Part 1: How a Miracle-Working Icon Was Revealed Through the Healing of a Paralyzed Girl
How atheists tried to close the church
The miraculous Cypriot “Stromyn” Icon of the Mother of God
“What happened after the Revolution, Photina Viktorovna? Were there attempts to close the church?”
“At first, the Lord was merciful. People with a strong spirit still lived here. Before the Second World War the church was closed for several years, but then Fr. Andrei Uskov, a wonderful priest, came and became our rector.”
Fr. Andrei studied in the first intake of the Theological and Pastoral Courses that had just opened in Moscow’s Novodevichy Convent and transformed in 1946 into the Moscow Theological Academy and Seminary. He studied together and maintained a lifelong friendship with the future Metropolitan Pitirim (Nechaev) and the elder, Archimandrite Kirill (Pavlov), the father-confessor of several Patriarchs.
Archpriest Andrei Uskov “Batiushka came to us after the war. My aunt said that he came in a military overcoat. He had a registration, which was very important for priests in that era. He took up his residence here, and began to revive the parish. The church was opened, and there were a lot of parishioners. Eight villages were attached to our parish, and there were plenty of households in Stromyn alone!”
Among the parishioners was Evdokia Nikolaevna Martynova, another heroine of our story.
“She was my grandmother’s sister,” Photina Viktorovna and Lyubov Viktorovna explain. “We called her ‘aunt’ all her life. She was born on August 17, 1916, on the feast of Martyr Evdokia. I always travelled to the Lavra to take Communion on that feast day. She would get us children together and take us with her before school to receive Communion. We left Stromyn on the earliest bus at four in the morning—first we went To Mytishchi, then to Alexandrovskaya by suburban trains. When we alighted from the train, we ran (despite her heart disease!) to arrive in time for the prayer before confession. ‘Hurry, hurry! Run!’ she urged us on. So, we would run together to the Lavra along the narrow town streets—and our hearts almost jumped out of our chests with joy. A completely different life in the church opened up to us—not earthly, but a real, heavenly one.”
Evdokia Nikolaevna Martynova, churchwarden of the Holy Dormition parish in 1960, keeper of the miraculous Cypriot “Stromyn” Icon of the Mother of God from 1971 till her death in 1987 “Aunt did not marry—although she had suitors—and lived all her life as a chaste virgin. She grew up in the faith thanks to her father, Nikolai Andreevich, a WWI veteran. She absorbed faith from him. She read the Akathist to the Mother of God by heart and knew the Lives of many saints. She spoke only about God—no gossip! ‘I don’t have a family of my own, so my task is to pray for all my relatives.’ In 1960, she was elected churchwarden of the Holy Dormition Church. It was a hard time: A new generation of atheists had grown up. Some began to steal icons from churches and behave outrageously.”
In May 1961, communist activists appeared in Stromyn.
“Some delegates of both sexes in leather jackets arrived. ‘How is it a church stands in plain sight? We need to open a military unit, but here are these religious people with their opium. Comrade Khrushchev promised to show us the last priest on TV soon’.”
Fr. Andrei tried to protest, but he was deprived of his registration and removed from Stromyn.1 The church was closed.
“They often did that in those days,” Fr. Peter Torik explains. “It was the simplest and easiest way for the authorities to close churches. A commissioner for religious affairs would deprive the rector of his registration, and the church would be closed because ‘there is no priest—there is no one to serve.’ In the town of Serpukhov near Moscow all the churches were closed, but a heroic deacon stayed in the old St. Elias Church. Though sick, lame and half-blind, he daily celebrated memorial services as a deacon. Whenever a Commissioner came to close the church, a memorial service was being held in it. So, the church was not closed.”
Our women parishioners kept watch daily by the closed church
The closed Holy Dormition Church in Stromyn had its own fate. Big locks from the Tsar’s time were hung on the door, and the churchwarden Evdokia Nikolaevna Martynova took the bunch of keys.
