About priest Nikita Ignatiev
…Father Nikita Ignatiev awaited this moment every day for 40 years—and it never came for him. But he never lived to see freedom, and he was forced to die and be buried as secretly as he had lived… He told his spiritual children: “If our Church can gain freedom, if I can leave my home openly—don’t tell me right away, without preparation—I won’t be able to bear it…” He feared his heart wouldn’t be able to bear this joy. Those 40 years were truly a bloodless martyrdom, when every day he laid down his life for his flock—and his spiritual children prepared to suffer for him every day…
Nowadays, it’s fashionable to call Metropolitan Sergius and the patriarchs who followed him, along with their like-minded followers, “bloodless martyrs.”
But the story of this man's life testifies: martyrdom—even if bloodless—is something quite different...
The well-known bloodless martyr, St. Sophia, did not command her young daughters—Saints Faith, Hope, and Love—to fulfill the will of Adrian, but blessed them to suffer for Christ...
The exact origin of Nikita Illarionovich Ignatyev is unknown. In those dangerous times, it was not customary to question even a close friend—they were content with what he would tell them himself. Nevertheless, one day they asked Father Nikita: "Is your homeland far away?" "Far away, where the grapes grow—my homeland is there," the priest replied. "When pilgrims went to Jerusalem, to the Black Sea, they spent the night with us."
His parents' hospitable home was always open to travelers. Father Nikita had a brother, Dmitry, eight years his senior, and their father explained his hospitality this way: "I have two sons—perhaps they, too, will have to wander..." And so it came true, at least for the younger one. Father Nikita said that just as his parents gave shelter to pilgrims, so he himself was later hidden by kind people.
One elderly wanderer lived with his parents for a long time, and that's how they buried him... Many, many years later, the owners of the house that gave him his final refuge would secretly bury Father Nikita, risking their own lives.
Nikita was raised as a Christian; he said he was close to the Church from an early age, avoiding games: "The young people go out for walks, but I go to church..." From childhood, he read and sang in the choir, and learned all the services; the boy also read the Epistle, for which he stood on a bench.
Father Nikita's parents were named Illarion and Euphrosyne. They were tortured and starved to death by the Bolsheviks: they locked them in one of the rooms of their house and refused to allow anyone to bring them food, telling everyone they were ill. But the neighbors knew what their illness was and said that if they were given food, they would recover.
Father Nikita was apparently a contemporary of the century, having been born somewhere around its very beginning. The Revolution, therefore, must have occurred when he was 16 or 17 years old. At this age, whether it was after the death of his parents or while they were still alive, he was caught by the Reds, carrying a written appeal against them from an elder, apparently named Jonah. The young man, still barely a boy, was led to execution, but on the way he lost consciousness and ended up in the hospital, from which a doctor friend helped him escape.
Somewhere during his youth, in the south, he met Archimandrite Seraphim and Matushka Ekaterina Ilyinichna Golovanova—she was a nun in the monastery over which Archimandrite Seraphim ministered, and had been raised there from childhood. The fate of the future Father Nikita later turned out to be closely linked with the destinies of these two people, although, unfortunately, there is no information about the circumstances under which they met. Perhaps it happened later, during his exile in Turkestan, where he was sent for refusing to serve in the Red Army. At that time, Turkestan was home to exiled clergy, including bishops. Father Nikita became acquainted with them, and, according to some sources, he was ordained to the priesthood there. It was said that Archimandrite Seraphim was from a monastery somewhere near Tashkent; perhaps Father Nikita met him during his exile? The exiles
wanted to go to the mountains, and a place had already been prepared when everyone was dispersed, and Father Nikita was left alone. When his term of exile was about to expire, he did not report for registration and went without permission to Moscow, where his brother Dmitry, serving as a deacon, was at the time. Archimandrite Seraphim, who had arrived in Moscow from near Tashkent, was also there.
Father Nikita related that, during his service as a priest in Moscow, he had more than once held the Robe of the Savior in his hands, raising and displaying the reliquary containing it to the people. The Robe of Christ the Savior was kept in the Dormition Cathedral; did Father Nikita serve there, or did he receive the Relic in his arms during the procession with the cross?
Father Nikita was not registered in Moscow. His life there was becoming increasingly unbearable; he was being followed, and to escape from them, he was once forced to jump out of a moving tram. His situation became especially difficult after the Declaration of Metropolitan Sergius.
Father Nikita's name day was May 24 (according to the old calendar), on the day of St. Nikita the Stylite.
