SCHEMONUN NILA

By Tatiana Shvetsova

One important result of the Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church that took place in Moscow in August 2000 was the canonization of 1154 Russia’s new passion bearers, martyrs and Orthodox believers.

Explaining the significance of that Council of Bishops, Patriarch Kirill, then Chairman of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate and Metropolitan of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, said in a Moscow television interview:

“The most important thing is what the Council had adopted. It had adopted documents called to determine the movement of the church into the future. It is certainly epochal, because it is precisely in the year of the 2,000th anniversary of Jesus Christ that Russia’s new martyrs were canonized. It would have been impossible to turn the last page of the 20th century filled with nightmares, ups and downs of our people, without the above-mentioned canonization. An incredible drama had overtaken us… Just try to imagine how the 20th century martyrs and Orthodox confessors had undergone sufferings. Everyone could see the sufferings and heroic deeds of the ancient martyrs for the sake of Christ, while the new martyrs of Russia suffered in secret. As a rule, they were arrested deep at night and taken away in secret, and no one knew where to. They were slandered and were blamed for criminal and political offences. They were interrogated, humiliated and killed without trial and investigation. And no one knew about it for some time. Can you imagine what fortitude, what strong faith in God they must have had to remain true to Christ.”

The heroine of our story had gone through many nightmares. And although she was not listed among the already canonized new martyrs and Orthodox confessors of Russia, actually, her canonization has already taken place. Orthodox Christians pray to her as to a saint, and miracles are worked with the help of these prayers. Therefore, it is believed that the official acknowledgement of her holiness by the Russian Orthodox Church is not so far off.

Her name is Nila, a nun who had taken vows of schema, a nun of the highest and strictest monastic rule. Mother Nila died on March 6, 1999 at the age of 97. We sincerely hope that our story about this very staunch Christian will strengthen those who believe in Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Nila, the schema-nun, in the secular world was called Yevdokiya Novikova. She was born in 1902 in one of the Ukrainian villages of the Donetsk Region into a large peasant family. Her father was Russian and her mother – Ukrainian. Yevdokiya was the ninth child in the family, but soon she got a younger brother. Someone abandoned a newly born baby at the door of their home and her parents took the boy into their family.

Yevdokiya was three years old when her father died. Her mother became the head of the family. She was an ardent believer in God, and did not lose heart. She told the children that since they now had no father, each one of them should share family responsibilities, otherwise they would not survive. She also looked after the spiritual life of her children. And they, without any compulsion, regularly attended church services. They also prayed at home. All this helped them.

The Novikov family had a plot of land on which they cultivated wheat and vegetables. They also kept a cow, hogs and poultry. From the age of five Yevdokiya grazed pasture sheep of her villagers, worked in her neighbors’ gardens, weeded their garden patches. For her work the small girl got some money. And on the money earned she even bought a pair of shoes for herself. The girl was so independent that she was absolutely of no burden to her family, despite her small age. Yevdokiya not only learned to do many things the peasants did, but also mastered some handicrafts. She could sew and embroider excellently, and that came in handy in her life. Already a grown-up, she often recalled with gratitude her excellent peasant upbringing given by her mother.

Yevdokiya never went to school. In her church she learned to read and write excellently. She also sang in the church choir. She loved to pray and from childhood did not conceive for herself any other life than that of a monastic life. Not once did she ask her mother to let her enter a monastery, the more so as the Mother-Superior of a nunnery was her aunt, her mother’s sister. The aunt often took her little niece to her cloister if only for a short time. Yevdokiya’s mother didn’t want to give away her beloved daughter and her first helper at home. However, Yevdokiya’s sincere wish, her constant yearning to pray convinced her to agree with her daughter’s choice. And so at the age of twelve Yevdokiya entered a monastery for good. The mother cried when parting with her. Later she several times tried to take her back home from the cloister. True, her endeavors were of no success.

Yevdokiya shared the lodgings with other girls who wanted to enter a monastery. Very soon time came for the first examination. The nun, in charge of the girls, told them to plant cabbage-plants… So that the rootlets would be above the ground. The girls, who did not yet know monastic science, naturally were amazed at such a strange assignment and planted the cabbage-plants, as it was supposed to be done, that is, with rootlets in the ground. Yevdokiya and two other girls planted the cabbage-plants as was told them – with rootlets above the ground. When the nun came to examine the work done, she asked: “Who planted the cabbages the wrong way?”

