Mother Maria Skobtsova (1891–1945)

FROM THE ARCHIVES

Elisabeth Behr-Sigel

Note: Elisabeth Avant-garde poet in the sophisticated no justice, there is no just God. If Behr-Sigel knew intellectual milieu of Saint Petersburg, there is no just God, there is no God Mother Maria member of the Socialist Revolutionary at all. I had broken through to the and most of Party in Russia, twice married and di- adult secret: God does not exist. The her inner cir- vorced, mother of three children, later world is full of misery, evil, and in- cle of friends a devoted nun of the Russian Church justice. And so my childhood came in Paris. Her in exile, and finally a member of the to an end. article, slightly resistance in occupied France who was abridged in this deported to the Ravensbrück concen- Saint Petersburg translation, was tration camp, where she died shortly published in Le before the liberation: such was the path At that time, Elisabeth was fourteen Messager ortho- of Mother Maria Skobtsova’s life. years old. Shortly after her father’s doxe, issue 111 death, her mother decided to settle in (November 1989). Childhood and Family Background St. Petersburg, where the family had Behr-Sigel lived connections among those close to the to see Mother Elisabeth Pilenko was born on Decem- imperial court. But the young girl, Maria’s formal ber 8, 1891. Her family belonged to the whose talent as a poet was already ev- glorification by Ukrainian landed aristocracy. One of ident, spent her time in avant-garde the Ecumenical her eighteenth-century ancestors mar- literary circles. The Russian imperial Patriarchate in ried Proskovia Romanova, sister of Em- capital was then a major center of the 2004 and died the press Anna. Her father created a model Russian religious renaissance of the following year at vineyard operation near the town of beginning of the 20th century. Elis- age 98. Anapa on the shore of the Black Sea. abeth forged ties with the symbolist There Elisabeth experienced a happy poet Alexander Blok. At eighteen, she childhood that ended, however, with married Dmitri Kouzmin-Karavayev, a a tragic event: the premature death of young lawyer and member of the So- her father. This event tormented the cial Democratic Party. The young cou- adolescent girl. Mother Maria, writing ple made frequent appearances among later, referred back to the crisis: the refined elite that gathered around the writer Vyacheslav Ivanov. . . . The only thing that tormented me, the one question that required an Eventually she grew weary of the hol- answer was this: Do I believe in lowness of the discussions in this social God? Does God exist? Then came milieu. She reproached the progressive the answer: my father was dead. intelligentsia for interminably discuss- The thoughts that jostled together ing revolution without ever being will- in my head were quite simple: ing to act or to sacrifice their lives for this is an unjust death. Therefore it. She was evolving toward a mystical there is no justice. And if there is populism, a messianic idea of the Rus-

44 sian people and land. She wrote in 1913, “I am for the land, for the simple people of Russia. . . . I reject the uprooted, soulless cultural elite.” For Elisabeth, as for Dostoyevsky, the “fertile mother- land,” source of life, was sacred. Christ, however, remained on her horizon. . . . “The people need Christ,” she wrote. At this time she also experienced the desire to deepen her knowledge of the Orthodox Christian religion. She became one of the first women, if not the very first, to take courses (as non-resi- posed only a symbolic penalty; one of Elizaveta Skobtsova dent day student) at the St. Petersburg the judges was a young officer Daniel with the children. Theological Academy. Her marriage, (www.pravmir.com/ Skobtsov. Having fallen in love with the-challenge-of-a- meanwhile, had come apart. A divorce Elisabeth, he soon married her. Two 20th-century-saint- made the rupture final. children, Yuri and Anastasia, would maria-skobtsova) be born from this union. Revolution and Civil War Without renouncing her socialist-rev- When the Russian Revolution broke olutionary ideal—perhaps even be- out, Elisabeth was an adherent of the cause of it—Elisabeth took part in Socialist Revolutionary Party, an ide- her husband’s struggle against Bol- alistic movement that combined, not shevism. Daniel Skobtsov became a without some confusion, Russian pop- member of the ephemeral Ukrainian ulism—with its aspirations for pravda government, but the vagaries of the (“truth-justice”)—with the ideals of Civil War ended up separating the Western democracy. Everyone knows couple. After the defeat of the White the outcome of these efforts, how the Army forces and the evacuation from cynical realism of Lenin’s Bolshevik Crimea, exile became the only option. party triumphed in Russia, eliminat- A pregnant Elisabeth embarked at No- ing the Socialist Revolutionary major- vorossysk with her mother and her el- ity democratically elected to the first dest daughter, Gaïana (born from her constituent assembly. first marriage), on the last boat leav- ing for Georgia. After a nightmare of Fleeing from Bolshevism, Elisabeth a sea voyage, Yuri was born, safe and went to the family estate in Anapa in sound, in Tblisi. Elisabeth’s husband January of 1918. Elected to the mu- managed to join them at Constantino- nicipal council of the town, she per- ple, where, one year later, Anastasia formed the duties of mayor. This she was born. Following the flood of Rus- managed under the difficult and dan- sian émigrés, in 1922 the entire fam- gerous circumstances of the Civil War ily settled in Paris, now the capital of following the seizure of power by the “Russia in exile.” soviets. In August 1918, a group from the White Army occupied Anapa. An Death of a Child independent government was set up in the province. Accused of collabo- In Paris, the Skobtsov family experi- ration with the local soviet, the young enced poverty and total insecurity, woman was brought before a military the difficult fate of those officially tribunal. In the end, the tribunal im- designated as stateless. All of these