In Moscow, there was a certain matushka, known as the "dark one," meaning "blind," who once began scolding Father Nikita:
"Schismatic, schismatic, what have you done to turn away from Metropolitan Sergius?! I'm going to see Sergius now; he'll come to you in a car and take you away—you'll serve him!"
But Father Nikita, unfazed, firmly explained why he would never serve Metropolitan Sergius, adding:
"He drives around Moscow in a car during the day, and I'm afraid to walk at night..."
"What is your name? Nikita?" asked the clairvoyant matushka (she didn't know his name).
"Nikita.
" "A stylite?
" "A stylite."
Then the matushka slapped Father Nikita on the head with her palm:
"Then be a pillar of Orthodoxy!"
She was testing him, calling him a schismatic...
Father Nikita's friendship with Bishop Maxim (Zhizhilenko) dates back to his Moscow years. It is known that he was ordained a bishop with the blessing of St. Patriarch Tikhon specifically for the Catacomb Church. They even rented a room together, but, unfortunately, no details of their close association have survived, other than the final tragic episode of their life together. Returning from somewhere in the evening, Bishop Maxim and Father Nikita noticed a light in the windows of their home. They became wary: "Something's wrong: the light's on in the house, and it's bright in our room..."
Father Nikita went out the back door; the landlady, seeing him, waved him away. It turned out their room had been searched: one policeman was rummaging through their belongings, another was dozing at the table. Father Nikita tried to take Bishop Maxim away, but he firmly refused: "I have to go—there are my vestments, there's my miter!" He refused to leave his bishop's vestments in the hands of the police, went into the room, and was arrested there...
Whether this was the same arrest that led Bishop Maxim to Solovki is unknown... But eventually, in the Solovetsky concentration camp, fate brought Bishop Maxim together with Bishops Victor of Vyatka and Nektary of Yaransk.
After Bishop Maxim's arrest, the hunt for Father Nikita continued, and his further stay in Moscow became completely impossible. Archimandrite Seraphim was in Yoshkar-Ola at the time, and Father Nikita received a letter from him inviting him to come. According to some sources, the letter advised him to stop by on his way to Kazan to see Bishop Nektary Trezvinsky. According to others, Father Nikita first came to see Archimandrite Seraphim in Yoshkar-Ola, and from there Father Seraphim sent him to Kazan to see Bishop Nektary: “Go to the Bishop, he’ll assign you somewhere here…”
But these details are not so important, and Father Nikita himself, according to his recollections, recounted his meeting with Bishop Nektary: “I arrived in Kazan, found this street, this house, this number… I arrived – he was working in a carpentry shop, short, in civilian clothes, in a jacket. ‘How can I find and see Bishop Nektary?’ – ‘You’ll see him in a minute,’ he said. He turned quickly—he was so nimble, young, not long out of the Academy, after all—and went, donning his cassock, his ryasa, his klobuk; and came out: "Here is Bishop Nektariy for you."
Father Nikita accepted the blessing and confessed how embarrassed he felt in front of the Bishop: "I mistook you for a novice…"—"No matter, but I—you—for a metropolitan…"
Father Nikita was indeed a very imposing man, of handsome appearance, and according to his spiritual children, he was gifted with everything: “Beauty, height, voice, and hair...”
To speak about his voice: after the conversation, Bishop Nektariy took Father Nikita out of his cell to sing near the courtyard. When Father Nikita began singing, the neighbors began to come running to listen…
During the conversation itself, Father Nikita explained that he had not signed the Declaration and had subsequently been persecuted in Moscow, making it impossible to remain there. Archimandrite Seraphim advised him to turn to him, the Bishop…
“Then go to Vyatka Province,” the Bishop said, “go to Sanchursk, stay there, it’s a quieter corner…” And Bishop Nektariy wrote a document roughly to the following effect: “I authorize Archpriest Nikita Ignatiev to serve in all Orthodox churches of the Yaransk Diocese…” (At that time, there were still Orthodox churches under Bishop Nektariy, who administered these parishes from Kazan). “Vladyka, I’m visiting Father Seraphim, I’m only here for two weeks…” the young priest tried to object. The Bishop patted him on the shoulder: "Or perhaps for twenty years..."
His prophetic words came true doubly - not twenty, but forty years Archpriest Nikita spent in these parts...
