Vitaly (Ustinov) - Biography

Biography

Rostislav Petrovich Ustinov was born to naval officer Peter Ustinov and Lydia Andreevna (née Stopchanskaya), daughter of the General of Police in the Caucasus. In 1920, during the Civil War in Russia, Rostislav Ustinov moved with his family to Crimea. There he enlisted into a cadet corps military school established by General Pyotr Wrangel. At the end of the year the corps, numbering 650 cadets, moved to Istanbul, and thence to Yugoslavia. In 1923, his mother recalled him to Istanbul, after which she moved to Paris and placed him in the French college of Saint Louis in the city of Le Маns. After completing his studies, Rostislav lived with mother in Cannes. In 1934, he was called to serve in the army and was enlisted in the Ninth Cuirassier (cavalry) Regiment. Having served up to the grade of foreman, he refused to continue military career as an officer, deciding to leave the world and to enter a monastery. Four years later, he arrived in the Monastery of Saint Job in Ladomirova in the Carpathian mountains (at the time, the territory of Czechoslovakia). In 1939, Rostislav Ustinov was professed a monk with the name of Vitaly, and received the Little Schema a year later.

The Second World War forced the monastic brotherhood to leave Ladomirova and to evacuate to Germany. Vitaly appeared in Berlin where, together with archimandrite Nafanail (L'vov), he engaged in wide missionary activity amongst the Russian refugees and prisoners of war. Nafanail and Vitaly then relocated to Hamburg where they concentrated on the work of preventing thousands of refugees from being compulsorily repatriated to the USSR. In Hamburg, hegumen Vitaly began active church life at Camp Fischbeck. In the barrack-type church, the daily circle of divine services were conducted. Simultaneously, Vitaly began a small monastic brotherhood, and established a printing house which began to print badly needed anthologies from the church service-books for all the camp churches of Germany. From 1947 to 1951, Vitaly was Prior of the London parish, where Metropolitan Anthony (Bloom) of Sourozh serially served in one church. However, not recognizing the soviet bishop as a true servant of God, bishop Vitaly called Antony "the servant of satan."