Vera Merkulova

Vera Merkulova (in monasticism Veronica, in the schema Michaela, 1874-after 1935) was a schema-⁠abbess and ascetic in the Kostroma region, known as "Mother Vera" or "Vera the Barefoot." She died after 1935, probably in a camp in the Urals. She is venerated by the faithful in the Kostroma land, without synodal canonization.

Beginnings

She was born on 15 September 1874 in the village of Ovo-⁠Sumarokovo, Galich district, Kostroma province, into a peasant family. In 1880 the family moved to Rostov-⁠on-⁠Don. In 1906 she returned to Sumarokovo and entered the Holy Trinity convent in the village. She walked barefoot all year, hence the nickname "Vera the Barefoot," and wore metal chains under her clothing. She gained the gifts of foresight and healing and was venerated by the local people, who came on pilgrimage to meet her. In July 1910, at the invitation of the abbess Dosithea Ipatova, she moved to the Makariev Monastery in Reshma, where she was venerated in the same way. When the abbess organised a skete at the Nativity Hermitage of Nodoga, in the forest on the other side of the Volga, she was the first to wish to settle there; within half a year her name became widely known in the Kineshma district, and the hermitage became a place of pilgrimage. At the beginning of 1911, after a slanderous denunciation, she had to leave Reshma and returned to Sumarokovo, by order of Bishop Tikhon of Kostroma. In the years of the First World War thousands came to her, waiting days on end to learn the fate of those at the front.

Persecution

In 1919 the convent's community registered as an agricultural commune, in 1920 an old people's home was opened, and in 1921 a state farm, whose workers were mostly the sisters. In 1919 she was arrested by the Cheka of Galich, but soon released. In 1918-1919 she received monastic tonsure, then the schema, and apparently in 1919-1920 was raised to abbess; her monastic and schema names were known only to those close to her, and the rest called her "Mother Vera." In the early 1920s she was paralysed in both legs. Pilgrimage continued, so the authorities wanted to stop it. On 19 April 1921 she was moved to a home for invalids, to which access was almost impossible; next day six sisters asked that she be returned to her place and, receiving no answer, refused to go out to work. The nuns and Vera were arrested and taken to Galich, but on 23 April they were released.

On 28 May 1921 a commission came to Sumarokovo to close the cathedral of the "Quick to Hear" icon and to dissolve the convent. At her call many peasants gathered, and the sisters refused to hand over the keys. On 6 June Vera was arrested at Vysokovo, and "a great crowd of the population of several districts" gathered to defend her. She was released the same day, under obligation not to leave. On 11 June she was arrested again and taken to the penitentiary in Kostroma, then to Moscow, to the hospital of Butyrka prison, in July 1921, and in December to Lefortovo. On 13 December 1921 the Presidium of the Cheka decided to send her to Turkestan; the Political Red Cross intervened for her. On 23 January 1923 she was released, without the right to leave Moscow. She lived at a convent in Moscow, then moved to Galich, to the house of V. A. Zelenina, where she was loved by the townspeople; even Soviet officials came to her, severely criticised in an article in the local newspaper in August 1923.

In the spring of 1924 she was arrested again, and in 1925 was sentenced to three years of exile at Kineshma. In the spring of 1928 she returned to Sumarokovo, where pilgrimage resumed. In the autumn of 1929 she was arrested again and exiled to Kotelnich; she lived at Koryakiny and was taken daily to the services in the town's cathedral. On 29 December she was arrested, accused of "anti-⁠Soviet activity" and of founding an "illegal convent," and on 19 May 1930 was sentenced to three years of exile in the North; on 8 September the sentence was replaced by conditional release, owing to the petitions of the faithful and her infirmity.

In April 1931 she returned to the area of Sumarokovo, to the village of Isakovo. Daily she was brought to the church of Saint Nicholas in Sumarokovo, where services began to be held daily; according to OGPU data 50-100 people came in April, 400-500 in June, up to a thousand on feast days. At Isakovo she received between 50 and 200 visitors a day. The press began to attack her; "Pravda" itself wrote an article against her in August 1931. On 13 July 1931 she was arrested with four nuns, and on 2 October 1931 sentenced to three years of detention, served at the political isolator in Suzdal. She was released at the end of February 1934 and returned to Sumarokovo, to the house beside the church of Saint Nicholas; the number attending services rose from 30-50 to 400-500. In 1934 she received large sums of money from visitors, which she distributed: she helped the collective farms with seed, gave 3600 rubles for the invalids' home, and sheltered twenty children of exiled priests and dispossessed peasants. From April 1934 to January 1935 she gave the needy about fifty thousand rubles. She embroidered for the icon "Quick to Hear," given to the convent in 1888 by Hieroschemamonk Parthenius of Athos, a robe of beads.

Last years

On 11 January 1935 she was arrested at Sumarokovo, with four nuns, a monk and a peasant woman, as a "counter-⁠revolutionary group of monasticism," taken to Molvitino, then to the internal prison of the NKVD in Ivanovo. Besides the usual accusation, she was charged with connection with a "monarchist party" at Buy. At the interrogation she stayed firm and did not admit guilt. On 21 June 1935 a special board of the NKVD sentenced her to three years in a labour camp, which for a physically helpless woman amounted to a death sentence. According to some data she was sent to a camp in the Urals, where she probably died in the following years.

Her veneration is alive today in the Kostroma land: at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s Archpriest Valentin Ratkov recorded the recollections of 49 people from several districts who had known her. In the former Holy Trinity convent there is today a psychoneurological home.