The Sealed Angel

The story's finale, where the Old Believers' community all of a sudden return to mainstream Orthodoxy, was criticized as being unnatural. Ten years later Leskov conceded that, while the story itself was mostly based on real facts, the end of it was made up. What happened in reality he revealed in Chapter 41 of The Pechersk Antics set of memoir sketches.[1]

As my story The Sealed Angel appeared in Katkov's The Russian Messenger, some periodicals, condescendingly giving me credit for having some talent, stressed the fact that such a story had indeed taken place – in the times when the Kiev bridge (the old one, obviously) was being constructed. The story, mind you, is that of an icon "sealed" by officials so as to be transferred to an Orthodox monastery, and of a group of Old Believers, those to whom it belonged, which retrieved the icon by replacing it with another, during the Easter Matins. This feat involved another one: a man crossed the river over stretched chain, in times of violent ice break-up. […] The setting of The Sealed Angel... is indeed reminiscent of Kiev, which can be explained by my being rather used to Kiev backdrops. But no Old Believer man has ever crossed Dnieper by chain with an icon. What did happen in reality – a stonemason from Kaluga – and chains indeed have been stretched already, - made it over Dnieper to the Chernigov bank during the Easter morning service, walking a chain like a tightrope. It was not, though, an icon that he'd made this venture for, but vodka which in those times sold much cheeper on the Chernigov side. With a barrel of vodka hung down his neck and armed with a pole for maintaining balance, this intrepid traveler indeed safely walked a chain over to Kiev side with his cargo which has been promptly consumed by his comrades, in celebration of the Easter. This brave expedition has indeed taken place and I used the fact in the story to highlight the desperate Russian prowess, but since the goal of the expedition had been different, The Seal Angel is, of course, fiction.[4][5]