On August 16 we honored the memory of Mother Maria (Gorbatova), an ascetic of the twentieth century, who in the 1930s and the 1950s lived in Sergiev Posad near the Holy Trinity-St. Sergius Lavra and set up a secret monastic community there, where very many people received spiritual guidance and support.
Schemanun Maria (Gorbatova)
In an environment of anti-religious repression Mother Maria spoke little about her life before coming to Sergiev Posad and about the people who had surrounded her, so information about this period of her life is extremely scarce and sometimes somewhat contradictory. She could change names in her stories in order to protect people close to her.
The ascetic was born in the 1860s or in the 1870s (according to some sources, in 1879). We can get the primary information about her life from reminiscences of Sergei Iosifovich Fudel (1900–1977), an Orthodox theologian, philosopher and spiritual writer, who was repeatedly repressed for political reasons and visited the eldress after one of his exiles.
“Mother Maria joined a convent at the age of sixteen,” he wrote. “Her father was a rich merchant, but she did not remember her mother. She had a very kind and pious nanny. One day her father decided that it was time to marry her off. A day was appointed when a matchmaker and a suitor would come and there would be a bride-show, or ‘smotriny’.1 On that day she was sad and not thinking about marriage. She was supposed to wear some special formal dress made of red satin. In this dress the maiden was sitting alone in the large hall with two rows of windows facing each other, waiting for the guests and the suitor. The guests were late, and she, with her hands on the table and her head on her hands, fell asleep. Suddenly she saw the double doors open, and a tall Lady enter the room. She was in such a shining robe that the girl got scared. The Lady walked straight up to the girl, took her left hand and wound a prayer rope around it three times with the words: ‘In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.’ The girl woke up and rushed to her nanny to tell her about the vision. The nanny immediately said firmly, ‘No suitors! Let’s go upstairs to our room.’ There she ordered a handkerchief to be tied around the girl’s cheek, and then she went to her father and announced that ‘the girl has a toothache.’ The bride-show was canceled, and soon her father, terrified by the vision, allowed her to go to the convent.”
Nun Dosithea (Verzhblovskaya) It is known that Mother Maria formerly had ties with Saratov. According to the reminiscences of Nun Dosithea (Verzhblovskaya), who was in her secret community, the eldress had previously struggled at the Convent of the Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God in the town of Volsk in the Saratov region (south of Russia) and was even its abbess. And although her name was not included in the lists of the nuns of 1925 and 1929, and no information about it has been preserved in the convent itself, the details given by Nun Dosithea indicate that this may indeed be true, and today the Convent of the Vladimir Icon in Volsk venerates Mother Maria as an ascetic who instructed the sisters until the convent was closed in the 1920s.
Archpriest Igor Maltsev, who knew her very well and lived in the same house with her for some time, testified that between the 1910s and 1936 her father-confessor was the Vicar of the Saratov Diocese, Bishop Nikolai (Parfenov) of Atkarsk, who, shortly before his last arrest and death in prison, blessed Mother Maria to provide spiritual guidance to his flock and to perform the ascetic labor of feigned “foolishness for Christ” which she did till the end of her life. The schemanun was also a spiritual daughter of Archpriest Konstantin Solovyov, who played a significant role in the organization of Church life in Saratov in the early and mid-twentieth century.
Bishop Nikolai (Parfenov) According to A.V. Rufimsky, whose relatives and spiritual mentors were instructed by Schemanun Maria, she can be identified with Nun Xenia (born Ulyana Yakovlevna Bagaeva (Gorbatova)), many facts of whose biography strikingly coincide with the facts of Mother Maria’s life. Like her, Ulyana Yakovlevna came from the Saratov province, was a spiritual daughter of Fr. Konstantin Solovyov and belonged to a group of followers of Bishop Nikolai (Parfenov), whom he referred to as the “desert Church”. She was a parishioner of the Holy Ascension Church (also known as St. Metrophanes’ Church) in Saratov and received the monastic tonsure at the blessing of Archbishop Thaddeus (Uspensky; a hieromartyr) in 1928. Her photo from Fr. Konstantin’s investigation case was kept by A. V. Rufimsky. On top of it there was a pencil inscription: “Seized from Priest Solovyov”, and on the reverse side there was the following text received the tonsure the fifth week of Lent on March 16/29, 1928. Born Ulyana Yakovlevna Bagaeva (Gorbatova). A widow since 1914, she came from a peasant family of the village of Krasnovidovka, Pereezd volost, Atkarsk uezd, Saratov province. She was born in December 1863. She was tonsured secretly with the blessing of His Eminence Thaddeus [(Uspensky)], Archbishop of Saratov, by Hieromonk Panteleimon in his cell. Nun Agnia (Nartsissova) was her sponsor during the tonsure. Since 1918, a spiritual daughter of Archpriest Konstantin Solovyov from St. Metrophanes’ Church in Saratov; since 1915, she has lived and served the Lord with V. P. and M. Iv. Kuznetsov as a nanny for their children and a cook in their house. In 1903, on the fortieth day after the uncovering of the holy relics of the Venerable Seraphim, the Wonderworker of Sarov, she visited Sarov Monastery; and in 1904, with the blessing of the elder Schemamonk Vasily (Anatoly), she visited the monastery again and became his zealous disciple. For a long time she was a novice of Eldress Iu...na, who lived with the blessing and according to the precepts of Elder Anatoly in her cell in the hamlet of Rozhkov Kondrashov, one and a half versts away from the village of Bor.”
