A synaxis is when all are together. To sit on bunks, to send parcels to those who are on bunks, to serve the Liturgy under threat of being shot, to carry logs, to repair nets, to love, to die, to pray and to believe. The New Martyrs of Solovki became the voice of conscience of the Russian Church, condemning the Declaration of Metropolitan Sergei (Stragorodsky) on the “peace and friendship” of Christ with the Bolsheviks in the Soviet Union.
“I didn’t take up the staff to abandon it!”
When Hieromartyr Alexander (Shchukin), Archbishop of Semipalatinsk, was told to stop preaching in prison in exchange for freedom, he refused. He was threatened and beaten. Barely alive, he repeated: “My body is in your power, and you can do with it whatever you please, but I will not give you my soul.” He was sent to Solovki where he worked as a watchman and accountant.
After his release, he continued not only to serve, but also to preach, which was prohibited by the earthly law. But Vladyka Alexander had already sworn an oath of fidelity to God on ordination, when the Lamb[1] is given to the man being ordained with the following words, “Take this pledge and keep it safe and sound until thy last breath, for thou shalt be tried in the Second and Terrible Coming of the Great Lord God and our Savior Jesus Christ.”
And as a priest and bishop, he could not just “believe quietly”, but also had to testify in words and deeds that no authority, threats, times, circumstances, or anything else could separate a Christian from the love of God.
Vladyka was threatened again. His sister tried to persuade him: “Retire and come to me in Lyskovo to take cover.” His answer was firm: “Although I love you very much, I did not take up the staff to abandon it!” In 1937, Vladyka Alexander was executed by a firing squad.
He died defending his cross
Hieromartyr Anatoly (Grisyuk), Metropolitan of Odessa, was exiled to Solovki. Before his exile, he had served a six-month term in prison in harsh conditions, and almost lost his legs. Despite his illness, the metropolitan was sent there together with criminals. On the way, the helpless archpastor was robbed.
They forced him to walk, and whenever he fainted, they threw him into the truck. Once the metropolitan came around, he was forced to walk again. By 1938, the saint had almost lost his sight. Before his death, he asked to be allowed to see his sister, but Vladyka was refused this as well. Hieromartyr Anatoly was tortured to death at the Ukhtpechlag labor camp (now in the Republic of Komi within Russia). According to eyewitnesses, his Gospel was taken from him, but Vladyka did not give up his cross and died defending it.
“The Church is shaken because of the moral decay of priests”
Hieromartyr Arkady (Ostalsky), Bishop of Bezhetsk, was famous for his straitforward and even naive generosity. There were practically no personal belongings in his rooms. One day his relatives sewed him a fur coat, knowing that he was in need, but soon Vladyka gave it to a poor widow who had two children with tuberculosis.
Once he left the city in boots, but, meeting a pauper on the way, he exchanged them with him for bast shoes and returned in them.
Another time, he gave his trousers to a poor man, and to conceal it he sewed up the hems of his cassock so that they would not open.
In the early 1920s, the Soviet authorities arrested Vladyka Arkady. During a court session Vladyka fell asleep while the verdict was being read out. The escorts had to wake him up to inform him that he had been sentenced to death. “All right, I thank God for everything. For me, death is a gain,” Vladyka Arkady responded. After the trial, his flock petitioned for the reduction of his sentence, and capital punishment was commuted to five years of imprisonment.
The archpastor was exiled to Solovki in 1928. Having organized a group of Orthodox priests around himself, he carefully monitored their discipline and made sure that none of them lost their boldness of spirit. For the clergy who had no support from their families he organized a mutual aid fund. Vladyka sometimes managed to celebrate hierarchical services. During one of them, the hierarch said that “it is only when we lose the opportunity to attend church that we truly appreciate what we have lost.” One of the witnesses in his case testified that Bishop Arkady “was particularly popular among the prisoners, and his every word was considered almost sacred.”
Vladyka managed to work at the Solovki Museum, copying ancient documents. (He copied twenty-eight documents dating from 1625 to 1797). Most of them are now kept at the State Historical Museum in Moscow.
One of his camp characterizations reads: “He does not obey the camp rules... gathered priests around himself..., has great influence… He said that ‘we should thank God that He has not yet taken away from us the opportunity to pray here, as in the catacombs in the ancient times.’ He is subject to strict isolation and permanent monitoring.”
Vladyka was promised to be made a cashier if he gave up the priesthood. For his refusal they added five years to his term and transferred him to the toughest place on Solovki—the notorious Sekirnaya Hill. He was released in 1937, gray-haired and very ill, but was arrested again just a few months later.
