4. "Re-education"
Once, in school we were supposed to write: "Down with Pascha! Long live the First of May!" I didn't write it, since I didn't like it, and they sent me home. At home I told my parents that they had expelled me, and my parents, not knowing the reason, were quite distressed. But when they learned the real reason, they were very happy. I saw it in their eyes and understood that I had acted correctly. It was Pascha. People were going to church, but the children were forced to sweep the schoolyard, and there were clouds of dust. The school was next door to the church. I walked past it to church that time. I was rewarded by God for the fact that I had not gone against my convictions. On the fourth day they summoned Mama to the school to have her explain why she was teaching her child insubordination in school. But Mama replied that, after all, she didn't know what they were going to write, and therefore how could she have influenced her daughter? After this conversation I went to the teacher's house for my books that had been confiscated from me. The teacher's mother, an elderly woman, stroked head until her daughter came out. I again understood that I had acted correctly.
I don't remember what year the bells were removed from our bell tower, but this greatly affected me. Papa was in church at the time; he knelt in the altar and prayed with tears in his eyes. When he came out of the church, the poor surrounded him, and he gave them everything that was in his pockets. Many people were gathered around the church, and they threw a rope around the bells and began to pull. The small ones didn't resist much, but the biggest one, with all its might, refused to budge. The people, in terror, watched silently. Finally, with a groan, the bell took flight and broke into pieces, and it was buried halfway in the ground, as if not desiring to fall into bad hands. I understood that even inanimate objects suffer and groan when violence is done to them.
The Feast of the Lord's Baptism. For the Blessing of the Water we would go to the river at night. This was an astounding sight. A large cross of ice, colored with beet juice, would be standing there, visible from far off! The water would be blessed through a hole in the ice... And how we sang — it seemed to me as though we were being baptized again along with Jesus Christ!
In school, at my German-language lesson, my cross suddenly came out and was visible to everyone. They all cried out, "She has a cross, a cross!" I quickly put it back in its place with my finger. The teacher turned to me and, seeing my Red Cross symbol, said that everyone had that kind of cross, and told me to continue answering my lesson. But then, after this, she would always stroke my head, if no one was looking.
I remember, when they were excavating in the square for the construction of a maternity home, how many bones were lying around everywhere. Obviously there had been a cemetery there before. The children, finding a skull, played with it as with a soccer ball. My parents were terribly upset, but there was nothing they could do.
Once in school, in 1936, they collected all our notebooks and returned the ones that had a picture of the sorcerer from "The Song of Oleg the Soothsayer" without their covers. It turned out that on his staff was the carving "Down with the V. K. P. B." (that is, "down with the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks"). Someone had done this quite deftly, so that it was visible but didn't attract your attention.
I remember how the people from the school came to Papa to borrow his ryassa for an anti-religious meeting. How far would they not go?! Papa drove them away so hard that I was in transports at how those characters left us!
Papa spiritually directed three villages, and altogether there were fifteen thousand people. It was hard for him to deal with it by himself, and thus there was general Confession. Two choirs sang with us, on two kliroses: one would begin and the other would join in. There was great enthusiasm and delight, but unfortunately it didn't last long. The year 1937 arrived.
