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Editor's introduction: In the text below "True Orthodox" refers to Christians of the "Russian Orthodox Catacomb Church". Like many of our New Martyrs and Confessors these "True Orthodox" did not acknowledge the Soviet "authorities" or the "Soviet Church" they had created.
They remembered the Anathema of Saint Patriarch Tikhon (which was confirmed by the All-Russian Church Council on 1/28/1918) which condemned not only the Communists but also all who would collaborate with them. They also considered that the Soviet government was not a lawful and God-established authority, but rather that "The dragon gave the beast [the Bolsheviks] his power and his throne and great authority" (Rev. 13:2). To the "True Orthodox" the Soviet "authority" was not "Caesar" but an "Antichrist" to which no obedience was due.
Due to these reasons many Catacomb Orthodox Christians refused, not only to acknowledge this Antichrist "authority", but even to accept any documents issued by them - viewing such documents as being forerunners of the "mark of the Beast".
By their heroic confession they teach us how all Orthodox Christians must one day act - both when the final historical Antichrist and his mark are manifested, and also, prior to this, when Orthodox Christians are compelled by the "authorities" to accept documents, injections, chips, or systems which will separate a person from our Lord Jesus Christ and eternal life.
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Regarding the Podvig of 13 "Nuns" of the Catacomb Church, 1970s:
Raisa Ivanovna was arrested in 1973 (according to another source, 1972) among a group of eleven True Orthodox women from Vladimir. She was a teacher, the mother of two children. She was sent to the camp for political prisoners in Mordovia for seven years.
In 1974 she was subjected to a psychiatric examination in the Serbsky Institute in Moscow. Then she was returned to the camp, where the administration tried by all means possible to find witnesses who would certify that she was mentally ill. A prisoner named Kogan (who was a provocateur in the opinion of several of the older prisoners) declared that Raisa had tried to kill her. She was then transferred to block 12, the psychiatric block in the camp hospital, from where she was transferred again to the special psychiatric hospital in Kazan. It is believed that she died on the way to Kazan in 1974.
Other True Orthodox women in the Mordovian women's camp for political prisoners were: Tatyana Krasnova, Nadezhda Usoyeva, Maria Semyonova, Alexandra Khvatkova, Irina Kireyeva, Anastasia Volkova, Catherine Alyoshina, Tatyana Sokolova and Glaphira Kuldysheva. All of these women were over fifty when they entered the camp. They were serving their second or third ten-year sentence for "anti-Soviet propaganda" after being declared "particularly dangerous recidivists" by the courts.
Tatyana Krasnova was born in 1903 and was a resident of Vladimir. She served her first term in Kengir, Kazakhstan, and was released in 1955. She began serving her second term - nine years plus three years exile for "anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda" - in 1973. She was considered "especially dangerous".
Nadezhda Mikhailovna Usoyeva was born in Vladimir in 1938. In 1972 she was sentenced to seven years' strict regime camp plus five years' exile. She was in prison in Belorussia and Barashevo.
One document relates of her: "She has passed the whole of her life in PKTs and in punishment cells for refusing to work. Nadezhda, according to the testimony of her friend, is the most radiant personality of all the True Orthodox Christians. She is nobility, submissiveness and meekness incarnate. She arrives ill (only just come from the punishment cell) and they do not allow her to rest. They shout: 'Again to correction.' She quietly puts on her boots and shawl, and without murmuring goes again to the punishment cell: 'I'm coming, I'm coming.'"
Maria Pavlovna Semyonova was born in the early 1920s and was a resident of Ryazan. In 1961 she was sentenced to ten years for "anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda". On her release, she refused to take her certificate of release, passport and money. She was then accused by a KGB captain of having stolen ten rubles and in 1973 was sentenced again to ten years in Barashevo as an "especially dangerous criminal".
Alexandra Khvatkov was born in 1910 and was a resident of Vladimir. After serving terms in Vladimir prison, where she was almost continuously in the punishment cell, she was sentenced to two further terms of ten years each in strict regime camps (Barashevo, Mordovia). She suffered from a nervous disease and was often unable to get up for days and months at a time. Her son was a communist who had rejected her.
Irina Andreyevna Kireyeva was born in 1912 and was a resident of Vladimir. She was unmarried. She was serving her second term of ten years for "anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda" (in Barashevo). She suffered from terrible headaches due to high blood pressure, but was denied treatment for days on end because she would not sign an official document requesting it.
Anastasia Volkova was born in 1910 and was an unmarried postal worker. She was serving her second ten-year sentence in a strict regime camp (in Barashevo) for "anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda". She was considered "especially dangerous".