After spending the night with the Bishop, in the morning Father Nikita went to Yoshkar-Ola, where, like the finger of fate, he was overtaken by a telegram: a priest had been taken away from the village of Gorodishche... He had to obey the Bishop and go to the empty place in Gorodishche, especially since there was no other way to decide his fate: Father Nikita had nowhere to return to. In those years, they traveled by horse-drawn cart; they found a cart so large that it would only take them so far, and when they arrived in Gorodishche, the wheel, as if it had been waiting for this, fell off...
But the residents were also happy with the arrival of Father Nikita; There was an elder named Myron in these parts who prophesied: "Gorodishchenskaya Hill will be covered in velvet..." And, indeed, it was covered with people, as if in velvet: parishioners flocked from all directions—both on foot and on horseback—to admire Father Nikita's services. During the service, they say, no one left the church, and after it was over, the people were reluctant to leave, as if expecting something... This anticipation was characteristic of people, apparently hungry for the word of a true pastor, unsure how to respond to this latest terrible turning point in Russian life. Father Nikita advised everyone not to join the collective farm.
But disagreements arose with the second priest, Father D.—apparently due to the latter's envy. This priest's wife even went to Bishop Nektarios with some complaints about Father Nikita. She entered the Bishop's cell without a headscarf. "Well, get out of here," said the Bishop. She waited and waited, and then entered again, again without her headscarf—and the saint again sent her away.
At that time, a new church had been built in the village of Tabashino, and the local holy fool, walking around it, muttered, "The church is new, but there are no priests. There's only one priest far away—Father Nikita…"
Then the construction brothers came to Bishop Nektarios and asked that Father Nikita be sent to them. The bishop granted their request. But even in his new location, Father Nikita's life was not without its sorrows.
There was already a "Renovationist" priest at this church, and some began to hate Father Nikita. They even tried to poison him—the warden's wife baked a poisoned pie.
The warden of the church in Gorodishche, on the contrary, demanded the return of his beloved priest; they say he was so angry with the priest who had outlived Father Nikita that it even got to the point where his kamilavka rolled across the church. Father Nikita was returned to Gorodishche, but sorrows were already following him relentlessly. Then they gave him an assignment: personally cut 100 cubic meters of lumber... Father Seraphim advised him against it: don't go, it's not your business.
Then, around 1929, the surveillance began. Policemen attacked him: first two, then four, pressing in, forcing him to cut his hair, but he wouldn't budge. They slammed his head on a bench, knocking him unconscious. When he came to at the police station, his hair was all over him, cut off, and covered in blood... They wouldn't even let him collect his hair... But they let him go.
Father Nikita continued to say: "Stay in your shirt, and don't go to the collective farm."
One day, the head of the GPU—a belted sheepskin coat—came to him for confession to hear what the priest was teaching the people. Father Nikita told him the same thing about the collective farm during confession as he had told everyone else, but he sensed something unkind about this "confessor" and noticed that he hadn't approached Communion.
Two weeks later, Father Nikita and Matushka Golovanova, who was his psalm-reader at the time, went to some friends for tea. When they returned to their haven, Father Nikita didn't go to bed. The bed in his room remained unmade. Father Nikita himself recounted it this way: "I sat up, malakhai in my hands, still wearing my robe. My heart ached—something was probably going to happen." There was a knock at the window. "They're coming to take me away," Father Nikita said confidently.
Matushka Golovanova, responding to the knock, went to greet the uninvited "guests" with a candle... The door of the hut opened outward, and Father Nikita stood in the entryway behind the open door. Stumbling into the entryway from the street, the "guests" suddenly found themselves in pitch darkness. "Oh, the candle's blown out!" Matushka exclaimed. "Let's go into the hall, it's light there." The newcomers rushed into the illuminated part of the dwelling, while Father Nikita emerged from the house: he was fully prepared for the arrival of the "guests," and even had his outerwear on.
"Where is Father?" the "guests" asked. "They summoned him to Serkovo for a service."
They inspected the house. Father's bed was unmade—they believed him and drove off toward Serkovo...
Thus ended Father Nikita's parish life.
They went to fetch the warden, held a prayer service in the church for the last time, and Father Nikita went wandering. Did his heart tell him that he would never again serve in a church on this earth, or even visit it?
Father Nikita stayed for a night, two nights, a month, or a week. Matushka Golovanova became a psalm-reader for a time in the Kiknur district; she had a cell there. She sang in the choir herself and attracted orphans to church singing, raising them in this way.
Things were difficult before the war, and then they became even more difficult.