Archpriest Konstantin Solovyov During the interrogation, Fr. Konstantin was asked: “It is known to the investigation that together with the former Bishop Nikolai Parfenov and Bishop Thaddeus, you took an active part in performing a secret tonsure of Gorbatova. Is that true?” The priest replied: “Indeed, in 1928 I took part in conducting a secret monastic tonsure together with Bishop Thaddeus of Gorbatova Ulyana Yakovlevna.”
Besides, A. V. Rufimsky’s mother told her son that she had known Schema-Abbess Maria since early childhood, since the time when before becoming a nun she had been a parishioner of St. Metrophanes’ Church and a spiritual daughter of Fr. Konstantin Solovyov:
“She was born in a village, was taken in by different people and was always in need,” she recalled. “She often lived in our family for a long time at Fr. Konstantin’s request. Since Father had Iranian citizenship and a Persian passport with the name Agha Baba Mamed Kuli Oglu, a native of Ardabil, the NKVD did not touch our family until the mid-1930s. Then they suggested that he either leave for his homeland without his family or stay, becoming a citizen of the USSR. He chose the latter.”
The coincidences are striking—only the fact of her widowhood does not match with the story of S. I. Fudel. However, it is not known for certain who exactly told him this story—perhaps it was not Eldress Maria herself, but one of her disciples. In any case, it is highly likely that Nun Xenia can be identified with Schema-Abbess Maria, and if this is indeed the case, then this fact sheds light on the circumstances of her life before she moved to Sergiev Posad.
The house in which the convent headed by Mother Maria was located. Sergiev Posad, 28 Kustarnaya Street. Photo by S. Bessmertny
The history of Schemanun Maria’s community in Sergiev Posad began in 1938. Archpriest Igor Maltsev testified that it was Vladyka Nicholas who bought the house on Kustarnaya Street, where Eldress Maria founded a secret monastic community.
“The house in Zagorsk2 (28 Kustarnaya Street) was bought by Bishop Nikolai and legally registered to the Maltsev family,” he wrote. “With his blessing one half of it was occupied by Maltsev, and the other half became home to one of his spiritual daughters from Saratov, Schema-Abbess Maria with her Novice Nun Arsenia.”
Archpriest Igor’s cousin A. B. Vetvitsky recalled:
“Our parents would tell us children that Schema-Abbess Maria was our immediate relative, and they passed her off as our father’s aunt, ‘Granny Fenya’. The house was first put in order, fenced off to hide it from prying eyes, and we began to live as one big, closely-knit family—to the point that we had a common table… The house was small, but it was nice, cozy and mysterious. There was Mother Maria’s coffin in the attic. There was a homemade radio set in the basement that we used to listen to reports from the front. In ‘Granny Fenya’s’ half we would read the entire daily liturgical cycle (except for the Liturgy) and the monastic rule every day. Mother Maria lived under the surname and with the passport of the reposed wife of the shoemaker Sarychev… The left window of Mother Maria’s cell along the façade of the house was always curtained off. As long as I can remember, she hardly ever left her cell...”
Nun Dosithea (Verzhblovskaya) used to say that the eldress tried not to do anything without the blessing of her elder, Fr. Jonah, whom she called “Papa”, speaking about him very seldom, always lowering her voice, as if out of fear that someone might be overhearing. According to her stories, he was hiding somewhere near the Volga, in an underground cell in a small village.
“It was a strange and amazing story,” Nun Dosithea recounted. “Of the few words that Schema-Abbess Maria said I can only state that Fr. Jonah was a priest. I don’t even know if he was an archimandrite or just a hieromonk. In any case, he had been her spiritual father for many years, even before the Revolution, and, apparently, the spiritual mentor of her convent.”
