My interlocutor, Anna Yakovlevna Belykh, is the great-niece of Hieromartyr Stefan Yermolin. And her godfather is the Monk Martyr Platon (Kolegov). He baptized Anna on the fourth day after her birth. The girl was born very weak, with a heart defect. Therefore, the relatives hurried to the temple - they wanted the baptized woman to die. However, she is still alive, raising her great-grandchildren. And Hieromonk Platon was arrested a few hours after her christening. Both martyrs were shot on the same day - August 15th.

All her life Anna Yakovlevna felt their prayerful help. And she believes that the saints, whom she has never seen, help her children, grandchildren, and now great-grandchildren with their heavenly prayers. She told me about this when she invited me to visit. Anna Yakovlevna Belykh lives with her husband in the suburb of Syktyvkar - Ezhva. The one-room apartment is all lined with icons; from the walls look the faces of the new martyrs who shone in the land of Komi. Under their gaze, our unhurried conversation took place ...

“A week before my birth, three neighboring houses burned down in our village of Bolshaya Sluda,” says Anna Yakovlevna. - The entire population ran to put out the fire, even hoses were pulled from the steamers using their pumps. Father watered with might and main. Our house could also catch fire, as well as the barn with all the collective farm grain reserves. Mom was in her last week of pregnancy. She was very upset by all this. When I was born, the midwife said that the child would not live long, because she found that I had strong heart murmurs. Doctors later diagnosed congenital heart disease. I think that it came out of the experiences that my mother experienced during the fire. The midwife was a believer, exiled from the Baltics, and she advised my parents to baptize me. And at the age of four they carried me to the church, to Father Plato. On the same night, from July 11 to 12, 1937, the priest was arrested. Allegedly for the fact that he christened the granddaughter of the exiled fist - an enemy of the people. Of course, this was only a pretext. The clouds over Father Plato have been gathering for a long time.

He was the last rector of the Ulyanovsk monastery. The first time he was arrested, along with 20 other monks, was in 1920, allegedly for "counter-revolution" and helping the whites. He sat in a concentration camp in Veliky Ustyug, and then in the Syktyvkar prison of the NKVD. After his release, Father Platon settled in the village of Chasovo and served there for 12 years. Then there were two large stone churches in Chasovo: Spasskaya and the First Apostles Peter and Paul, in which I was baptized. Both of them were blown up in the same 1937. Nothing remains of Petropavlovskaya, but only one skeleton of Spasskaya still stands. Officially, the 72-year-old Hieromonk Platon was accused of “conducting active counter-revolutionary activities, as a clergyman, organizing gatherings, talking about the imminent death of Soviet power and collective farms, and calling on no one to join collective farms.” This is such a general statement. In fact, he was shot for serving God.

“Now I’ll tell you about the martyr Stepan and about my grandfather,” Anna Yakovlevna continues, calling her relative in a rustic way - Stepan. – The martyr was a cousin of my grandfather Andrei Filippovich Pechkisev. Grandfather Andrei was famous throughout the region as a skilled blacksmith and builder. In Bolshaya Sluda, he had his own forge. In Chasovo, he built a seven-year school - together with my mother and aunt, without outside workers. Near Aikino, in the town of Polovinka, the bus station - here he also put his golden hands. Or here in Palevitsy there is still a two-story house - his work. In our village, in every hut one could see cabinets, tables, chairs, beds with carved legs made by him.

Although our grandfather was seven years older than Stepan, they say the brothers were very friendly. Although the characters were different. The fate of Stepan was not easy. At first, as usual, he was a peasant, then he fought in the First world war, and then ended up in the Red Army. And there he became a platoon commander in a company that was directly subordinate to Trotsky. After the army, Stepan returned to the village. What happened to him, what was going on in his soul, we do not know. Only he decided to devote himself to God. And in 1926 Stepan was ordained a priest of the persecuted Church. He served in the Exaltation of the Cross Church in the Syktyvkar town of Nizhny End.