The archpastor said during an interrogation: “The Church is shaken because of the moral decay of priests. Correcting this is the only way to strengthen the Church. I came to this conclusion in 1935, when Bishop Peter (Rudnev) arrived in Solovki and told me much about the misdeeds and falls of the episcopate and clergy, and the absolute disunity among the latter. Already at that time, I came to the conclusion that after being released I would not strive to rule the diocese, but to serve in church and speak to people.”
Vladyka Arkady was shot in 1937 at the Butovo firing range.
He adopted a beggar woman’s child
Hieromartyr Vasily (Zelentsov), Bishop of Priluki, was a co-author of the Epistle of the Bishops of Solovki, the voice of conscience of the Russian Church, written in connection with the Declaration of Metropolitan Sergei, which called for an open declaration to the Bolshevik Government that “the Church cannot tolerate the interference in its life of a State hostile to religion.”
Even before Solovki, an interesting episode had been known about him: During one of his incarcerations, when he was still a married priest (Fr. Vasily), he helped a beggar woman who sat outside the prison with her small boy, begging. When the woman died, he adopted the boy and began to take care of him. Vladyka was shot in 1930.
An aristocrat in Solovki
When Hieromartyr Vladimir (Lozina-Lozinsky), from the nobility, served his term in Solovki, he amazed many with his fresh and tidy appearance, and calm and almost cheerful face. He was amiable, even affectionate, with everybody else.
His fellow inmates would say of Hieromartyr Vladimir: “The aristocracy of his behavior did not disappear even when he was weighing stinking vobla (dried and smoked roach fish) at a food stall, delivering parcels or washing latrines… He was so airy and radiant, so light and kind that he seemed to be an embodiment of sinless purity, which nothing could tarnish.” He was shot in 1937.
A repentant secret agent
When in 1925 Hieromartyr Vladimir (Medvedyuk) was arrested, under pressure from the authorities, he agreed to become a secret agent of the OGPU (an organization for investigating and combating counter-revolutionary activities).
The priest collaborated with the authorities for four years. But day after day his inner struggle was intensifying, and one day he repented fervently before his father-confessor with the intention of being martyred, if only not to be a traitor anymore. And that is what happened.
Soon, the investigator summoned Fr. Vladimir to the police station and wondered why he had stopped giving the necessary information. The priest replied: “I don’t want to collaborate anymore.” He was threatened for three days, but Fr. Vladimir no longer wavered. He was convicted and sent to Solovki for three years. He was shot in 1937.
“Now I’m free!”
Hieromartyr Hilarion (Troitsky) was elected head of the Orthodox clergy in Solovki. It was he who in 1926 celebrated the Paschal service in an unfinished bakery without the authorities knowing.
He became a co-author of the Memorandum of the Bishops of Solovki (June 9, 1926), in which a group of imprisoned hierarchs spoke about the need to work out principles for the life of the Church and the Government when their convictions were conflicting and even incompatible; the Memorandum continued the line of the holy Patriarch Tikhon’s Church policies. The authors of the Memorandum stated the systematic persecution of the Church in the USSR, denounced the falsehood of Renovationism, and called for consistent implementation of the law on the separation of Church and State—that is, the life of the Church without the control of Government officials.
After Solovki, Vladyka Hilarion was arrested several more times and died of typhus in prison with the words: “Now I’m absolutely free! How good!...”
The Skadovskys
Hieromartyr John Skadovsky was exiled to Solovki because, together with his wife Catherine and other believers, he helped the imprisoned clergy. Their organization was declared “counter-revolutionary”.
St. Prokopy (Titov) recalled: “When we were traveling from Solovki to the place of exile, we were accompanied from Leningrad by Catherine Vladimirovna Skadovskaya, who had come from Kherson to serve us. She would bring us parcels during the halts. And so she traveled with us from Leningrad to the city of Tobolsk.”
Risking their lives, freedom, and family well-being, the Skadovskys supported exiled bishops and clergy. Hieromartyr John (Skadovsky) was shot in 1937 on the same day with the ascetic Hieromartyr Prokopy (Titov), whom he supported, and was buried with him in a common grave.
“Your Faithfulness to Him Is More Precious to Me Than Life”
Another helper of the exiled clergy, Hieromartyr John (Steblin-Kamensky), together with parishioners of the city of Voronezh regularly collected and sent funds to Archbishop Peter (Zverev) and other prisoners in Solovki.
