Part 2: Selections from Three Orthodox Christian Priests from Latvia

Last week we introduced Dn John Dibs’ work “Three Orthodox Christian Priests from Latvia.” This week we offer the first interview with Mitred Archpriest Nikolajs Vieglais of blessed memory, which deals with his early life. Next week we will share Fr Nikolajs’ experience of seminary, marriage, and ordination.

Chronology of the Life of Fr. Nikolajs

 

1907 Born on March 31 in Dundaga, Latvia.

1915–1920 Family lived in Saratov, Russia as refugees during the First World War. At age 12, Nikolajs was tonsured as a church reader. The family returned to Latvia, first to Riga, then to the village of Krapy.

1921–1922 Attended grammar school in Riga. During this time Nikolajs and his oldest sister lived with their aunt, Vera Moser.

1924–1927 Attended the Institute of Agriculture in Latvia.

1927–1928 Attended the Orthodox Christian Seminary in Riga.

1928–1934 Lived in Cesis, Latvia, and worked as a clerk in the city hall. Married Natalija Calders on October 18, 1931. Ordained to the diaconate on October 21, 1934 by Metropolitan Alexander of Tallinn and assigned to the Nativity of Christ Cathedral in Riga.

1937 Ordained to the priesthood on September 19 by Metropolitan Augustin of Riga and assigned to Holy Trinity St. Sergius Convent.

1944–1949 Ordered by the retreating Germans to leave Riga with his family and to take the Tikhvin Mother of God icon. Joined Bishop John (Garklavs) and other clergy and their families in the port city of Liepaja. The group took refuge for a year in Czechoslovakia, then in Bavaria, and until 1949 lived and served in several Displaced Persons camps.

1949–1952 Arrived by ship in New York. Received into the Metropolia on August 16, 1949. Assigned to serve Ascension Church in Lykens, Pennsylvania on November 17, 1949.

1952–1992 Assigned to serve St. John the Baptist Church in Berkeley, California on February 26, 1952. Received the clergy award of the
miter in 1968. Faithfully served until retiring March 1, 1992.

1992 Feel asleep in the Lord on May 28 in Cotati, California.

Childhood and School

Q: Fr. Nikolajs, where were you born?

NV: I was born in Dundaga. It is a small village in the western part of Latvia.

Q: How far is Dundaga from Riga?

NV: About 150 kilometers.

Q: You were born in 1907?

NV: 1907. March 31.

Q: What are the names of your parents?

NV: My father’s name is Andrew and my mother’s name is Evgenia.

Q: What did your parents do?

NV: My father was a priest and my mother helped with church singing.

Q: How many brothers and sisters do you have?

NV: I have two brothers and three sisters.

Q: Do you have any memories of your grandparents?

NV: My father’s parents were peasants in Latvia. They became Orthodox in the middle of the nineteenth century.

Q: So they were not Orthodox to begin with?

NV: Before the eleventh century Latvians were Catholic and after the fifteenth century Lutheran. In the middle of the nineteenth century they started to join the Orthodox Church.

Q: Was your mother’s family from Riga?

NV: My mother’s father was from Riga, and my mother’s mother was from somewhere in the countryside, but she was Russian.

Q: Could you describe the place where you were brought up as a young boy?

NV: In Dundaga there was a church property. The church and living quarters were in the same building.

Q: So it was a rectory for the priest?

NV: The rectory for the priest was on the first floor. The second floor had a room and two small quarters for psalm readers1 or choir directors. There were also teachers.

Q: Who lived with you in that place, just your parents, or did any of your grandparents live there at any time?

NV: For a very short time my grandmother from my father’s side lived there.

Q: Do you remember any stories about your grandparents’ life in the church?

NV: My mother’s father was a psalm reader and choir director in a suburb of Riga.

Q: Do you have memories of him?

NV: I don’t remember him. He passed away before I started elementary school.

Q: Can you tell about your father?

NV: He studied in the seminary in Riga. And then for six years he was a psalm reader in Cesis, Latvia. Interestingly, some thirty years later I was there in the same church, as psalm reader! After six years, he was married. His future wife’s sister was a teacher in that city. And my future mother visited her sister there in Cesis. Of course she was a singer from childhood. She went to church and started to sing with my future father, and they became husband and wife.