When I looked at the transcripts of the interrogations of the martyr Stepan, I was surprised at his calmness. It must have been God fortifying him that way. The interrogations dragged on for several months, most likely "with passion", but he always answered clearly and very boldly. They also asked him about Trotsky, trying to attribute also a connection with the Trotskyists. Stepan calmly said: “But I didn’t even notice when he was made an enemy of the people.” Having broken with worldly life, he was far from politics. But my grandfather, unlike Stepan, was very emotional, and he suffered for this. When in the 1930s, at the first stages of collectivization, he was called to the collective farm, he refused.

“Then we will take everything from you – meadows and fields,” they threatened him.

- Well, take it.

My grandfather still had a forge, besides, he was a good carpenter, he could earn a living with his own hands. Then came the second stage of collectivization. Again they began to call to the collective farm and at the meeting they threatened that they would take away the forge.

“Then you’ll have to go to the collective farm, otherwise you poor fellows will steal everything in a week,” he said.

For the word "hungry" he was convicted and should have been sentenced to death. At that time, in our village, an equally rich peasant was shot, who also refused to join the collective farm. And the grandfather, in order to save his life, was forced to flee the village. One of his distant relatives had just died, and according to his passport, his grandfather left for the Urals at night and got a job at a factory there. And the grandmother was arrested and imprisoned for some time, although she had two more young children in her arms.

Grandfather and in the Urals soon earned himself a good reputation. Everyone respected him for his golden hands. But there one of his countrymen saw him and addressed him by his first name and patronymic. Grandfather had to flee from there, then he secretly came back to his homeland. Together with their grandmother, they wandered wherever they had to. The last time they lived 12 kilometers from our village.

They were allowed to return to their village only in 1940. In February, they again settled in their home, but did not live long. Both died the same year of a heart attack. Grandfather - on the night of Procopius the Righteous, and grandmother - on the Intercession. After the death of my grandmother, the house again passed to the collective farm. In the 90s, when it became freer, I turned to the director of the state farm: “Maybe it’s enough to exploit someone else’s property? Our grandfather already had great-great-grandchildren. Give the house to them! Let them live." Now, thank God, great-great-grandchildren live there. The house is still in good condition.

The fact that I was baptized by the monk Platon and that he and Stepan were shot, I learned from my mother when I was 20 years old. Then I was already married. But the fact is that until that time, none of our relatives also knew that Stepan's father was shot, even his wife. Everyone thought he was somewhere in Siberia. Only at the request of the widow on January 16, 1957, she was handed a certificate of her husband's death. When my mother told me about this, she said: “You, daughter, are happy. Because she was the last person in the village to be baptized by the priest. He suffered as a martyr – he gave his life for Christ.” Mom was a believer and even then she understood that Father Plato was a saint.

When Stepan's father was arrested, my mother and aunt helped his elderly mother Natalya Prokopievna with the housework: bring hay, firewood, manure. For this they were punished - they were sent to logging in the Palevitsky timber industry enterprise.

My own father also suffered innocently from the authorities. He worked at the lumber station as an accountant and conducted an audit in a rural store. He reduced the debit with the credit - the saleswoman had a shortage. Dad, in order to save her from prison, suggested: “Let's go around the village at night, borrow money from friends. And I will not give documents until tomorrow. They will put you in prison - what will you do with two children? And then he himself was arrested at night for harboring embezzlement. Some of their own brought it. We have made a complete confiscation of property. The cow was taken away, all the furniture was taken away (then I had to buy it out).

My mother worked as a pig farmer on a collective farm. In 1943, they also wanted to imprison her for five years - for the loss of livestock. They didn't feed the purebred pigs, they began to die, and the mother was to blame. And she has three small children. Neighbors advised my mother to go to the stage with the children. There they took pity on her, they said that until her husband returned from the front, they would give a respite. And they let go. Then they forgot about this conviction.