The Wheel 7 | Fall 2016 45 material hardships were completely was dominated and penetrated by an overshadowed, however, by the tragic intuition, both terrifying and joyful, illness and death of Anastasia during of the eschaton. “The old has passed the winter of 1923–1924. Following away, behold, the new has come” (2 a diagnosis of meningitis that came Cor. 5:17). Elisabeth felt called to be too late, the young child was carried witness in the here and now of the new away in a slow and painful death. The reality of “love without limits”: death of the child whose name meant “Resurrection” broke her mother’s Of holiness, of works, of dignity heart. But paradoxically, the Living Nothing can be found in me. Why God, this God in whom Elisabeth had have I been chosen? . . . ceased to believe after the death of I can only raise up my arms; I her father, reentered her life through could not say the same emotional breach. She expe- Who knocked at my door, nor rienced the catastrophe as a mysteri- when . . . ous divine “visitation,” but also as an Calling me to struggle against ev- anticipation of the Last Judgment. As ery evil. she sat near her dead child, the mother Against Death itself. wrote these lines: O my heart, know your emblem. That it might shine bright on the I never understood what repen- flags! tance meant, but now I see with Inscribe on your banner: “We will horror how contemptible I am. exult in the Lord!” Throughout my life, I have been Then your canticle will resound in wandering along pathways with the blaze of the flames, no exit. Now I want to commit to Then, my heart, you will receive the clear way, the purified path. Grace. Not that I believe in this life, but in order to justify, understand, and A Diaconal Ministry accept death. Nothing is greater than the commandment, “Love one Concretely, the life of Elisabeth another.” To follow love to its end; Skobtsova took a new direction. The to love without exception. Then ties between husband and wife be- everything becomes clear, and this came strained, and they separated in life, which otherwise would be 1927, though maintaining a friendly re- nothing more than an abominable lationship. Elisabeth committed herself burden, is justified. fully to the organization Russian Stu- dent Christian Action [Action Chréti- “The death of a loved one is a door enne des Étudiants Russes or ACER], a that opens suddenly onto eternity,” youth movement born spontaneously wrote Mother Maria later. “By visiting in the heart of the Russian émigré com- us, the Lord reveals the true nature of munity. ACER saw itself as a move- things: on the one hand, the dead skel- ment in the Orthodox Church. Its activ- eton of a human being and of all cre- ity found strength in the celebration of ation, mortal; on the other, the spirit of the eucharistic mystery. But the move- fire, the giver of life. The consoler who ment also benefited from the impetus consumes and fills all things.” of the Russian religious renaissance at the beginning of the century, which From that moment on everything was had renewed the dialogue between different. Elisabeth’s entire existence the intelligentsia and the Orthodox

