E.N. Permit me then to ask you this question: “From where did you come?”

V.E. I grew up in a family, where first soviet conditions were not admitted thanks to the heroic character of my mother, and where second we were of the same family of the Pushkin scholar Eremin... They [the government]“saved” us earlier and they did not trouble us, but took care of us like prestigious individuals. I was used to perfect freedom at that period of time when, generally speaking, there was forced fear, and therefore to me it was easy for I felt myself special all the time, with a privileged, defended situation. And that, of course, was exceptional help from above.

But in general, in our family existed traditions of prayer; our roots were always Christian. For example, in the family was maintained the traditions of praying for the author of the army reforms during Tsar Alexander II, Count Dmitri Miliotin. Already for a long time there had not been any of our tracks in neither the army nor anywhere else, but the memory remained and the blessing remained. In other words, the kinder works [the works of Count Miliotin] before the Lord do not disappear. This idea was suggested to me from infancy. And so, when the Church journey began for me, my parents had much fear, and there were all kinds of possible mental struggles, but in the end of it all, they became reconciled with it, reconciled when then there was still no direct hope, and there was not any obvious instruction that soon every eternal situation would be subjected to abrupt and irreversible change.