When the war began, dad volunteered for the front straight from the places of detention. He fought back in the First World War, was an experienced warrior. He died in 1944 in Western Ukraine, buried there in a mass grave. I went there. Mom did not live long - only 51 years old.

Left without parents, I felt that someone was guiding me through life. Probably, they were Father Platon and Father Stepan. True, and they taught me very hard. I will tell you such a case. I worked as the director of the Bolsheludsk elementary school. And since I was a director, they forced me to join the party. Then she began to prepare for the institute for infak and asked to be transferred to the sentry primary school a simple teacher in order to have more time for preparation.

And the clock school was then located in the priest's house, where last years Father Platon lived before the execution. Imagine, this is 1967 - 50 years of Soviet power. I am 30 years old. I just received the "Excellence in Public Education." Has always been active. When I was at school, I was elected secretary of the Komsomol organization. And when she herself began to work as a teacher, she also tried to be the first everywhere. Then there were no extended day groups, and I led them: I worked with children in the evenings. (One day a Moscow commission came to us and noted this.) Naturally, when I moved to Chasovo, I wanted to arrange my class in a new way. Where the iconostasis was, there was still an icon shelf. And in the prayer corner I decided to put large portrait Lenin in full growth, where he is depicted in a cap. Everyone then perceived Lenin almost as a saint, and I did not see this as a big sin.

The portrait did not fit under the shelf, and I cut it with an ax. Then she took this idol and went to put it in the shrine - she immediately stumbled and how with all her might I hit my forehead on the sharp corner of the table! Sparks fell from the eyes, blood streamed. She was injured and scarred for life. I had such a concussion that I suffered from terrible headaches for a whole month. I go to one grandmother - she will correct my head in one direction, to the other - in the other, wild headaches did not go away. So the dent in the skull remained for life as a reminder. Fortunately, the pain is gone.

But as soon as I fell, I immediately realized that this idol could not be put in a shrine. Already during perestroika, when information appeared, we learned that Lenin was not a saint at all, but on the contrary, he fought with the saints and with the Church ...

Although I was a communist, I never refused God and went to church. And then the authorities followed this very closely. Once, when I was already working at rono, the day after visiting the Gojbong Church, our boss asked me to stay for five minutes after the planning meeting. I did not know then that all believers immediately get noticed by the KGB and information from the church is transferred to work. And Nikolai Fedorovich was a very tactful person and did not know how to start a conversation.

- Listen, Anna Yakovlevna, is Belykh Nikolai Ivanovich not your relative? he asks me.

- I don't know that. Why do you think he is my relative? What did he do?

Yes, I went to church.

- And what, do you get this information? Then they will come to me. I also went to church yesterday.

- And what were you doing there?

- I took the annual to my mother. We must pray for the departed parents.

"And they didn't do anything else?"

This is where our conversation ended.

Another time, when I was working at a school, the director at the beginning of the teachers' council said: "I don't know how some people combine membership in the party and faith in God." I immediately realized whose garden the stone was. In addition, I was still responsible for ideology at that time. Apart from me, none of the teachers went to church, the teaching staff was young.

I got up. “Now,” I say, “I will explain. Every morning, before I go to work, I stand in front of the icons and pray that God will give me the opportunity to have a good lesson, so that the students learn the knowledge and everything in our school is safe. And the Lord gives me all this in advance, not according to my merits. And just like that, every day I save a part of my salary and give it to the party, also in advance. But the party has not done anything for me yet.”

After this conversation, the director never again reproached me for being a believer. And then he came to God himself, even helping me make wooden frames for icons cut from paper calendars. But this is when he was already removed from the directors.

At first, I went to the Holy Kazan Church. And when the Church of the Ascension opened in Kirula, I began to go there. There my husband and I got married. And then, when the Church of the Intercession appeared closer to our house, I began to go there and did not understand why I was so drawn to it. After some time, I learned that the Exaltation of the Cross Church stood nearby, in which the Hieromartyr Stepan served.