And in a secret letter from prison in 1929, he wrote to his flock: “If during my ministry in Voronezh and my stay among you, you who were entrusted to me by the Lord did not feel that your faithfulness to Him was more precious to me than my own life, then alas, neither this letter nor any other will reveal it to you. But if I truly love you with the love of Christ, if I am in part comforted by our sorrow, since it testifies to your love for me... now I want to ask you for the last time with tears in my eyes: Do not walk away from the Cross, and we will be close during our separation, no matter how long it drags on…”
The Golgotha of Prince Zhevakhov, Bishop of Mogilev
Hieromartyr Joasaph (Zhevakhov), Bishop of Mogilev, was descended from a princely family, for which he was first arrested in 1924. The prince had never experienced such torments and humiliations before. On his release, he wrote to Patriarch Tikhon: “After experiencing a real Golgotha this year in the form of a six-month prison term, I felt the need for resurrection to a new life and resolved irrevocably to withdraw from the world and devote the rest of my life to God...”
No sooner said than done. Patriarch Tikhon encouraged the prince’s intention. St. Joasaph headed various dioceses in Belarus and Russia. He served a long term in Solovki and received a martyr’s crown in 1937.
The Pravdolyubov Family
Hieromartyr Nicholas (Pravdolyubov) came from an ancient family of priests. It is over 300 years old. In the early twentieth century he suffered during the persecutions of the Church together with three other members of his family: Hieromartyrs Sergei, Anatoly and the Martyr Vladimir.
In 1925, Vladimir Pravdolyubov was exiled to Solovki for three years, and was later shot. His father, Archpriest Anatoly Pravdolyubov, was shot in 1937. The third of the martyred Pravdolyubovs, Archpriest Sergei Anatolievich Pravdolyubov, was arrested in 1935 and exiled with his son (then still a boy, a future priest) to the Solovki camp for five years. In 1944, after a short period of freedom, he was exiled to the quarries of Maleyevo (in the Ryazan region). From there he wrote:
“Sudden severe blows happen to us in life. Life is going well and nothing bodes misfortune. But all of a sudden, an overwhelming, unexpected blow befalls us, and our whole life turns upside down; we lose our balance from intense suffering... These sufferings are difficult to bear, but when they pass, they leave a clear mark in the soul, indicating that these blows have the power to purify the human soul, bring it closer to God, and therefore make it better, purer, and more sublime.”
Having returned in 1947 from hard labor already seriously ill, Archpriest Sergei lived with his family for only three years.
The fourth of the Pravdolyubov martyrs was Priest Nicholas Anatolievich. He was exiled to Solovki for five years. After his release, he was forbidden to serve, but nevertheless Fr. Nicholas served. On August 13, 1941, he was shot in the courtyard of the Ryazan Prison.
She was always good-natured
The destiny of the Pravdolyubovs who languished in Solovki was inextricably linked with the Martyr Vera Samsonova, a churchwarden. They all hailed from the same town of Kasimov (in the Ryazan region), knew each other well, helped each other, and served their time in Solovki together. Hieromartyr Anatoly Pravdolyubov recalled:
“Vera had to endure a great deal on the way. There were three women in a train car shared with male prisoners. And they had to use the toilet in front of everyone: the toilet in a corner of the car was not screened off. Each time, one of the three had to ask her two companions to shield her from the mens’ eyes. Vera also suffered much from hard labor, to which she was unaccustomed and unfit owing to her ill health. But whenever she entered the Solovki refectory, she was good-natured, bright, and sometimes smiled very sweetly.”
Hard labor was beyond the frail woman’s strength. In February 1940, seriously ill, she was admitted to the infirmary. Vera passed away at dawn in June 1940—two weeks before the end of her term.
She only recognized her husband by his voice
Hieroconfessor Alexander Orlov served a five-year term in Solovki in the Pravdolyubov priests case. Together with representatives of the famous family of priests, Fr. Alexander compiled a biography of Blessed Matrona of Anemnyasevo. He returned to his family in the summer of 1940. Exhausted and in torn clothes, he did not dare to appear before his close ones in such a state and asked his acquaintances to help him with clothes. Dressed up, Fr. Alexander went up to his wife, who was at the time at church, helping during a service.
Batiushka approached his spouse, called out to her, but she… did not recognize her husband, and tried to drive him away: “Go on, go where you were going! There are many like you walking around here!”
“You don’t recognize me? And you’re greeting me with a censer! That means I’m going to die soon!” Fr. Alexander exclaimed in shock. Only after hearing her husband’s voice did Catherine Vasilievna recognize him and burst into tears. The couple lived together just for about nine months, and in 1941 Fr. Alexander passed away.
