Under the Roof of the Almighty

"He who dwells under the shelter of the Most High rests under the shadow of the Almighty..."

(Psalm 90:1)

Our childhood and school years fell on difficult post-revolutionary times. The people groaned under the rule of the Communists, who took up arms against the Church, the peasantry, the intelligentsia, and even their co-workers - "comrades". Churches collapsed, monastery buildings turned into prisons, packed to capacity. Honest peasant workers were dispossessed, many fled to foreign lands, fleeing from prisons, a rationing system was introduced, according to which it was possible to buy goods in stores only with cards. And cards were issued only to workers, employees and their families. Peasant handicraftsmen, artisans, clergy with families, monks from closed monasteries starved and were doomed to extinction. There were also people from the "former", that is, relatives of the executed princes, counts, ministers and other "former", as they were then called. They bore well-known surnames, and therefore they were not accepted for any work, were not given the opportunity to register, in a word - they lived out of the world. In those years, beggars sat everywhere, knocking on doors, asking for bread. However, despite all the difficulties and the seeming hopelessness of further life, my parents started a family! This was already their spiritual feat! My mother always said: "Do not look at the waves of the stormy sea of life, you must look to Christ with faith, then you will walk on the waves, like the Apostle Peter."

My mother was still a student of the Higher Technical University when her husband was arrested [N.N. Sokolova's father, Pestov Nikolai Evgrafovich (1892-1982) - Doctor of Chemical Sciences, Professor, famous spiritual writer. There was a warrant for her arrest, but she breastfed five-month-old Kolya. In 1924, they were not yet imprisoned with babies, as it was later in the 30s, which my mother witnessed (but I will talk about this later). The Pope was soon set free, as were all his friends who were members of the Christian Student Circle. These people were brought together until their death by the years spent in the Circle. Our family always had close communication with them: together we rented dachas for the summer, visited churches together, gathered together for church and family holidays, shared with each other what we could, arranged for work, etc.

When Kolya was one year and eight months old, his mother was waiting for me. The term came, contractions began, dad took her to the hospital. But hours and days passed, my mother felt good again and asked to go home. The doctors did not let me in: "The child is at the exit - lie down." However, the mother insisted and returned to her son, for whom she was very worried. For a week she was at home, washing, nursing Kolya, and running the whole household. On September 8, the day of the celebration of the Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God, as soon as the bells were struck (in 1926 they were still hanging in some places), my mother hurried to the hospital. She told me later: "As soon as we crossed the threshold of the maternity hospital, I sat down on the first bench and the birth began." Dad was sent away, hastily telling him that a boy had already been born and that he did not have to worry. Dad went to church. People I knew later told my mother that they were amazed by my father's fervent prayer. He did not see anyone, did not get up from his knees, made incessant bows and shed tears. What my father prayed for - only God knows. But if I look back at my seventy years, I can say one thing: they passed under the protection of the Almighty. I've always been called happy, and I quite agree with that.

The two-story house in which I spent my childhood was a tobacco warehouse before the revolution. In the 26th year, the house was rebuilt into residential apartments. Mom was given a three-room apartment on the ground floor from the factory, in which she and dad lived for forty-eight years. But in 1930, the wing of the house facing the street was broken, cutting the house in length just to our apartment. It turned out that instead of one wall, we had only a wooden partition, which constantly froze, although my parents carefully insulated it with carpets. My mother worked hard and managed to get the wall covered with slag and another layer of boards. But the brick walls began to diverge, threatening to collapse. They were reinforced with stone supports and fastened with rails. A huge eight-story building grew perpendicular to our house. From that time on, the sun peeked into our damp apartment only in the summer, for three hours a day. There was no fire-fighting distance between the old house and the new building, so our apartment had to be demolished, and we were given another one in an eight-story building. Mom received a warrant, but our new apartment was occupied by some clever people. Mom filed complaints with the police, the court, everywhere she bothered, but all to no avail. My parents considered this to be the will of God, for in any other apartment they would not have been able to lead such a conspiratorial life, hidden from the world, as I remember in my adolescence.