“We,” answered Yevdokiya and two of her new girl friends.

“You will stay in the monastery,” the nun said, “and the rest can go back home.”

That is how Yevdokiya successfully passed her first and the most important examination in obedience, without which true monasticism is impossible.

The peasant mettle helped young Yevdokiya to bear the burden of monastic life, full of arduous physical and prayer labor. One of the most difficult work of obedience – taking care of monastery cows – fell to Yevdokiya’s lot. She even slept in a cow-shed. By the way, she slept very little, preferring to pray at nighttime, rejoicing solitude.

Yevdokiya read a lot, preferring hagiography (biography of saints) to all other spiritual books.

When the Bolshevist revolution broke out in Russia in October of 1917 and Christians began to be persecuted, Yevdokiya was a lay sister, but wanted to take monastic vows as soon as possible. That dream itself in those years, was already a heroic deed, because all those in the monastery knew that Christians were being tormented in prison torture-chambers and were being shot in their thousands. But, true to her choice, at the age of 18, she, nonetheless, took monastic vows and received the new name of Yevfrosinya.

She did not leave the monastery till the very end when it was shut down by Bolsheviks. She remembers well how officers of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs and Red Army men came to the cloister. The nuns were driven together and offered an option: either they denounce Christ and take off their crosses or go to prison. The majority of nuns did not denounce their faith and did not take off their crosses. Yevfrosinya was interrogated with special bias, because someone had informed that before the arrival of Red Army men she had hidden the most precious monastery objects of worship. They beat her up cruelly and demanded that she denounce Christ and take off her cross herself. She endured the beatings but did not betray her faith. She was then prosecuted. At the court trial, too, she was offered to denounce Christ and take off her cross. She again refused. The court then sentenced her to 20 years of labor camps.

Yevfrosinya was a beautiful girl. That was why the guards were, all the time, flirting with her en route to exile. Meeting with a resolute rebuff they set shepherd dogs on her. The young nun once told them: “If you again set a dog at me, it will die.” And so it happened: when the guards again set a dog at her, she made a sign of the cross, and the dog immediately died. After that incident the guards began to treat the young nun with respect and even made her a senior over the others.

The prisoners had spent some of the way in overcrowded carriages, and were not given any food or water. Many died and their corpses remained in the carriages together with the living. Once, at night, several carriages – Yevfrosinya was in one of them – were uncoupled from the train and left amidst a snow-covered field. There was a severe frost at the time. The prisoners had neither warm clothes nor food. Giving themselves to despair they were simply awaiting their deaths. The organizers of this execution were sure that no one would escape. That was true. The weakened, hungry people simply did not have enough strength for that.

At dawn Mother Yevfrosinya went out of the carriage and began to crawl, falling into deep snow-drifts, towards the haystacks standing at quite some distance. She managed to haul to her carriage the first armful of hay. Others too followed her example and crawled to the haystacks. That hay saved many from death – it helped them to get warm and to not die of hunger. Mother Yevfrosinya advised them to grind the hay with the palms of their hands and to eat it with snow. Then they dug burrows in the snow, made them more or less habitable by using snow, and in that they warmed themselves.

In a week time a steam-locomotive appeared with escorts. By that time only the strongest, mainly the younger of them, survived. The elderly and feeble prisoners remained there forever. They were not even buried. They were simply thrown out into the snow.

Those who remained alive were sent further on, to the place of exile… Guards were yelling, dogs were barking…

Those who could not walk and fell were kicked and beaten with butts and forced to stand up. Old priests, and there were many of them among prisoners, died. They could not bear the burden of such a journey.

It looked like the escort took pleasure in taunting the prisoners. Once they drove them to a river and made them swim to the opposite bank. Those who could not swim were driven into the river with rifle-butts… Many drowned. Mother Yevfrosinya managed to save the lives of several priests. She helped one of them to reach the opposite bank, then returned to help the next one… although she herself was extremely exhausted.

