VASILY THE BAREFOOT / ENDEL THE BUMBLEHAT
Sources agree that Vasily Tkachenko was led to the way of wandering by the Archimandrite of the Trinity Monastery of St. Jonas, Jonah of Kiev [ru], canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church. Among Vasily's close friends were the famous adventurer and schemer Hieromonk Iliodor, the revered seer Matrona of Petersburg, and other famous people of his time.
During his lifetime, two booklets devoted to his biography were published. Photographs of the wanderer's appearance were taken by the great photographers of the time, among them Karl Bulla and the staff of the photographic studio K.E. Gan and K, working on the order of the Imperial Family. At the beginning of the 21st century, a book was published and several articles about the life and views of Vasily Barefoot appeared.
After the February Revolution of 1917
In March 1917, the newspaper Petrogradsky Listok informed its readers that on March 16, the staff of Vasya the Barefoot, which the newspaper called as a full, was handed over to the Extraordinary Investigative Commission "under the State Duma".[Notes 4][59] It was reported that the iron staff weighed about a pood. There was an inscription engraved on it. The Investigative Commission decided to take the staff away so that Vasya the Barefoot "could not use it for the purposes of agitation among the dark masses".[60] The little note in the newspaper made a great impression on the comrade chairman of the St. Petersburg Religious-Philosophical Society, Sergei Kablukov, who carefully cut out the note and pasted it into his diary.[61][Notes 5][62]
Vasily Tkachenko was last seen in Petrograd in 1918. It is known that he was arrested for some time for wearing a badge of the Union of the Russian People on his chest, which he did not remove even after the victory of the Revolution.[63] Another version of his arrest was recounted by the writer and memoirist Alexei Demidov in his memoirs about Maxim Gorky:[64]
Once again Alexei Demidov returned to the personality of Vasily Tkachenko in his novel "Whirlwind (1917)", first published in 1926 and subsequently reprinted four times. The wanderer was again portrayed by the writer under arrest. He stands in the middle of a chain of arrested people, barefoot, without a hat and in a cassock. In his hand, Vasily holds his iron cane and, as if paralyzed, looks silently at the people swarming around him.[65]
Documentary evidence about Vasily Barefoot was cut off in 1917. After that only oral and written reports in the memoirs of his contemporaries, written many years later, have survived. According to one of them, Vasiliy Tkachenko died of old age while working as a guard in the storehouse where the church built with his money was turned into. According to another, he died of starvation.[26][39][66] One of his relatives (who was still a child in the early 1930s), said:[67]
The surviving death certificate states that he died at his home on February 6, 1933, "of senility". Shortly after his death, the temple was bombed.[Notes 6][35][39][67]
Vasily Tkachenko was buried in the local cemetery of the village of Nadezhda. A gravestone with an almost illegible inscription has been preserved.[68][69]
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Vasily the Barefoot is mentioned in the 9th scene of the 4th act of Mikhail Bulgakov's play Batum. The action is set in Peterhof. The minister tells the tsar about the crime committed by Joseph Dzhugashvili in Tbilisi — he incited the workers to strike. Nicholas II, without listening to the minister's report, tells the story of how a stranger cured the minister of the Imperial Court of the Russian Empire Vladimir Fredericks during his stay at the glorification of St. Seraphim in Sarov. Fredericks began to get cramps in his leg. The doctors could not help him. Vasily ordered "ordinary bottle corks, cut into slices, like sausages, and threaded on a string. And this chain was to be put on his bare leg, after he had smeared saliva under his knee. Vladimir Borisovich walked barefoot for five minutes, and it was all over!"[84]
In later Soviet times, Vasily Barefoot was commonly referred to as one of the "numerous domestic and imported miracle workers, seers, soothsayers, and clichés", which included the occultist Papius, the praying mantis Daria Osipova, the wanderer Anthony, the soothsayer Grippa, the jesters Pasha Diveyevskaya and Mitya Kozelsky. It was believed that they "performed the function of the most trusted persons and advisors of Nicholas II and Alexandra Feodorovna" in the period after the expulsion of the Frenchman Philip and before the appearance of Grigory Rasputin at the court. Doctor of Philosophy Alexander Grigorenko, citing the testimony of Sergei Trufanov, claimed that the tsar had a rule: "First he listens to the 'elders' and the 'blessed', and then to the ministers".[85]
Sergey Bolshakov, a church historian and figure in the ecumenical movement, described his early childhood meeting with Vasily Tkachenko in his book On the Heights of the Spirit many decades later: "It was winter, in January, in a great frost, with the sun shining. I saw a tall, extraordinary figure moving toward us: an old man in a blue cassock, with his head uncovered, gray hair, bearded. In his hands he was holding an ebony staff with a crown on top. What amazed me most was that the old man was walking in the bitter cold, in the snow, barefoot — and his feet were not red, frozen, but pink, as if he were walking on a soft carpet. I was stunned..."[86]
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