Schema-Abbess Maria In his paper dedicated to the life of Mother Maria, the hagiographer and historian Ilya Basin cites the memories of one of the last sisters of her community. Speaking about the life of Elder Jonah, she noted that she herself would never have believed that if she had not seen with her own eyes his secret refuge on the banks of the Volga. Perhaps these were underground passages that in ancient times were dug by robbers along the Volga banks and which later became a haven for persecuted Christians.
It can be assumed that “Jonah” was a false name that Mother Maria had invented in order to protect her elder from punishment by the godless authorities. However, it is known that she did receive letters from a certain elder with instructions on what she ought to do in this or that situation. She did nothing without his blessing and regularly sent her spiritual father clothes and food. From 1947 on, when Fr. Jonah no longer gave her spiritual guidance, until Eldress Maria’s death in 1961, she and the sisters of her community were pastored by Schema-Hieromonk Seraphim (Romantsov) from Glinsk Monastery (in the Sumy region).
Eldress Maria’s community became one of the strongholds of post-war secret monasticism. Her house was constantly full of people. People came there for spiritual guidance and advice in difficult life situations, and nuns from closed convents found shelter there. Such famous ascetics as Hieromonk Pimen (Izvekov), the future Patriarch; the first Abbot of the Lavra, Archimandrite Gury (Egorov), the future metropolitan; Metropolitan John (Wendland), who was dean of the Holy Spirit Cathedral in Saratov in 1953–1956; Yuri Smirnov, a student of the Moscow Theological Academy, later Archbishop Evlogy of Vladimir and Suzdal; Archimandrite Kirill (Pavlov); Archpriest Tikhon Pelikh and many other figures of various ranks and estates always found consolation and support in this house.
Schema-Abbess Maria and the community created by her helped restore the Holy Trinity-St. Sergius Lavra in 1946, after it had been reopened. The nuns baked prosphora and collected donations. A significant part of the funds that people donated for the revival of the monastery was kept by Eldress Maria herself.
Speaking about the eldress’ character, we can cite interesting memories of Nun Dosithea about her:
“Mother Maria was full of humor, mundane and popular, rich and healthy. And she also ‘played the fool’ a little—it was her style, her way of communicating with people. Sometimes you would come to her and start complaining, ‘Mother, I can’t live like this anymore... it’s hard for me… I can’t do it...’ Mother Maria would listen sympathetically and then say, “Well, never mind! Don’t worry! Now I’ll give her a good dressing-down!’ That was her approach.
“There was another method of ‘education’ used by Mother Maria, in which I took part. Sometimes some ‘noble’ guest would come to us. The eldress would call me and say, ‘Listen, I’m going to scold you. But know that I’m not scolding you, but her! Let her listen. She’s touchy, I can’t tell her this directly—she won’t bear it. You should just bow down and say, “I’m sorry, mother,”. But be calm: I’m not scolding you—I’m scolding her.’”
Schema-Abbess Maria’s grave in the Old Town Cemetery of Sergiev Posad In a letter to Priest Viktor Grigorenko, Archbishop Evlogy of Vladimir and Suzdal recalled the eldress:
“It is impossible to hide light in the darkness of time. People were drawn to such a spiritual person as Nun Maria, receiving support in the faith, which the world with its temptations undermines. I had the great blessing of visiting Mother Maria more than once, talking with her and hearing what my soul couldn’t yet contain—about the secret life here, despite the harsh circumstances of earthly life, which passes into eternity. She was very sick and bedridden, but her face shone with faith and inner prayer.”
In the 1950s, Mother Maria’s health began to deteriorate. A letter dated April 9, 1956 from Nun Barbara (Adamson) to Bishop Athanasius (Sakharov), has survived. It reads: “I was at Schemanun Maria’s on Sunday. She is very poorly and probably won’t last long.” On behalf of the bishop, who was concerned about her condition, Nun Barbara visited the eldress in her house-convent regularly.
Schema-Abbess Maria (Gorbatova) fell asleep in the Lord on August 16, 1961. After her death, the sisters of the community did not dare admit new novices. So over time, the secret convent ceased to exist. However, the memory of the ascetic who had the gift of prayer, who managed to preserve faith during the years of severe persecutions and pass it on to the next generations, still gives us a sense of the closeness of God in any, even the most difficult circumstances of life, and provides us an example of deep faithfulness to the will of God.