46 Church. Some prominent intellectuals, factories. In the course of her pere- such as the Marxist economist Sergius grinations, she discovered among her Bulgakov and the libertarian philoso- fellow exiles the chronically ill; the pher Nicholas Berdyaev, experienced tubercular, the alcoholics, those no genuine conversions. These “major one wanted; Russians interned in psy- converts,” whose faith had passed chiatric hospitals where no one could through the test of doubt, inspired a care for them because, for lack of a youth movement that aspired, in exile, common language, communication to “ecclesialize life” (to use an expres- had proved impossible. Her vocation sion invented by the young believers as she began to understand it was not themselves)—in other words, to pene- only to deliver brilliant lectures, but trate all of life, in its social and personal to bring consolation, to listen to con- 1 At the camp in dimensions, with the light of Christ. In fidences, and sometimes, when possi- Compiègne, shortly this way, culture [culture] would be- ble, to offer concrete help. before the depor- come worship [culte] “in spirit and in tation to Germany, truth.” One of her poems from this period Fundaminsky-Bu- speaks to the discovery of this vocation: nakov was bap- tized by Fr. Dmitri Ordained a priest in 1918, Sergius Bul- Klepinin. gakov taught dogmatic theology at the What use to me clever intelligence St. Sergius Institute of Orthodox The- what use bookish words ology in Paris, founded in 1925. He when everywhere I see the dead face became Elisabeth’s confessor and spir- of despair, of nostalgia, of suicide. itual father. She established close ties with other members of this new Chris- O God, why is there no refuge? tian intelligentsia, such as Berdyaev, Why are there so many orphans and church historian Georgy Fedotov, and abandoned ones? Konstantin Mochulsky, who wrote bi- Why the wandering of your bitter ographies of Nikolai Gogol and Fyo- people dor Dostoyevsky. A special place in in the immense, eternal desert of the her relationships was reserved for Ilya world? Fundaminsky-Bunakov, a Socialist revolutionary like Elisabeth . . . of Jew- I want to know only the joy of giving. ish origins, but as later events would Oh to console with all one’s being show, of Christian sympathies.1 the suffering of the world. Oh that the fire, the cries of bloody In 1928, Elisabeth Skobtsova became dawns ACER’s itinerant secretary, charged might be drowned in tears of com- with visiting groups of Russian stu- passion. dents in various university cities around France. She traveled through- Without bearing the title, Elisabeth out the country, giving lectures in was in fact exercising the ministry of Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse, and Stras- a deaconess or, better, of a “spiritual bourg. But she could not allow her- mother.” After her lectures, people self to be restricted to the university would press forward to speak with her setting. With increasing frequency, in person. A line might form in front she visited housing developments of the room where she had spoken, in industrial regions as well, where as if in front of a confessional. Forlorn Russian émigrés, newly reduced to men and women would tell her of their working class status, had found work lives and share with her their intimate in mines, foundries, and chemical dramas. From these experiences there

The Wheel 7 | Fall 2016 47 arose in her the desire to obtain an ited several communities of women in official ecclesial ministry. Later, after Latvia and Estonia, former provinces she had taken religious vows, she ob- of the Russian Empire where a regu- tained authorization from her bishop lar and traditional monastic life had to preach after the Liturgy when she been retained. She returned from her visited provincial parishes. But she travels persuaded more than ever that was thinking especially of a total gift of those traditional forms of monasti- herself to God and to her fellow man— cism were poorly adapted to the sit- to God through her fellow man—when uation of Russian emigrés in Western she asked to take monastic vows. Europe. They appeared to her obso- lete and, moreover, contaminated by This desire, however, would come up a “bourgeois” spirit, the polar oppo- against several obstacles. For many site of the authentic radicalism of the traditional Orthodox Christians, Elisa- monastic vocation. For many women, beth’s past, her political commitments, she seemed to notice, monasticism and especially her two marriages were corresponded to a desire for a reassur- incompatible with entry into monastic ing spiritual family. The monastery life. There is, however, a canon from was viewed as a refuge, the monastic the era of Justinian (sixth century), community as a family where one felt which allows for divorce when one of comfortable among one’s own, snugly the spouses, with the agreement of the “protected by the high walls from the other, desires to embrace the monas- ugliness and the misery of the world.” tic life. With considerable generosity, Daniel Skobtsov accepted the eccle- This conception, she thought, might siastical divorce. On the basis of this perhaps have been appropriate for agreement and Justinian’s canon, Met- other times. But this was an apocalyp- ropolitan Evlogy, spiritual head of the tic time, a sort of end of the world. Her Russian Orthodox parishes in Western premonition, we must not forget, was Europe, was able to accede to Elisa- situated in the context of the 30s in Eu- beth’s wishes. The ceremony of mo- rope: the rise of fascism and la Bête im- nastic profession took place in March monde (the Great Beast). But it went be- 1932 in the church of the St. Sergius yond that. Under the influence of Lev Institute. The metropolitan himself Gillet, Mother Maria rediscovered the presided and gave to the new nun the eschatological dynamism of primitive name of Maria, in remembrance of the Christianity. She dreamed of a creative great penitent St. Mary of Egypt. Per- monasticism renewed in response to haps the metropolitan saw in this new the call deciphered in the “signs of the Maria a restorer of traditional feminine times”: a monasticism lived not in the monasticism, the absence of which he desert or behind protective walls but in so deplored in the ecclesial entity he the world—fire and hearth ablaze in the directed. Others, like Berdyaev and middle of the city, as the great though Fr. Lev Gillet, feared that the monastic neglected Russian theologian Alexan- habit she adopted might prevent the der Bukharev envisioned it. Mother new Mother Maria from fulfilling her Maria sent monks and nuns every- true vocation. where a new challenge:

