In November Yakunin was hospitalised in a serious condition. Doctors managed to bring him out of a coma — that is, out of a prolonged state of unconsciousness — and he regained consciousness. Activists who had supported the priest for many years announced a collection of funds for his treatment and rehabilitation. He did not have time to recover.
Yakunin's path encompassed almost the entire history of relations between church and state in the second half of the twentieth century. He was a priest of the Moscow Patriarchate, that very institution which in Soviet times existed under strict state control and rarely spoke of the persecution of believers. That is precisely why an open letter to the patriarch about the persecution of believers took the discussion of the Church's situation beyond the walls of church institutions. It was a step hard to reconcile with the caution in dealings with the authorities that was customary for the hierarchy.
Defending believers and imprisonment
The Christian Committee for the Defence of the Rights of Believers, which he founded, devoted itself to helping people persecuted for religious activity and to documenting violations of their rights. For the Soviet system such work was a challenge, since the state was accustomed to regarding religious life as a matter that should proceed under supervision and without public debate. Yakunin ended up in a labour camp, as did many dissidents of the time. In Soviet practice a camp meant a place of forced detention for convicts, where living conditions were harsh and contact with the outside world limited.
Later he became one of the deputies of the country's first democratic parliament. Those were the years when the Soviet system was already losing its former solidity, and elections for the first time gave people the chance to choose from more than lists drawn up in advance. For a priest who had spent years speaking out against restrictions, participation in politics was a logical continuation of his earlier work.
Defrocking and anathema
In 1993 Yakunin was defrocked. This meant he could no longer perform services and sacraments as a clergyman. In 1997 he was anathematised. In the Orthodox tradition anathema is a formal church curse and excommunication from communion with the Church, and such a decision is taken by church authority. For a man who had called himself a priest all his life, this rupture was especially painful.
He devoted the last decade and a half to the movement for the renewal of Orthodoxy. It took shape as the Apostolic Orthodox Church. Renewal movements in Orthodoxy have historically set themselves the task of reforming church life, making it more open to society and more independent of state power. Supporters of such ideas spoke of the need for the independence of local churches, and the theme of autocephaly — that is, the self-government of an individual church — remained one of the most acute in the Orthodox world.
Year of birth and final weeks
Sources differ on Yakunin's date of birth: 1934 and 1936 are both cited. The death notice gives his 81st year, and it was this wording that became the basis for most publications about his passing. The discrepancy concerns not only the formal biography but also the understanding of how early he began his path in the church milieu and how long his public activity continued.
Yakunin's final weeks were spent in hospital. Activists who knew him through human rights work collected funds for his recovery, expecting that after coming out of the coma he would be able to undergo full rehabilitation. These efforts proved insufficient: the priest's condition did not improve enough to restore his ability to return to his former life. He passed away in Moscow, and with him ended the story of one of the most prominent priests who campaigned for the rights of believers in Soviet and post-Soviet times.
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