During the war years, there was a pause in Father Nikita's life in Vyatka. Before the war, he left again for Moscow, where Father Archimandrite Seraphim and many of their acquaintances had gathered at that time. The Catacomb Church was also active in Moscow, and the clergy likely had much to discuss.
But staying in Moscow for long was impossible, and the day came when Archimandrite Seraphim said to Father Nikita: "Return to Vyatka." "I don't have any documents." "Here is our document," Father Seraphim pointed upward. "Lord!"
Wartime trains were inescapable of inspections; this time, patrols with flashlights patrolled from both ends of the carriage.
"The inspector pointed his flashlight at me," Father Nikita recounted. "And I had no documents, only an icon of Our Lady of Vladimir hidden on my chest..."
The patrolman stared silently at Father Nikita for a moment, shining his flashlight on him, and Father Nikita stared back. Father Nikita had companions with him, and they, too, froze.
At that moment, another approached: "Well, why aren't you checking?" "Everything's checked, let's go," came his companion's unexpected reply.
The entire compartment, they say, was practically crazed with surprise that they hadn't been checked. Father Nikita especially revered the Mother of God of Vladimir, and She had saved him more than once...
But again, there were sorrows. Returning from Moscow, Father Nikita discovered that his final resting place before leaving for Moscow had been searched, and that precious utensils and the white vestments he had treasured so much, as if they were meant for his own burial, had disappeared. Overwhelmed by the stress of the experience, his consciousness gave way and abandoned him; he fell and hit himself hard, causing a swelling to appear on his face that remained for a long time. Father Nikita later cured this swelling by anointing it with oil from a lampada.
But were there ever days in Father Nikita's wandering life that passed without worry, days he could spend serenely? We don't know; his spiritual children remember days of constant anxiety. And yet... So, there must have been something for which they agreed to endure all these unthinkable, even unimaginable to most modern people, worries?
Naturally, the authorities were haunted by the thought that Father Nikita was hiding somewhere in their region.
All other catacomb priests known to the authorities had already been arrested, including Father John Razgulin, also known as Lisinsky, named after the village of Russkaya Lisa, where he was born around 1906-7, who we have not yet mentioned. He had been ordained by Bishop Nektary in Kazan, but due to Father John's lack of education and preparation, he was not permitted to celebrate the Liturgy. Bishop Nektary ordained him, as it were, in advance, for the last times, in case there would be no one to administer the Holy Gifts to Christians. Father John had yet to master the intricacies of priestly ministry; but, on his way back from the Bishop's, without the Bishop's blessing, he suddenly appeared alongside the priests in priestly vestments in one of the villages on a feast day, when they were about to perform the litany. This greatly astonished the local residents, who began whispering, "Look, Ivanushka is a priest!" Apparently, rumors of this spread quickly, and shortly afterward, the imprudent Father John was arrested, a consequence of his disobedience to his bishop. Father John Lisinsky served approximately ten years in prison and died in the late 1870s, remaining a secret priest. However, since he began celebrating the Divine Liturgy without the bishop's blessing, he apparently did not have a large flock.
As already mentioned, the remarkable pastor, Father John Protasov, who had earned a grateful memory for many decades and managed to hand over his flock to Father Nikita before his death from prison, was also arrested. And Father Nikita was left alone in his circle—his long-standing battle with the godless authorities had begun.
Five regions rose to their feet to search for the priest; they caught everyone, but Father Nikita could not be caught. But what this daily awareness of being hunted cost Father Nikita—only God, the priest himself, and his devoted spiritual children knew. Yet this spiritual unity was more precious to them than life itself. "He was irreplaceable to us," his children recalled. And they added: "Like any person, he wanted to live..." But this was no longer life, but a living. Like any person, they, too, wanted to live, but they had something more precious than life itself, and they were ready to give it up for their pastor, and in him, for the most precious treasure they so carefully guarded—the Church. As long as their shepherd was with them, the Church was with them, and they were with the Church and in the Church: they could come into life, live it, and leave it as befits a Christian: baptized in the Orthodox faith, confessing, partaking of the Holy and Great Heavenly Mysteries, being deemed worthy of a Christian death and burial; God was with them… They had that which alone gives meaning to life, and therefore makes it immeasurably more precious, and many of them actually went to their deaths, to prison, to exile, while the rest, by their own testimony, "were gathering in line for this"… And, therefore, what they possessed was worth all the sacrifices they made, all the inconveniences, deprivations, worries, and fears; it was truly priceless. The most persecuted, the most unfortunate, and destitute people on earth—they were the happiest.