Q: And your parents then moved from Cesis to Dundaga?

NV: After my father was married, he was ordained a deacon, and then a priest, then he was sent to Dundaga.

Q: What was the name of the church in Dundaga?

NV: Saints Constantine and Helen.

Q: What do you remember from your childhood as a boy in Dundaga?

NV: I just remember that we were visited by relatives. Our aunt and uncles came to our place, as well as others. My parents’ family was very
hospitable. [phone interruption] Then one day in the neighborhood they were expecting something special. We were very interested about what was going on. They said, ‘The stork is going to bring a child to the psalm reader.’ After a while they said, ‘No, the
child is at home.’ But I said, ‘I didn’t see the stork!’

Q: When you were young, your parents moved away from the city where you were born. Why did your family move?

NV: My father was appointed to another village closer to Riga. It was west of Riga. That place was named Krapy. It was 1913. We stayed there only two years because the war started in 1914, and in 1915 the German army was very close to that place, and our whole family was evacuated to Russia to
the city of Saratov on the Volga River. It was in August 1915. And we stayed there until August 1920.

Q: Could you talk aboutWorldWar I before the time that you were sent out of Latvia?

NV: We were very sad that the war was started. There was no reason why the Germans started the war with Russia. Everyone was very angry. But the
Germans were better organized. [phone interruption] And as they came to Russia, important people were elevated to be officers, clerks, different positions. But that place where many lived was east of Riga, and the river Dvina separated them. [pointing to a map] Here is the sea, here is the bay, here is Dundaga, and here is Riga. And the Germans were on this side of the river. And here was the railroad station, and we had to get to the railroad station. The Germans were 15 kilometers from our place. I cannot say much about the war, but you could find much literature.

Q: You were young then in 1914?

NV: In 1914 I was 7 years old. I just don’t remember anything except that we had to change the trains three times.

Q: You were evacuated by train?

NV: By train, yes.

Q: Were you considered refugees in Saratov?

NV: We were officially refugees, but because my father was a missionary priest he got a salary from the synod of bishops, but only when the tsar was alive and governing. And in Kerensky times he didn’t receive anything. He started to work as a bookkeeper or secretary in the gymnasium where he
was a religion teacher.

Q: But your father still had duties as a priest?

NV: He replaced sick priests and helped when needed. He did not have his own parish. But in communist times, the church was not an officially recognized institution, but churches were crowded, especially in the evenings because people didn’t work then. They usually had vespers and an akathist service. And the akathist was sung by the whole congregation, which was thousands of people —not hundreds, but thousands. In those times I
started to do something in the church. At first I was an altar boy, then a reader, then a singer, and in 1919 I even became a psalm reader in the
cathedral. I was only 12 years old. It happened because the deacon was ordained a priest. There was a famine in the city. They had a big family,
and went to the country because there was more food there. And the psalm reader was ordained a deacon, and I was appointed as psalm reader.

Q: Do you remember the name of the church there?

NV: St. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral.

Q: Was there a bishop in that city as well?

NV: There was a bishop and four priests, but no psalm reader! Nobody wanted to do it. It was dangerous for workers, you know.

Q: What was the bishop’s name?

NV: One was Dosithei, one was Tikhon, and some other name, Boris maybe. Some were killed, some were sent to Siberia, and so on.

Q: So it was a time when people were on the one hand afraid about their faith but on the other hand they expressed a lot of fervor for their faith.

NV: Yes, it was so. Of course, this is very interesting. When I was in school there, I should have gone to the seminary, but the seminary was closed
before communist times, and I started to study in the realnoe uchilishche—gymnasium. But with the communists everything changed, and school buildings were occupied for other purposes. Usually in each school building there were three school groups, one worked from 8:00 to 12:00, another from 12:00 to 4:00 and third from 4:00 to 8:00. For me it was very good that I was in the second group, from 12:00 to 4:00 so that I could be in church in the morning and at night.

Q: How did your parents feel about your participation in the church and your becoming a psalm reader? Did they encourage you?