The NKVD officers watched us as if we were "the unfinished intelligentsia". This was the name given to people of science and culture in the 20s and 30s. In a house that stood parallel to ours and suffered the same fate as ours, there was an apartment whose windows looked into our windows at a distance of only eight meters. Through these windows we were watched by a certain Marusya, hired by the NKVD. She did not work, raised three children, acquired from different husbands, but registered to her first husband, who went missing. Marusya was considered the wife of a deceased front-line soldier and was respected. Her children rested in sanatoriums, camps in the summer, and in winter they sat on their wide windowsills. They climbed out through the window, ran barefoot in the snow, terrifying our mother. Mom felt sorry for Marusya, helped her as much as she could, they had a good relationship. My mother ran out into the street every now and then, knocked on Marusya's window, shouted to her: "Look, your guys are running barefoot and naked, drive them in, because they will catch a cold!" One answer was heard: "May they die!" But Marusya's children grew up, and from the age of fifteen they already lived in "correctional camps", that is, prisons for minors.

To get into our apartment, our friends did not walk, like other people, through a long courtyard. No, they entered the entrance of an eight-story building, and there they went down to a dark passage basement littered with garbage. Through a tiny door, our acquaintances came out into the light about five paces from our windows, and after slipping past them, they hurried to disappear behind the door. It was difficult for Marusya to "spot" (that is, notice) our friends, she was busy with the household, and she needed to sleep after drinking. The courtyard was not lit, our windows were often tightly covered with blankets, so that the apartment from the outside seemed uninhabited. And we had "circles", "Maroseians", nuns who had arrived from exile, secret clergymen. Most people in those years lived in communal apartments, even huddled in barracks. Mom was especially sorry for her friend Lizochka, who had a daughter Ksenia, a year younger than our Seryozha. Lizochka was the widow of the bed-keeper of Emperor Nicholas II. Small, downtrodden, meek Lizochka liked to whisper to my mother about what her husband had seen at the royal court. I only remember that Nicholas II was a great man of prayer. His bed-keeper more than once witnessed the long kneeling prayers of his Sovereign. The emperor shed tears and bowed. Late in the evening, alone with God, Nicholas II spent hours pouring out his soul before God. The Tsar's rug and pillow were wet with tears.

Faithful to his Monarch, Lisa's husband was arrested and exiled during the revolution. Lizochka followed her husband to Siberia, spent the years of her youth there in incredibly difficult conditions. She gave birth four times, but the children were stillborn. Only the fifth child, Ksenia, survived. Widowed, Lizochka returned to Moscow with her two-year-old daughter. They had nothing but a bed in the dormitory, where there were twelve beds in a row. "What we will not hear, what we will not see in our barracks! Lizochka was horrified. - And swearing, and fights, and debauchery - everything is in our sight, there is nowhere for me to hide with the child. We will at least breathe Christian air from you." My brother Seryozha played with Ksenichka, promising to take her as his wife when she grew up, which caused smiles from adults. Despite the difficult situation, Lisa raised Xenia as a deeply religious and chaste girl, although she was sick.

Many faces of other deeply religious people have been preserved in my memory. Their children, our peers, are now old people, and their parents have departed into eternity. However, for the most part, children were brought to us at Christmas not by their parents, but by those who raised them. Two aunts brought to us the three children of the Obolensky princes: Liza, Andrei and Nikolaushka. Their parents were arrested. Four children of Father Sergius Mechev, who was in prison, like his wife, were brought. Father Vladimir Ambartsumov's children, Zhenya and Lida, also visited us often. Their mother died, and their father was arrested. And so up to thirty people crammed into our apartment. The Christmas tree was invariably brought to us on Christmas Eve by Olga Serafimovna, the sister of the Martha and Mary Convent, which was closed in those years. Risking her freedom, she cut down a Christmas tree in the forest with her own hands, put it in our huge suitcase, drove it by train, dragged it through the streets. Until 1936, Christmas trees were banned as a "bourgeois prejudice". However, Olga Serafimovna considered it her duty to give us, children, this Christmas pleasure. We thanked her and with bated breath always listened to her stories about how she, drowning in snowdrifts, got us a Christmas tree: "Night, moon, wolves howl...". Through the prayers of this ascetic, Olga Seraphimovna (the secret nun Seraphima), our family, our disintegrated church community, held together.

Every year, religious poems were heard under the Christmas tree.

And on the altar of Christ and God She is ready to bring Everything that is beautiful to her path, That has shone on her way.