4
The Nuns of Shamordino
in Solovki Prison
AND THE MIRACLE OF THEIR MANLINESS
Commemorated November 12
Upon him who labors—
God sheds mercy; but he who loves
acquires consolation.
Elder Ambrose of Optina
| I |
N THE SUMMER of 1929 there came to Solovki about thirty nuns.
Probably the majority of them were from the monastery of Shamordino, which
was near the renowned Optina Hermitage.
The nuns were not placed in the common women's quarters,
but were kept separately. When they began to be checked according to the list
and interrogated, they refused to give the so-called basic facts about themselves,
that is, to answer questions about their surnames, year and place of birth,
education, and so forth.
After shouts, threats and beatings they were placed in
solitary confinement, and were tortured by hunger, thirst, and deprivation
of sleep; that is, all the usual means of pressure were applied to them. But
the nuns remained unbending and even were bold enough—a fact very rare
in the concentration camp—to refuse any kind of forced labor.
After several days, I, together with Prof. Dr. Zhizhilenko
(who had been sent to Solovki because, while being the chief physician of
the Taganka prison in Moscow, he had secretly accepted monasticism and had
become a bishop with the name of Maxim) were called to the chief of the Sanitary
Division. We were confidentially ordered to make a medical examination of
the nuns with a hint as to the desirability of recognizing them unfit for
labor so as to have an official bias to free them from forced physical labor.
It was the first time in the history of Solovki that the
administration found itself in such a complicated situation. Usually in such
cases they acted very severely and cruelly. After a serious beating of those
who refused to work, they were sent to the punishment island of Anzersk, from
where no one ever returned alive.
Why these rebel nuns were not sent to Anzersk we could
not understand. We gave this question to the chief of the Sanitary Division
of the whole camp. He explained to us that the silent, restrained protest
of the nuns was not in the least like the protests with which the administration
was used to dealing. These latter protests were usually accompanied by a scene,
shouting and hooliganism. But here, there was silence, simplicity, humility
and an extraordinary meekness. "They are fanatical martyrs seeking sufferings,"
the head of the Sanitary Division explained. "They are some kind of psychic
cases, masochists, but one becomes inexpressibly sorry for them. I cannot
endure to see the humility and meekness with which they bear the pressure.
And it is not I only. Vladimir Yegorovich, the chief of the camp, also could
not bear this. He even quarreled with the chief of the Intelligence Division
and he wants somehow to soften and iron over this matter. If you find them
unsuitable for physical labor they will be left in peace."
When I went out to the barracks where the nuns were kept,
I saw extraordinarily sober women, peaceful and restrained, in old, worn-out,
and patched but clean monastic garments.
There were about 30 of them. Their age one could give as
an "eternal thirty" years, although undoubtedly there were those
both older and younger. In all faces there was something from the expression
of the Mother of God, "Joy of All Who Sorrow," and this sorrow was
so exalted and modest that totally involuntarily I was reminded of certain
verses of Tyuchev. Their meek appearance was of a spiritual beauty which could
not but evoke a feeling of deep contrition and awe.
"So as not to upset them, I'd better go out, Doctor,"
said the chief of the assignment who met me, who should have been present
as a representative of the medical committee. I remained alone with them.
"Good day, Matushki," I bowed down low to them.
In silence they replied to me with a deep bow to the waist.
"I am a physician. I've been sent to examine you."
"We are well. You don't need to examine us,"
several voices interrupted me.
"I am a believing Orthodox Christian and I am sitting
here in the concentration camp as a prisoner for church reasons."
"Glory be to God," several voices again replied
to me.
"Your disturbance is understandable to me," I
continued, "but I will not examine you. You only tell me what you have
to complain about and I will assign you to the category of those incapable
of labor."
"We are not complaining about anything. We are quite
healthy."
"But without a definition of the category of your
inability to work, they will send you to extraordinarily difficult labor."
"All the same, we will not work whether it be difficult
or easy labors."
"Why?" I asked in astonishment.
"Because we do not wish to work for the regime of
Antichrist."
