realized that I would not allow this to happen. I left work and started caring for my mother. I sat with her for 4 years. All. Some kind of career was shining for me there, but nothing, it went away. But my mother died as a person. Christian death...

– Just like that, you gave up all your scientific work and career... How did you come to the Church?

I was baptized in 1975.

The first time I met with the church was when I was very little; my father’s sister lived in Moscow, who had cancer, and they tried to treat her. We were walking. Once we walked to the gates of the Vysokopetrovsky Monastery, and I asked her: what kind of house is this? She said it was a church.

-Who lives here?

– God lives here.

- Who is this?

She told me as best she could. Then I said, what is this, will I continue to live unbaptized? The aunt ran home and said that the child expressed a desire to be baptized. My parents greeted this matter with completely sour faces and did not let her go out with me anymore. It’s okay, my mother was baptized at a fairly mature age, to put it mildly. I don’t remember how old she was, 75, I think. So I returned good for evil. And then we went to this strange house where God lives for some time to pray; there was Father Gleb Kaleda, who died in 1994. Then I became unable to go out, and the priests came to my house until one was established. And not on the principle of dignity and celebrity, but simply one day I told him about some of my condition: “But I don’t know whether it’s a sin or not a sin.” And the priest said: “We need to think about it.” Just like that. This is how we have lived since then. Thoughtful and thoughtful.

In fact, live simply and joyfully, both by publishing Orthodox media and by studying general linguistics. If you want to be happy, be it. Whatever you say, the ideal state of man was ideally expressed by the Apostle Peter: “Lord, it is good for us to be here.”

Quick poll

What steps and milestones of religious journalism can be identified:

The answer is quite simple: from enthusiasm to skill, from skill to professionalism, from professionalism to depth, etc.

Names and texts for which you are not ashamed:

I named a lot of names, if I left some out, I apologize.

The biggest failure in Orthodox media?

A lot of them.

How to search, what and how to write?

As the Lord commands.

Which genres are missing, which are too many?

Personal testimony is missing. Too many interviews. This is bad because the interviewer models the interviewee in his own image. Not everyone can resist.

Interviewed by Anna Danilova

Head of the Department of English Linguistics, Faculty of Philology, Moscow State University. M.V. Lomonosov

Marina Andreevna Zhurinskaya (1941-2013)(last name after her first husband - Alfred Zhurinsky, maiden name unknown) graduated from the Faculty of Philology of Moscow State University, defended her diploma in Hittite studies, worked at the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, where her field of study became linguistic typology. In the mid-1970s, she was appointed coordinator of the project “Languages ​​of the World” at the Institute of Foreign Languages ​​of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and led the project until 1986. Candidate of Philological Sciences, has more than 100 publications on linguistic topics. Translator from German (linguistic works, theological texts, as well as Gadamer and Schweitzer). Since 1994, publisher and editor of the Alpha and Omega magazine. Member of the editorial board of the collection “Theological Works”.

In 1975, under the influence of S.S. Averintseva’s lectures, she was baptized by Father Alexander Men under the name Anna. After 1986, she left editing linguistic works and completely switched to Orthodox journalism. In 1994, under the influence of Averintsev’s circle, she founded the Orthodox educational magazine “Alpha and Omega,” of which she was editor-in-chief until her death. She died in Moscow on October 4, 2013 after a serious illness.

Marina Andreevna was an editor from God

I knew Marina Andreevna for more than twenty years, and I am grateful to God for that. She was an amazing person, a true Christian intellectual.

In the 1970-1980s, many people from her circle came to the Church. Not everyone remained in it. Many of them saw in the Church some kind of alternative to the existing system and, therefore, when the system collapsed, they did not really need the Church. They did not always leave quietly and calmly; on the contrary, many of them left quite demonstratively. Marina Andreevna, unlike others, stayed until the end. The spiritual child of Father Alexander Men and Father Gleb Kaleda, who was friends with the Lavra monks, she was a person rooted in the Orthodox tradition, which did not interfere with the breadth of her views on church life. Having once come to the Church, she saw the Body of Christ in it. Not a political force, not just an environment in which it is convenient to talk about fashionable topics, but namely Christ, to whom she was faithful until her death. And she brought so many people to God, becoming for them, so to speak, a door to the Church.

Marina Andreevna was an unusually deep person. Anyone who read her reflections on the text of Holy Scripture could be convinced of this. Her life's work was the Alpha and Omega magazine. It’s amazing how the editorial board, consisting of several weak women, but led and inspired by Marina Andreevna, could publish such a serious theological magazine for twenty years - the only one of its kind, which at some point took first place among our church periodicals. This is her great service to the Russian Church. Taking a modest part in this work, I witnessed how difficult and difficult each new issue of the magazine was, and what a joy it was when it came out and turned out no worse, and more often than not, better than the previous one.

And I must say that Marina Andreevna was an editor from God. She knew how, for example, to discern the future author of Alpha and Omega in a person whom she accidentally met while in the hospital. Even in everyday life, she knew how to find topics for serious discussion and research.

The Lord destined her to live a very interesting life, but at the end of her life he sent her a difficult test of illness. She bore it in full consciousness and with submission to the will of God.

May the Lord rest in peace the soul of the newly deceased servant of God Anna in the villages of the righteous! Let us remember her and pray for the repose of her immortal soul.

Marina Andreevna is the whole world

Director of the educational Orthodox forum “Orthodoxy and Peace” Viktor Sudarikov:

Translator, publisher, editor, Christian thinker, houseplant specialist, jewelry artist, collector and much, much more...
But the main thing is, of course, faith - which is “in the ribs”, which determines all thoughts and deeds, which makes a person free and capable of growing spiritually higher and higher.
She was a spiritual child and student of outstanding pastors of the 20th century - Rev. Alexandra Men (whom she described as a very strict and serious confessor, without accepting the attitude of some of his exalted admirers) and Archpriest. Gleb Kaleda.

We were introduced to Marina Andreevna at the Church of John the Baptist on Presnya by Fr. Andrey Kuraev. Then I sometimes visited her amazing apartment, filled with books, strange plants (some of them were in special closed flasks) and paintings by Elena Cherkasova; I even prepared some publications for Alpha and Omega. Marina Andreevna loved and valued her friends, asked questions about my children with interest...

