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"Another interesting case I personally heard from the sisters of the Botkin hospital in Moscow [is the following] - There, in 1927 or 1928, I don't remember, there was a 10-year-old girl who was very seriously ill with spinal tuberculosis. She suffered incredibly.
The entire staff of the hospital took part in it. The girl was both quiet and meek. She suffered for more than a year, and everyone was just waiting for her death as a deliverance from her torment, but death did not come to her. Her parents were simple peasants in a village near Moscow. Her sister brought milk to Moscow every morning and visited her every day.
Once the girl woke up in great agitation and, shedding tears, did not want to explain the reason to anyone. When her sister came, she said to her: 'Tonight I was walking in a dream on a white staircase that ran up to the sky. There were many people, adults and children, there were girls like me. We walked for a long time and saw a big light at the end. When we approached, we saw that this Light was coming from Someone Who was standing at the very top. He let some of them through the big bright door, but others He didn’t let in. He gently let in two girls who were walking with me, and stopped me saying: 'You can’t come here, you are a pioneer*.'
[**The Young Pioneers, was a mass youth organization of the Soviet Union for children and adolescents aged age 9–14. It existed between 1922 and 1991.]
And the girl began to ask her sister to go to the teacher, the head of the school, and tell him to cross her name off of the list of pioneers. She asked with such tears, that her sister went to the teacher and asked him to cross the girl off the list. To this he replied: 'This is another nonsense, some kind of sick nonsense'.
The next day, when the sister came back to the hospital, she found the patient still in great tears. She again had had the same dream, and when her sister, wanting to reassure her, said that she had been expelled and was no longer a pioneer, she replied: 'That's not true! Not true! He didn't let me in. Go again and say that I don’t want be one, let him cross my name out, and also go to church and ask the priest to give me the big red book. Once, when no one saw, I ran to see what was in the church. I had never seen it before. The priest held a large red book and read from it. Ask him to give me this book.'
She said all of this while lying motionless. She could not raise her head for a month.
The nurses of the hospital say that it was impossible to see the grief of this dying child without tears, and there was something special in this grief, touching the soul with fear. They told the milkmaid to demand her expulsion at all costs. The teacher was then compelled to cross out the girl's name and to tear up her documents.
Then the sister went to the priest and told him everything. He was shocked. The big red book was the Gospel. 'I can’t give the Church Gospel, but, here I have sheets from a torn Gospel, you can take them to your sister.'
When she entered the hospital ward the next morning, she was surprised to see that the doctors and nurses surrounded the girl, who was somehow sitting joyfully and completely unusually. She stretched out her thin hands like sticks, took the pages from her sister's hands, pressed them to her chest and said: 'He, that Light One at the top of the stairs, told me: Today I will take you to Myself, you are no longer a pioneer.' Saying this, she sank down on the pillow and sighed for the last time. The Lord took her to Himself.
For a believer, one who knows what pioneering is, this story is undoubtedly a fact and can only be touching, but not surprising. In most cases, these are unbaptized children. I will not analyze the reasons that prompted the parents to betray their children from birth to Satan. Whether it be beliefs, whether it be fear of arrest and exile for the baptism of a child, or other motives, it is still a fact that instead of the Holy Sacrament of Baptism, the rite of October was performed on these children..."
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Concerning Princess Natalia Urusova (†1964), Fr. Seraphim Rose of blessed memory wrote:
"From her childhood she led a highly spiritual life, something rare for someone of high society at her time. After the Second World War, having lost all of her six children (three of her sons were martyred for Christ), she wrote her complete biography, which was never fully published. Her book is a highly moving piece of evidence concerning the price Orthodox Christians had to pay to be in the saving enclosure of the True Orthodox [Catacomb] Church.
Due to her spiritual training she was able to discern quite easily the falseness of the Sergianist position, and in her book she offers a first-hand account of how Metropolitan Sergius personally, without pressure from the authorities, suggested which churches should be closed or blown up, and which clergy should be arrested. Hence it is not strange that her book has never been published. It is a mother’s lamentation over the death of her catacomb children.
She has provided information on the following New Martyrs: Metropolitan Joseph, Child Sergius and Elder Anatole (of Optina), Priest Vladimir, Abbess Antonina, Priest Alexander - who drew fire from heaven while celebrating the Liturgy on a stump in the midst of a forest, and Archbishop Barlaam.
In the last days of her life she wrote profound poetry which reflected the hopelessness of Orthodox Christians in the free world, simply because it was apparent to her that they were losing the savor of True Christianity - Orthodoxy. Archbishop Averky (of Jordanville), her spiritual father, entrusted her memoirs to the St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood for publication, expressing his hope that this book would see light in the English language for the preparation of our neophytes and converts for martyrdom."