Chionia of Arkhangelsk

Holy Confessor Chionia of Arkhangelsk (1883-1945) was the wife of Holy Hieromartyr Tikhon Arkhangelsky and the mother of nine children. After the arrest and shooting of her husband in 1937, she herself was arrested. At the interrogations she rejected all the charges of anti-⁠Soviet activity. An NKVD troika sentenced her to eight years in the camps. Despite her serious illness, her request for early release was rejected. Freed in 1944, she died in December 1945.

The family of Father Tikhon

Father Tikhon was born on 30 May 1875 in the village of Bolshoe Popovo, Voronezh province, in the family of the priest Ioann Arkhangelsky. His parents died early, and the younger children, Tikhon and his sister, were raised by a cousin, Zinaida, and her husband, Peter. They sent him to the theological seminary, which he finished, and then he married the pious Chionia. She was born on 8 April 1883 in the village of Novy Kopyl, Voronezh province, in the family of the priest Ioann Dmitriev. Father Tikhon and Chionia Ivanovna had eighteen children, the first born in 1901 and the last in 1923; nine survived, six daughters and three sons, the others dying in infancy. Soon after the wedding Tikhon was ordained a priest for the church in the village of Troekurovo, near Lebedyan.

Troekurovo was in a picturesque place, on the bank of the Krasivaya Mecha river, near a convent, now destroyed. The priest was given land and the large family lived by farming. The land was not among the best, full of stones, and much labour was needed to clear it. All the older children worked the land, which accustomed them to every kind of labour and helped them to bear the trials that were to come. The raising of the children was the care of Chionia Ivanovna, a deeply religious and pious woman, who taught them to pray and to turn to God in all difficulties. On all great and small feasts the children went with her to church, and she kept the fasts according to the rule, often in times of hunger, in the persecution of the twenties. In fasts secular reading was set aside and only the Law of God was read; what they read the children told to father or mother, while working, in the garden or in the field, or knitting stockings or mittens.

Father Tikhon was a diligent and zealous pastor, prayed much and served often. Welcoming and compassionate toward people's sorrow, he could comfort anyone who came to him in trouble. He was a decisive and firm man, and in his presence nothing coarse could be said, for he stopped it at once and made a remark. Yet he was of few words and reserved. For his blameless service he was raised to the rank of archpriest.

The years of persecution

In 1928 the authorities closed the church in Troekurovo and resolved to list the priest among the kulaks, in order to dispossess him of everything. But in the village council many respected Father Tikhon, and an official came to his house and informed him of the authorities' plan. Rather than wait for them to come and throw us out of the house, said Chionia Ivanovna firmly, better to gather now what we need and go, for the time being, to Lebedyan. Father agreed. They loaded the necessary things on a small sledge and the same official took them to town. At first they rented a corner, then a small room. Bishop Varus (Shmarin) of Lipetsk sent Father Tikhon to a parish three kilometres from Lebedyan, where he served almost a year, and then the church was closed here too. The bishop sent him to the church in the village of Ilinskoe, then to that of Patriarshy, where they too were closed after about a year. At Patriarshy an envoy of the parish of the village of Kuiman came to him and invited him to serve with them. With Bishop Varus's blessing, Father Tikhon moved to Kuiman, a big village inhabited mostly by pious and deeply believing peasants, so that the church was always full. There was no separate house for the priest there and he rented a small cottage in the yard of Andrei and Elena Zhdanov; between the peasant's family and the priest's good Christian relations grew, full of love and peace. Here he served until his arrest. The older children had left; with the parents there remained only the youngest daughter, Elena, and in 1936, after her husband's death, their daughter Irina, with four small children, moved in.

On 9 August 1937, a warm day, the door of the house was wide open. A car stopped near the house and men in uniform got out of it. One went straight to Father Tikhon and asked: Do you have weapons? The priest answered: I have: the cross and prayer. The NKVD agents ransacked the house. One climbed behind the stove, took a pistol from his holster, then, coming out, showed it to the others and said: Here is his weapon. Father Tikhon was led away in his light summer cassock, without being allowed to dress and gather his things. At the interrogation, at Lipetsk, he stated that in his understanding the Communists were unbelieving people, gone astray, leading the people to perdition in the life to come, and that absolute truth is only in heaven; he denied any terrorist intentions and any criminal connections. On 4 October 1937 an NKVD troika sentenced him to death. Before the execution, an agent asked him: Will you not renounce? No, I will not renounce, answered the priest. Archpriest Tikhon Arkhangelsky was shot on 17 October 1937 outside Lipetsk and buried in a common grave, now unknown.

Chionia Ivanovna tried to learn her husband's fate; she went several times to the authorities and, being a decisive and straightforward person, rebuked them for their silence. A representative of the authorities threatened that they would take her too. Very well, she answered, take me, perhaps I shall see Father Tikhon there. She then went to Moscow, to her sisters, to take counsel. In her absence officials of the village council came and searched the house for her. Returned, she said: I must get ready. I feel that they will take me. I will not hide, and since they have called, I had better go myself. She dressed, gathered her things and on the evening of 12 December 1937 went with her daughter Elena to the council. She was detained. She was taken to Trubetchino, and her daughter brought her food and a flask of holy water. At the interrogation she said she did not admit guilt of anti-⁠Soviet activity, denying the witnesses' testimonies.

From prison she wrote a letter to her children, in a few days. She told how she had been asked whether she believed that God had saved the Jews by drowning Pharaoh in the sea, and when she said yes, she was called a Trotskyist. She wrote that now she had tested in herself that not one word of the Saviour passes unfulfilled; that in life she had had the sin of judging others, and now she herself was judged. She divided her modest belongings among the children, asked them to burn a vigil lamp for her and their father, to pray, to forgive her and not judge her, to be at peace with one another, not to abandon the faith, to baptise the children, to leave Kuiman, where they would not be let live, and to find shelter with relatives. She wrote that at the last interrogation the chief shouted that she was a real enemy, but she answered that if she had sinned she must receive punishment for her sins, and she committed all to the Lord.

On 31 December 1937 an NKVD troika sentenced her to eight years in the camps. She was imprisoned in the jail at Shatsk, in Ryazan region. On 20 May 1938 the prison doctors drew up a report on her state of health and proposed that she be freed, in accordance with the law, since she could no longer manage without help. But the NKVD plenipotentiary demanded that the question of early release not be considered, because of her harsh words toward Soviet power. She was freed at the end of 1944, when the fatal end of her illness had become certain. For a time she stayed with her daughter Yulia, in Michurinsk, then moved, at her own request, closer to the graves of her kin, to the village of Krivushka, near Tyutchevo, where her daughter Irina had bought a small cottage. Even ill, she took sewing work, for which she was given food, part of which she gave to her daughters and part kept for her own commemoration. She prayed and prepared her death, so as not to be a burden to anyone. In her last weeks she took no food at all. She reposed in December and was buried in the local cemetery on 22 December 1945.

She is commemorated on 17 October, on 7 February, in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, on 23 June, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Ryazan, and on 23 September, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Lipetsk (new style).