Her legacy is enormous. An interesting theological magazine “Alpha and Omega”, published since the early 1990s, a collection of paintings, many of my own articles and translations. A talented person is talented in everything. Few people knew that Marina Andreevna had VDNKh diplomas for growing exotic plants. In her old age, she perfectly mastered the manufacture of various jewelry - her “tchotchkes and trinkets.”

Yes, Marina Andreevna also loved her cat Mishka and even wrote about him...

I remember how once Marina Andreevna quoted to me the ancient ascetic wisdom that the Lord calls a person to Himself at the moment when he is best ready for this. And she concluded: “If the Lord prolongs my life, then he gives me more time to repent.”

Now the ear is ripe.

The Kingdom of Heaven to the servant of God Anna...

I don’t remember that her actions or words were outside the Christian understanding of life

Priest Mikhail Isaev, cleric of the Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Krylatskoye:

- I met Marina Andreevna in the late nineties, when I was not yet a priest or even a deacon, but was studying at a theological institute. I came to the editorial office of Alpha and Omega, where Marina Andreevna met me and accepted me into the magazine’s staff. Since then, we communicated closely and a lot, and when I was ordained, after some time the spiritual connections intensified, I became Marina Andreevna’s confessor. I was one of the last to give her Holy Communion in the hospital.

We talked with Marina Andreevna on a variety of topics, and always, even if it was about some everyday things, I was amazed at her wisdom. I don’t remember that any of her actions or words were outside the Christian understanding of life. She gave me so much wonderful advice and taught me so much! Communication with her was spiritually strengthening. Many noted that after a conversation with Marina Andreevna you feel inspired. Eternal memory to her!

Everything she did, she did with passion

Alexander Dvorkin, professor at PSTGU:

Several years ago, when we gathered in memory of Father Gleb Kaled, Marina Andreevna said a little ironically that when you share memories of a deceased person, you always say “me and him.” I think that now, when we remember dear Marina Andreevna, there is no need to be ashamed of this: this is natural, because we are all members of one Church, we communicate with each other and we always perceive others precisely through the prism of their communication with us.

Therefore, I want to remember how we met Marina Andreevna. This was 21 years ago. I tried to remember the very moment of the meeting, but could not. After returning from America, when I began working in the Department of Religious Education with Father Gleb Kaleda, Marina Andreevna often appeared there. Then she became part of the small community that developed around Father Gleb in the Vysoko-Petrovsky Monastery. She and Yakov Georgievich lived on a street with the unpronounceable name Krasnoproletarskaya, which was located within walking distance from the monastery, in a building with a very clever system of apartments - an elevator in the middle, and apartments on both sides of it. The entrance was ruined: even the steps on the stairs were going at random, it was unclear whether it would be possible to walk along them next time or everything would fail. However, for the early 90s, nothing surprising.

And so, after this devastation, I entered the apartment and found myself in a completely different world. The external decay was forgotten: there were books, incredible exotic indoor flowers in pots and, of course, the cat Misha, who slept in regal poses on all the chairs. I remember I immediately took Misha on my lap, and Marina Andreevna said: “Be careful, he only allows priests to scratch his belly.” But he allowed me.

Communication with Marina Andreevna was very intense, because she made me work, made me think and do. The very first projects appeared. Once Marina Andreevna called me and said: “There will be a new theological journal, it is necessary, and the idea arose for you to be its editor-in-chief.” I just sat down. Even then I had so many obediences: Butyrka, and began to study sects, and taught. But I realized that I wouldn’t be able to simply refuse Marina Andreevna, and I went to Father Gleb and talked to him. Father Gleb said: “Don’t worry, I know how to solve this issue.”

He really resolved this issue - he said that Marina Andreevna should be the editor-in-chief. Father Gleb realized that this is the very place where Marina Andreevna should be, that this is a job that will stretch her and which will allow her to open up. Indeed, thanks to this, Marina Andreevna opened up and shone even brighter than when I knew her in that narrow circle. Her personality, charm, and multifaceted talents opened up to a huge number of people; the magazine became a microcosm, transforming into a macrocosm. Authors and editors, layout designers, friends of the magazine and its readers - everyone was somehow connected with each other, the result was a very wide coverage. And it is wonderful that this self-realization of Marina Andreevna was in the Church and for the Church, for Christ and, accordingly, for each of us.

Once, after one very interesting conversation, I asked her why she did not express her thoughts in the article. Then she told me that she had long ago given up writing anything of her own - she was only an editor. I don’t know whether she imposed this restriction on herself or fulfilled someone else’s blessing, but time passed, this fast ended, and Marina Andreevna began to write and thereby also enriched a very wide circle of people - incomparably wider than those who had the good fortune to be her direct interlocutors.

The journal "Alpha and Omega" is still waiting for its researcher. It was great happiness that we knew Marina Andreevna, that she urged us, consoled us, that she edited us. Although she was the kind of editor with whom you often had to argue. I remember how seriously we argued with her when she was editing my “Essays on the History of the Universal Church.” But these debates gave me a lot. She was a serious and caring editor. Everything she did, she did with passion. And her concern stemmed from the most important thing: she was a loving person with a huge heart. Eternal memory to Marina Andreevna.

Marina Andreevna continues her work, her ministry

Hieromonk Dimitri (Pershin):

I would like to note two points, dedicating my story to the blessed memory of Marina Andreevna Zhurinskaya.

First of all, this is extreme honesty towards oneself, by the way, towards one’s business, honesty that is completely incredible for our world, vegetating in everyday half-truths. By this standard she judged herself and grieved for this world.

And second. In recent years, it happened that I confessed and gave communion to Marina Andreevna, but what I will say is not a secret confession. Almost all the time she had to overcome a very difficult internal situation, which is sometimes called depression.

This was the state that Father Sophrony (Sakharov) wrote about - a feeling of inner emptiness that drains all the strength from a person. This condition can last for years or decades. From this vacuum she emerged into Divine grace - in prayer, in the sacraments of Christ's Church, in communication with loved ones. And this was also a cross, invisible to many. In her texts we do not find all the tragedy of these experiences, because the texts are words addressed to people, and she took care of people.

And we came to Marina Andreevna and shared with her our problems, bewilderments, grief - and received answers, found support in her wisdom and sympathy, not understanding what the price of this active love was. According to the precise remark of Marina Andreevna’s husband, Yakov Georgievich Testelets, the gifts of God are usually combined with suffering imposed on us. And the higher the calling, the heavier the cross.

