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                                                                                COVER STORIES, Page 68

THE NEW RUSSIA: CULTURE

Triumph of the Spirit


Change has also meant challenge for these five Russians, who
are blazing new trails and making a difference in the lives
of people around them


    YEVGENI SLAVUTIN Director. "The whole world is about to
perish, and you sound like you want to drink tea!" shouts
director Yevgeni Slavutin, 44. He is taking two actresses
through the crucial scene in an existentialist drama, where a
chance encounter between a city woman and a peasant turns into a
test of strength that will decide the fate of the universe.
Viewers must believe, he says, that this morality play is "their
own story." Slavutin's Student Theater at Moscow State University
has dramatized the most tumultuous events of the Soviet demise
in the language of vaudeville sketches. His success in turning
the grit and grime into lyrical parables of universal meaning
has attracted a dedicated following. "This is a theater of
hope," he says, "not of dead ends."


     VLADIMIR IVANYUSHKIN Farmer. As the 43-year-old farmer
proudly surveys his freshpainted beehives and rabbit hutches,
architects are reviewing plans to restore the village church,
lately a warehouse. "It will cost me a lot," says Vladimir
Ivanyushkin, "but it's important. It's not just the farm we want
to restore here, it's the tradition." The village of Staroye
Leskovo, 180 miles from Moscow, was once the estate of an old
Russian noble family managed by Ivanyushkin's grandfather,
famous for its Thoroughbred racing horses. Seventy years of
Soviet control laid waste to the estate, and his grandsons are
determined to restore it, even though they still can only rent
the land. "We'll turn this place into a high-class modern
facility," vows Ivanyushkin. "Soon it will be our property for
keeps."


     VLADIMIR ZAKHAROV Church Elder. In the Church of St. Sergei
a seven-year-old boy tilts his head as a priest snips off a
lock of his hair and dips it in a cistern of holy water. The
boy and six others have just been baptized. Vladimir Zakharov
proudly watches the service. Though not a priest, Zakharov, 46,
is an elder at St. Sergei's who oversees the Russian Orthodox
Church's charity mission. Baptisms are now fairly common, but
the new parishioners do not come solely for spiritual
sustenance. Many are poor, and they look to St. Sergei's for
practical help from the Moscow patriarchate's new charity
programs, funded largely by churches abroad. "Charity brings the
church closer to the people," says Zakharov. "In return, the
people learn about God for the first time."


     ANATOLI BERESLOV Neurologist. The young boy's weary eyes
light up the moment Anatoli Bereslov, director of Moscow's first
cerebral palsy rehabilitation center, approaches the teenager's
bed. "You look well, my young one," he says. The compliment
motivates the boy to sit up, despite his pain. Bereslov, a
former professor of neurology, has inspired many such acts of
courage since he became director of the center, opened 21 months
ago. His respect for his patients and unpretentious attitude are
the best therapy. Doctors with such convictions are rare in
Russia's crumbling national health system. "When I first came
here, I decided I was not going to work for the sick, I was
going to serve them, just as I serve God," says the doctor, 54.
"I take their problems on as my personal pain."


     LEONID KESELMAN Sociologist. He knows what Russians are
thinking. At 48, Leonid Keselman is one of his country's premier
sociologists and experts on public opinion. In a land where
statistics were once state secrets, he is a mirror held up so
the Russian people can see themselves. "Information," he says,
savoring the word. "Before, the state manipulated people by
withholding it. They knew that a person with information cannot
be manipulated so easily." Today his surveys are published in
15 newspapers and broadcast nationwide. Despite the deepening
economic crisis in Russia, Keselman remains an optimist. Says
he: "I don't see a power strong enough to change the people's
desire for a better society." His surveys tell him that most
Russians agree.