He maintained contact with the exiled clergy, including Bishop Herman (Ryashentsev) of Vyaznikovsky. On February 24, 1937, Vladyka was arrested on a fabricated case of the Holy Squad, accusing him of “participation in a counter-revolutionary fascist church group, for providing material assistance to members of the group and the clergy exiled to prison, as well as for systematic counter-revolutionary agitation ...” They were shot on September 15 along with other members of the Holy Squad.

When I found out about this and that Father Stepan was canonized, I ordered his icon. Now she stands in our red corner.

Hieromartyr Stepan had a younger brother. He, most likely, was also shot. My brother's widow married the activist Chulpanov. He was chairman of the village council. So, he played a very big role in rooting out the entire Yermolin family. This also reverberated in our family, because we, like the children of the kulak, were all listed as "enemies of the people."

Many years have passed since then, I don’t feel any sense of revenge for him, but I often think that I could be on their side, take part in the persecution of believers and wealthy peasants, because I was too active in my youth . Thank God, He saved me from it. Although the communists were different ...

When I worked in rono, I often had to give open lessons. They were attended by school directors and head teachers from all over the republic. And the first thing I said after the greeting was the number and specified that this was the date from the Nativity of Christ. And then she gave some new methods in conducting English lessons. Usually everyone took it for granted, and no one was indignant that I remember the name of the Lord.

The first time I read the Bible English language. It was brought to me from Nigeria in 1983 by the parents of my students. At that time, it was still impossible to buy the Holy Scriptures in our country. Already in 1986, she came to a meeting of Jehovah's Witnesses, which was held at the Syktyvkar Opera and Ballet Theatre, and purchased a Bible in Russian, in a thin cover. And after the celebration of the Millennium of the Baptism of Rus', church literature began to appear everywhere in our country.

The closer I got to God, the more I understood that the martyrs Platon and Stepan were praying for me and for my children. Son Oleg served in Afghanistan. Knowing that I'm worried about him and I have diseased heart He wrote letters to us twice a week. And at the end of the service, there was no news from him for a month and a half. I became very worried, shuddered at every call. I thought: “Now they will call from the military registration and enlistment office and report ...”

Just at that time, a daughter in a republican maternity hospital could not give birth to her first child. For three days she was stimulated into labor, and suddenly the doctors call me at work at the school:

- Anna Yakovlevna, probably, it will be necessary to do C-section. Will you give permission?

“God, why do you need permission?” I ask them.

- We will save the mother - it is already impossible to save the child.

– What are you talking about! I began to get angry. - You poisoned him with all sorts of drugs for three days, and now you say that you cannot save him?! Just try to make the child die!

And hung up. Spent, all on the nerves, the last lesson, came home. I called my cousin, who worked as a cook in the republican maternity hospital, to find out what was happening with her daughter. She says:

- Your Tanya is already under anesthesia. Now they are going to have an operation. Pray for her to Nicholas the Wonderworker - today is the day of St. Nicholas the Pleasant.

It was May 22, 1985. And I was in such a panic that I forgot everything in the world. Immediately she threw herself on her knees in front of the icons. “Lord,” I say, “I was a communist, I was a member of the party, I built communism, but You know, I never denied You. If I am guilty, why are You punishing me with children? You know that I was not allowed to give birth. You know how painfully I gave birth to them. How I raised them, trembled for their lives. And now You want to take away my son and daughter and my unborn grandson…”

She said all this to the Lord, and she herself sobbed so that tears flowed in a stream, literally splashed from her eyes in jets. I asked the Mother of God, St. Nicholas, the martyrs Stefan, Plato and all the saints to help and save my daughter and son, and for the birth to be successful ... After 15 minutes, the phone rings. The sister calls from the hospital, she cries:

- Grandmother ... I congratulate you, the child is alive!