Monasticism Open to the World Open your doors to the homeless thieves. . . . Let the whole world en- In the summer that followed her mo- ter. Let the world destroy your mag- nastic profession, Mother Maria vis- nificent liturgical edifices. Lower

48 yourselves, empty yourselves—an lapidated apartment building on the abasement that will be nothing in rue de Lourmel in the fifteenth. There comparison to that of our God. As- the Russian nun with the broad smile sume the vow of poverty in all its and unruly appearance, whose dress devastating rigor. Reject all comfort, often bore traces of her most recent even monastic comfort. May your efforts in the kitchen or painting stu- choirs be purified through fire, so dio, became a popular fixture. At “the that they reject every comfort. Then rue de Lourmel”—the familiar des- you will be able to say: My heart is ignation for her project—lived two ready, my heart is ready. . . . or three nuns; a priest who served as chaplain for the house butwas also a For everyone, the only thing that mat- professor of theology at St. Sergius; ters is taking seriously the Gospel several unemployed persons without parable of the Last Judgment. Mother other resources; some Russian delin- Maria exhorts: quents who, after their incarceration, had no place else to go; and several The path to God passes through the patients who had been locked away as love of neighbor. There is no other mentally ill, but whom Mother Maria way. At the Last Judgment, I will had managed to free from the psychi- not be asked whether I have suc- atric hospital after judging them to be ceeded in my ascetical exercises. of sound mind or only minimally dan- I will not be questioned about the gerous. Also occasionally in residence number of my prostrations during were some young women whom she prayer. I will be asked if I have fed had attempted to remove from a life of the hungry, clothed the naked, vis- prostitution, various artists and danc- ited the sick and the prisoner. With ers from the Russian opera, and mem- regard to every poor person, all the bers of a Catholic Gregorian choir. hungry, the imprisoned, the Savior said: It was I. I was hungry, I was Such was the “pandemonium”—the thirsty, I was sick and in prison. expression is from one of the chaplains of the rue de Lourmel. A chapel was A House Open to All set up in the courtyard and decorated with icons painted or embroidered by The beginning of the 1930s in France Mother Maria’s nimble hands. There was marked by a severe economic the priest attached to the house reg- crisis. Russian émigrés were often its ularly celebrated the Liturgy and the first victims. Mother Maria decided to hours. Fr. Lev Gillet provided this open a house where all who arrived, ministry for several years. Fr. Lev, a as long as there remained even a little monk of French origin, who loved and room, would be welcomed as brothers supported Mother Maria, was also at and sisters, whatever their condition. times a source of inspiration for her. She had no money, but thought, like He was replaced, when he left France the Apostle Peter with his eyes fixed in 1938, by a young married priest, Fr. on Jesus, that one had to learn to walk Dmitri Klepinin. on water. Thanks to some gifts (she was often helped by some Anglican Mother Maria had decorated her friends), she managed to acquire a first chapel with love. But she barely toler- house at 9 Villa de Saxe, in the seventh ated the long Byzantine prayer offices arrondissement. This first house soon (during which she admitted to bore- proved too small, so she bought a di- dom) and which she attended only

