Victor Sokolov (Russian:Виктор Владимирович Соколов) (February 21, 1947 – March 12, 2006)[1] was aRussian-American formerdissident Sovietjournalist and anEastern Orthodoxpriest.
He wrote articles critical of the Soviet government that were clandestinely distributed throughout theSoviet Union and abroad.
After moving to theUnited States in 1975, he was stripped of his Sovietcitizenship by anukase of thePresidium of the Supreme Soviet on September 7, 1976, for "activities discrediting the rank of a Soviet citizen", becoming only the fifth person around that time to be so penalized, among themAleksandr Solzhenitsyn. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1984.
Born inTver (at the time named Kalinin), Sokolov served his obligatory stint in theSoviet Army before graduating from theMoscow Literary Institute and working as prose writer and editor for a monthly literary magazine. He became involved as a dissident in 1968 when he copied out his firstsamizdat, an appeal from five Soviet intellectuals objecting to the invasion ofCzechoslovakia.
In the early 1970s, as a writer then unknown to theKGB, he was able to covertly report on the trial taking place inLeningrad of a dissident writer, which was distributed viasamizdat and eventually broadcast viaRadio Liberty andVoice of America.
As he became more active in the human rights movement, joining theMoscow branch ofAmnesty International, he came to the notice of the authorities who kept a close eye on his activities.
Sokolov was baptized into theRussian Orthodox Church in 1975, for the most part as a political statement. He married U.S. citizen Barbara Wrahtz, then employed by the U.S.Embassy, in a church service that same year, but hervisa expired in August.
She was forced to return without him to theUnited States, but he received permission from the Soviet government to join her in November.
In theUnited States, Sokolov accepted a post as an instructor in advancedRussian at theUniversity of California, Santa Cruz, where he continued to write for international anti-Soviet journals.
In November 1976 he wrote to the Sovietconsulate to begin the process of obtaining permission for his parents to visit. Instead of a reply to his application, he received a letter informing him of an action taken by the Supreme Soviet two months earlier to strip him of his citizenship.
At the time he remarked that this action was "rash" since it placed him on the same level as "...Solzhenitsyn, Vladimir Maximov,Valery Chalidze andZhores Medvedev", but that he would strive to merit this "high honor".
Over time, his church membership became more a matter of faith than politics. Sokolov was ordained to the priesthood in 1984, and in 1985 graduated fromSaint Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary with a Master of Divinity degree.
He served for a time inCanada at Holy Resurrection Church,Vancouver,British Columbia, where he also occupied a post asLecturer in Slavonic Studies at theUniversity of British Columbia, and then asrector at the Orthodox SS Peter and Paul Church inBuffalo, New York starting in 1990.
In 1991 he was assigned as rector of Holy Trinity Cathedral inSan Francisco, California, the oldest Orthodox Christianparish in thecontinental United States, where he was "well-received" by the congregation. He served with distinction, and in June 2000 was elevated to the rank ofarchpriest by Bishop Tikhon of San Francisco.
Late in 2004, Father Victor was diagnosed withsquamous cell carcinoma of thelungs, which had alreadymetastasized. He succumbed to the disease on March 12, 2006, the Sunday of Orthodoxy, at age 59.His wife Barbara succumbed to a similar disease two years later at age 56. (10/12/2008)
