Mother Maria Skobtsova (1891–1945)

FROM THE ARCHIVES Mother Maria Skobtsova (1891–1945) 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.

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