And I think: why is she crying, since the child was born alive? Something must have happened to my daughter...

- What about Tanya? I ask.

- Tanya is also alive, everything is fine. After your call, the doctors had not yet had time to take the scalpel, as Tanya herself gave birth.

Isn't it a miracle? But it turned out that this was only half a miracle.

It was on this day, May 22, that my son was taken from Afghanistan to Russia. And that's how it happened. Three days later, the phone rang at our house. A male voice asked:

Is this the Whites' apartment?

- Yes. And who asks?

Everything inside of her died: I'm afraid that they will now report the death of her son. There was silence at the other end. Well, I think everything is ... prepared.

“Mom, don’t be afraid,” the receiver says, “it’s me, Oleg, calling from Moscow.

And the following happened to my son. For a month and a half there was no news from him, because all the helicopters that flew from Afghanistan to the Union were shot down. At the beginning of his service, Oleg, along with other soldiers from Syktyvkar, was sent to guard the presidential residence in Kabul. And once the commander sent him to the city to exchange boxes of condensed milk for sheepskin coats for the authorities. The son refused and reproached the commander for looting: “We are starving here, and you earn sheepskin coats on this.” At night he was awakened and the "grandfathers" began to beat him. They kicked me in the legs, and all in one place - just below the kneecap. He still has a black funnel in this place. They kicked me and asked me to repeat what he had said. And he repeated these words every time, thinking that he would be beaten to death. By morning my leg was swollen. The commander began to send him to the medical battalion. The son refused: “What will I say there? I did not participate in the battles, but I will not complain about my own. I still have to serve with them ... ”And he submitted a report to the active part.

He was sent to the most dangerous area - to guard the road along which caravans from the Union passed. At this time, in a letter, I just sent him the 90th psalm - "Alive in help." And they check the letters. The political instructor, when he gave this letter to Oleg, showed the prayer, which was written on a separate piece of paper, and asked: “Do you have a believer mother?” “Yes, believer.” A political instructor from Ukraine, he believed in God. He took this prayer into his chest pocket and then constantly carried it with him, and from the next day he appointed Oleg as his orderly.

The son's term of service ended in April, and the political instructor's - on May 22, and he left Oleg until the end of his service. There were many deaths around, but the Lord kept them both. In every letter I wrote to my son: “Oleg, don’t shoot at people! You have no enemies or friends there. If you kill someone, you will bring such a trail of sins home, which will affect our entire family.” And he tried not to aim at people, but in battle he could not help but shoot, because then he himself would be killed. On May 22, a helicopter flew for them. The son later said: “We had not yet had time to collect the ciders, when the helicopter was bombed, it burned down like a candle. I had to call the second board on the radio, which no longer landed, but hovered in the air, and we climbed into it on rope ladders ... ”After my son told about the salvation, I thought that it was Nicholas the Wonderworker who saved his son and helped him in Nikolin's day to fly out of Afghanistan. And then it turned out that the Hieromartyr Stefan's birthday was May 22.

Here's the story that happened to my nephew. He also fought in Afghanistan, but after my son. The miracle with his salvation happened on January 16, 1989 - just before the withdrawal of Soviet troops.

For the entire period of his service, I prayed for my nephew as for my own son. He himself was an officer, he ensured the combat readiness of the aircraft. Right at the airfield in Kabul they had a trailer that was used as a red corner. All the officers gathered there, watched films on the "Vidik". They were often bombed, so the officers got used to it and did not even leave the trailer. Another shelling with rockets began, and again everyone remained in their places, continued to watch movies.

“And me,” the nephew later said, “as if someone pushed me in the back and said:“ Get out of here, go to the bomb shelter. Both the push and the voice were as if in fact, I felt it on physical level. I took my two mechanics, and we went to the bomb shelter, which was right there, under the runway. All the officers looked at us with reproach: here, they say, weaklings! Just managed to dive underground, as they heard an explosion. The shelling is over, we go upstairs and see instead of our trailer a huge funnel, all covered in blood. Direct bomb hit. No one was alive, not even body parts were found.”