The Wheel 7 | Fall 2016 49 irregularly. She had so many things also social problems and politics, in a to do! She cooked meals and shopped spirit of ecumenical openness. . . . at the markets. At dawn she could be found at Les Halles,2 where the mer- In those years, Mother Maria experi- chants knew her well and offered her enced another great sorrow: the death the best prices or gave away perish- of her eldest daughter, Gaïana, in Rus- able products before they went bad. sia. She had returned to the land of Occasionally she would spend the her birth on the advice of André Gide. night at the cafés or bistros near Les At the same time, the atmosphere in Halles, where beggars and the home- the house on the rue de Lourmel was less would doze hunched over the often tense. Two opposing parties tables. She would speak to them, par- vied with each other more and more 2 Then a large open- air market, now an ticularly to the Russians abandoned openly. The first consisted of Mother urban shopping mall by everyone, and invite them to come Maria and her friends associated with (—trans.). see her in an attempt to address their Orthodox Action. The second was as- problems. Fr. Lev Gillet, who often sociated with another nun, Mother accompanied her on these excursions, Eudoxia, a woman of considerable spoke of the special charism of Mother virtue who, unlike Mother Maria, as- Maria during a recorded conversation pired to a traditional religious life cen- devoted to her memory. Mother Maria tered on the opus dei, the celebration of possessed a special gift for listening, the liturgical offices. The conflict was immense compassion for sinners, and further poisoned by the presence of an respect for the poor and humble. The archimandrite, pious and knowledge- Lord had said to her, “Go live among able, but who lacked any sympathy the vagabonds and the poor; between for Mother Maria and did not under- them and you, between the world and stand her aspirations. Father Cyprian me, tie a knot that nothing will break.” Kern supported Mother Eudoxia but A deaconess without the title, Mother instead of appeasing her threw gas on Maria was nonetheless a typical Rus- the fire. Mother Maria suffered from sian intellectual. Wearing her reli- incomprehension of these tensions, gious habit, she still smoked in pub- but managed to overcome her bitter- lic, shocking not a few observers and ness, as she expressed in one of her drawing upon herself severe criticism. poems of the time: An authentic social activist, she still adored discussion of theological and I know the fire will be lit philosophical problems, often until By the calm hand of a sister, late at night. The religious philosoph- And my brothers will look for the ical academy founded by Berdyaev wood, met in her house and she took part in And even the gentlest its meetings. In 1935, together with a On my road all of sin few of her friends, she created Ortho- Will say cruel words. dox Action, an organization charged My stake will burn with directing and coordinating her —songs of my sisters, ever-expanding social activities, a peaceful ringing of bells— free spiritual fraternity of Orthodox in the Kremlin on the square for Christian inspiration, and a society executions, of inquiry and thought. She edited or even here, in a foreign land, its journal, Novii Grad [The New City], everywhere weighted down with which dealt with religious themes but piety.

50 From dead branches rises insub- Holy martyrs Ilya stantial smoke, Fundaminsky, the fire appears at my feet, Mother Maria (Skobtsova), priest the funeral song, louder. Dmitri (Klepinin), But the shadow neither dead nor and Yuri (Skobtsov). empty, Icon by Maria in it appears the Cross. Struve. My end, my final end.

