I first experienced the power of prayer when I was ten years old. We lived in the summer in the city of Uglich, where an epidemic of dysentery was raging. My grandfather, an experienced doctor, was dismissed from his job at the age of seventy as "failing". Forty babies died in the hospital in two days, and they were infants deprived of their mothers. Their mothers worked in a concentration camp, on the construction of a railway. There were no antibiotics yet, so my grandfather Veniamin Fedorovich could not do anything to save these motherless babies. He said: "How many houses on our street, so many people we buried this summer." And on the street where we lived, there were half as many dead people during the summer: a hundred houses - fifty dead. This, of course, is on average. Horses dragged strings of coffins towards the cemetery. And there, a machine dug a ditch every day, where dozens of coffins were lowered. Everyone was in a panic and did not know what to do. Heat, dust, clouds of flies...

Dad came to us on his vacation from Moscow, where he also had dysentery. And how good we felt with him when he took us on a boat along the Volga, invented games, and in the evenings read books aloud to us. I was impressed by the following story:

"The man woke up at night and saw that a robber was standing over him with an axe in his hands. The rogue says, "I have raised my axe several times to finish you off, but I have not been able to do so. Some force is guarding you." And when he woke up, he used to read the 90th Psalm every day. It was the power of God that preserved his life."

Then I decided: I will read this psalm too. Then the Lord, perhaps, will save our lives from illness. But I will ask God that He preserve not only me, but also my brothers and parents, so that none of us even gets sick. I learned the words of the psalm by heart and read them daily, hiding somewhere in the bushes of the garden or alone in a room, but in order to remain alone with God at that moment. So we returned to Moscow in the autumn healthy, although we did not observe any hygiene: we ate berries from the bushes, did not wash our hands, etc.

And at the age of thirteen, I began to pray myself little by little. I was not satisfied with praying together. Evening rules were read quickly. Tired from lessons and reading, my head was inattentive and did not catch the sacred words. When I went to bed, I felt that I was missing something, as if I had some kind of hunger in my soul. I didn't pray; so, I will only say: "Lord, have mercy," but with all my heart I will say something to God... So I began to talk to God. And temptations already stood as a wall between me and the Almighty. I have already begun to go to church myself, I began to pray fervently for peace in my family. That's when Satan turned on me so much that he almost destroyed me. Later I learned that the holy ascetics also had such temptations. But they were already smart people, and I was a stupid girl. Heaviness on the heart, despair. His closeness to his father saved him. "Daddy! It's hard for me. I can't tell you anything, because you're a man, and I'm embarrassed even by my mother. Please, call the priest to my house..." Dad did not hesitate with this. And with what fear and shame I stood before the old priest. I could barely tell him everything that was happening to me. I was afraid of lectures, punishment. But like a weight fell off my shoulders, when I heard only a few gentle quiet words in response to my inarticulate babble: "God will forgive... Won't you do that again?" It's good that you repented, otherwise a mental illness would have begun..."

The Kingdom of Heaven to this priest (I think it was Father Boris from Maroseika), who was then hiding in Moscow, and then was in exile for many years somewhere in Kazakhstan.

Outbreak of World War II

In 1941, when we returned to school on September 1, we were told that the school was being taken under the hospital and that we would no longer study. Everyone was somehow confused, no one knew what awaited everyone ahead. The enemy was advancing quickly, institutions were evacuated, most of the children had already left Moscow with their parents. But we were fourteen, sixteen, and seventeen years old, and we did not consider ourselves children. Many of our peers went to work, we were enrolled in the self-defense headquarters, instructed to be on duty at night in the attic of our house and in turn in the office of the house management. It was like a new game for us. My brothers climbed on the roof during the shooting, collected pieces of shells, which fell noisily on the iron. The guys brought home these fragments in their hats, boastfully calling them "our trophies". Mom begged the boys to keep a low profile, but we, the children, had no fear of death. In the evening, after reading another akathist to the saint, we went to bed in fur coats, without undressing, so that we could quickly jump out of the house if it began to collapse from the bomb. Day and night "alarms" buzzed three or four times a day, but we did not react to them. It was funny to us when we saw our neighbors running with knots to the bomb shelter, only to return back in half an hour, and then run again in panic. We firmly believed that by entrusting our lives today to St. Nicholas, or St. Seraphim, or St. Sergius, we could be calm and sleep soundly.