Catherine Aleshina was serving her second sentence (seven years from 1973) for "anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda" in a Mordovian camp.
Tatyana Mikhailovna Sokolova was born in 1930 and was a resident of Gorky. She was serving a seven year sentence plus three years' exile in Barashevo. She had had a stroke and was considered third degree invalid. She refused to work and was often put in the punishment cell and refused medical treatment. She was often punished for not standing up when guards disturbed her prayers.
Glafira Kuldysheva was born in 1935. She was a dressmaker and had five or six grown-up children. Her husband considered her to be mentally ill. She refused to see her husband and children. She refused to bathe on religious feast days and was therefore forcibly dragged to the baths by the guards. She was a second degree invalid, having rheumatism and oedema. She was serving a long sentence in a strict regime camp (Barashevo, Mordovia).
Other True Orthodox women serving long terms in the Mordovian camps in this period were Nadezhda Grozena (born 1911), Mariam Mitrofarovna Varseyeva (born 1920) and Claudia Volkova.
The "crimes" of the True Orthodox consisted in having put leaflets in the sergianist churches calling on the clergy to renounce their collaboration with Soviet power. These leaflets contained verses such as: "Satan lies under the mausoleum, his flesh has been rotting for a long time". Some of them had photos and caricatures.
The True Orthodox refused to have their names inscribed on Soviet population registers and would not undertake any officially recognized work, refusing to sign any official document. They acted with great dignity, always saying what they were doing and never lying. After serving one term they were promptly put back in the camps on the same charges.
In the camp they refused to have any contact with the administration. So, for example, on arriving in the camp every woman had to sign for bedding. They did not sign, and slept on the ground. This continued until a commission arrived to visit the camp, after which they issued them with bedding over the signatures of other prisoners.
They categorically refused to work, which earned for them either prison in the camp (PTK) or solitary isolation (SHIZO). In the PTK their food was reduced to a minimum. In the SHIZO they had warm water and four grams of bread on the one day, cooked food on the next.
All of these women fasted strictly on Wednesdays and Fridays; some of them added Mondays. Every day, at 6 a.m., they would wash, pray until 8 a.m. and only then eat. It was the same in the evening.
When they were notified of a punishment (fifteen days in SHIZO, six months in PTK), they would say farewell to the other prisoners, kiss them all and then, prostrating before them, ask their forgiveness. Then they went joyfully to the cell. At the end of the punishment, some came out swaying with exhaustion, but they still refused to work and were again subjected to harsh punishment. It went on like this until, exhausted by suffering, they were declared invalids or unfit for work.
In the camps all the True Orthodox Christians conducted themselves with great dignity. They were distinguished by characters full of kindness and gentleness, and were loved and respected by the other detainees. No one was offended when they refused to join in collective actions against the administration (hunger strikes) because the prisoners saw that they were on a continuous voluntary fast.
On arriving in the camp, they lengthened their uniforms, enlarged the sleeves and closed the collars, thereby taking on the form of monastic clothing - and they were known as "the nuns" by the camp authorities.
The majority of them came from Vladimir region. They maintained secret relations with their co-religionists outside. They said that they became True Orthodox when they saw with their own eyes how the agents of the KGB practiced surveillance over the believers in church. In general, they had had no more than two or three years in school.
All had contracted chronic illnesses in the camps. Their behavior made the already severe regime of the camp a slow death for them. They understood this, and accepted it with joy.
The poetess Irina Ratushinskaya, who was in camp with these women, writes: "These gentle, steadfast and humble women obviously made a powerful impression on everyone who encountered them. And understandably so. An ordinary female prisoner will shower you with a string of curses for the most trivial reason, but these women would react quite differently: 'May the Lord forgive you, my son.'
Even upon release, they would refuse to accept the document attesting to the completion of their sentence. Off they would go, without a single scrap of paper, heading for a new and certain arrest and sentence. From their point of view, this was perfectly normal: were they not suffering for God?
In their eyes, it is we who act unnaturally: we submit to Satan and his minions - the Soviet government - in order to escape persecution. And Satan, they know, will never give up of his own accord - he shall merely exploit any sign of weakness to his greater gain, penetrate ever deeper into your soul. That was and is the reasoning of the 'True Orthodox'.
Some of them are still alive, living in internal exile. Yet the exile sentences of some of our babushki had expired, and they did not return to the Zone: so Satan was defeated, after all, forced into retreat. Others of them are still to be found in some of the camps with calm, serene faces, ever ready to lay down their lives for the Lord: to what great honor can one aspire?!"