NV: They encouraged me, of course, but the service would sometimes last up to 11:00 at night. It was dangerous to walk on the streets, like here sometimes! But there it was more dangerous, of course. And they sometimes suggested to me not to stay so long in church. But otherwise they were happy that I was in church.

Q: What was the attitude of your mother toward your involvement in the church?

NV: My mother was very religious, and she participated. She was working, but when she was free, especially in the evenings, she came to church and was singing and doing other things needed for the church. [interruption; NV talks about an experience at a church service] It was after the Liturgy. During the Liturgy a deacon was ordained. And the deacon in such cases makes the sign of the cross over the gifts [with a liturgical fan] during the Eucharistic Canon. And then this deacon put it aside. And then after the service, I did something with the fan [motioning with hands, shows how he was imitating the deacon] and it broke in half.

Q: Why was that significant?

NV: I understood that I should not try to get a psalm reader’s job, but a caretaker’s job. I thought a lot about that. My idea was that it would be very good to be a caretaker in the church. Even in the seminary, I was not ready to be a priest, but—

Q: You understood from this experience that it was better to take the simpler jobs?

NV: The simple jobs in church, yes.

Q: You were living in Saratov until 1920, and that means that you were there in 1917. What do you remember about the revolution and the effect it had either in general or on the church in particular?

NV: In general it was a strange thing that they put artillery in the city. For example, here is one church [uses an object on the table to represent a church]. They put one of them here, and another one in another church. And when the revolution started, they started to shoot from this church to that church.

Q: Was that in the place where you were living?

NV: It was very close to where we lived.

Q: Why were they shooting?

NV: I don’t know the reason, but we noticed this. And they started shooting, and then they started using machine guns. And in the entire city you couldn’t go outside because you didn’t know who was shooting. That’s how it started. And then all the policemen there were arrested and killed or sent somewhere, and they were replaced by militia. Of course everything, such as food, disappeared from the stores. [phone interruption] There were many different changes at once. At stores you had to get in line a long time before they opened in the morning. At that time I was ten or eleven years old. In the middle of the night, at 2:00 a.m., I went to stand in line to be sure that I was first in line, because by 7:00 or 8:00 a.m. the store would be empty. And my mother became sick with typhus and needed her doctor’s prescriptions filled. I was very afraid of the dogs, because the fences were used for fire places for heating — there was no gas heating —and there were holes in the fences. The dogs would run at night, and it was dangerous.
The schools were changed and everything in them. Many churches were closed in this short period when we lived there during the communist government. Church choirs disappeared because the singers didn’t want to be against the government, because everyone was working somewhere. They had to work. If you didn’t work you couldn’t get anything you needed for food and so on.

Q: Did your family stay together at this time, or did some of your brothers and sisters have to be sent other places?

NV: The family was together, because my father was from Latvia and therefore they didn’t touch him. In Saratov, the church government gave us one apartment for our family. We lived there for a while but during the communist times the surrounding buildings were occupied by the Soviet army, and we had to get out. We got a very small apartment. It was close to the cathedral. It was from there that I started to go to the cathedral and became a psalm reader.

Q: I didn’t ask you before, but are you the oldest in your family?

NV: My sister is the oldest.

Q: You have an older sister, and then you?

NV: Yes. And then next, the one who lives here in Berkeley, and then that one who passed away who was a teacher and psalm reader in the country, and then my sister who lives here in Berkeley, and then the youngest who is left in Riga right now.3

Q: You said that many of the clergy were taken by the militia and were either killed, tortured or sent away. Can you tell the story you mentioned to me once about a priest?

NV: One priest was arrested. I knew his name, but I don’t remember. Then he was tortured, I don’t know how or in what way, but one of the guards —probably not the one who killed him — was present there. In those times the guards were not as afraid of the government as they were later, and they talked among themselves. And he told them what happened with that priest. The priest was praying, ‘Forgive me, forgive me,’ and mentioned different people, different situations. They stood in front of him with guns. And then the last day he said, ‘And you, my brothers, forgive me, because I caused you to arrest me,’ something like that. He made a prostration, and at that moment they killed him.
In 1920 was a detente. All those who came from the western part of Russia during the war, those who were refugees, were allowed to go back, and the communist government was obligated to provide transportation. And so the whole family returned to Latvia.

