About the book: 2003 / Conversations with the great elders were recorded for two centuries. The book begins with answers to questions from St. Paisius (Velichkovsky), and ends with conversations with the recently deceased elder Archpriest Nikolai Guryanov from the island of Zalita. Two hundred years, thirty-five ascetics, many monasteries remote from each other - and at the same time an amazing unity of teachings, high spiritual harmony in everything. Truly, with one mouth and one heart! The conversations of the great elders captured the enormous spiritual experience of the Russian people, their traditions and customs. Any of us will find here the answer to a pressing question, will receive advice on how to live, how to believe, how to act as an Orthodox Christian in this or that case. This is truly a priceless treasure. Conversations with the great Optina, Kiev-Pechersk, Radonezh, Pskov-Pechersk, Athos, Zosimov and Valaam elders form the core of the publication. You will read here conversations with Elder Moses, Archimandrite of the Bryansk White-Bank Hermitage, from which many famous ascetics emerged (including the founders of the Optina eldership), and little-known, never published in our time, conversations of St. Seraphim of Sarov, recorded by his cell attendant, and conversations with the holy righteous John of Kronstadt. The book also included a conversation with the great Valaam elder, abbot Schema-Archimandrite John (in the pre-war years he was the last abbot of our Trifonov Pechenga monastery).