One of Mother Yevfrosinya’s most painful recollections was the journey in the ship’s hold where she and other prisoners were on their way to the place of exile. It was a real Sodom. Women and girls were being raped. It’s impossible to introduce all the horror with words. Mother Yevfrosinya prayed with tears in her eyes to the Holy Mother: “Mother of God! Have mercy on me: Let me remain what I was from the day of my birth! Help me preserve my purity!” And what was really amazing was that her prayer was heard, and the escort left her alone.

The nightmare of deportation ended when the transport with prisoners moored to the wharf of the Solovetsky Island. A special purpose camp, where dozens of thousands of people were exterminated, was located there. It was evident from the composition of inmates there that the Soviet authorities considered the clergymen, monks and Orthodox Christians in general as their main enemies.

Another hell began for Mother Yevfrosinya on the Solovetsky Island with nightmares more terrible than the deportation nightmares…


Women on the Solovetsky Islands were kept in one large barrack, surrounded by three rows of barbed wire. Political prisoners and criminals were kept together with the sufferers for the faith of Christ. Women absolutely different in spiritual and cultural needs, in habits and requirements had to tolerate each other, which in itself was a torture. And this torture grew stronger and stronger because of the undivided domination of women-criminals in the barrack.

But, for women with whom Mother Nila had arrived in the concentration camp there was not enough space in the barrack. Therefore, cave dug-outs were dug for them on the slopes of roads and hills on orders of the concentration camp authorities.

In the first period of their concentration camp life Mother Yevfrosinya and her sisters in distress were not given any food. They had to procure food themselves. They picked mushrooms and berries, boiled herbs, roots and tree leaves. In winter they boiled bark and melted snow. Water was also not given to them.

Years later Mother Yevfrosinya told her spiritual children that there was not a single day during her concentration camp life when she could be sure that tomorrow there would be at least some kind of food or water.

Under intensified escort women inmates were led to work at laundry-houses, a rope work-shop and a brick factory. They feared the brick factory especially, because work there guaranteed sure death in two or three months time. To mould and carry bricks were too heavy a job for women’s organisms, the more so that their nutrition was almost symbolic.

In winter for this or that offence the inmates were left in bitter frost in just their underwear. And that led to inevitable death. And in summer for some offence they were tied to trees naked in places full of swarms and mosquitoes and other blood-sucking insects.

Scurvy and tuberculoses literally mowed clean the inmates of the Solovetsky archipelago.

Those who were very feeble and were not fit for work were simply shot dead.

The head of the Solovetsky concentration camp Nogtev was famous for his saying: “This for you is not Sovietsky (Soviet) but Solovetsky power”, which meant full arbitrariness of the concentration camp bosses towards the inmates.

At first the inmates of the Solovetsky concentration camp from among the Orthodox Christians were kept separated from criminals. They for some time were even allowed to conduct church services. But that was not for long. The last open divine service took place in 1926 on Easter days. After that services were forbidden and began to be conducted in secret in small forest glades, where the trees in such “temples” served as walls, and the dome of heaven as a cupola. Naturally divine services like that were an extremely risky affair. But God always guarded those who prayed to Him.

It seems the Orthodox inmates of the Solovetsky and other concentration camps like it were atoning for the sins of Russians who have grown cool to God, who could not stand up for the Tsar, guardian of their Fatherland. The very best people perished there, repeating the feat of Jesus Christ, who with His blood, atoned for us.

During the prison life on the Solovetsky Islands, a Russian saint, Reverend Nilus Stolobensky appeared to Mother Yevfrosinya. “I was once taking a walk in the forest,” she told her spiritual children, “when suddenly I saw an Elder-monk. He came up to me, gave me communion bread and an icon with his image. “Who is this?” I asked, pointing at the icon. “Nilus Stolobensky,” answered the Elder and added that when I would become a schema-nun, I will carry his name.” That, by the way, is what did happen later. Before Yevfrosinya had time to come to her senses the Elder disappeared as if he dissolved in the air.

In 1939 the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs decreed to close the Solovetsky concentration camp. And the martyrdom of Mother Yevfrosinya continued in other concentration camps, also in the country’s north.