The Liturgy was celebrated on his chest
The reputation of Archbishop Peter (Zverev) of Voronezh was such that even in the role of a Solovki janitor with a broom, he inspired respect. When meeting him, the Cheka (Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution, Sabotage, and Speculation) officers not only let him pass, but also greeted him, to which he responded by raising his hand and blessing them with the sign of the cross.
Vladyka arrived in Solovki in 1927 and was elected (like St. Hilarion (Troitsky), who had been transferred to the Yaroslavl Prison by that time) Bishop of Solovki. He headed clandestine services, and when the authorities took away the antimension (on which bread and wine become the Holy Gifts during the Liturgy), services were celebrated on his chest.
In October 1928, St. Peter was sent to Anzer Island for baptizing an Estonian prisoner. There the archbishop worked as an accountant. He wrote: “Glory to God for all things... Do not live as you wish, but as God commands you.”
In 1929, St. Peter contracted typhus. His spiritual son was in the same ward with him. He saw an unusual phenomenon on the day of the archbishop’s repose: Great-Martyr Barbara, accompanied by a host of saints, appeared and gave him Communion.
Before his death, the saint wrote with a pencil on the wall: “I don’t want to live anymore—the Lord is calling me.” Vladyka Peter fell asleep in the Lord on February 7, 1929, on Anzer Island.
Typhus epidemic in Solovki
In the autumn of 1928, a typhus epidemic broke out on Anzer Island. Around 500 people died from the disease. They were “treated with death” at the so-called hospital. Eyewitness accounts have survived:
“The scene that I found on my arrival at Golgotha [that was the nickname for the church on Anzer, in honor of the Crucifixion of the Lord on Golgotha.—Ed.] was dreadful, the name ‘Golgotha’ was fully justified. The cramped rooms, packed with people, were so stuffy that staying in them for a longer time seemed fatal.
“Most of the people, despite the cold, were absolutely naked—in the full sense of the word—and the others were in pathetic rags. With emaciated faces, living skeletons wrapped in skin, they ran out naked from the chapel (the Church of the Resurrection of Christ) staggering towards the ice hole to draw some water into a can. There were cases when they died after bending down.”
Christian love changes the usual order
Hieroconfessor Athanasius (Sakharov), Bishop of Kovrov, worked as a watchman and accountant in Solovki, contracted typhus, but recovered. After Solovki, he was sent to the Turukhansk district (in the Krasnoyarsk territory). On the thirty-third anniversary of his episcopal consecration (1954), Vladyka calculated that over his episcopate he had served for thirty-three months, spent seventy-six months in exile, and 254 months in prisons and camps. But precisely this kind of episcopate and confession of the faith is genuine for God.
The archpastor wrote to his spiritual children: “It usually happens in life that the longer the separation, the more the bonds weaken. Christian love changes this order. Motivated by Christian rather than worldly love, my kind benefactors intensify their care and concern year after year, multiplying their help annually. If in the first two years and four months seventy-two parcels were sent to me (thirty parcels per year), then in the past year 1954 there were 200 of them. May the Lord pour out abundant mercy on my benefactors. I believe they will hear at the Last Judgment: Come, ye blessed of My Father… I was in prison, and ye came unto Me (Mt. 25:34, 36).
“He was happy to suffer for the faith”
Hieroconfessor Victor (Ostrovidov), Bishop of Glazov (in the Kirov region), was exiled to Solovki together with the great scholar of Old Russian language and literature Dmitry Likhachev. Later, Likhachev recalled:
“Vladyka was always smiling, joyful, accepting all sufferings with deep gratitude to God. He was happy to suffer for his faith. I remember him smiling on the ‘square of general check-ups’ beside the Transfiguration Cathedral of Solovki. He was forcibly shaved and hurt as he resisted. He was tied up with a towel and walking in his cassock, shortened at the hems (the tormentors would shorten his long vestments).
“He had no grudge against the guards who had done all this to him. Then on the square, we didn’t know how we should behave—whether to smile in response to his joyful smiles, or to grieve over his suffering.”
“I’m not a doctor and can’t help, but I will pray”
Hieroconfessor Peter Cheltsov was arrested in 1927. He was charged with distributing “counterrevolutionary literature” and sentenced to three years in the Solovki camp. Fr. Peter later recalled that the tormentors had even attempted to drown him in the sea at Solovki, but the Lord rescued him. In a letter to his wife, he wrote: “This poem expresses my situation and my mood best. And I couldn’t think of a better way to write to you. The special purpose Solovki camp (SLON), July 2, 1928.
In the wild north
There stands a pine tree lonely on a bare top,
And slumbers, rocking,
And is clothed in creaking snow
As in a cope.