And this reverent and caring attitude toward the Church, which represented a counterbalance to the abuse and mockery to which Metropolitan Sergius subjected the Church, truly depriving countless compatriots, usually unaware of what they were deprived of...
And he himself?
No, in those apostolic times, it was not Metropolitan Sergius nor his successors who fulfilled all the words that put everything in its proper place: "Those of whom the world was not worthy wandered in mountains and deserts, in dens and caves of the earth" (Hebrews 11:37-38).
Father Nikita lived in cellars, barns, and sheds, justifying his nickname "Haystack," given to him by Archimandrite Seraphim. We can only judge how Father Nikita spent his wandering life from a few surviving episodes...
Father Nikita found temporary shelter with a widow in the village of Krutom, Lisinsky Village Council. At that time, a search was underway throughout the village—searching for deserters. One could hear the detectives, stopping at the widow's house, suddenly deciding to show uncharacteristic mercy: "We won't go to her, we won't disturb the old woman..." But if a priest disobeying Soviet rule had been found in her house, the Soviet regime would not have hesitated to "disturb" this old woman. All ages were fit for prison, and, according to eyewitnesses, there were more than enough old women in prisons and camps—apparently, old women posed a particular threat to the mighty Soviet regime... This was just one day out of many thousands of days that brought their own anxiety.
Another time, in another place, they were also looking for deserters—not finding them, the human hunters decided to hunt fieldfares instead. Shooting broke out, the cause of which Father Nikita did not know, but only heard them banging on their gate and shouting: "He's here!" How was the priest to know that a shot fieldfare had fallen into their yard, and the human hunters, eager to prove their marksmanship, wanted to pick up the bird...
The priest suffered a nervous breakdown, and when a neighbor who lived ten houses away with her children came into the house where he was afraid to stay after this incident, the priest himself, like a small child, seized upon her: "Take me home!" She led him to a barn where they had made a hole in the straw, where Father Nikita lay for three months, without straightening up, only cutting a crack with a knife to see the light, and praying. The housewife was not always able to bring food; If he didn't bring bread, the priest would remain hungry. After these three months, he could barely stand up, fall, and barely comb his hair...
It was difficult to find even a short-term shelter for the priest—some were afraid to take him in, while for some reason it was dangerous to stay with others. A special responsibility fell on the hosts, and during secret services, which naturally took place at night, they usually didn't so much pray as guard. And it happened that, according to them, they were saying goodbye to life... There were false alarms, vain fears, but, alas, this was far from always the case. Secrecy had to be kept so strictly that, for example, if two people came to the priest, it was established that no one was to talk about it among themselves.
The situation was so tense that Father Nikita's parishioners decided to take him to another area, 50 kilometers away, where they believed it would be safer for him. But walking 50 kilometers is easy to say now, but back then it was very difficult: even something so simple and seemingly accessible to everyone—walking—became a daunting task when every man was counted and in plain sight; especially for such a conspicuous figure as Father Nikita. So for the duration of the walk, he had to transform himself into a stooped old man, as he himself recounted: "I'd pick up a load of bast shoes—and I had a big beard—and I'd bend over—as if an old man with bast shoes was going to the market..." So they walked from place to place, and Father Nikita later recounted how nervous he was before each such journey.
So it was this time—they picked up their bast shoes, hung them on, and went to see Father Nikita off. The roads were blocked by police, and they walked along a path through a rye field. Those who remained at home sent their small children to see if the priest and his companions would make it out of the village safely. When the children returned, two policemen were already standing guard on the path through the rye: any longer, and the priest would not have been able to pass through…
But even in the village of Sobolyak, where they finally arrived, a new disappointment awaited them. It turned out that the mistress of the house had invited Father Nikita only to perform some service for her, and not at all to accommodate him. Father's companions—his devoted spiritual children—were so grieved by the impending separation that they could not hide their tears. The mistress, noticing this, said, "Why are you crying? Take your father back!" She herself was afraid to take him in. At this point, she could have burst into tears of resentment for Father Nikita, whose feet were sore and bloody from the long and dangerous journey—he no longer had the strength to walk back—and it was risky to return. The housewife's heart softened when Father Nikita predicted the return of her husband, from whom she hadn't heard for a long time: "Write down the date and time, and pack a parcel—your husband will be alive." Indeed, a letter from her husband arrived some time later, and soon he himself arrived with a wounded arm.