Knowledge of plants helped Mother Yevfrosinya greatly during her life in concentration camps. She could prepare food from herbs, roots, berries and contrived to feed disabled priests and Orthodox believers from among the inmates. She found a very compassionate helper, who by some miracle was working there as a guard. He had a dog with the help of which he offered to carry food to the priests so that they would not die of hunger. A pot with food was hung on the neck of that clever shepherd dog, and it, choosing out-of-the-way paths, hiding itself in the bushes from camp guards, delivered it to the needed place, and then, brought back the empty pot.

There, of course, was no wine which is a must for the Holy Communion during secret divine services. So, Mother Yevfrosinya found a way out – it was to use cranberry juice. To acquire it was connected with great risk. Once Mother Yevfrosinya had nearly departed this life while picking cranberries at a swamp. She fell into a swamp. Having lost all hope to be saved she implored the Mother of God to help her. Suddenly, without knowing how, she found herself on a tussock. When the priests found out how the young nun got the precious cranberries for them, they forbade her to go to the marshes and risk her life.

The Mother of God was all the time helping her. Here’s one incident that occurred with Mother Yevfrosinya. In autumn when the young nun went out in search for mushrooms and berries for the priests, she got lost in the forest. She began to pray to the Mother of God, and all of a sudden she saw a wooden deck. How did it get there in those backwoods, she wondered, but, nonetheless, she used it. The deck took her exactly to the place she knew. After thanking the Blessed Virgin for having indicated her the way to safety, she looked back – the deck was gone, it had disappeared.

At another time, when the nun could not get over a channel, she suddenly saw a small bridge that had disappeared immediately after she got over to the other side of the channel.

In other words, the Lord and the Mother of God helped the young nun all the time on her way of the cross.

In 1949 Mother Yevfrosinya was summoned to the camp authorities who asked her: “For what are you serving term?”

She answered: “I don’t know”

“Well, since you don’t know you can go, you are free.”

She took this discharge as a miracle, because she had not served her full time yet.

Mother Yevfrosinya was given a document, certifying her discharge from confinement by amnesty. Fourteen years, 3 months and 3 days of concentration camp life were left behind. Later on, Mother Yevfrosinya used to say: If it were not for the help of the Holy Mother of God and God’s mercy I could not have endured life in concentration camps. It was like one hundred years of secular life in freedom.

For some time Mother Yevfrosinya stayed at her distant relative’s place in her Ukrainian native village. To find a job with the document she had was practically impossible. It was at that time that she began to feel she possessed abilities to heal people, and people began to come to her for advice and help. She treated many diseases with herbs. But just when people began to come to her for help, spiteful people reported on her to the local authorities. Summons to the police and threats followed. To avoid arrest Mother Yevfrosinya left her native village and headed for Kiev, to the famous Kiev-Pechora monastery. She prayed to the saints of those places and asked them to guide her in her future life. She also went to see the place of her destroyed cloister where on the eve of her arrest she had hid the wonder-working icon of St. Nicholas of Bari. She found the icon at the place where she had hid it – in the monastery well – and took it with her. She never parted with that Holy Image.

Mother Yevfrosinya had to look for a new place of residence and means of existence. When she was still on the Solovetsky Islands she was given an address of reliable people who at a difficult moment could surely help her settle down. They lived in the city of Tula, 200 kilometers (124 miles) to the south of Moscow. In Tula she did not find them and so she asked the local church to help her. Soon a place was found for her as a help and nurse-maid in a Jewish family. The master of the house was a professor, dean of one of the Tula universities. Besides him there were his wife and a small daughter, Alla, in that family. The family lived in a four-room apartment which in those days, and today too, was quite extravagant. Mother Yevfrosinya, a new nurse-maid, was given a separate room. She stayed with that family for 23 years till it left for Israel. They wanted to take her with them because they were very attached to her. Their daughter adored her. She even used to go to Orthodox temples with her, although she professed Judaism. But Mother Yevfrosinya refused to go to Israel to the great disappointment of the family. When she was leaving the house, almost all neighbors came to say good-bye, and many of them cried, saying: “Who will help us now?”