It seems to me that it is important to understand that it is not just a certain person who has passed on to another world. An era is passing. People in whom the connection of times is revealed to us are leaving. They were given the power to keep it from falling apart, straightening the dislocations of this world. Among them are Father Alexander Men, Sergei Sergeevich Averintsev and others - those who remained faithful to the traditions of high European culture. Dear God, they extended their love and care to everyone who needed them.

I remember when I was a student, Marina Andreevna sent me with a package of various chicken bones and cartilage to Sergei Sergeevich Averintsev - Sergei Sergeevich had many cats, and Marina Andreevna’s cat Mishka did not eat everything, something remained. So in the hungry nineties they helped each other. After all, we also had to think about this, live it and worry about it. I would like us to at least a little follow Marina Andreevna in this attention to seemingly little things, on which a lot depends on the destinies of people, and those animals, flowers and other creations that God has entrusted to us.

Praying for the repose of her soul, we understand that now the Lord is revealing Himself to her, revealing the secrets of His Kingdom.

Shortly before leaving, Marina Andreevna said that a moment comes when there are already more people there who love you and love you than here, and they call you there. Eternity turns to us, acquiring faces and already familiar features.

But when we go there, we stay here. We are invisibly present in the inner world of everyone we love, and it does not matter at all where our soul is currently located. Now she is there, probably praying for us, too, because the love in her heart has become not less, but more, because it has multiplied by Divine love and is dissolved by this love.

And now Marina Andreevna continues her work, her ministry. Her testimony continues in her books, articles, audio and video recordings, and films with her participation. It would probably be right if we, for our part, did what we should have done, but we didn’t, so that when we cross this line, we wouldn’t be ashamed of it.

Lived more than one life

Andrey Kibrik, Doctor of Philology, Head of the Department of Typology and Areal Linguistics at the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences:

Apparently, most people know Marina Andreevna as a figure in Orthodox journalism, the creator and editor-in-chief of the Alpha and Omega magazine. But she sowed many seeds in her life, lived, one might say, more than one life, and at the beginning of her career worked as a linguist at the Institute of Linguistics. It so happened that she became the coordinator of the “Languages ​​of the World” project. At that time, the word “project” was not yet widely used, but in fact it was a voluminous project to describe many, and in the future, all languages ​​that exist on earth.

This unexpected, ambitious project was conceived by linguists in the mid-seventies. A special format was created to describe different languages, which are very different in their structure, so that they can be represented in a similar way. And large-scale work began on the preparation of this publication. For the first 12 years, Marina Andreevna acted as a coordinator under the general leadership of Victoria Nikolaevna Yartseva.

During these, as it now seems, short years, Marina Andreevna and the team, which included Yasha Testelets, managed to accumulate a huge amount of material. As you know, then Marina Andreevna decided to take up a completely different activity and left the Institute of Linguistics, and I eventually became her successor.

All these years we have continued to work on the publication of “Languages ​​of the World”; 17 volumes have already been published, all of them describe different languages. Three more volumes will be released in the coming months. The total volume of the publication is about eight thousand pages. We never forget that Marina Andreevna Zhurinskaya was at the origins of the project, and we note this in the preface to each volume. Only in the last few years have we been preparing books based on completely new articles, and until about 2005 we mainly published articles, albeit updated, revised, but also collected directly by Marina Andreevna. This is what she has prepared for us!

Our small team always remembers the role Marina Andreevna played. I think that she largely developed her editorial skills in the process of working on these linguistic articles in the already distant Soviet years. Marina Andreevna, as has been said more than once, did many good deeds. At one time, she helped publish a collection dedicated to the anniversary of my father, Alexander Evgenievich Kibrik.

My parents were also well acquainted with Marina Andreevna. This morning I came from the dacha, from their dacha, where there is a large apple orchard. Marina Andreevna was not only a florist, but also a gardener. I remember conversations about apple trees, different varieties of apples, how to grow them, how to collect them. And I just brought a box of our apples. Although there is more than enough food here, I will put it here and ask those who wish to take apples with them and also remember Marina Andreevna as a gardener.

Bringing a light of joy to those around

Vasily Glebovich Kaleda, Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor of the Department of Practical Theology of PSTGU:

The Kaled family has special gratitude to Marina Andreevna for her enormous, selfless work on the literary heritage of Father Gleb. In the early 90s, she was his spiritual daughter and made a huge contribution to perpetuating his memory. It is to her that we largely owe the publication of his literary heritage; without her, some of his works would have remained only part of the family archive.

Back in 1991, Marina Andreevna, having read her father’s Christmas sermon “The Magi,” organized its publication in the form of a small brochure on newsprint - then this was an event for all of us. Later, in 1994, shortly before the death of Fr. She invited Gleb to write an article about the Shroud of Turin specifically for the second issue of the Alpha and Omega magazine. The pope has already written articles about the Shroud of Turin for both the ZhMP and a number of other magazines. To make his work easier, Marina Andreevna offered to make a digest of his articles, to which he agreed.

Recalling their joint work on this article, Marina Andreevna, with her characteristic irony and humor, and excellent command of the literary word, described the different types of authors with whom she met as an editor: “...There are two types of bad authors. Some give careless pieces of paper and complacently say: “well, correct it, well, add it, - in general, do what you want, it doesn’t matter”; at the same time, the quality of the finished publication is attributed entirely to their own account and completely ignores the fact that the printed text has little in common with the original monument of thought. Others usually pronounce the same pathetic text with slight variations: “Keep in mind, I suffered through all this and will fight for every comma.”

Publishers with the rudiments of sanity usually do not publish such things, while others try to take on the challenge and come close to a heart attack; finally, still others, retreating under the pressure of the author, publish everything as is, in order to listen to the reproaches of not only colleagues and readers about the sad result, but also the hero of the occasion: “well, was it really difficult to fix it?” Father Gleb belonged to the fourth type of authors, and he is the only correct one. The manuscript returned to us again and again with paragraphs crossed out and pages re-written in the marvelous professorial handwriting... Before my eyes, something happened that every professional linguist admires as a miracle: the transformation of thoughts into words, and words into text.” And when the second issue of the magazine was already ready, and dad had only a few days left to live, Marina Andreevna persuaded the director of the printing house to make separate reprints of the article, which he managed to sign to his family and friends, for which we are still grateful to her.