“They wanted to use the church for film reel storage,” Photina Viktorovna recalls. “But Aunt Evdokia found some influential architect in Moscow, through whom they managed to have the church building listed as a cultural monument; so they left it empty and didn’t even touch anything inside. But they feared for the church, which could be robbed or desecrated. Aunt Evdokia and our heroic parishioners Iraida Sukhova, Daria Semyonovna Bubnova, Klavdia Petukhova (who had sore legs), Aunt Natasha Kolysheva, Faina Amelina, Natalia Makeeva, Maria Vakina, Natalia Simagina, Olga Smolnova and Natalia Avdonina came up with the idea of keeping daily watch by the church together. Those who lived in the neighboring houses stood at their windows watching, while those who were farther away would sit on a bench close to the church. Whenever they saw someone walking near the church, or a car of the authorities, they would send the children: ‘Run to Evdokia Nikolaevna quickly and say that strangers have already entered the church area.’ Aunt Evdokia would instantly rush towards the church and sort everything out.”
How Daria Semyonovna saved the Stromyn Icon
The Holy Dormition Church remained under the protection of local residents for ten years. On July 22, 1971, on the feast of the Cypriot “Stromyn” Icon of the Mother of God, some trucks drove up to the church.
“I was at home, when suddenly I heard a cry, ‘Lyubov, the church is being robbed!!!’” Lyubov Viktorovna Vakina’s face was contorted with pain as she spoke. “I came running. The church was surrounded by police. Everything was cordoned off, and their were countless swarms of crows in the sky over the dome. The policemen began to carry icons, candlesticks, banners and vestments out of the church. They took the cross outside and threw it into a truck with all their might! We burst out crying. All of a sudden Daria Semyonovna Bubnova, mincing along, approached a policeman and said to him affectionately:
“‘Sonny, please leave us an icon.’
“‘Well, okay, grandma. Go and take an icon.’”
Daria Semyonovna Bubnova (left), who saved the miraculous Cypriot “Stromyn” Icon of the Mother of God on July 22, 1971, during the looting of the church by representatives of the godless authorities. Right: Photina Viktorovna Kulikova
“She slipped into the church and dashed towards the wonder-working icon. The icon is old and heavy: two hefty men carry it on cross processions. Darya Semyonovna was a skinny woman in her sixties. But lo and behold, she deftly took the icon out of the icon case all alone, without help! Then she talked the policeman into allowing her to take the Kazan Icon of the Queen of Heaven as well.”
At that time Evdokia Nikolaevna Martynova was standing at a bus stop. Suddenly some parishioners ran towards her:
“Why are you just standing here, Evdokia?! The Mother of God is being taken out of the church!”
She clutched at her heart and broke into a run across a field, her face turned black.
She ran up to the church and found that the locks had been smashed off, and the church had been looted. Daria Semyonovna Bubnova was standing, hugging the miraculous icon and chasing the policemen away.
“‘Sisters, how long are you going to live, so that Daria can be commemorated every day?’ Aunt Evdokia later taught us. They decided to hide the miraculous icon in the house of one of the villagers. They brought it to three houses, but the atmosphere in each of them was somehow wrong. Since it was an icon of the Mother of God Herself, there should be purity in everything.”
Evdokia Nikolaevna and Anna Semyonovna built a house for the icon
Then Evdokia Nikolaevna, together with another pious elderly virgin, Anna Semyonovna Yudkina, built a small house and placed the miraculous icon in it.
Anna Semyonovna Yudkina, keeper of the miraculous Cypriot “Stromyn” Icon of the Mother of God from 1971 till the day it was returned to the church in 1988 “Aunt Evdokia and Anna Semyonovna guarded the Mother of God’s icon in such purity! No worldly talk, no newspapers, no TV,” Photina Viktorovna relates. “They talked only about God and prayed. Every day they read the Akathist to the Icon, ‘Assuage My Sorrow’, by heart, as it was the most touching for them. They didn’t fry anything in the house and didn’t let any bad odors inside. If they cooked fish soup, then only in the inner porch. Though it was cold in winter, they cooked soup on a kerosene stove all day long and ate it right in the porch. What grace streamed from the Mother of God’s icon—they did not have a single weed in the garden. Once there was a crop failure in Stromyn, but they had flowers, cherries and strawberries like in the Garden of Eden. Whenever the time to wash the icon case approached, Aunt Evdokia and Anna Semyonovna fasted, changed into clean clothes, and only then did they touch the holy icon.”
Multitudes of people came to pray to the Mother of God. Aunt Evdokia and Anna Semyonovna let them in at an agreed knock. They never took money from anyone and only asked visitors to bring candles and lamp oil. The enemy did not sleep: some commissions came and intimidated them. One day gypsies came, circling around the house and pushing at the door. Aunt screamed. Thank God, the policeman Ivan whom they knew drove them out and saved the icon.