"What are you saying?" I asked, upset. "After
all, here on Solovki there are many bishops and priests who have been sent
here for their confession. They all work, each one as he is able. Here, for
example, there is the bishop of Vyatka who works as a bookkeeper at the rope
factory, and in the lumber department many priests work. They weave nets.
On Fridays they work the whole 24 hours, day and night, so as to fulfill their
quota extra quickly and thus free for themselves a time for prayer in the
evening on Saturdays and on Sunday morning."
"But we are not going to work under compulsion for
the regime of Antichrist."
"Well then, without examination I will make some kind
of diagnosis for you and give the conclusion that you are not capable of hard
physical labor."
"No, you needn't do that. Forgive us, but we will
be obliged to say that this is not true. We are well. We can work, but we
do not wish to work for the regime of Antichrist and we shall not work even
though they might kill us for this."
"They will not kill you, but they will torture you
to death," I said in a quiet whisper, risking being overheard; I said
it with pain of heart.
"God will help to endure the tortures also,"
one of the nuns said, likewise quietly. Tears came to my eyes.
I bowed down to them in silence. I wished to bow down to
the ground and kiss their feet.
In a week the commandant of the Sanitary Division entered
the physician's office and, among other things, informed us, "We're all
worn out with these nuns, but now they have agreed to work. They sew and patch
up clothing for the central ward. Only they made as conditions that they should
all be together and be allowed to sing quietly some kind of songs while they
work. The chief of the camp has allowed it. There they are now, singing and
working."
The nuns were isolated to such an extent that even we,
the physicians of the Sanitary Division who enjoyed comparative freedom of
movement, and who had many ties and friends, for a long time were not able
to receive any kind of news about them. And only a month later we found out
how the last act of their tragedy had developed.
From one of the convoys that had come to Solovki, there
was brought a priest who turned out to be the spiritual father of some of
the nuns. And, although contact between them seemed, under the camp conditions,
to be completely impossible, the nuns in some way managed to ask directions
from their instructor.
The essence of their questions consisted of the following:
"We came to the camp for suffering and here we are doing fine. We are
together; we sing prayers; the work is pleasing to us; have we acted rightly
that we agreed to work under the conditions of the regime of Antichrist? Should
we not renounce even this work?"
The spiritual father replied with an uncategorical prohibition
of the work.
And then the nuns refused every kind of work. The administration
found out who was guilty for this. The priest was shot. But when the nuns
were informed about this, they said, "Now no one is able to free us from
this prohibition."
The nuns soon became separated and one by one were taken
away somewhere.
Despite all our attempts we were not able to find out any
more news about them. They disappeared without any trace.
Years later from the mouth of an American prisoner who was in a slave-labor camp, comes the following supplementary information shedding light on the spiritual outcome of the ascetic firmness of such nuns.
THE MIRACLE OF THE NUNS
| W |
HEN THE CONVERSATIONS turned to religion, as they soon did,
I heard of an extraordinary happening, a miracle, which had just occurred
in Vorkuta. God indeed was there with us! And the eagerness with which the
men told me this story left no doubt as to the fact that the Iron Curtain
could not keep God out of a country or out of the minds and hearts of its
people.
It was in November of that year, 1950, just after our own
arrival, that three nuns reached the camp under the sentences of hard labor.
The many thousand women prisoners at Vorkuta did not work in the mines but
performed other rugged work, and the nuns were assigned to a plant which made
bricks for construction work throughout the whole Arctic area of Russia.
When the nuns were first taken to the brick factory, they
told the foreman that they regarded doing any work for the Communist regime
as working for the Devil and, since they were the servants of God and not
of Satan, they did not propose to bow to the orders of the foreman despite
any threats he might make.
Stripped of their religious garb, the nuns' faith was their
armor. They were ready to face anything and everything to keep their vow and
they did face their punishment, a living testimony of great courage. They
were put on punishment rations, consisting of black bread and rancid soup,
day after day. But each morning when they were ordered to go out to the brick
factory, into the clay pits, or to any other back-breaking assignment, they
refused. This refusal meant, of course, that they were destined to go through
worse ordeals. Angered by their obstinacy and fearing the effect upon the
other slave laborers, they commandant ordered that they be placed in strait-jackets.