Soon after the death of Father Gleb, in one of the Moscow churches, I saw behind a candle box a brochure about the Shroud of Turin and the idea arose to prepare a separate edition of my father’s work on this shrine. I called Marina Andreevna, as the editor of the magazine in which my father’s article was published, expressed my idea, which she supported, and came to her home for negotiations. From that time on, our collaboration began with her in publishing the works of Father Gleb. Father Gleb’s article entitled “The Shroud of Our Lord Jesus Christ” was published as a separate brochure, and was subsequently reprinted many times and published in other periodicals. In the next issue (No. 3) of the magazine, along with an obituary, Marina Andreevna published her father’s sermon about Russian saints.

After this, the question naturally arose about publishing other of my father’s works and, first of all, “The Domestic Church,” which is a series of essays, many of which were not completely completed and had only a handwritten version with many corrections. Realizing that it was impossible to prepare a whole book for publication at once, taking into account the general busyness, several essays were edited and printed, which then formed a separate book (first edition 1997). In this she was helped by Natalia Alekseevna Erofeeva, who for many years was the permanent and indispensable processor of Father Gleb’s manuscripts.

Simultaneously with work on “Home Church,” Marina Andreevna began working on notes from a prison priest (“Stop in your ways”), which were published in 1995. Not wanting to stop there, she offered to collect from her father’s spiritual children all the audio recordings (some of them were of extremely low quality) of his sermons, together with Natalya Alekseevna Erofeeva, she transferred them to paper and prepared a collection of sermons “The Fullness of Life in Christ” (1996).

Marina Andreevna was very sensitive to the author's text and discussed every editorial change with me. I would like to note that when publishing books, she not only did purely editorial work, but also thought through its entire layout, including the book format, font size, design, and cover colors.

Later, she published in her journal her mother’s (L.V. Kaleda – nun George) memories of her father, Hieromartyr Vladimir (No. 24) and her mother’s memories of Fr. Glebe (No. 31-32), which later, somewhat expanded, were included in the large collection “Priest Gleb Kaleda - Scientist and Shepherd” (2007, 2012).

With the help of Marina Andreevna, the series “Spiritual Experience of Russian Women’s Asceticism” was created in the publishing house at the Conception Monastery. The series was designed by her, and she edited several books in the series. She also participated in organizing the publication of the monastic series of akathists.

In 2008, she offered to write me an article on the problem of the relationship between mental and spiritual illnesses, which I deal with as a psychiatrist; this was my first publication in a theological journal, for which I am very grateful to her.

Later, when we were preparing collections dedicated to Father Gleb (2007, 2012) and nun Georgia (2012) at the publishing house of the Conception Monastery, as well as the latest edition (2013) of the “Home Church” (together with my mother’s memories), we always consulted with her as conceptual issues, as well as on the design of the book and cover, while her opinion was decisive for us. I would like to note that the idea to publish “Home Church” together with my mother’s memories of Father Gleb (in this publication they were called “Our Home Church”) belonged to Marina Andreevna.

Marina Andreevna published the magazine “Alpha and Omega” for almost twenty years. Over the years, a considerable number of Orthodox magazines have appeared, many of which, having existed for several years at best, have sunk into oblivion. The magazine “Alpha and Omega” was published regularly, and it is hard to believe that this was the merit of one elderly amazing woman - Marina Andreevna Zhurinskaya, in the holy baptism of Anna.

Her house, with a large number of exotic plants and a huge cat Mishka walking importantly, gave the impression of some kind of oasis of calm and tranquility.
Father Gleb, one of her confessors, loved to repeat that “Christianity is the joyful fullness of life.” Marina Andreevna possessed this amazing joyful fullness of life, and she carried the light of this joy to those around her.

The last time I talked to her was this summer, when she was already confined to a hospital bed. She talked a little about her illnesses, talked more about her magazine, that the next double issue of Alpha and Omega magazine would be the last, and how she saw it.

Marina Andreevna passed away, but the books she created, magazines, the release of each of which was an event, collections remained with us; the flowers she gave me are still green on the windows of our apartment, and behind the glass door of the bookcase, life continues on the pages of an amazingly kind book charming cat Mishka.
Eternal memory to her.

She liked to have happy people around

Tatyana Petrovna Tselekhovich, candidate of philological sciences, one of the authors of the magazine “Alpha and Omega”:

It seems that St. John Chrysostom, in one of his funeral orations, noted that after the loss of a loved one, those living begin to grieve that they did not love him, did not say something, did not do something. After Marina Andreevna left, I don’t have this feeling of incompleteness: every visit to her monastery was an event for me, and every time - complete and with a beautiful afterword. Even pauses in the conversation did not cause awkwardness, because they were appropriate and, as they say, meaningful.

She knew how to listen. She was attentive and did not rush to conclusions - she clarified, asked again, asked to clarify those points in the interlocutor’s monologue that seemed vague to her. We drank tea, ate grapes and smiled at each other. I don’t remember who else could make me laugh as much as she did; sometimes I laughed until I cried: “This can’t be!” And she calmly repeated: “Exactly so, dear Tanya.” I loved being around her. I managed to say that I love her.

When a person leaves, the one who remains needs physical evidence of his presence; he needs to touch something, smell it, try it on - remember. Marina Andreevna gave me books and magazines, cosmetics and jewelry. We corresponded. And each of her letters is also an event, a complete story/advice from a friend/teaching from her mother. But somehow the set she made was especially dear to me: a bracelet and beads, bright, I immediately thought it was even too bright.

She liked to have happy people around, so that they were happy and did not hesitate to decorate themselves. I was shy, and then - on every new visit to Moscow “to Marina Andreevna” I tried to dress myself up in something singing and sunny, and if femininity increased in me during this time, that was her merit. I remember that once we even went shopping together, choosing jewelry - it was a triumph of taste and a master class for aspiring ladies!

She had many friends, famous, ordinary - for her - wonderful. She loved our Belarus, was a friend of the St. Nicholas Monastery in the city of Gomel and knew the inhabitants there; she had a particularly cordial friendship with Archimandrite Savva (Mazhuko), who later introduced us. I am grateful that in this way I became involved in the process of publishing the Alpha and Omega magazine and was also among its authors.

