Alexander Vygovsky’s Unformat

“I Have No Idea Who I Am…”

He was born in the Ukrainian city of Korosten, Zhytomyr region, in the family of Olga Petrovna and Grigory Petrovich Vygovsky.

My parents were ordinary engineers and thought I would also become an engineer in the future. Eventually, I entered the technical university. Considering the diploma as the most important thing for a person I became what my parents wanted to see me.

Coming from Vygovsky these quite ironic words sound like a mockery. After all, it is impossible to even imagine him as a technical specialist who had been working at one enterprise for all his life.

When I was ten I used to play football. When I turned twenty I got an engineering degree at the university. At my thirty I graduated from a theological seminary. At the age of forty, I was designer, architect, and builder. Today I am over my fifty and I have no idea who I am…

Lord sent this man to earth to make him experience much more: he worked as railroad car inspector, as furniture assembler in a factory, and as village priest. He struggled with alcohol addiction, was sheltered in other people’s houses, and had no money at all. But it turned out that all these ordeals were needed only to form today’s Vygovsky – philosopher, sculptor, poet, prose writer, and just an interesting and unordinary personality.

He Never Asked for Forgiveness

Sasha dreamed of becoming an outstanding football player: already at the age of ten he was playing for the city juniors’ team, and the coaches had great plans for him. But suddenly the football career had to be finished as his parents went to Surgut, to another Soviet building, and took their son with them.

What was the biggest shock for the eleven-year-old Ukrainian child in Siberia? It was Taiga and bums. They lived a few hundred meters from the builders’ town, and Sasha made friends with many homeless because they were really interesting people.

Generally, it’s easy to become a bum. Later, there was a period in my own life when I became one of them. As for my ‘prosperous’ Surgut classmates, there were also quite good guys among them. Only, unfortunately, few could live to their 45. Vodka and drugs have done their job. I’m sure it’s all because people living there are devoid of roots. They don’t have an anchor, which can help to hang on. Several million people came from everywhere in one place. Of course, nothing good could come of it.

However, Sasha lived in Siberia only four years, and then he went to Moscow. It all started when he was expelled from the Surgut secondary school. Although, for the rebellious high school student, probably this incident was only an occasion to do finally what he had been dreaming of for a long time.

In the USSR, secondary education was considered compulsory, and the case with the student expelled from school was an emergency. Even D students and malicious hooligans were expelled very rarely, but, nevertheless, the excellent student Alexander Vygovsky was expelled. And it was not even for that he started a verbal skirmish with the principal in public. To fix everything, he just had to apologize to the principal. But Sasha didn’t do it.

He didn’t manage to find a common language with teachers at all because he did not like to be directed by anyone even by his own parents. After the scandal at the school, Sasha told them that he was going to go to the capital. That’s right; he didn’t persuade them or ask for anything, he simply informed them. That’s because at the age of fifteen he was mature enough to make his own decisions.

In Moscow, he successfully passed the selection and was enrolled in a sports boarding school for the football department. The following year and a half in the guy’s life were full of daily training for 6 hours a day. The thing he had been dreaming of for so long had come true!

In the photo: Moscow, Luzhniki stadium. The 47th USSR Championship in 1984, the second league, the first zone. Alexander Vygovsky - third on the right in the first row.

But still Sasha didn’t graduate from the boarding school; only two months remained before graduation when he suffered a serious knee injury. The operation and treatment should have taken at least a year, which means that he won’t be able to catch up and at best be a mediocre athlete. He couldn’t agree to this.

Since there was no point in staying in the boarding school, Alexander left for Kiev, where he received a complete secondary education in some vocational school (he doesn’t even remember which one because it didn’t matter); and in the autumn he joined the Dneprodzerzhinsk Industrial Institute.

Staff Artist

Alexander hadn’t been studying at the university for long. Andropov’s time had come, and all the students were mobilized after the first year.

Many of us got to Afghanistan directly from the classes. Once on the military shipment, we immediately guessed that we would serve abroad, since we were given barren boots, and everyone who stayed in the Union wore tarpaulin ones. And we also knew: if we go from Dnepropetrovsk in the direction of Tashkent, this is Afghanistan. If we go in the direction of Kiev then we get to the country of the socialist camp. Our train headed to Kiev...

I served in Germany, in tank troops, although I never even saw tanks. Even when I was an ‘elephant’ (a soldier who had not served even a half a year - ed.), I agreed to draw a portrait of Georgian guy on his discharge album. When I was drawing, the master sergeant saw me. As a result, almost two years I served as a staff artist; I wrote slogans with nice lettering and painted everything I was ordered.

Then for the first time, I tried to work with a wood. On the territory of our military unit, there was a semi-backstreet workshop where the lads cast decorative gypsum figures. I have no idea how everything was organized from a commercial point of view; I didn’t care. The main thing is that one soldier in the workshop cut out pieces of wood. He showed me how to do it.

I immediately realized that this was the job for me. I didn’t succeed right away, but dexterity is only a matter of time. It is acquired over the years, as well as the most important skill – when you work no longer with your hands, but with your head.

In the picture: Alexander Vyhovsky - soldier of the emergency service of the Soviet Army. 1986 year

Icons and Commerce

After the army, Alexander did graduate from the institute, but he never worked by his profession. And it’s not because he didn’t want to. It was 1992. In Ukraine, plants stopped one by one, so the newly-made engineer was forced to return to Korosten, where a paralyzed mother was waiting for him (his father passed away when Sasha was studying in Moscow), and earned for living by casual earnings.

