Fr. David Means was ordained in the archdiocese of St. Louis-but his ministry has carried him all the way to Magadan, a small, isolated city in eastern Siberia that was once the center of a major Soviet slave-labor camp. Means, who returned home to Missouri this month to renew his visa and visit his parents, came to Saint Louis University last Thursday morning to speak to the students of a course in Soviet and post-Soviet politics taught by Ellen Carnahan, Ph.D. “Father Means-was able to describe to students how ordinary people far from the centers of power have experienced some of the recent political and economic changes in Russia,” said Carnahan. “We discuss these changes in class, but it is sometimes hard for students to imagine what it is like to live through them.” Means is associate pastor of the Church of the Nativity in Magadan, alongside Fr. Michael Shields, whom Means met while working in Anchorage, Alaska. Anchorage is a four-hour flight away from the port city of Magadan, where it is estimated that more than a million people died in the slave-labor camp established under the brutal regime of Joseph Stalin. Means said that it is hard to say how many people were sent to work in Magadan, but it could be anywhere from two to seven million. “Every family knows somebody who had been arrested [and sent to the camp],” Means said. Means said that the people of Russia are “still trying to rebuild,” 15 years after the fall of communism. Magadan suffers from what Means referred to as a “brain drain,” meaning that educated people leave Magadan for better places. The city is populated largely by invalids and the elderly, whose pensions can be as low as $50 per month. Shipping to Magadan is costly, Means explained, because it can only be reached by air or water. As a result, food is expensive; sometimes, vodka is cheaper than bread. “The thing we experience most of all [in Magadan] is broken families,” Means said, which is due in part to the fact that every family suffers from the divisive forces of alcoholism. Citizens have also been discouraged from marrying. Under the atheistic Stalin, they had no sacrament to look to, and “the attitude of marriage has been lost,” Means said. The fact that abortion is encouraged also contributes to this problem. Abortion is the only readily available form of birth control in the region, Means said. Means’ parish offers a “Project Rachel” retreat for women who have had abortions, to help them recognize what they have done and give them a chance to pray for their children. The women light candles to represent each unborn child. At one retreat, six women were present, and 49 candles were lighted; on average, women in Magadan have five abortions during their lifetime, Means said. Means discussed the role of the Catholic Church in contemporary Russia, explaining that Stalin “did a very good job of getting rid of religion” in the former Soviet Union. Some people truly forgot about religion, and some are afraid to talk about it, he said. To illustrate, Means said that many Russians use the phrase “Christ is Risen” as a spring greeting-but they don’t know who Christ is. “They thought it was just a phrase you say in the springtime,” Means said. Since Means arrived in Magadan in 1996, the Catholic Parish of the Nativity has grown to include about 200 parishioners, drawing about 80 people to church each Sunday. Catholics remain a minority in Russia, with the Orthodox Church claiming about 70 percent of the population. The parish receives funding from the United States, with many contributions coming from Anchorage. These contributions allowed them to build a church, and currently enables them to offer programming for the citizens of Magadan, some of whom are former prisoners of the slave-labor camps. “We’ve got problems now, but we don’t want to go back to communism,” Means said of the general sentiment in Magadan. The people are “struggling to make their homeland a great place again,” and the church is doing everything it can to help.