Holy Schema-Abbess Sophia of Kiev (1873–1941)Sonya broadly made the sign of the cross over the wolf and began praying aloud. The wolf stood as if listening, then slowly retreated and disappeared into the ravine.
“>Part 1
The Holy Protection Convent in 1912
The Holy Protection Convent was founded in 1889 by Grand Duchess Alexandra Petrovna Romanova (1838–1900), the Princess of Oldenburg. She secretly accepted monasticism and became radiant with holiness, as the venerable St. Anastasia of KievDespite the centuries-old ban on women being on the Holy Mountain, this saint was directly related to the laying of the first stone on the Holy Mountain in 1881 in the foundation of the cathedral of St. Elijah Skete, founded in 1757 by St. Paisius Velichkovsky.
“>nun Anastasia of Kiev. Abbess Sophia was assigned to manage a very well-appointed monastery. Owing to the efforts of Nun Anastasia, it had two well-established general surgery hospitals equipped with the most modern equipment, a therapeutic hospital, and a clinic. The hospital and the clinic had two house churches: the first one in dedicated to Venerable Agapitus the Unmercenary Physician of the Kiev Near CavesThis holy Unmercenary Physician was born at Kiev. He was a novice and disciple of Saint Anthony of the Caves, and lived during the eleventh century.”>St. Agapitus the Unmercenary Physician, and the second one to the “Joy of All Who Sorrow” Icon of the Mother of God. The monastery also had a pharmacy with a free dispensing counter, while its outpatient clinic accepted more than five hundred people at no charge every day. The therapeutic hospital and outpatient clinic were named after Emperor Nicholas II: Rare Photos from Family AlbumsWe here present rare photographs of the tsar from 1907 to 1915 from six family albums that were taken abroad by the empress’ lady-in-waiting Anna Vyrubova.”>Emperor Nicholas II, and had been built at his expense. The vast territory of the monastery included monastic residences of one thousand two hundred nuns.
With the death of Nun Anastasia, the founder of the Protection Convent, none of the abbesses appointed in her place could handle the task entrusted to her. This enormous monastery required an intelligent and energetic administrator. The new abbess Sophia apprehensively accepted her position of abbess, but with time, because of her kindness and humility, she was able to win over the hearts of the sisters, becoming a tender and loving mother to them.
Sophia, with her kindness and humility, was able to win the hearts of the sisters, becoming a tender and loving mother to them
Abbess Sophia became known for her piety. Armed with excellent organizational skills, she was actively engaged in charity and spiritual enlightenment. She sought the advice of a chief physician of the hospital regarding every important issue arising in the hospitals, and monitored order in the hospital institutions, observing the sisters who carried out their obedience there.
During the First World War, an infirmary was opened in the Protection Convent. For her cooperation with the Committee for Assistance to Wounded Officers and Lower Ranks in 1915, Abbess Sophia was awarded a commemorative badge. In the same year, on the way to the front, the Emperor Nicholas II stopped by at the Protection Convent. Abbess Sophia blessed him with the holy icon and offered prayerful wishes. She also asked and received Tsar’s consent to give the orphanage the name of Tsesarevich Alexei. This orphanage took care of forty-eight orphans—the children of soldiers who laid down their lives on the battlefield for the faith and the Motherland.
This orphanage took care of forty-eight orphans, the children of soldiers who laid down their lives on the battlefield for the faith and the Motherland
The school also included several workshops—there were painting, vestment-making, seamstress, florist, gilding, bookbinding, and shoe-making workshops. The sisters of the convent trained the children in many of those skills. The children weren’t only well cared for there—they also discovered their faith. Apart from the orphanage, the convent also had an almshouse.
For ten years—from 1913 to 1923—Nun Sophia headed the community and, over time, she became known as a powerful and influential abbess.
Then the revolution came, followed by the Civil War. Risking her own life, Abbess Sophia sheltered in her convent both Bishop Nestor (Anisimov, 1885–1962) and the family of the Orthodox writer S. Nilus (1862–1929). She also gave her blessing to bury on the convent grounds the famous tsarist general Feodor Arturovich Keller (1857–1918) who was brutally murdered by the followers of Petliura.1
In the spring of 1919, the Bolsheviks seized power in Kiev and the property of the convent was nationalized. Under the guise of a labor, handicrafts and gardening cooperative, the convent managed to stay open for a few more years. In February of 1923, the Bolsheviks transferred the St. Nicholas Cathedral, the convent’s main church, over to the Renovationists. They closed the Protection Church and the sisters’ cooperative, while Abbess Sophia was removed from the management of the convent. The residential buildings of the former convent were used as housing units and the churches were turned into warehouses.
At that time, in 1923, Nun Sophia bought a summerhouse in the village of Irpen near Kiev and set up a church there. Twenty former sisters came there with her. A secret monastic community was formed. Archpriest Dimitry Ivanov, a former rector of one of the churches of the Protection Convent, became the rector of a secret, hidden church. The sisters rented out rooms in private homes in the village. They would meet for divine services at night at one of the dachas.
In the 1930s, Nun Sophia suffered repressions: arrests, interrogations, groundless charges, transfers from one prison to another. In 1924, Abbess Sophia was arrested for the first time. Here is how Maria, her sister, recalled it:
“They took my sister to prison … in an open automobile, seated between two commissars. At this unbearable sight, the orphaned sisters went running after the car crying out loud and shedding tears.”