Father Nikita, returning to the Sanchursky district, lived in a village nicknamed "Pig's Lair." When the old woman went away, Father Nikita would lock the door from the inside with a hook, which the old woman would unlock on her return by prying it open with a stick through the cat hole. One day, while she was away, someone came to her, knocked, and tugged at the door: "It's locked from the inside, it won't open—she must be dead!" Father Nikita stood behind the door, holding the hook... Alas, few were those in whose hearts remained the words: "For we will not reveal the secret to your enemies..." Far more would have revealed the secret in one way or another: they would have reported it or let it slip; and the mistress of the house would have suffered.
As one nun of the Catacomb Church says, recalling that time: "Can a free man convey what a persecuted man..." And it is difficult for us now to understand how real and terrible this threat was. Meanwhile, 40 people simultaneously suffered for Father Nikita (according to other sources, first 30, then another ten). Father Nikita moved from place to place; they could not find him, and they began to seize his spiritual children; one woman was arrested simply for bringing him a small bottle of sour cream, which, it seems, in her simplicity, she did not even think to hide from her persecutors. The arrested parishioners were tortured, beaten, and tormented, with demands for the address of where the priest was hiding.
Mother Ekaterina Golovanova was also arrested. She was arrested twice. The first time, they came to her and began asking her where Father Nikita was. Two policemen, dressed in civilian clothes, took her to a house they had in mind—an elderly couple lived there. They were delighted to see Mother, and the woman, thinking that someone close to Mother was with her, began a joyful conversation that Mother was unable to stop, because the policemen were watching for any sign from her. It was the woman who revealed Father Nikita's whereabouts: "Oh, Mother, oh, my dear, how are you? We saw Father Nikita off like this: we hung a bag of bast shoes on him, and he went…" Mother finally managed to wink at her unnoticed, but the woman stopped short and said, "Well, why are you silent?" — asked the detectives. — "But I don't remember anything..." — "We'll give you a good beating now—you'll remember." They took off their outer clothing, revealing, like sheepskin, a wolf's gut—police uniforms—and showed their weapons. But the hour was late, and the tired guards wanted to sleep. One dozed at the table, the other on the threshold: apparently, he was guarding the door, so that mother wouldn't escape. Mother waited and waited, opened the window, and was gone. She was on the run, as they say, for about six months, then they finally arrested her again. "Come on, tell me how you escaped." — "Yes, how—they're asleep, and I thought: why just sit there like that, so I opened the window and left." — "You did the right thing," came the answer. "If you caught me, don't sleep."
But now the guardians of Soviet order were not dozing. All forty people were tried at once (according to other sources, thirty at first); and Matushka Golovanova was the main one in this case. She got it badly during the investigation: later, many years later, Matushka S. saw scars from those interrogations on her back. They tortured her so much that some could not stand it and revealed the addresses where Father Nikita might be; but the persecutors, it seems, had already despaired so much of catching the priest that they no longer believed them, even when they were told the truth.
At the trial, one woman, in her simplicity, said: "If you let me go, then I will go to Father Nikita again that very day." They did not believe her: "We have been looking for him for so many years and cannot find him, and you will find out one day where he is?"
At the trial, Father Nikita's parishioners were given many years; Matushka Golovanova also received twelve years, two of which were in solitary confinement...
Father Nikita's companions and spiritual children went to suffer; His own suffering and wanderings continued—they still had thirty years ahead of them… And human grief surrounded him everywhere; war tormented Russia, tormented Russian people, and their own Russian people; how many times they appeared, both in uniform and in civilian clothes—seemingly Russian in appearance, but in fact—enemies, tormenting and exterminating their compatriots. How many times already, even in our history, have they come, stood at the door, entered the house as if they owned it, said to the servants of God: "It's time!"—and led the owners away, taking away all that was left.
Father Nikita came to Shamakovo in the Kiknursky District. The father and two sons were at the front, leaving the mother at home with the young children. Everything they owned was taken from them—they boiled tea in a mortar, cooked soup in the same mortar, and didn't even have spoons. A well-fed man is no friend to a hungry man, and he who has nothing understands the same. They made a hiding place for Father Nikita in this house—God protected him.
And amazingly, the children in the families where Father Nikita hid were able to keep a secret, something most adults in Russia had forgotten in those years.