Marina Andreevna was a straightforward person, without hypocrisy and double standards. Sometimes her directness and uncompromisingness could seem impudent and even offensive, but even behind this “yes, yes, no, no,” there was sensitivity, love and the ability to understand and forgive. Whatever she talked about - about religion, about politics, about culture, about Russia - all her conversations were Christ-centric. Her life was Christ-centered. For her, the Savior was not a theoretical ideal, an absolute, but a living one, very dear to her, really existing with her - a Man, a Person Whom she loved. And this love of hers was contagious.

She often quoted the Gospel and referred to it. “Read the Gospel, child, everything is written there” - this has already become my life credo. I remembered the Apostle Paul: pray unceasingly, give thanks in everything, live in joy. And also that Christianity does not know zombified stereotyped believers, but only individuals - and each has their own story.
We talked a lot about love stories, about gender relations in the modern world, so many jokes were made about this - not offensive to anyone, just funny, like the naked truth. Marina Andreevna loved her husband very much. When I looked at the photos from her funeral, I experienced an acute sense of loss, noticing Yakov Georgievich in them, his confused face, sunken cheeks and tiredly lowered hands.

It was as if it were a reflection of Gogol’s Afanasy Ivanovich from “Old World Landowners.” Some believe that this is the best work about love in Russian literature. They believe correctly, but in reality it is even better. Such attention, care, respect, and sensitivity of Marina Andreevna and Yakov Georgievich to each other evoked tenderness and a feeling of gratitude for the opportunity to observe the example of a Family, faithful and loving people. And here it becomes obvious what it means: “the meaning of an Orthodox marriage is in the love of two,” and not in procreation.

They say that there is no continuation, that you can’t take anything with you to your grave, and here you can argue. There are people who take the whole world with them. Marina Andreevna Zhurinskaya is an era in the history of Russian Orthodoxy, and these are not big words: just one “magazine about Christ”, to which she devoted so much effort and knowledge, gave her health - a powerful argument of her contribution to theology.

When a loved one passes away, the living also mourn themselves, because they feel sorry for who they were next to this person. I feel sorry for myself. I will never again notice a quiet magical light through the thickets of cacti in the windows of the first floor, I will not hear slow steps outside the door and feel the warmth of my cheeks, they will not grumble at me and will no longer give me a handkerchief so that I can wipe away the tears that unexpectedly burst out of the spiritual taps. , I will not listen to Tsoi with her and look at paintings and books... As if she took a part of me with her, - these days I part with that Tanya - with sadness and gratitude.

Once, in response to my complaints about the disorder of good Orthodox people in the world, Marina Andreevna remarked: “This happens on earth, but remember: the eye has not seen and the ear has not heard what the Lord has prepared for those who love Him?..”.

I just now remembered. And she already knows. And together we will live, waiting for a new meeting.

She was truly a lover of Christ

P Rotopriest Alexy Uminsky, rector of the Church of the Life-Giving Trinity in Khokhly:

Lover of Christ... She was truly a lover of Christ. This is the most important thing that people began to understand when they met her, when they began to communicate with her, to recognize her. When they read her wonderful articles, when they listened to her discussions about the Church. Lover of Christ...

There are always very few such people. But it is precisely such people who primarily influence the world. We are well aware of this from the words of St. Seraphim of Sarov, but we do not think about it seriously. Well, how can a person save thousands? And so, imperceptibly, it turns out that when there is a lover of Christ or a lover of Christ, the world changes, the space of life changes. And you suddenly understand this especially when this person is separated from us.

Marina Andreevna can be called a teacher of the Church. Well, or a teacher. Because she really has taught our newborn Church of recent decades a lot. She taught and taught Christians a lot. For example, she always, constantly taught everyone human dignity. This was a very important science, which she herself mastered and tried to instill in others. Teach Christians human dignity.

She taught and taught many about real freedom. Such, not unbridled, irresponsible freedom, but deep, responsible freedom of a Christian within the Church - that is, a very great responsibility.

She taught many people to look at the world through the eyes of a child. Despite the fact that she is a person with gray hair, she never stopped admiring and wondering about this world. In any plant that she saw and loved as a living being, butterflies, flowers, beloved cats - she saw God’s love for humanity. Her love for Christ extended to this world, so she understood the words: “Go, preach to every creature.” For her, this creature, in love for her, was also a sermon, a conversation about Christ. This is an amazing teaching that she left for us, such dry and almost lifeless people of the 21st century.

Of course, she loved Christ very much, and therefore she taught, first of all, believers, those who are called Christians, who are called Orthodox, to seek encounters with Christ in their lives. There was nothing more precious than this meeting with Christ, the imitation of Christ, the thoughts of Christ, the longing for Christ, which was so alive in her, did not allow her to be calm, it worried her all the time. This she continually taught and continues to teach.

This teaching is always small, but it is very important, it is wonderful, it is teaching that makes us people standing in Christ.

We are seeing her off today. The word “funeral” does not at all fit with what we have in Christ. Because when there is a funeral, it is a victory for death. But today, Christian burial is always a victory for life. These words that we heard today during the funeral service, these amazing prayers, which all the time proclaim the victory of life, and no death. We are sad to lose such an amazing person in this life, this is truly a huge loss for us, but for us it is also a gain, because testimony in Christ, true testimony of faith, is always an acquisition, it is always new. A new voice that says that Christ has risen, that death has been defeated, and that life lives on.

Thank you to everyone who came today to this festive, solemn day, because today is truly a holiday for Marina Andreevna. She is with Christ, Whom she loved so much. Today is her real birthday - a real Christian birthday. As for us, I hope this will be the case. For every Christian there is a birthday in Christ.

We met Marina Andreevna a little over twenty years ago at the very moment when the magazine “Alpha and Omega” had just begun to appear. And our first meeting was dedicated to the magazine and the formation of its editorial staff. Marina Andreevna invited me to the editorial board.

Our initial communication took place in understanding the contents of the magazine, what was happening in the Church. We talked about the need for real spiritual enlightenment, living theology, and not “reprinted” one. In the early nineties of the last century, there was mainly a reprint of theological works of the past. Yes, it was important, necessary. But this “reprint” still continues in the minds of many Christians.

And Marina Andreevna then decided to take a different, very difficult unknown path. I would even say - impudent for a woman who has orders to remain silent in church.

Marina Andreevna was never silent, greatly respecting the Apostle Paul and the patristic tradition. Moreover, she spoke in such a way that her voice became the voice of the Church. Her feminine seemed to be lost; she already had what the Apostle Paul spoke about: “In Christ there is neither male nor female” (Gal. 3:28).