Q: What city did you go to when you returned in 1920?

NV: First to Riga, the capital city. And then in Riga the synod gave us one apartment that belonged to the church. And we lived there from August to
December 1920. In December my father got his job at the parish where he was priest before we left in 1914. He was appointed there again as the priest, and we moved to the village of Krapy.

Q: How far is Krapy from Riga?

NV: 75 kilometers.

Q: Did you live at the church there? What did your father do there?

NV: That parish was small, and of course it didn’t get monetary income, just food. The parishioners, who were mostly farmers, when they came to
church on Sundays brought some kind of food, such as meat, bread, and other things. It was difficult for my family to send the children to Riga for
education. In Krapy schools had just started after the war. There were only three grades at that time. My youngest brothers and sister attended that
school, but my oldest sister and I went to Riga because I was in fifth grade and my sister was in the gymnasium. Of course, my parents were not able
to pay for the room and everything there. But our aunt was in Riga, and she took us in her small apartment, just one room and one kitchen. She helped us very much.

Q: What was your aunt’s name?

NV: Vera Moser. It was far from the center of the city. We had to walk because we had no money for a street car. It took about an hour to get to school, and back again one hour. But we were happy that our aunt helped us. But she was not rich. She was selling flowers in the market.

Q: How old were you at that time?

NV: At that time, in 1921, I was fourteen.

Q: And your sister?

NV: She was 16. Then during vacation — we had several vacations, one was for the farmer’s children to help harvest the potatoes — we had one week free from school. We wanted to go back to see our family, but sometimes we had no money and we had to stay there in Riga. We were unhappy, but what could we do? At Christmas we had two weeks. Then we went by train 75 kilometers, and then walked 12 kilometers from the station. We were very happy to be home, and of course my parents were very happy too. They tried to give us as much as they could, to prepare some food and so on. We had a Christmas tree at home and also in the county hall. We visited some parishioners and prepared for the church services. My father prepared the singing in church with my mother. Because at that time we had no psalm reader or choir director there. Only our family was serving: my father serving as priest, we were singers, and one of us was an altar boy.
Then we had to go back to Riga. We would take some food to our aunt, such as a loaf of bread, beef, pork, butter and some other things. But we had little money. Of course my father paid the train fare. And he gave us two lats4 — one dollar is five lats. You understand, it would be 40 cents, for 3 months — for pocket money!

Q: What do you remember about when you were in school in Riga? What about church life there? How close was the nearest church?

NV: The nearest church was almost the same as the school, in the center of the city.

Q: Did you go there often?

NV: Every Sunday and every Saturday night, not like here, where some people leave for a couple of months and don’t attend church.

Q: Did you participate in reading at the services or as an altar boy?

NV: I did, of course, but when we lived with our parents in Riga, before we moved to Krapy, there it was close to the church. I was singing and reading. But when we moved, that church was too far. During the First World War, the Germans occupied Riga and turned the cathedral into a Lutheran church. They put in pews and cut the [motions with his hands]—

Q: They cut the top and bottom bars of the Russian Orthodox cross.

NV: But in 1921, the Latvian government gave it back to the Orthodox. And then it started to be rebuilt, and I was happy to go there because it reminded me of when I was at the cathedral in Saratov. But of course in those times I had no chance to participate other than as an altar boy, because there was a nice choir there, and two or three paid readers. But being an altar boy was okay for me.

Q: And that church is called the Church of the Nativity?

NV: Yes. And in Krapy the church was St. Arseny, because before the war, the bishop in Riga was named Arseny, and he got some money to build the church because the parish was very small. So they decided to name the church St. Arseny in memory of the bishop who helped build it. After I graduated from grammar school, I was supposed to go to the gymnasium. But the Russian gymnasium was occupied by children with Russian family last names, and my last name is Latvian. And they suggested that I go to the Latvian gymnasium since they did not have the possibility to take more. But my father was not rich enough to send me to Riga again, because he would have had to pay for school too. And besides that, in Riga there was still little food. In the country it was much better at that time. So I decided to go to agriculture school.

