Natalia Sivakova

Holy Martyr Natalia Sivakova (Natalia Lukyanovna Sivakova) was born in 1872 at Aktyubinsk, to a peasant family. She was married to Boris Trofimovich Sivakov; they had a son, Ivan, and a daughter, Maria. In 1929 the Sivakov family was persecuted: an informer wrote to the NKVD, on 25 June 1935, that in 1929 the Sivakovs had been held by the GPU at Aktyubinsk and, once freed, had moved to Aulie-⁠Ata (at the end of the thirties the town of Mirzoyan, now Taraz). At Mirzoyan Boris Sivakov kept a farm, a horse, a cow, pigs, and had his own sowing. "His wife is occupied exclusively with services, agitates for God against Soviet power," wrote the informer. At Mirzoyan many exiled clergy and monastics lived, who gathered secretly in houses for common prayer and the Divine Liturgy. The house of the Sivakov family, on 3rd Boulevard Street, near the railway station, became a place where the faithful gathered regularly.

Natalia Lukyanovna saw to it that the illegal Orthodox community had books, service vessels and vestments. Because the NKVD watched the believers closely, she had to keep to conspiracy and hide the books and vessels carefully. With the faithful she went from house to house and urged people not to depart from the Church. She told them not to fear persecution for the faith, since persecution is temporary; they must wait a little and God would put an end to the persecution, but for this they must pray, form a church community and open a house of prayer. She travelled to the Kiev Caves Monastery, where she had spiritual communion with the elders. She knew the former bishop of Tashkent, Schema-⁠Archbishop Anthony (Abashidze). Coming from Kiev, she brought icons and books to give to people.

In 1935 there came to Aulie-⁠Ata, from Kazalinsk, Konstantin Matveevich Konkov, aged seventy-⁠five. Having great experience of church work, he energetically set about organizing a house of prayer at Mirzoyan. At his house a meeting was held on the opening and registration of the house of prayer. The faithful collected money and bought a house on 4th Boulevard Street, which was repaired and fitted out with what was needed for services. Most parishioners were workers of the station or members of railwaymen's families. Under the letter with the request for registration of the house of prayer, Konkov and Natalia Sivakova gathered more than seventy signatures, but the town council refused registration. In April 1935 Natalia Sivakova went to Tashkent, to the diocesan administration; she met Metropolitan Arsenius and asked that a priest be appointed to the unregistered house of prayer. From Tashkent a priest appointed by the bishop came with her, but the authorities did not allow him to register in Mirzoyan, and he had to return. In 1936, after the death of Metropolitan Arsenius, Natalia Sivakova went again to Tashkent, to the new archpastor, Bishop Boris.

The hard situation of the faithful was made worse, besides outward circumstances, by inner disputes and schisms. At Mirzoyan the Renovationist schism had great influence. In the only church functioning in the thirties, the Dormition at the cemetery, Renovationists served. But in Mirzoyan many Orthodox remained who had kept faith with the Patriarchal Church. Natalia Sivakova and those around her had no communion with the Renovationists and were entirely opposed to Renovationism. In the south of Kazakhstan the Josephite movement then had great authority. Saint Natalia asked for an explanation about the Josephites from the monk Serapion at the Kiev Caves Lavra. The words the elder said to her, Natalia Lukyanovna repeated to the faithful of Mirzoyan: "The Holy Spirit moved Metropolitan Sergius to sign the declaration. If he had not signed, there would be none of the freedom of prayer which we now enjoy and not a single lamp would burn before our icons. What, is some heresy preached in this declaration, that one could fall away from union with him?" After this explanation those around Saint Natalia were confirmed in the rightness of Metropolitan Sergius and did not enter into communion with the Josephites.

In December 1936 there arrived at Mirzoyan, to serve his exile, the holy hieromartyr Alexis (Orlov), Archbishop of Omsk. The faithful received him warmly. They lodged him in a flat on 4th Boulevard Street, near the station. In the house of Natalia Lukyanovna Sivakova a church was arranged, in which Archbishop Alexis celebrated services. In agreement with Bishop Boris of Tashkent he joined in the work of registering the Mirzoyan community and prepared the documents for the town council. This work was not in vain: in 1937 the Dormition cemetery church was returned to the Orthodox community. But the holy hieromartyr Alexis was not destined to learn of it, since he was arrested before. In the spring of 1937 the inhabitants of the village of Dmitrievka in the Kirghiz SSR asked Archbishop Alexis to open a house of prayer in their village. In April a meeting was held at the exiled bishop's lodging; at his order Natalia Sivakova went to Dmitrievka. In thanks, the inhabitants sent the archbishop, through Natalia Lukyanovna, spiritual books of which the exiled clergy were in great need. Archbishop Alexis did not have time to use them: on 15 May he was arrested and taken to Chimkent, and on 4 September he was shot with other martyrs and buried in Lisya Balka.

Soon after the archbishop's arrest, in the newspaper Gudok, read by all railwaymen, a propaganda article appeared, "Sectarian Spies in the Settlement of Mirzoyan", which said that the church community at Mirzoyan station was led by "a woman, Natalia Sivakova", whose daughter, a former Komsomol member, had published in the paper that she was breaking with her religious mother. The article was full of lies and slander, with a tale that "the priest Orlov", arrived at Sivakova's, had set workers to throw bolts and nuts into locomotive boilers. In 1937 NKVD agents followed the believers closely, arrests went on in the town, and in the newspapers and at enterprises atheist and anti-⁠church agitation was heightened. Prayer and church activity were a feat of endurance. Many believers, especially of the exiles, lived in great need. Konkov said of the exiles that "they, poor things, live where there is not even a cucumber". Christian love moved Konstantin Matveevich and Natalia Lukyanovna to help them: several times a year they made collections of alms, and the money gathered they gave to the exiles and to the elders living in hidden hermitages.

On 21 January 1938 Konkov and Sivakova were arrested and taken to prison. At the interrogation the investigator asked Natalia Lukyanovna to admit her guilt; the charge was that she had had counter-⁠revolutionary ties with members of a counter-⁠revolutionary organization of churchmen, with the bishop of Tashkent Boris and the bishop of Omsk Alexis Orlov at Mirzoyan (condemned to death), at whose orders she was said to have carried on counter-⁠revolutionary organizational activity to set up illegal religious communities, together with counter-⁠revolutionary terrorist agitation. On 31 January 1938 the troika of the UNKVD of the South Kazakhstan region passed the sentence: Natalia Sivakova and Konstantin Konkov "to be shot, personal property confiscated". There is no news of the carrying out of the sentence; probably they were shot soon after it was passed. On 5 May 1989, by decision of the procurator's office of the Dzhambul region, Konkov and Sivakova were rehabilitated. At the Jubilee Council of Bishops in 2000 the martyr Natalia Sivakova was numbered among the New Martyrs and Confessors. She is commemorated with the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, on 7 February, a movable day.