At that time, carving turned from a hobby into a basic work and allowed at least to make ends meet.

I found buyers in different ways, mainly through personal connections. I still had many friends in Germany, the Czech Republic, and friends in Ukraine also helped. The clients were mostly foreigners because the money I asked for my works was a trivial matter for a German or an American. And at that time I lived for $15-20 a month.

In the photo: Alexander Vyhovsky (right) at the exhibition of his icons. 1995

Road to God

Unemployment, lack of money, unsettled state... My mother died, and an incredible emptiness appeared in my soul. I had different thoughts in my head. By that time Vygovsky wasn’t even thirty, but he seriously believed that life was over and he must prepare for some other stay in the afterlife already.

And then the year of spiritual transformation came, after which he became a completely different person.

Lord called me to the priesthood under strange circumstances. This is a completely mystical story. Accident, some kind of insight.

One day I went to church and prayed that God would show me the way to go. After the service, Father asked me “Don’t you want to enter the seminary?”

I wasn’t going to be a priest, even in my thoughts I never had that, but at that moment for some reason, I answered “I do”, and a few days later I went to Zhitomir to find out where the seminary was.

I was the oldest of my course. As if I returned back to my youth after ten years of wandering and disorder.

But still I didn’t graduate the seminary; I didn’t complete my studies for one year. When a man is more than thirty, he is married, but lives in a dormitory and is still a student this is wrong. In fact, a seminary or a spiritual academy is just an education and not an obligatory one. The holy order is acquired by ordination, by means of which a person is ordained to the order. 

In the picture: The ordination of the priest Alexander Vygovsky. 2000 year

Short Priesthood

In 2000, 34-year-old Alexander Vygovsky became prior of Svyato-Preobrajenskaya Church in the village of Grosino, where he founded the first parish of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate in Korosten district. But the following year he took off the priest’s robe.

I just got bored. I lost the feeling of the unusual and unearthly importance of my mission, my own particularity, my chosenness. I realized that the being priest doesn’t bring anything to your development as a person. In all other spheres, you work for your status (artist, politician or businessman) for many years, and in the church, you receive it automatically, along with the holy orders, and you have the minimum that I had for sure.

Although for the sake of justice I must say that being a priest isn’t that simple. First, it’s a myth that priests earn a lot, at least rural ones. Often in their free of service time, they work on a building or somewhere else (and I think this is right).

Secondly, you are constantly in the public eye; the parishioners follow your every step. You don’t have the right to make a mistake, even on trifles. It’s exhausting. In addition, when faith turns into everyday life, you become really bored and monotonous. And most importantly, you’ll do what you’re doing right now until the end of your life. I just got tired of being a priest.

Perhaps, it is really so. But maybe he just found a universal excuse so as not to tell everyone the long story of his life. In fact, one of the reasons for leaving priestly dignity by Vygovsky was his divorce with his first wife.

Friend among Foes

The return to secular life, as unsettled as it was before entering the seminary, required some action. One day a friend, whom he met while being a student, invited Alexander to move to Belaya Tserkov. And Vygovsky agreed.

I had to live in different cities, but everywhere I felt not at home. You know this is a feeling when the hosts seem to be friendly, and their house is cozy and comfortable, but you don’t feel at home and you know that your home is better. Strangely enough, I felt that my home wasn’t even in Korosten, where I was born, but in Belaya Tserkov. In no other place did I feel so comfortable.

Here, in Belaya Tserkov, Alexander met his fate. Elena Andreevna, his wife, became not just a beloved woman. She is his main connoisseur and support both in creativity and life.

The period from 2002 to 2008 was the most fruitful in the life of Vygovsky as a sculptor. He materialized in his sculptures, filled with emotions and special messages, a continuous flow of ideas – daring, sometimes unexpected even for himself. The intimate thoughts were embodied in the created images; the artist carved from the wood his own memories and dreams, made and lost, meaningful and unreached.

Previously, I just didn’t have enough time for the carving. In the seminary, the whole day was scheduled. When I worked as a priest, I didn’t belong to myself either. A sculpture requires, first of all, a lot of free time. Any other business can be done in fragments; even books can be written with swoops for 30 minutes. Carving doesn’t work like this. Maybe someone can, but not me. First, you get into the right state, then you work for seven or eight hours, and after that you go off for another two hours, release the topic so you will be able just to fall asleep.

Unusual Journalist

Lord is a great prankster, and you never know in advance what he has got for you. When the crisis of 2008 came, previous work stopped, and Alexander decided to try his hand at journalism.

At that time I appealed to many editorial offices. I was rejected by all but one. The editor gave me the first task, saying ‘Try it. If you manage, we will have a talk.”

He coped and became not just a journalist-newsman; Alexander Vygovsky has ten books published. By the way, none of them was unambiguously accepted by the readers. Vygovsky jokes ‘Normal people don’t read this, and normal writers don’t write such things either.’

The task of the book is to cause emotions, arguments; it should make you talk about yourself. However, I don’t consider myself a writer or a poet and I’m not going to get any status in the literary field. I write simply because I like the process. And also because in some cases I can’t stay silent.

‘What gives you the greatest pleasure – drawing, creating sculptures or writing poetry, prose?’ Alexander was asked by his fellow journalists during the presentation of one of his latest books.

‘Perhaps I’ll disappoint you, but I get the greatest pleasure from... a cup of coffee and a pipe,’ he replied. As always it was ironically, boldly and mysteriously.