Their hands were tied in back of them and then the rope with which their wrists
were bound was passed down around their ankles and drawn up tight. In this
manner, their feet were pulled up behind them and their shoulders wrenched
backward and downward into a position of excruciating pain.
The nuns writhed in agony but not a sound of protest escaped
them. And when the commandant ordered water poured over them so that the cotton
material in the straitjackets would shrink, he expected them to scream from
their pressure on their tortured bodies, but all that happened was that they
moaned softly and lapsed into unconsciousness. Their bonds were then loosed
and they were revived; in due course they were trussed up again, and once
more the blessed relief of unconsciousness swept over them. They were kept
in this state for more than two hours, but the guards did not dare let the
torture go on any longer, for their circulation was being cut off and the
women were near death. The Communist regime wanted slaves, not skeletons.
They did not transport people all the way to Vorkuta in order to kill them.
The Soviet government wanted coal mined. Slave laborers were expendable, of
course, but only after years of labor had been dragged out of them. Thus the
commandant's aim was to torture these nuns until they agreed to work.
Finally, however, the commandant decided that he was through
trying. The nuns were either going to work or he was going to have to kill
them in the attempt. He directed that they again be assigned to the outdoor
work detail and, if they still refused, that they be taken up to a hummock
in the bitter wind of the early Arctic winter, and left to stand there immobile
all day long to watch the other women work. They were treated to this torture,
too. When the pale light of the short Arctic day at last dawned, they were
seen kneeling there and the guards went over expecting to find them freezing,
but they seemed relaxed and warm.
At this, the commandant ordered that their gloves and caps
be removed so that they would be exposed to the full fury of the wind. All
through the eight-hour working day they knelt on that windy hilltop in prayer.
Below them, the women who were chipping mud for the brick ovens were suffering
intensely from the cold. Many complained that their feet were freezing despite
the supposedly warm boots they wore. When in the evening other guards went
to the hill to get the nuns and bring them back to the barracks, they expected
to find them with frostbitten ears, hands, and limbs. But they did not appear
to have suffered any injury at all. Again the next day they knelt for eight
hours in the wind, wearing neither hats nor gloves in temperatures far below
zero. That night they still had not suffered any serious frostbite and were
still resolute in their refusal to work. Yet a third day they were taken out
and this time their scarves too were taken away from them.
By this time, news of what was happening had spread throughout
all the camps in the Vorkuta region. When at the end of the third day, a day
far colder than any we had yet experienced that winter season, the bareheaded
nuns were brought in still without the slightest trace of frostbite, everyone
murmured that indeed God had brought a miracle to pass. There was no other
topic of conversation in the whole of Vorkuta. Even hardened MVD men from
other compounds found excuses to come by the brick factory and take a furtive
look at the three figures on the hill. The women working in the pits down
below crossed themselves and nervously mumbled prayers. Even the commandant
was sorely disturbed. If not a religious man, he was at the least a somewhat
superstitious one and he knew well enough when he was witnessing the hand
of a Power that was not of this earth!
By the fourth day, the guards themselves were afraid of
the unearthly power which these women seemed to possess, and they flatly refused
to touch them or have anything more to do with them. The commandant himself
was afraid to go and order them out into the hill. And so they were not disturbed
in their players, and were taken off punishment rations. When I left Vorkuta
four years later, those nuns were still at the brick factory compound and
none of them had done a day's work productive for the Communist regime. They
were guarded with awe and respect. The guards were under instructions not
to touch them or disturb them. They were preparing their own food and even
making their own clothes. Their devotions were carried on in their own way
and they seemed at peace and contented. Though prisoners, they were spiritually
free. No one in the Soviet Union had such freedom of worship as they.
What their example did to instill religious faith in thousands
of prisoners and guards there at Vorkuta, I cannot being to describe. Later
on, when I had the opportunity as a locker-room attendant for the MVD men
to talk with some of the more hardened Russian Communists about religion,
not one failed to mention the Miracle of the Nuns. (John Noble: I Found God
in Soviet Russia, Zondervan, Mich. 1971, pp. 112-117).
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