After this incident, the nephew always said: “Even if everyone says that there is no God, I still won’t believe it, because the Lord saved me from certain death.” Both - both the son and the nephew - are now believers, they go to church.

Of course, God's miracles happen at every turn, but not everyone notices them. One day my sister and I went to the forest for berries. My sister took a whole basket of blueberries and lost it. And she told me about it when we had already moved half a kilometer from that place. I began to pray in my own words: “Michael the Archangel, help me find the basket. Because only you know where she is. You know, I'm almost blind, I have to make sure that I come across it and see it under my feet. So with a prayer, I went back through the forest until I came across our kit.

And there were several more such cases. Once she fought off her own and got lost in the forest. The day was overcast and rainy. It began to get dark. I'm already wet. Again she turned to the Archangel Michael to lead me to the road. I found some path, walked along it for a kilometer - and went out to my own. They, too, seem to be lost. And then, also through prayer to the Archangel Michael, we all found our car together. I revere Archangel Michael very much and try to read an akathist to him every Monday.

- With my health throughout my life I had big problems, - Anna Yakovlevna continues her story. - From the age of 20, all the doctors gave up on me and began to expel me for disability. And I didn't agree to that. No, I say, if I can’t work, then it’s better to sit on my husband’s neck, and I will never be an invalid. I am afraid of this word. You will feel like an invalid - and in fact you will be sick all your life.

From the age of 40 I have gone cancerous tumors. First they did one operation. Again, the question of disability came up very seriously. But I did not leave my job, and in order to make it easier, I moved from school to work in the executive committee. Then there were two more operations, again they offered to join the group. But even before the danger of death, I declared that I would rather die with a healthy gene pool of the Komi people. So she said!

After the second operation, the wound did not close at all. Neoplasms went all over the body. And at night I prayed that the Lord would give me some kind of sign how I should be. Went to bed. The pain is unbearable. I had not yet had time to fall asleep, when with my inner vision I saw the Lord Jesus Christ near the bed. He stood to his full height, as on a temple icon. I think: “Well, that's it, I'll die. The Lord has come to take me." I grabbed my husband by the hand, began to punish him so that after my death he would not offend the children. The next morning I went to worship. And in the evening, at the dressing, the nurse says: “Well, today it’s already better, the wound began to heal.” Before that, the doctors again persuaded me to go on disability. The pain was so intense that it was unbearable. A week later, my condition improved so much that the same doctors discharged me to work. And over time, the wound completely healed.

Because of this cancer, I had to move back to the countryside to be closer to nature. I took a plot, started cattle. There, the leaders of the state farm treated me very well, and I was able to overcome the disease. May be, ethnoscience helped, and maybe prayers. I fervently prayed to the Lord, asked the help of the saints, and, thank God, the disease receded over time. Now I'm already living out my life, I'm 74 years old. No one offers me a disability anymore, on the contrary, they invite me to work in a clock school again. The school in the village is under threat of closure. They do not have an English teacher, and none of the young people want to go to such a wilderness. I, too, cannot often go there, but I still keep in touch with my homeland. In Chasovo, we registered an Orthodox community and set up a prayer house. The priest is coming.

“Here, they say, now there is unemployment, we live poorly,” Anna Yakovlevna sighs. - A lot of work! Especially in the countryside. Take a piece of land, start cattle! So no one wants to work these days. If my parents were alive and got to our time, they would have decided that we live under communism. They could not even dream of such a life. Everyone basks in well-appointed apartments, there is everything in the shops, even the unemployed are paid money by the state - live and be happy! But many people cannot be happy. Because without God, in whatever mansions you live, there will never be joy.