The first arrest lasted six weeks. During this arrest, she suffered a severe purulent inflammation of the jaw. The second arrest followed in 1928 and lasted seven weeks. The abbess was sentenced to exile in the East, but she didn’t go into exile because of her illness. In the same year of 1928, she traveled to Poltava county, where she stayed at a former estate of Tatiana Demianovna Keller, the widow of Boris Feodorovich Keller and the daughter-in-law of the heroic General Keller, whose remains she once allowed to be buried on the grounds of the Protection Convent. In 1930, Mother Sophia returned to Irpen.
In October 1931, on the eve of the feast of the Protection of the Most Holy Mother of God, following the evening service, Abbess Sophia suddenly sent all other inhabitants of the house to spend the night elsewhere at various acquaintances. Miraculously, she foresaw that her arrest was to happen that night and so she wanted to save her loved ones from that sorrowful fate.
Miraculously, she foresaw that an arrest would take place that night and so she wanted to save her loved ones from that sorrowful fate
That night she was arrested for the third time, but was only interrogated on July 3, 1932, ten months later. Abbess Sophia was accused of counter-revolutionary activity. Showing dispassion and patience in her statements, she declared with dignity:
“I tried to avoid any conversations on political issues, because I think the ministers of religion shouldn’t be involved in politics. I consider the Communist movement an anti-Christian sect hostile to Christian ideas, and in my opinion, every minister of religion and truly believing Christian must put into practice the ideas of Christianity, as opposed to the ideas of Communism. They should in no way agree to the actions by the Soviet authorities, mainly regarding its attitude to religion.” 2
The document regarding the case of Abbess Sophia was issued at the end of 1932, based on which she was to be exiled to Kazakhstan for three years. On October 3, 1932, the Special Council at the Collegium of the General Prosecutor’s Office of Ukraine issued another decision. Extracts from the protocol stated:
“To release Sophia Evgenievna Grineva from custody, stripping her of the right to reside in twelve major cities for a term of three years, beginning from December 14, 1931. Archive the case.”
This commutation of sentence was owing to the efforts of a parishioner. History has preserved his name for us—Kalinik. He and his wife collected a large sum of money and handed it to a major official, and the sentence was commuted.
In 1933, Abbess Sophia continued acting as abbess of the secret monastic community. In the same there Abbess Sophia was again arrested in Irpen, a suburb of Kiev, where she lived using someone else’s identification documents in the house of a secret nun. She was exiled to the city of Putivl in Sumy region. Abbess Sophia weak health was further undermined after almost a year of imprisonment, so this exile was a real ordeal during a time of mass starvation. On August 2, 1933, she appealed to the prosecutor’s office asking to allow her to return to Irpen before the required three-year term because of her illness. This petition was ignored, and her second appeal was also refused. Then she secretly left Putivl and returned to Irpen.
There is information that in 1934, Abbess Sophia was secretly tonsured to Great Schema. It was most likely performed by Bishop Damascene (Tsedrik)3 probably during his brief release in 1934.
In 1937, in the year of great terror, Abbess Sophia’s secret monastic community was discovered. The nuns were arrested and taken to a reindeer farm in the Arctic circle, on one of the islands near Kamchatka. Abbess Sophia, however wasn’t apprehended because she was at another location.
The last days in the life of Abbess Sophia were spent in the village of Pokrov, near Serpukhov, Moscow region. Here, not far from the Protection Church, there was a wooden house where the abbess was staying with her trusted nuns Pelagia (Beletskaya) and Maria (Zinina) who never parted with her from the time they lived in the “Joy and Consolation” Convent. Her friends, the so-called “former ones,”4 used to visit her from Moscow. On March 22 (April 4), 1941, Nun Sophia (Grineva) reposed, having received the Great Schema seven years before (in 1934).
Seven days before the beginning of World War II, the sorrowful news reached her younger sister Maria who lived in Paris. A letter from I. A. Grigorieva, a spiritual daughter of Schema Abbess Sophia, reached France via Switzerland.
“For the last three years,” the letter said, ”she suffered from a painful disease. She had bronchial asthma, which at first was manifested by mild seizures, which then grew more frequent and made worse by heart disease. Despite the fact that she was repeatedly seen by the best Moscow doctors and obediently followed their advice, the disease did not yield to treatment. In the last three days of her life she drank only Borjomi mineral water, worrying that soon she would not be able to drink at all. She was terribly emaciated. Just as throughout her life, during which she was surrounded by loving souls, her devoted and endlessly loving spiritual children were with her at the final hours and lavished upon her the tenderest care and affection. She had no need of money, so, in this respect, her situation was tolerable.
Her death came unexpectedly, in spite of the fact that we could expect this bitter event any day… She felt no worse than usual early in the morning. She asked for one of her favorite books, and having sent away her spiritual kin who were with her, she was left alone. From the adjoining room she could be heard turning the pages of the book, but suddenly she began to cough. It became difficult for her to breathe… This continued for three hours. Her breathing became more and more difficult, less and less frequent; her eyes were clear, understanding everything, and she was gazing at the icons, but then she looked another way, towards her favorite icon, then quickly and firmly closed her eyes; and those dear, bright eyes never opened again…”
Reliquary with the relics of the Venerable Confessor Sophia (Grineva)
In 1981, Schema Abbess Sophia was added to the host of the holy new martyrs and confessors of Russia, glorified by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate added her to the host of locally honored holy confessors of the Kiev diocese quite recently, in 2012. The relics of the Venerable Confessor are in the St. Nicholas Cathedral of the St. Nicholas Convent in Kiev.
The memory of St. Sophia of Kiev is celebrated on March 22 (April 4)—on the day of her repose—and on April 28 (May 11) —the day of the uncovering of her relics.
Holy Venerable Mother Sophia, pray to God for us!
