Michel Sollogoub fell asleep in the Lord on Friday, 8th September 8 2023

Michel, “Micha”, devoted his life to the service of Christ, the Church and others. Born in 1945, Micha has been a full member of Action Chretienne des Etudiants Russes (ACER) since his early childhood, which was, in his own words, “the place where he discovered the very meaning of life”. Deeply marked by the remarkable figures of the Movement in the post-war period (Jean Morozov, Cyrille Eltchaninoff, Father Alexis Kniazeff, Father Alexander Schmemann and others), he committed himself, thanks to them, to the service of ACER by joining the Movement's council in 1965, at the age of 20. Within this council, of which he remained a member until his death, he assumed numerous responsibilities: youth section, student section, camp leader, general secretary, vice-president, president, and, since 2022, honorary president. In the world of ACER, Michel met the woman who would become his first wife, Catherine “Katia” Lopukhine (1947–1993), with whom he would have four children: Matthieu, Ivan, Marie and Marc.

 

This intense family life and this commitment to serving the Church were combined with a brilliant academic career. After having defended a doctoral thesis in economics at the Sorbonne, Micha became a professor first in Le Mans then in Orléans and finally at the Panthéon-Sorbonne University (Paris 1). He conducted research at the Sorbonne Economics Center on theoretical and practical questions of microeconomics, particularly on inequalities.

 

Although raised in a Russian emigration environment and deeply attached to Russian culture, Micha felt the need to live and bear witness to Orthodoxy in the context of Western Europe, in line with the aspirations of the Movement. In 1965, with other young people of his generation, he founded and ran the Dostoyevsky Centre, which welcomes Orthodox students of all origins to the Latin Quarter in Paris every lunchtime, around a meal and a prayer. The rich discussions that take place in the evening are an opportunity to meet the theologians and thinkers of this era. Friendship bonds were created, in particular, with Olivier Clément, Jean Tchékan, Nicolas Lossky. Subsequently, he participated in the co-ordination committee of Orthodox youth and organised with his friends the first congress of Orthodox Youth in Annecy in October 1971. This committee subsequently became the Orthodox Brotherhood in Western Europe. His commitment to dialogue and the meeting of Orthodox people of all origins continues within the executive committee of Syndesmos, World Federation of Orthodox Youth, which he joined as a representative of ACER, and of which he was vice-president and president from 1968 to 1980.

 

With other active members of ACER, he participated with his wife Catherine in the creation in 1984 of the French-speaking parish Saint-Jean-le-Théologen. In 1995, he played a leading role in the reflection which led the ACER General Assembly to adopt a new charter and a new name Action Chretienne des Etudiants Russes-Mouvement de Jeunesse Orthodoxe (ACER-MJO). He thus participated in the transformation of the Movement which no longer only welcomes the descendants of Russian emigration, but is open to all Orthodox wishing to deepen their ecclesial life.

 

At the same time, Micha developed, thanks to Perestroika, numerous contacts with Orthodox dissidents released from the camps in Russia. These contacts became easier and more direct with the fall of the USSR in 1991. Regularly invited to Russia to teach economics at the Moscow High School of Economics, Micha took advantage of these trips to discover the reality of post-Soviet times. He met actors of spiritual and intellectual renewal, launched various initiatives and participated in numerous conferences intended to transmit, in this contemporary Russia, the theological, spiritual and cultural heritage of emigration.

 

Faithful servant of the Church, he agreed to assume the office of secretary of the Diocesan Council of the Archdiocese of parishes of Russian tradition in Western Europe, then chaired by Monsignor Gabriel (de Vylder), from 2003 to 2013. In a period particularly complicated in the life of this ecclesial entity, Micha, faithful to the spirit of the founders of the Archdiocese, embodied the vision of an Orthodoxy in Western Europe rooted in ecclesial Tradition, conciliar, open and creative, free and independent of all political power, transcending nationalism.

 

In the last years of his life, Micha, with the support of his second wife Brigitte, committed himself to serving asylum seekers, taking responsibility for the Montgolfière association, founded by his friend Tatiana Morozov.

 

Micha left us on the day of the Nativity of the Mother of God, at the end of a long illness which had greatly weakened him physically but without ever affecting his luminous eyes.

 

 

(translation of an obituary posted on vicariatorthodoxe.fr)