He gained great popularity among his contemporaries through his charitable practice, his campaign against alcoholism and profanity, and the construction of a temple in his native village, for which he raised funds during his travels throughout the Russian Empire.

Sources agree that Vasily Tkachenko was led to the way of wandering by the Archimandrite of the Trinity Monastery of St. Jonas, Jonah of Kiev [ru], canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church.

[13][10] The famous Stavropol local historian German Belikov claimed that the miraculous recovery from a serious illness affected the psyche of the impressionable young man, so on the road to Moscow he "walked barefoot and almost undressed", "testing and tempering his body and spirit".

[17][22][23][7] Tkachenko first wanted to take monasticism, and for some time performed obedience, was a keleinik (assistant to the elderly monks), tailor and coachman at the monastery, but illness and the desire to raise money to build a church in his native village forced him to abandon this plan.

[17][18][23] Another version was presented by the modern historian of the Orthodox Church Anatoly Medvedev, based on the life biography of the wanderer, published in 1903 in the Generalov printing house in St. Petersburg: Tkachenko was hired as a drover by the merchant Myasnyankin, but before reaching Moscow he took a settlement and went to Kyiv.

After meeting Archimandrite Yonah, Vasily Tkachenko did not take the path of wandering, but joined the Eger regiment of life guards, but due to an impending illness he was first hospitalized and then discharged from the reserve.

[36][37] The temple was located on a hill in front of the crossroads leading to the city, with five domes and two side chapels: in honor of St. Seraphim of Sarov and St. Alexis of Moscow.

[11][46] Alexander Panin, deputy chairman of the Moscow regional branch of the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society, chairman of the board of the Fund Revival of Cultural Heritage, member of the Union of Local Historians of Russia, wrote that "the wanderer was perceived as a kind of connection between the people and its vast expanses, where lived, ascended, preached and stayed with their holy relics the greatest benefactors and saints".

All the detainees were lying on the ground, and Vasya, barefoot, with a long, broad gray beard, was standing in the middle of them, holding a staff with a silver cross on it.

On the postcard was photographed disorderly company of gypsies with Lokhtina at the head, where were drunk Grigori Rasputin and Vasya the Barefoot, with the same stick — with a silver cross on it.Once again Alexei Demidov returned to the personality of Vasily Tkachenko in his novel "Whirlwind (1917)", first published in 1926 and subsequently reprinted four times.

And in the morning the nuns who lived in our village came running to us and told us that they had found Grandpa Vasily in the church, on his knees and already lifeless.The surviving death certificate states that he died at his home on February 6, 1933, "of senility".

Barefoot, he walks silently forward, stopping in the middle of the office, looking at you with his large, gray, penetrating eyes, and exclaims: "Christ is risen".

In the cassock were sewn two huge pockets in the form of sacks, filled with pamphlets and magazines of spiritual content, sheets with portraits and engravings of churches, weighing at least two poods.

This morning I was riding in the Shake, an omnibus that runs along Nevsky, and suddenly I saw a stranger, Vasily, get on and stand on the platform; again, of course, he was without a hat and barefoot, in a dark blue robe; everyone looked at him with curiosity.

The pockets of this holy man were bulging with pamphlets, his own hagiographies; he hands them out to those who want to read them, and if they give him money for them, he immediately drops it into a cup kept behind his sinus.

Not long ago he was sued by the world for a scandal and a fight: the usher in the Kazan Cathedral did not let him in with a cane, and he took offense and said: "Emperor Alexander III allowed me to go everywhere with this staff, and you do not let me in?"

A scuffle ensued, and the beaten saint was fined.The head of the police department in 1912-1914 Stepan Beletsky in the testimony of the Extraordinary Investigative Commission of the Provisional Government attributed Vasily Barefoot to the world of fools ("in the spirit of Mitya Kozelsky [ru]"), which Grigory Rasputin revolved around.

[78] Beletsky himself in his memoirs created a vivid image of Vasily ("the elder always stood in a monk's habit, with the badge of the Union of the Russian People, without a hat and with a lamenting staff on the porch of the Kazan cathedral, collecting alms for the construction of the temple, while distributing cards with his picture in full height"), but extremely low assessed the moral qualities of the wanderer and emphasized his closeness to Rasputin.

Beletsky reported that he had a long correspondence with the Archbishop of Stavropol, "who exposed his [Tkachenko's] life and self-interest and demanded that his book be taken away for fees, the removal of monastic vestments, and transportation to his homeland.

[6] The memoirist and journalist, former commissar of the Provisional Government, Alexander Voznesensky, believed that Vassily the Barefoot played the same role under the imperial family as Mitya Kozelsky and Grigory Rasputin did after him.

It was believed that they "performed the function of the most trusted persons and advisors of Nicholas II and Alexandra Feodorovna" in the period after the expulsion of the Frenchman Philip and before the appearance of Grigory Rasputin at the court.

[85] Sergey Bolshakov, a church historian and figure in the ecumenical movement, described his early childhood meeting with Vasily Tkachenko in his book On the Heights of the Spirit many decades later: "It was winter, in January, in a great frost, with the sun shining.

I was stunned..."[86] After a long period of neglect, the St. Petersburg historian of the Orthodox Church Anatoly Medvedev drew serious attention to the personality of Vasily the Barefoot.

[87][33] In 2011 the famous local historian, candidate of natural sciences, chief researcher of the Stavropol museum of local history named after G. N. Prozritelev and G. K. Prave German Belikov in co-authorship with the doctor of chemical sciences Boris Sinelnikov published the book Temple necklace of the North Caucasian dioceses, in it a separate chapter is devoted to the biography of Vasily the Barefoot and the history of his creation of the temple in the village of Nadezhda.

From Blessed Xenia of St. Petersburg to Lyubushka Susaninskaya (compiled by Marina Danilushkina, curator of the Archives of the Holy Synod in the RGIA fonds), which collected 24 biographies of the most famous fools of the city for three centuries.

[92] Doctor of historical sciences Nikolai Yakovlev believes that in the period of Grigory Rasputin's maximum influence, the role of other "mystical friends" of the Imperial family decreased sharply.

"In the high society circles of the capital a vacuum formed with the murder of Rasputin, trying to fill — again muttering madly "Vasya the Barefoot", — wrote Yakovlev.

[93] The same idea was expressed by the Doctor of Historical Sciences Sergey Firsov, a specialist in the problem of the relationship between the Russian Orthodox Church and state power in the 20th century, in the book "Nicholas II: Prisoner of Autocracy".

[31][97] The photo studio K. E. von Gan and K, working since 1891 by order of the Imperial Family and located in Tsarskoe Selo, Shirokaya Street, in the house of Bernasconi, made the photograph The man of God Vasily Barefoot among the clergy of the Sarov Monastery (July 17–20, 1903).

[101] The action of the main part of the movie takes place in 1991, when three boys climb the mountain Budarka (near the lake Vshivoye near the village Demino) to fly a kite.