He was an overwhelming personality. Light, self-ironic humor. Disarming friendliness and joy in life. The wrath of a Biblical Patriarch. I have never felt so strongly the light of real holiness from any person. B ut behind this I sensed a vast, sleeping power and watchfulness — something hardly ever used, which would spring to life, it seemed, at any moment he chose. He gave the impression that he could choose to be whatever he wanted — that he was the master of his feelings, not their slave. This in itself was frightening. No law binds such a man, only his will. And how do you know where his will may lead him? It made him seem secretive, impersonal, an unknown quality. This was an absolutist of another caliber altogether.

He spoke to peasants as confidently as to intellectuals. Indeed, there was much of the peasant in him, slow, massive, like a locomotive — hard to get rolling, harder to stop. In discussions he would react slowly, think things through, let us have our say, then make some devastating remark which brought all objections to the ground. He listened when others spoke, but if their interests were irrelevant to him, he would continue where he left off when they finished. He seemed rooted in the soil, utterly concrete. This gave him a joy in simple tasks: his house, his church, his work. For he was also an animist, and all his work bore the improvised, pragmatic stamp of the autodidact. He sat for hours telling jokes, some (one might think) quite unfitting for a priest. Though he affirmed that he loved life, I felt somehow that he did not take his own life very seriously, that he could snap his fingers and leave it if need be, without looking back. And beneath it all — this cunning, almost evil strength. As a peasant watching the weather, asking himself "what will it do this time?", Peter [Fr. Paul] seemed to watch society and people.

Narrow wrinkles spread from the corners of his eyes, stretching out straight, then falling abruptly. They were there when he laughed, when he concentrated, squinting, and (I sensed) when in great pain. The eyes were full of pain, in spite of their gaiety. He was peasant, patriarch and martyr — an elemental force of authority and autonomy — absolutist and animist — totally opposed to all that is subjective.

Speaking about the recent drive among members of the Russian government to become fervent Orthodox worshippers, Adelgeim said that they were “all just pagans,” referring to head of Russian Railways Vladimir Yakunin using the same term.

“They have nothing to do with Christianity. They can only hold a candle. A candlestick is just a candlestick. … They became so devout because they are all just one group of people, and the Russian Orthodox church has turned to the KGB’s ideology department,” he told Dozhd TV last October.