Kolya was waiting for conscription into the army, and Seryozha and I began to study externally, which allowed us to have a working food card. With this card, we received a hundred grams more bread every day than dependent children. The university teachers who did not leave drew up external programs so that a student could go through two grades of school in a year: the 7th and 8th, like my brother Sergei, or the 9th and 10th, as I was supposed to do. But the buildings were not heated in winter, the children were hungry, sick, missed classes, and many dropped out after a month or two. New students were recruited, the program was started from the beginning, but everything was repeated, since the turnover did not stop. As a result, by spring, we had barely finished the 9th grade program. Weak, exhausted from hunger, we fearfully awaited the upcoming exams. It was difficult to study, until late in the evening we ran around Moscow, going to every store to buy a card, otherwise by the 30th the products marked on the card were gone. And if you managed to find a store where they gave something, then you had to stand in line for hours in the cold. But we were happy if, having heroically stood in line, we brought home a bottle of vegetable oil or a bag of cereals, etc. And for bread we took turns at six o'clock in the morning in the dark, in the cold, in any weather. It was necessary to get bread early in order to be in time for classes later, and white bread was only available in the morning, and during the rest of the day they gave only black bread, in which a lot of potatoes were mixed. And yet, we endured the hardships of wartime with enthusiasm, with joy, with pride that God sent us these trials, gave us the opportunity to share the sufferings of our people. And we did not suffer yet, we were young and cheerful.

The war reflected on the faces of parents with concern. In the first autumn months of the war, when the institutions were evacuated, there were few people left in the capital and everyone was looking for something to do. Mom got a job in the cooperative to weave string bags (bags), but the norm to get a work card was high, and we all had to help her. Dad also mastered weaving and in the evenings he worked hard as a shuttle.

At the end of 1942, when winter came, the commandant of our house No20 ordered the following: all the remaining residents (from twelve buildings) should temporarily move to building No1. It was pointless to heat the empty buildings, the inhabitants of which were almost all evacuated. But even in building No1 (the largest, eight-storey), almost all apartments were empty. They appointed a commission, began to remove the locks, make an inventory of the remaining valuable property of the owners who had left, and began to settle other tenants in empty apartments. We suffered the same fate. They gave us two adjacent rooms in a shared apartment. In the third room lay a paralyzed woman. My mother began to energetically transfer to the third floor of building No1 those things that we needed for the winter. We quickly moved in and were satisfied, as we got into a warm apartment, and it was already freezing in our old one. Just before Easter, my mother received a telegram from Uglich. Grandfather was sick, he called his daughter to say goodbye. Mom quickly got ready for the road. She carried with her tobacco, vodka, that is, those products that we received on ration cards, but did not consume, and they could be easily exchanged in the provinces for potatoes, cottage cheese, etc. She asked us to pray fervently, since the road was difficult, the front was close to Uglich. We promised to pray and, indeed, persistently demanded help from St. Nicholas, his helper in his labors and journeys.

We celebrated this Easter without my mother. It was the last Easter when Kolya was at home. On that holy night, it was allowed to walk in the streets, and during the war it was forbidden. Kolya went alone to matins, my dad and I got ready for mass. Kolya returned home all wet, sweaty, with someone else's shawl on his shoulders. He said that the church was so crowded that the crowd swayed like one person, now to the right, then to the left. At the end of the service, when they began to go out, Kolya was carried out into the street, and on his shoulders was someone's shawl. My brother was very tired and lay down to rest. We were all very sad that day without mommy. But there was something to break my fast with: before the holiday, God helped me get butter on ration cards. We hid it during Holy Week, and on Bright Day we thanked the Lord for the oil. In that hungry year, this was a rarity.

But then my mother arrived, brought cottage cheese, eggs, bread, potatoes, etc. There was no end to the joy, especially for me: I was relieved of the worry of what to feed my family.