Later, when they grew up and kept this great secret of love and fidelity in their hearts, they remembered how Father Nikita raised them—taught them about the future life. He told the children: "If I didn't believe in a future life, I wouldn't hide, I'd go out into the street and walk, or drive... This temporary life will pass, no matter how you live it, and you'll have to answer: there will be the Last Judgment. And this is temporary suffering. Let's be patient. Be prepared—you might have to suffer."
At confession, he instructed: "Be meek, humble, do good deeds." And these instructions were wholeheartedly received by both his spiritual children, great and small; the seed fell on fertile soil, and these words did not remain just words. There are no more meek and humble people in Russia than the children of these secret priests, the children of the True Orthodox Church—and there are no people in Russia more steadfast and unwavering than them...
Father Nikita also loved to joke, especially with children. He loved to recite poems; children would come in, and the priest would greet them:
"There was a fight in the yard:
A bull and a pig were fighting.
The chickens went on the attack—
A bloody battle began!"
There was a poem on a more serious topic, about Lenin and Stalin: " Two mad fools/
Lost all of Russia ..." On Father Nikita's name day (May 24th, according to the old calendar—Nikita the Stylite), a housewife decided to treat the priest in a festive way. The birthday boy came in, saw the delicacies, and was touched: "I cooked and baked—all for dear Peter!" And so Father Nikita moved from house to house during that most terrible time. He lived with a family where he served in a small shed, past which neighbors walked to fetch water. The service was in progress, and behind the wall a neighbor jingled his bucket on his way to the well. The owners were amazed later that they hadn't been caught. The priest had thought of staying with the grandmother of some of his parishioners, but the enemy was everywhere: the housewife's sister was taken away for 10 years—she refused to vote; he had to leave again...
Father Nikita, as is well known, forbade anyone from joining a collective farm or voting. Some might say: wasn't he demanding too much of his spiritual children, if it meant they were threatened with imprisonment? Our lukewarm times have different ideas about everything, and the example of Saint Sophia, who blessed her daughters to suffer for Christ, is no longer remembered. This position of Father Nikita and other catacomb priests seems strange next to the mass of Soviet clergy who blessed their children from the pulpit to rush to the polls to cast their votes for the Communist-Non-Party bloc, for the "ideal man"—Stalin; who blessed their flock to lie and hypocrisy without bounds and to comply with all the demands of the Antichrist's regime... They might say: Father Nikita and priests like him were stern! But did those who blessed the Russian people to surrender themselves to the most merciless slavery the world had ever known love their flock more, did they care more for them?
Absolutely powerless Russian slaves toiled on the great construction projects of communism until they dropped dead; these same slaves, turning into living, frostbitten skeletons, mined gold in the Kolyma mines in -50 degrees Celsius, and sought out opportunities to cling to the booths where the bosses warmed themselves by the stoves, to get at least a moment's breath of warm air, receiving a kick in return for this breath of warmth... Previously, under different historical formations, as historians and scholars say, masters treasured their slaves and made sure they were well-fed; These masters had countless slaves, and there was no point in feeding them: one who died of starvation was replaced by several more...
And one of the forms of this slavery, unheard of in history, was the collective farm.
One of Father Nikita's parishioners left the collective farm. She was arrested, and they began to find fault with everything: for not voting in elections, for not going to church. That's what this church was for—to ensure obedience to the Soviet regime, whose mouthpiece it was.
She was given eight years—she left four children. The man who took her away from her children to prison received a pound of butter, while the collective farmers worked on the farm for labor—for free. The free milk went to the dairy, and the butter went to the executioners and above—their bosses and the bosses' bosses... True slave labor; that's why those who refused to go into slavery were so cruelly persecuted. And, despite the fact that the individual farmers faced prison, the collective farmers envied them and said: "You live like tsars..." Although there was nothing particularly to envy: the individual farmers' cows weren't allowed in the fields, and to keep a goat you had to earn 200 labor days; it got to the point that in one village the chairman even told a farmer who refused to join the collective farm: "The land isn't yours—it's the collective farm's, don't you dare leave the porch!" If an old house fell apart, they weren't allowed to build a new one or even repair the old one. New foundations had to be laid secretly at night, replacing rotten timbers. There was an instance when Father Nikita's parishioners finally built a new house, and they had to roll it onto the site of the old one—as if it had always been there.
They might say that Father Nikita was too strict, insisting that his spiritual children not join collective farms and run individual farms. Yes, against the backdrop of universal, silent obedience, refusing to join a collective farm was a heroic deed, involving enduring sorrows, sometimes even imprisonment and death. But it was no accident that the collective farmers, forced to perform backbreaking labor for which they were not paid a penny, only credited, as if in mockery, with phantom workdays, still envied the individual farmers.