Q: What made you interested in agricultural school?

NV: All subjects were taught in the gymnasium, even a special agriculture class on how to plant, how to milk cows, everything that is needed for farmers.

Q: Did you think that you might be a farmer some day?

NV: My idea was this: Each church had a hundred acres of land. The Latvian government took land from the landlords. They paid them of course, because they had thousands of hectares. They couldn’t use it. So they gave each church 50 hectares, which is equivalent to about 100 acres. And to
former workers —farming workers — they gave 60 acres.

Q: Each church got approximately 100 acres?

NV: Yes. And so I thought, if I could graduate from that agricultural school, I would enter the seminary and then I would be a priest, but I would be working on that land, and I would have enough money and everything. Such was my idea. But there was one obstacle: I couldn’t speak Latvian. I could speak it before we left Latvia, but during the five years away, I forgot it. Farmers had to build their own houses. The government gave them wood, trees, timber, and they could bring it to a machine to cut it. And I knew one former caretaker in the church, and we cut wood with a saw from the forest. His children were very small, so I helped. And then we cut off the branches. He had a horse, and we brought the wood to a place where there was a saw, and then brought the lumber back to their place, and they started building the house, and I helped them. It was wintertime. And in the summer I worked with them in the fields and vegetable gardens. And during that year, I regained my Latvian! And then I went to agriculture school. It was only six kilometers from Cesis where my father was psalm reader and where I was later a psalm reader. There were 30 candidates and only 25 vacancies, and I was chosen among the 25, even with my poor Latvian! But I knew mathematics very well. Maybe that was the reason.

Q: So you took a year off of school after you finished grammar school?

NV: It was during that year when I was between grammar school and agricultural school. I gained two experiences: I learned how to do practical work, and I gained back my Latvian.

Q: What was your oldest sister doing that year?

NV: My sister studied, because my father at that time started to work as a bookkeeper in the country hall. Of course he only got 10 lats a month—two dollars! [laughs] And he had to walk two kilometers!

Q: Did your mother work at that time as well?

NV: Mother worked in the household. She had a cow, a pig, a sheep and of course chickens, and so at those times we had our own —

Q: You were self-sufficient somehow?

NV: Yes. Then because my father received money, in the meantime farmers got money too and they started to donate more, and so father could send my sister to Riga. But in the agricultural school, since we had to work there and during summertime we only had six weeks free, we had to work all the time. In winter we worked with wood. They found different kinds of work and therefore we didn’t have to pay for studies. Meals were provided. For the meals, students were supposed to pay a little, but because of our income, they gave me food without cost. And in the meantime my father received more money because he started to teach religion lessons in school, and so little by little my debts were paid for.

Q: What were the other students like in the agricultural school?

NV: They were mostly farmer’s children. I was the only one who wasn’t a farmer. I started to play chess, started to play sports like soccer. And then I participated in running competitions. Then I started to practice to run for long distances, 10 kilometers. Almost every evening I did it. It took about 40 minutes. Because of that, I’ve had no trouble with my feet! Then I graduated from the agricultural school. The seminary had opened in the meantime. After the First World War, seminary was not open because they had no money to pay for teachers and to operate.

Q: How many years were you a student in the agricultural school?

NV: Four years.

Q: So at the time you finished, you were how old?

NV: I started there at 16. I was 20 years old, because I lost one year. I finished fifth and sixth grades in grammar school. It would be 1921 and 1922. In 1923 I was working. I started the agricultural school in 1924, so in 1924, 1925, 1926, and 1927 I was in that school. The seminary opened in 1926, but because I had grounding in my religion— I was a psalm reader in Saratov and so on—they accepted me in the second year. And when seminary was over, I went to that place where my father was, Cesis, not far from the agricultural school, and I was there for six years because I was not married yet and couldn’t be a priest. And when I was married I stayed for three more years, because I had a job in the city hall as a clerk and assistant bookkeeper in Cesis, and my future wife was a teacher in school.

Click for the other parts in the series:

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8