Tatiana Grimblit

The holy martyr Tatiana Grimblit (1903-1937) was a nurse and medical assistant who organized aid for those in prisons and exile, among them the clergy of the Russian Church. She was arrested five times and was shot at the Butovo firing range near Moscow on 23 September 1937. The Holy Synod of the Russian Church numbered her among the saints on 17 July 2002 as a martyr. She is commemorated on 23 September, in the synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia and in the synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo.

Childhood and works of mercy

She was born on 1 December 1903 at Tomsk, into a deeply devout Orthodox family. Her father, Nikolai Grimblit, was an official of the excise administration, and her mother was Vera Antoninovna. She was raised in love of God and the Church by her grandfather, Archpriest Antonin Alexandrovich Misyurov. In 1920 she graduated from the Mariinsky girls' gymnasium in Tomsk. In the same year her father died and she became a teacher at the children's colony "Klyuchi" in Tomsk.

Then the civil war in Siberia ended, repressions by the new Soviet power began, and soon Siberia became a place of prison and exile. Resolving to devote her life to helping her neighbour, Tatiana made it a rule to exchange the money she earned and what she managed to collect in the churches of Tomsk for food and goods and give them to those in the Tomsk prison. Coming to the prison, she asked the administration which of the prisoners received no food parcels and gave to those. In 1923 she took parcels to needy prisoners in the prison at Irkutsk. There she was arrested, charged with counter-⁠revolutionary activity, which consisted in kindness to prisoners, but was released after four months.

The arrests

Helping exiles and prisoners, she came to know many famous bishops and priests of the Russian Church held in the prisons of Siberia. Her active charity drew more and more the attention of OGPU officers. In 1925 she was arrested a second time and released after seven days. On 6 May 1925, at interrogation, she said that since 1920 she had given material help to exiled clergy and to those in the Aleksandrovsky central prison, the Irkutsk prison and the Narym region, collecting funds through churches and the city, in money, goods and food. She mentioned a parcel of nearly two poods to Bishop Varsonofy (Vikhvelin) and help to Bishops Victor (Bogoyavlensky), Euthymius (Lapin), Anthony (Bystrov), Ioannicius (Speransky) and Agathangelus (Preobrazhensky), to priests and to laypeople, in general to prisoners, without knowing the cause of their imprisonment.

For the third time she was arrested on 7 May 1925 and held in the OGPU at Tomsk. On 26 March 1926 the special board of the OGPU sentenced her to three years of exile in the Zyryan (Komi) region, under article 58-10 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR. On 15 July 1927 she was sent to Turkestan to serve the rest of her term, and on 19 December 1927 she was released under an amnesty, with the right to choose her place of residence. From March 1928 to 14 April 1931 she lived in Zamoskvorechye in Moscow and sang in the choir of the church of Saint Nicholas in Pyzhi (rector Gabriel of Melekess), continuing to help prisoners.

For the fourth time she was arrested on 14 April 1931, charged with systematic anti-⁠Soviet agitation. At interrogation she confirmed that she had helped exiles and prisoners but pointed out that she had helped all prisoners, both church people and non-⁠believers. On 30 April 1931 the special board of the OGPU sentenced her to three years in a labour camp for anti-⁠Soviet activity, consisting in organizing illegal "sisterhoods" and "brotherhoods" and in helping exiled clergy. She was held from 14 April to 9 May 1931 in Butyrka prison, then from May 1931 to 1932 in the Vishera camp (the Urals, town of Usolye), where she studied medicine and worked as a medical assistant. In 1932 she was released with a ban on living in twelve cities of the USSR. She chose to live at Yuriev-⁠Polsky, from 1932 to 1933, then from 1933 worked as a medical assistant at the hospital in Alexandrov, and from 1935 until her last arrest as a nurse and laboratory assistant at the district hospital in Konstantinovo, near Sergiev Posad.

The last arrest and martyrdom

For the fifth and last time she was arrested on 6 September 1937 and held for a few days at the NKVD section at Konstantinovo. From a note of hers on the day of the arrest: "I knew, putting on the cross, this one that I wear, that I would go again. For God not only to prison, even to the grave I will go with joy." At interrogation she answered that she had nowhere and never carried on anti-⁠Soviet agitation and that, when out of pity she was told that she could spend money on fine clothes and sweet things, she preferred to dress more modestly and send the rest to those in need. Asked how she showed herself as a religious person toward Soviet power and the people around her, she said that she had tried to show herself an honest and conscientious worker and so prove that a religious person too can be a useful member of society, and that she had not hidden her faith. After these interrogations she was put in the prison at Zagorsk. The last interrogation was on 21 September, before the file was sent for the decision of the "troika". She was asked whether she pleaded guilty to anti-⁠Soviet agitation and to "wrecking", that is, knowingly killing patients in the hospital, and she answered that she did not plead guilty. Reading the record, she signed: "Written down from my words correctly, read personally by me."

On 6 September 1937 the "troika" of the NKVD Directorate for the Moscow region sentenced her to death by shooting, under article 58-10, for "anti-⁠Soviet agitation, helping prisoners, religious conversations". On 23 September 1937 she was shot and buried at the Butovo range near Moscow. She was rehabilitated by the Prosecutor's Office of the USSR on 11 October 1991 for the sentence of 1931.

Veneration

On 17 July 2002 the Holy Synod numbered her among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia for veneration in the whole Church. On 4 November 2005, on the patronal feast of the church of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God, with the blessing of Metropolitan Juvenaly of Krutitsy and Kolomna, the rite of founding a new church in honour of the Archangel Michael and the martyr Tatiana (Grimblit) was performed in the grounds of the Kazan church in Reutov. In September 2010 the "Service of Orthodox Volunteers of Saint Tatiana (Grimblit)" was founded, working with children with cancer and helping the elderly at home, organizing charity events and concerts. A documentary was made about her, "To Give Everything. The Holy Martyr Tatiana Grimblit" (2010), directed by Inga Monaenkova, which received an award at the Orthodox film festival "Meeting" in 2011, and in 2013 part of an episode of Felix Razumovsky's programme "Who Are We?" was devoted to her. On 9 July 2019 the Holy Synod approved the text of the service to the new martyr Tatiana Grimblit. A notebook of her poems survives, from 1920 and later, written in prison and camp, in which, in one commentator's words, it is not the splendour of the verse that draws the reader, but the boundless, eternal love for Christ, attested by word and by the life and death of the holy martyr.