She set herself and the magazine the goal of speaking with the people of the Church in theological, modern, Christian language within the framework of the problems that face the Church today. And she did it brilliantly.

All these twenty years, the magazine has occupied and continues to occupy (I don’t want to speak only in the past tense) its unique place. During this time, he did not have a single competitor. The magazine, which talked about complex theological problems, from the very beginning was addressed to a modern, educated Christian who thinks, reads, and often just goes to church. "Alpha and Omega" became a special form of theological education for new Christians who had recently come to the Church. Moreover, I know from the life of my parish that many people who have just become Christians are very fond of this magazine, even without higher education. For readers it is always a new encounter with the Church, a new look at the patristic heritage.

And it was “Alpha and Omega” that made Marina Andreevna and I friends. We started communicating.

For all people who have at least somehow encountered her in life, Marina Andreevna evokes enormous respect and great respect. Not only with his education and activity. But the main thing is amazing spiritual wealth. Marina Andreevna turned out to be a real Christian of the 21st century.

She lived with an all-consuming love for the Church, a constant striving for Christ. It was clear to everyone who communicated with her that for Marina Andreevna, Christ is life.

Despite the fact that she had a very difficult character, this is what most often happens to a truly very lively thinking person who is constantly in contradiction with himself.

Marina Andreevna was very truthful, and hence her sharpness in judgment and responsibility for her words. Moreover, this truthfulness was a property of her Christianity.

At the same time, she was a very vulnerable person who suffered greatly from what was happening in the world, in the Church, between Christians.

Marina Andreevna was capable of some completely naive from the point of view of this world, absolutely not pragmatic and even crazy actions. She did them solely out of understanding: Christ would have done the same.

It’s probably unnecessary to talk about what a wonderful conversationalist Marina Andreevna was. Many people know this. As well as what a great publicist she was. Her brilliant articles are in the public domain.

Marina Andreevna easily got along with people, opened up, giving herself to her interlocutors, making them her friends.

Those who at least once met Marina Andreevna fell under her charm and tried to be in her orbit.

She loved young people very much. And when Marina Andreevna also fell in love with Russian rock, it became clear that she was just a very young person.

Marina Andreevna is a person of a very high standard. In everything she did in life. Even her “tchotchkes and trinkets” - the jewelry that Marina Andreevna began to make at the end of her life - turned out to be truly beautiful. She also gave them to our parish charity fairs, and for them we received large sums, which went to help those in need for whom the events were held.

The culture that Marina Andreevna possessed was a culture of the highest standard. She is from the galaxy of Sergei Sergeevich Averintsev. There are always very few carriers of such a culture, you can count them on your fingers. Now it's even smaller.

And at the same time, she was a person in love with the world around her, created by God: with nature, with flowers, with trees, with her adored cats.

Marina Andreevna could still give us a lot, with her intellect, her heart, her energy.

The last months that she spent in intensive care under an artificial respiration apparatus became for her a real feat of martyrdom. With her energy, she would be bedridden, helpless, without even the ability to speak. Lately she could only articulate some words, and in order to understand them, she had to carefully watch her lips.

It was clear that she, as a Christian, was trying to gather all her inner strength in order to maintain inner peace, not to burst into despair, and not to lose touch with God.

Two weeks ago, when I was in her intensive care unit, taking communion, Marina Andreevna asked me to read the death note over her.

Then, almost always unconscious, she came to her senses literally for a minute when they came to her with the Holy Gifts. I gave Marina Andreevna communion on Sunday, and she regained consciousness exactly when I came to her with the Holy Gifts, consciously took communion and then went into a peaceful, calm state.

Father Dimitry (Pershin) told me the same thing, who gave Marina Andreevna communion for the last time, on Monday. She regained consciousness for a minute, took communion, somehow especially wanting it, with some special greed (here this word seems appropriate to me) and again went into an unconscious state.

I hope that Marina Andreevna is with Christ, Whom she loved so much. Eternal memory to her.

Alpha and Omega by Marina Zhurinskaya. Essays, articles, interviews
Marina Andreevna Zhurinskaya

Anna Aleksandrovna Danilova

The book by M. A. Zhurinskaya (1941–2013), permanent editor of the Orthodox magazine “Alpha and Omega,” was prepared for the anniversary of the author’s death. This collection includes articles, essays, interviews from different years. Marina Andreevna, a sincere and open person, talks in them about everything in the world: about the Orthodox faith, about social and family life, about art and nature. The author's views are often original. The book will be of interest to all thinking people.

Marina Zhurinskaya

Alpha and Omega by Marina Zhurinskaya. Essays, articles, interviews

Approved for distribution by the Publishing Council of the Russian Orthodox Church

IS R14-416-1466

© Testelets Y.G., text, 2015

© Danilova A.A., compiler, 2015

© PRAVMIR.RU, Internet portal “Orthodoxy and Peace”, 2015

© Publishing house "DAR", 2015

Letters from Diotima

As you know, Herzen was awakened by the Decembrists. The untimely awakened one looked around inquisitively and began to wake up the commoners, of whom there were many, and no one undertook to predict how many sleeping people the frantically conscious youth would awaken. We, the Orthodox youth of the nineties, had our own alarm clocks and inspirers, the Herzens and the Decembrists. In the Church we were savages, but our eyes had not yet lost their fire, and our hearts knew how to beat ardently and excitedly from unexpected meetings and mysterious news. Russia was then before the Second Coming, and prayer in church ruins inspired more than cathedral splendor.

Then Kuraev appeared, Osipov’s lectures, and from the thunderous cup of Moscow came vague rumors, either about the opening of a theological institute, or about an unusually informative journal, or the posthumous broadcasts of the elders. From the capital, dusty couriers, or, as they were called then, “scribes”, messengers of church publishing houses, hurried to us in the provinces, and we greedily pounced on scraps of the capital’s splendor, on scattered issues of magazines, on individual volumes of books. I felt Moscow with my hands - they were simply torn off by countless bags filled with books, and so on after every trip. Both I and my new church comrades, most of them, from those who now teach, write books, head bishops' departments and monasteries, have followed the same path, the starting point of which was subdeaconry - the obedience to serve the bishop during divine services.