The End

The Second World War, so long antic- ipated by Mother Maria, broke out in 1939. After the debacle of 1940 came the German occupation, food short- ages that struck the poor with special force, and soon the hunt for Jews, beginning with Jews of foreign origin. Mother Maria, who counted among her best friends the Russian Jew Eli of several of her co-detainees. Partic- (Ilya) Fundaminsky, did not hesitate ularly precious for me was that of a for a moment in deciding what path niece of General de Gaulle, Geneviève to follow. Her house quickly became de Gaulle-Anthonioz, who felt a pro- known as a place of refuge. Those who found friendship and great admiration felt threatened by the danger could go for Mother Maria. Blessed with excep- there to be hidden, and efforts would tional vitality, supported by an un- be made to move them to safety in the shakable faith, Mother Maria was well Free Zone. Fr. Dmitri Klepinin deliv- equipped to resist the terrible ordeal of ered baptismal certificates to any who the concentration camp. “Everyone in desired them. These things were com- the block knew her,” remembered one mon knowledge. It is said that Mother of her companions. Maria was betrayed by someone who ate at her table. . . . “She got along with young and old, with those with progressive ideas, On February 8, 1943, the Gestapo came with believers and unbelievers in her absence and arrested her son alike. . . . In the evening, gathered Yuri, a student at the time; Fr. Dmitri; around her miserable pallet, we and the administrator of Orthodox Ac- would listen to her. . . . She spoke tion, Feodor Pianov. Mother Maria was to us of her work in Paris, of her told that they would be liberated if she hope to see one day the reunion of presented herself to the German po- the Catholic Church and the Ortho- lice. When she did so, she was herself dox Church. . . . Thanks to her, we arrested, but neither her son nor her rediscovered a little courage when- friends were released. All four were ever, crushed by the ever increasing deported, the men to Buchenwald and weight of terror, we felt faint.” Mother Maria to Ravensbrück. Of the four, only Pianov would return. On the sly, obtaining some thread in exchange for a ration of bread, Mother On Mother Maria’s attitude during Maria continued to embroider icons, her captivity we possess the testimony and even to paint a little symbolic

The Wheel 7 | Fall 2016 51 fresco representing the landing of the the beginning of April, the camp was Normans in Great Britain. But the last liquidated before the advancing Rus- months before the Liberation were terri- sian army. . . . ble. Sick with dysentery, Mother Maria saw her strength fail her. She scribbled a The fate of Mother Maria Skobtsova message on a sheet of paper, addressed might appear to be a complete failure. to Metropolitan Evlogy and her spiri- Her two marriages fell apart and her tual father, Fr. Sergius Bulgakov. “Here children died prematurely. She may is my status: I fully accept my suffering have considered herself responsible for . . . and I accept death, if it comes, as a the arrest of her son. She never saw the grace from on high.” victory over Nazi barbarism, a victory she never ceased to hope for. Orthodox 3 Father Lev Gillet. She who had so often comforted others Action barely survived her. Within Or- then fell silent, as if plunged deep in an thodox monasticism she had no disci- interior dialogue, of which one of her ples. Yet she remains alive. Her passion- poems speaks: ate appeals never cease to challenge and awaken us. Perhaps her influence after Here is my soul riveted to its solitude, her death is comparable in the Ortho- Only You and I. Your light, my sin. dox world to that of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Here I am arrived at the limit. in the Protestant world. Like him, she Your sun points to the East. aspired to a “secularized” Christianity. Above all, she calls us to move beyond Nothing is known for sure concerning paralyzing structures of all kinds, to- Mother Maria’s end. Separated from ward him who is to come. her companions, transferred to the Ju- gendlager (youth camp) where the sick One of her friends said that in a dream and the wounded were left to starve to he saw her walking through a wheat death, she must have expired, accord- field. He cried out to her: “What’s ing to Geneviève de Gaulle-Anthonioz, this? Mother Maria, someone told me in utter destitution and solitude. Some you were dead!” Then, looking at him believe they saw her name on a list gently, she answered: “People tell so of female prisoners gassed the 31st many stories. . . . You can see that I am of March, 1945. Some said that she quite alive!” The “monk of the Eastern © 2016 The Wheel. had taken the place of a young Polish Church”3 who reported this dream to May be distributed for noncommercial use. woman among those condemned to me said of Mother Maria that she is “a www.wheeljournal.com the gas chamber. A few days later, in modern Orthodox saint.”

Elisabeth Behr-Sigel (1907–2005) was possibly the most significant female Orthodox theologian of the twentieth century. As a young Lutheran, she studied philosophy in Strasbourg alongside Em- manuel Levinas. She joined the Orthodox Church in 1929, after at- tending Paschal Matins celebrated by Fr. Sergius Bulgakov in Paris and meeting Paul Evdokimov, Vladimir Lossky, and Fr. Lev Gillet. She subsequently became an active participant in the Parisian Or- thodox theological circle, and in 1976 completed a doctoral thesis at the University of Nancy on the theologian Alexander Bukharev. She was the author of many books and articles on Orthodox theology and spirituality.