Triumph of the Spirit

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 freshly painted 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.