Among us were schoolchildren, students, and sometimes young scientists. Just young people who have joined the Church. Nothing serious or gratifying. I met only one person who looked at these youth with inspiring hope, a look that encouraged life and creativity. Marina Andreevna Zhurinskaya. A man who knew how to wake up properly. You ask, and quite rightly: how did she “wake up”, many did not even know her name then? They didn’t know the name, that’s true. But her legendary magazine “Alpha and Omega” was read by all my friends, sometimes they were read cruelly and mercilessly, they read it, copied it, and forgot to return it. Marina Andreevna once admitted that she was publishing this magazine for subdeacons, who would later become bishops, priests and theologians, and what they read in her magazine would grow, whether they wanted it or not. She looked so far, seeing in us, in the boys, the future face and voice of the Church. Then I did not pay attention to these words (how many words I did not pay attention to then!), and only now I understand how few people are capable of looking and seeing like that.

One day I asked Marina Andreevna:

- May I call you Diotima? You won't be offended?

“Oh, father, you’re not the first to call me that.”

Socrates had Diotima. Plato’s “Symposium” tells about this amazing woman. Socrates was lucky - he met a man who taught him not just to look, but to see. It happens that the one gifted to be Socrates never meets his Diotima. But sometimes, on the contrary, Diotima has no luck with Socrates. Marina Andreevna had some Socrates, but I am not afraid that I am not one of them. But I saw the real Diotima. She taught to see and had the amazing gift of sobering thought.

It was a miracle that we met at all. What were the chances of this meeting? Marina Andreevna is a brilliant scientist, author of scientific works, editor of a serious journal, and, in addition, lives in Moscow and is significantly older than me. And in the Belarusian city of Gomel, an indecently young monk in a newly opened monastery accidentally obtained several issues of Alpha and Omega, left by regular visiting “scribes” at the bottom of empty boxes. I opened the magazine and was in awe! Averintsev, Florovsky, Meyendor, Lossky - and nothing superfluous or empty. It was an event!

I had never encountered such literature before, and I decided to find out more about this amazing publication. Found a phone number. I got through. And they started talking to me! At the other end of the line in distant Moscow, the wisest woman in the world spoke to me cheerfully and kindly, for a long time and thoughtfully. This was in 1995. And we began to talk regularly, and I learned that we are not such strangers: the legendary magazine is the same age as our monastery, and Marina Andreevna’s mother comes from Gomel. It was very exciting for me to meet in person. Our rector, Archimandrite Anthony (Kuznetsov), kept letters from Bishop Bartholomew (Remov), and we offered to publish them in our native journal. I had the honor of taking them to Moscow. As usual, I got the wrong apartment, but eventually got to the address. Two elderly, but very attentive and kind women, some kind of old computer, cabinets with books. I would like to describe this first meeting in detail, but I was too young then and was terribly worried. It was Marina Andreevna’s old apartment, and I was there again, and the wonderful, now legendary cat Mishka allowed himself to be stroked.

And then somehow unexpectedly we began a correspondence that lasted almost ten years. What did we correspond about there, whisper in the letter? Now this is important only to me. She had some kind of innate sanity and the gift of sobriety, which she shared generously, with one phrase, look, gesture, bringing clarity to a seemingly hopelessly confused issue. Through letters, Marina Andreevna knew well our life and the good (and even bad) half of the brethren, having never seen any of them. And she also had the gift of persuasion. For quite a long time she tried to persuade me to write something for the magazine, and I succumbed to the persuasion. Since then I haven't been able to stop.

Just don’t think that we sent each other philosophical treatises. Everything was simple, humane, cordial. Marina Andreevna had a unique sense of humor, and she knew how to turn even her health problems into an elegant joke. Here she writes:

“I’m not much of a prayer book, but shouldn’t I know what legs are! When reading fiction (it’s a sin!) I pay attention to the fact that the characters walk, go somewhere on foot, stroll - and what bliss this is. One consolation: even if I wanted to, I cannot go to the advice of the wicked.” People who knew Marina Andreevna closely and her health problems know the value of that smile, how hard it was for her to have this wonderful humor, this charming mischief.

For many years, Marina Andreevna wanted to write a text about the Christian reading of Levkonoi. This is the famous poem by Horace, which few people have read in its entirety, but many remember the famous carpe diem - “seize the moment”, “seize the moment”. She had the gift of enjoying life, its simple gifts, its childhood secrets and consolations. She loved people, cats, flowers, music, just living - she really liked it, and you really hope that at Easter you will again receive a “bouquet of delights” from her:

“And how my cacti grow! And how many there are and how unexpected there are! And what unprecedented violets are blooming! And how magnificently my cat collection on the piano grows! Your little dragon has been joined by the same glass crocodile, and how happy they are! And what an Easter I made!” And at the end there will certainly be some holy and stupid signature:

“I remain, kindest and most soulful father...

Loving Your Reverence from the bottom of my heart...

Now giving free rein to her unquenchable desire for unceasing joy and daring to consider herself close to you in mentality and spiritual structure, the servant of God Anna.”

One day she wrote: “The holiday has arrived. Congratulations, congratulations, congratulations, and rejoice endlessly, because God and His Most Pure Mother are with us. And this cannot be taken away from us.” My dear Diotima is now in the arms of God. She loved to live, and now she is more alive than we are, and no one can take that away from her. Why is it so sad? From separation, of course. But this will all pass. As Marina Andreevna used to say, “we’ll already talk there.”

Archimandrite Savva (Majuko)

Instead of a preface

Without Moscow swearing

Testify

Marina Zhurinskaya: Mass media should have one property: it should be environment-forming. Like-minded people should gather around him.

Of course, the media can achieve temporary success if it looks for an audience to please, but this is doomed in the long run, especially when we are talking about Christian journalism. Christian journalism is not propaganda, it is testimony.

Nobody promised us success; they told us: you will have sorrow in the world. And then it says, but take heart, I have overcome the world. It is not said: I will give you victory over the world, no. I have conquered the world. We live in a saved world.

In the days before political correctness, in 19th-century America, when people advertised for jobs, they would insultingly say, “Don't worry about the Irish.” If we ignore political correctness, the conventional Irish are asked not to worry - there is no need to save the world, it has been saved. And we must testify that he is saved.

We must live by this ourselves, we must experience joy in the Lord and testify to the joy. This, of course, is very difficult, but the ideal Orthodox media will be guided by the thesis of the Apostle Paul: Pray without ceasing, rejoice always, give thanks in everything. Do you often see this in the Orthodox media? And “glory to God for everything” by St. John Chrysostom – often?