“For several years we wrote letters, asking the authorities to open the church”
“My own and my sister’s lives have been connected with the Mother of God. When we were in high school, Aunt Eudokia told us, ‘Write letters to the authorities and ask them to open our church.’ We began to write letters by hand and send them everywhere. We did that for several years.”
“Who did you write to?” we wonder.
“To Brezhnev, Kosygin and all those commissioners for religious affairs. We wrote slyly: ‘The church is about patriotic education and love for the Motherland. The church is necessary for the young Soviet generation. Open it!’ But no one would answer. Lyubov, who was graduating from a technical college in 1979, got a letter somewhere from the authorities that she wouldn’t receive a diploma because she ‘belonged to a sect’. But by the mercy of the Mother of God they were late—my sister had already been given a diploma. Then Bishop Gregory of Mozhaysk2 said to us, ‘Type letters on a typewriter. You write by hand, and no one understands you.’ Nina Vasilievna Nekhlyudova, who worked with Lyubov, was a good typist. She said, ‘I will do everything for God!’ And she typed letters for us. It was so dangerous, but the Lord kept us.”
For seventeen years the miraculous Cypriot “Stromyn” Icon of the Mother of God remained in the house of the heroines Evdokia Nikolaevna Martynova and Anna Semyonovna Yudkina. Evdokia Nikolaevna reposed in 1987. And seven months later, in May 1988, the Holy Dormition Church was opened—one of the first in the Moscow region. Hieromonk Nikolai (Groshev) became its rector, and Tamara Alexeyevna Mishkina, Evdokia Nikolaevna’s niece and the mother of Photina Viktorovna and Lyubov Viktorovna, was chosen as the churchwarden.
“Our mother had six children,” Photina Viktorovna continues. “Our father had died by that time, when she was sixty-six. And she took to this work with enthusiasm. All our parishioners joined her! They restored everything in the church with their own hands—the people of Stromyn and painters from Noginsk. All was done for the glory of God and His Most Pure Mother. Very soon, with Paschal hymns, they returned the preserved holy icon of the Theotokos to the church. Aunt Evdokia was already dead, but Anna Semyonovna was still alive—she saw everything with her own eyes.”
Tamara Alexeyevna Mishkina, a widow with six children, was elected churchwarden of the newly opened Holy Dormition Church in 1988. She served as churchwarden for ten years till 1998 “Then miracles occurred. In Botovo, a nearby village, they decided to restore the destroyed chapel of St. George the Victorious. The consent of the owner of the neighboring house was required. They came to him, but he frowned and said that he would think for a week. Several days later he himself came and said, ‘Please restore it! I have been waiting for a car for so many years. No sooner had I said that I would think about it than I received notification that my car was coming!’
“In 1996, a new joy awaited us—we found the relics of St. Savva of Stromyn under the chapel. The earth had bulged up for years there, as if wishing to give us the relics. Aunt Evdokia always taught us to bow our heads in that place, saying, ‘The saint is buried there.’ Metropolitan Juvenaly of Krutitsy and Kolomna asked for His Holiness Patriarch Alexei II’s blessing, and he gave his blessing. Our dear mother Tamara Alexeyevna was then our churchwarden. She was present at the uncovering of his relics; when she brought some pebbles home, they smelled so sweet.
“This is all thanks to the Mother of God! Everything happens under Her protection. I remember the year 1985, when the church was still closed. The times were dangerous, and pilgrims could enter only by an agreed knock at the door. In July, on the feast of the Cypriot “Stromyn” Icon, some important commission arrived. They said, ‘We have been ordered to inspect your bell tower.’ Our hearts sank to our boots, ‘What for? Will it be demolished?’ Aunt Evdokia prayed by the miraculous icon and said to me, “Go and take them to the bell tower. Don’t be afraid, just stick to the wall.’ I took the commission there. It seemed as if someone were carrying me through the air. We went up the tower, and they looked around and saw an expanse, fields, forests, and the sky—huge, blue and joyful. One of the commission members turned around and said, ‘How beautiful... The church should be opened.’ I ran head over heels down from the bell tower and then down the street—the July sun was shining, and I was shouting, ‘Aunt, aunt! They’re going to open our church! Our church is going to be opened!!!’”