Where did Mother Yevfrosinya direct her steps? She went on a pilgrimage to one of the Moscow Region’s monasteries to pray and to give thought to her future life. There she got acquainted with schema-nun Raphaila, who led a secular life in her own home in countryside not far from the city of Voskresensk. Mother Yevfrosinya thanked her and took up residence at her place.

Soon our heroine, as was foretold at the Solovetsky concentration camp by Reverend Nilus Stolobensky, was consecrated into the highest monastic degree – schema – and received a new name – Nila.

Another gift, besides the ability to heal people and to pray, the gift of foresight was revealed in her. Very soon the house she lived in became a place of pilgrimage for Orthodox Christians from all over Russia. They came to her with spiritual and worldly problems. She helped them, and her good name spread far and wide.

What’s interesting is that soon after Mother Nila had settled down in the home of schema-nun Raphaila, a question arose where to get the means of subsistence. Mother Nila thought of a pension, but the Mother of God who appeared to her in a dream said: “I will feed you. You don’t have to have a pension.” Soon Mother Nila found a basketful of fruit and bread, the kind she never saw or ate in her life. She ate part of that and wanted to leave the other part for sister Raphaila, but the leftovers of the foodstuffs disappeared immediately.

Mother Nila slept very little because of the numerous people she received. She generally prayed after midnight. She slept only about 2 to 3 hours. In her last years she felt herself sick and very feeble, but she never refused to help people and, overcoming pain, received them. She usually offered something to eat to them and it was simply impossible to refuse her offer.

Those who were at Mother Nila’s place said she had a special gift of instilling happiness in people’s hearts. It was as if she herself exhaled that happiness despite her illness. Those who were in despair left her inspired, strong and ready to continue living.

Mother Nila saved many sick people from death. She even managed to treat the most serious oncological diseases. She covered the body of a cancer patient with a canvas, tapped the body from different sides with her palm and listened very intently to the sounds. She said that there were male and female types of cancer, and each one of them required special treatment. After Mother Nila’s prayer and herb mixtures, which she concocted for the sick, the disease, according to Mother Nila, “got out” of the sick through the skin in the form of a furuncle and rash, which also soon disappeared.

Monks, too, came to see the aged Nila. She received them with love and helped them with what she could. She used to speak with great enthusiasm about them to her spiritual children. “They live in the mountains and on cliffs,” she said, “they hang in baskets and on ropes, and pray day and night for the whole world, for Russia, for all of us. Thank God there are people like them in Russia.”

Mother Nila was once asked to speak about how she had taken the veil, about her life in the nunnery.

“You’re asking too much: the life of a schema-nun is a mystery and only God knows about it,” answered Mother Nila.

When TV men came to her for an interview and to make a film about her, she gave orders not open the door. They left without achieving anything. She also did not allow to be photographed, if only, perhaps, for a rare exception, saying: “I’m a schema-nun, and you don’t have to look at my portrait. You’d do better to pray to Our Lord Jesus Christ. He’ll help and make you listen to reason.”

Once Mother Nila was invited to visit the Solovetsky Islands for the inauguration there of a museum for the victims of repressions. She refused flatly, saying: “I won’t go there any more!”

“Blessed be my small, secluded monastery,” is how Mother Nila called her home. That home of hers had running-water that came from a holy spring…

Mother Nila was generously allowed by God and also by people, whom she helped as no one else. Some of the neighbors envied her, saying that people brought her “cartloads of foodstuffs”, and what does she do with all that? But Mother Nila distributed everything people brought to her among the needy, and never left anything in store for herself.

Mother Nila was often ill. She suffered three heart attacks. She died on Saturday, March 6, 1999, at 8.15 in the morning. During the last days of her demise Mother Nila was administered communion almost everyday. She repeatedly said that she would soon die, but people refused to believe her. They simply did not want to believe, and that’s that. Mother Nila till her last minutes made all kinds of arrangements, down to where precisely she should be buried.

Her grave in the city of Voskresensk is one of the most attended places in the Moscow Region. People pray to Mother Nila as to a saint, and she continues to help them from the life hereafter. Let us to pray to her, — “Mother Nila pray to God, entreat Him for us sinners!”