Anna Danilova: Testimony is an unusual concept for journalism. Religious journalism is talked about in a variety of words - preaching, PR, analytics...

M. Zh.: A normal Orthodox publishing house is run, forgive me, by laymen (with all due respect to holders of holy orders, they must be present in this matter, but laymen work). Therefore, this is a special case of the apostolate of the laity.

What is an apostle to the laity?

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Marina Andreevna Zhurinskaya(b.) - Soviet and Russian journalist, publicist, linguist, editor of the Orthodox magazine “Alpha and Omega”. Candidate of Philology.

Biography

Marina Zhurinskaya is a graduate of the Faculty of Philology of Moscow State University, defended her diploma in Hittite studies. She was assigned as an intern to , where she immediately got the job of linguistic typology - an area that is usually dealt with by employees with long years of service. She worked at the institute for almost 20 years. Author of more than a hundred scientific papers. In the mid-1970s, Marina Zhurinskaya was appointed coordinator of the project “Languages ​​of the World” at the Institute of Languages ​​and Languages ​​of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and led the project until 1986.

In 1975 she received Orthodox baptism. Since 1994, publisher and editor of the Alpha and Omega magazine. Member of the editorial board of the collection “Theological Works”.

Marina Zhurinskaya has a cat named Mishka; her book “Mishka and Some Other Cats and Cats: A Strictly Documentary Narrative” was published in Nizhny Novgorod and went through two reprints (2006, 2007, 2009).

Marina Zhurinskaya, linguist, founder and editor of the Orthodox intellectual magazine Alpha and Omega, was born on June 26, 1941.

Private bussiness

Marina Andreevna Zhurinskaya (1941-2013)(last name after her first husband - Alfred Zhurinsky, maiden name unknown) graduated from the Faculty of Philology of Moscow State University, defended her diploma in Hittology (probably under the influence of V.V. Ivanov). She was assigned as an intern to the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, where her area of ​​study became linguistic typology. In the mid-1970s, Marina Zhurinskaya was appointed coordinator of the project “Languages ​​of the World” at the Institute of Foreign Languages ​​of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and led the project until 1986. The goal of the project was to create general theoretical principles for describing any language and publish the encyclopedia “Languages ​​of the World.” Candidate of Philological Sciences, has more than 100 publications on linguistic topics. Translator from German (linguistic works, theological texts, as well as Gadamer and Schweitzer). Since 1994, publisher and editor of the Alpha and Omega magazine. Member of the editorial board of the collection “Theological Works”.

In 1975, under the influence of S.S. Averintseva’s lectures, she was baptized by Father Alexander Men under the name Anna. After 1986, she left editing linguistic works and completely switched to Orthodox journalism. In 1994, under the influence of Averintsev’s circle, she founded the Orthodox educational magazine “Alpha and Omega,” of which she was editor-in-chief until her death. The magazine is not an official organ of the Russian Orthodox Church, but received high marks from the Patriarchs of Moscow and All Rus' Alexy II and Kirill, who noted that the magazine “has become one of the most popular publications among domestic Christian periodicals.”

What is she famous for?

She edited the series “Languages ​​of the World” and led sections on structural typology in several collections. She founded the Orthodox intellectual and educational magazine “Alpha and Omega,” dedicated to the popularization of biblical studies, patristics, Church history, and theology. Member of the editorial board of the Russian Orthodox Church MP collection “Theological Works.”

What you need to know

Marina Zhurinskaya

There was no Hettology at Moscow State University; it was propagated by comparative linguists led by V.V. Ivanov. M.A.’s diploma was not, in the strict sense, a scientific work, nor were her encyclopedic articles written in the 1970s. for various collections. They popularized the ideas that were developed in those years by theorists V. Zvegintsev and I. Melchuk. The structural typology itself was founded in the USA by Greenberg in the 1960s; in Russia, it flourished already in the 1980s (Nedyalkov, Khrakovsky, Kibrik, etc.). Therefore, Zhurinskaya’s scientific activity in linguistics was more popularizing, and her departure from the Institute of Linguistics was a transition to the popularization of Orthodoxy.

In the 1990s. in the wake of perestroika, several magazines about the Bible and the Church were created (“World of the Bible”, “Church and Time”, etc.), intended to intellectually nourish the para-church intelligentsia, focused primarily on S. S. Averintsev and Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh (Bloom) . The magazine "Alpha and Omega" published mainly articles on the topics of the Bible, patristics, theology and hagiology, as well as translations of biblical and patristic texts.

Direct speech

“The problem of translating the Holy Scriptures is relevant now for almost all Christian Churches and peoples: translations, quite adequate for their time, need updating and revision, since the language is constantly changing, and the texts in this regard become outdated and become archaic. However, this problem, common to all, must be solved in each specific case individually, since the translation or revision of existing texts of Scripture in national languages ​​must be carried out in line with the relevant traditions - linguistic, philological, cultural." Marina Zhurinskaya.

“Even if the Russian Orthodox Church disappears somewhere - which is impossible, but even if it disappears somewhere and only one priest remains in it - a bitter drunkard and a notorious informer - I will remain his last parishioner and we will mourn our sins together.” "Marina Zhurinskaya: Without Moscow swearing". Orthodoxy and peace from 12.05.2011 .

7 facts about Marina Zhurinskaya

• Zhurinskaya's diploma was devoted to the language of the ancient Hittites; she did not defend her dissertation.
• Both of Zhurinskaya's husbands were prominent linguists - Alfred Zhurinsky and Yakov Testelets.
• The journal “Alpha and Omega” was founded in 1994 as Scientific Notes of the Interfaith Society for the Dissemination of the Holy Scriptures in Russia (ORSPR), and it received the blessing of the Russian Orthodox Church MP only in 1996.
• The first publications of articles by A. Dvorkin, A. Kuraev and E. Homogorov appeared on the pages of the magazine.
• Marina Zhurinskaya’s book “Mishka and some other cats: a strictly documentary narrative”, dedicated to her cat Mishka, went through two reprints (2006, 2007, 2009).
• At the age of 70, Zhurinskaya turned to the topic of rock culture and wrote an article about Viktor Tsoi. After that, at the invitation of Vyacheslav Butusov, who liked the article, she attended a rock concert for the first time in her life.
• Patriarch Kirill expressed his condolences in connection with the death of Marina Zhurinskaya.