And it keeps seeing the same dream,
That in a faraway desert,
In the land where the sun rises,
Lonesome and wistful on a burning cliff
A beautiful palm tree grows.”
Fr. Peter’s wife, Maria, travelled to see him in Solovki. One day when she was allowed to visit him, she brought some pies and put them by a stump. While they were happily talking, someone came up from behind and ate the pies.
In 1929, batiushka was released early from the camp and exiled for three years to the town of Kadnikov in the Vologda region, where he worked at home as a shoemaker. His wife Maria moved there with him. From Solovki Fr. Peter returned as an elderly invalid. And then there were more arrests and exiles until 1955. In late 1955, Fr. Peter took up residence in the village of Velikodvorye (the Vladimir region) and served in the local church. Miracles and healings occurred through his prayers. The disgruntled authorities constantly sent their secret agents to him.
The following testimony about him has survived: “Father Peter served very often right until his repose. He used to give Communion to 400–500 people, after which he couldn’t even walk right away. Father Peter used to say that he was not a doctor and could not help, but he would pray, and the Lord would heal people… And so it happened. Many people were cured through his prayers, even from incurable diseases. The faithful trusted the saint and flocked to him...”
Everyday life of a camp watchman
Hieromartyr Roman (Medved) was a night watchman in Solovki. He wrote to his daughter from prison:
“Dear Irochka![2] I received your first package on the 24th, and will receive the second one today [...]. Thank you and all my close ones who don’t forget me. The package arrived very opportunely, because after being discharged from the infirmary on July 9, I was ill for over a week… I was mainly treated with hunger, I was very thin, there was not a single grain of fat left in my stocks, and there was nowhere to buy food [...].
“The bedbugs have almost been exterminated here, but I sleep poorly and very insufficiently, because I work as a watchman every night from midnight to eight in the morning. At first it was very hard, but now I’m getting used to it. Now I have a night off and they promise relief of my duties. Keeping watch is the most suitable occupation in my old age and illness. When I’m on duty, I can stay indoors alone, which I really need to get my soul in order, to think, and so on. I get enough sleep until midnight, and then in the afternoon.
“Summer is good here, but the nights can be cold, and my clothes come in handy now [...]. I received some official uniform, but I turned it in, mainly because I’m afraid of losing it in my absent-mindedness, and I’ll be sent to the lockup for it.
“Your father, Roman Ivanovich Medved. August 3, 1931.”
“After I remember everybody, I feel at peace”
The Venerable Martyr Innocent (Beda) was arrested in the Bishop Peter (Zverev) case on December 17, 1926 by the Voronezh OGPU and sentenced to three years of imprisonment in the Solovki camp.
Archimandrite Innocent wrote: “By the grace of God, we are still alive, although my health is rather poor... Our only joy and solace is church, where we find absolute peace of mind, and forget all the hardships of life in the far north. We have the opportunity to attend church almost daily. It’s here in a corner, in silence, that I prayerfully remember the faces that I have met in my life; and after I remember them all, I feel at peace, and I leave the church refreshed and encouraged.”
St. Roman Medved died in 1937: he was so worn out by illness that the NKVD (a secret police agency in the USSR) did not deem it “expedient” to arrest him in such a condition.
Faith is a light for the people
On the feast of Theophany in 1921 on the porch of the Holy Trinity Church in the village of Protopopov (the Kolomna district), a young man named George (the future Venerable Martyr Nikon [Belyayev]) placed a poster with the counter-slogan: “Religion is a light for the people” instead of “Religion is opium for the people” (by Leon Trotsky).
Of course, he was arrested and exiled to the Arkhangelsk region. Three years later he returned, became a monk, and eventually served as the abbot of the Theophany Old Golutvin Monastery (now within the town of Kolomna). In 1929, the monastery was closed, and Archimandrite Nikon was exiled to Solovki. He was shot in 1937 at the Butovo firing range.
The mother of a New Martyr
The mother of the Martyr Stephen Nalivaiko, the peasant Euphrosyne Romanovna, went around villages, preaching the Gospel during the persecutions of the Church. And soon Stephen was arrested for “church propaganda” and exiled to Solovki. In the camp, Stephen contracted scurvy, and his legs became paralyzed. His mother came to him, bringing clean linen and food. But Stephen could no longer walk.
Then his mother got a separate room for her son out of the administration and began to “pull him out of the other side”: She fed and washed him, changed his clothes, prayed and talked to him. And she put him back on his feet. Afterwards, Stephen was arrested more than once for preaching Christ and died of starvation in 1945, shortly before the end of one of his terms.