Didn't those pastors who blessed the Russian people to obey the Antichrist's regime condemn them to even worse suffering, even here on earth, not to mention eternal life? What if all priests—or at least most of them—had acted like Father Nikita? It would probably have been more difficult to force the Russian people into this yoke, since the people awaited the Church's final word. After all, there were many Russians who offered spiritual resistance to the Satanists' violence. Of course, these spiritually resilient people knew how to find true shepherds among themselves, but on the other hand, one could say that it was precisely these true shepherds who nurtured such a strong flock.
Father Nikita Ignatiev expected arrest every day for forty years, but that day never came. He never lived to see freedom, either, and was forced to die and be buried as secretly as he had lived.
Father Nikita's parents, Illarion and Euphrosyne, provided shelter to pilgrims. One elderly wanderer stayed with them for a long time, and they buried him. Father Nikita himself was later hidden by kind people, and many, many years later, he was secretly buried by the owners of the house who had given him his final resting place.
Nikita was raised as a Christian, close to the Church from an early age, reading and singing in the choir from childhood, and learning all the services. He later said, "The young people would go out for walks, but I would go to church." One day, Nikita was captured by the Reds. During a search, they discovered the elder's appeal on him and led the young man to execution. En route, he fainted and ended up in a hospital, from which a doctor friend helped him escape.
After refusing to serve in the Red Army, he was exiled to Turkestan. It was there, perhaps, that he met Archimandrite Seraphim and Matushka Ekaterina Ilyinishna Golovanova, a nun at the monastery near Tashkent where the archimandrite ministered (she had been raised in a monastery since childhood). There he was ordained a priest. After his exile ended, he illegally left for Moscow, where he began serving as a priest in a Moscow church.
He met the secret Bishop Maxim (Zhizhilenko), befriended him, and later rented a room together. One evening, returning home, they noticed a light in their windows and became wary—the house was being searched. Father Nikita decided to go into hiding, but Bishop Maxim, unwilling to leave his bishop's vestments in the hands of the police, was arrested.
Continuing to live illegally in Moscow, Father Nikita, still hunted by the Cheka, was forced to constantly hide from surveillance. His situation became especially difficult after the publication of Metropolitan Sergius' declaration, making his further stay in the capital impossible. At that time, he received a letter from Archimandrite Seraphim of Yoshkar-Ola inviting him to visit him.
After visiting Bishop Nektary of Yaransk, he received his blessing to serve in the Yaransk Diocese and traveled to the village of Gorodishche in the Vyatka Region, where the priest had been arrested. His service was later remembered:
"During the service, they say, no one left the church, and after it ended, the people were reluctant to leave, as if expecting something... Father Nikita advised everyone not to join the collective farm.
Around 1929, "he began to be followed. Police officers attacked him: first two, then four, but he wouldn't budge; they slammed his head on a bench, knocking him unconscious. When he woke up at the police station, he was covered in blood, his hair cut off, and his head was all over the place…"
Before the war, Father Nikita left for Moscow, where Archimandrite Seraphim and many acquaintances were living at the time. After all, the Catacomb Church was also active there, so the clergy had much to discuss. But staying in the capital for long was impossible, and the day came when Archimandrite Seraphim advised him to return to the village. During a search, church utensils and his white vestments disappeared.
At first, Father Nikita lived in a widow's house in the village of Krutom, Lisinsky Village Council. He then lay in the straw of a barn for three months, praying, and often went hungry when the woman could not bring him food. He then lived briefly in the village of Sobolyak, then returned to the Sanchursky District and settled in the home of an old woman in the village of Svinoy Pochinok. Later, he moved to Shamakovo, Kiknursky District, where he hid in the home of a soldier's wife with her young children. The children later recalled how Father Nikita raised them.
"He would tell them, 'This temporary life will pass, no matter how you live—and you will have to answer: There will be the Last Judgment. And this is temporary suffering. Let's endure. Prepare yourself—you may have to suffer.'
At confession, he would instruct them, 'Be meek, humble, do good deeds.' And these instructions were wholeheartedly received by his spiritual children, both large and small; the seed fell on fertile soil, and these words did not remain just words. There are no more meek and humble people in Russia than the children of these secret priests, the children of the True Orthodox Church—and there are no people in Russia more steadfast and unwavering than them..."
Source: http://pravdonbass.com/ru/node/3145