The Holy New Martyr Lydia.
The Holy New Martyr Lydia was born in the city of Ufa in Russia on March 20, 1901, the daughter of a priest. She was married at the age of nineteen, but lost her husband in the civil war. When her father, out of weakness, joined the schism of the “Renovationist” church organized by the Bolsheviks, she did not follow him.
In 1926 she obtained work with the Forestry Department, where even the hardened lumberjacks and drivers ceased using foul language in her presence and became kind, moved by the grace of the Christian virtues in her. This brought her to the attention of the authorities, who kept an eye on her, hoping through her to discover the members of the local catacomb church. They were unable to find anything against her until July 9, 1928. A typist had been secretly supplying workers of the Forestry department with lives of the Saints, prayers, instructions of ancient and contemporary hierarchs, and other dangerously subversive literature, and it was noticed that the lower stem of the “k” was broken, and through this she was found out.
The secret police, the GPU, interrogated her for ten days straight, realizing that in her they had found a lead for uncovering the whole catacomb church. On July 20, they lost patience with her refusal to inform on others, and handed her over to torture. Since the ten days of questioning had left her exhausted, Cyril Ataev, a 23-year-old private, was commanded to lead her into the cellar where she was to be tortured, since she had no strength left. Perceiving compassion in the way he helped her, Lydia thanked him, “May Christ save you.” This so touched Cyril, with the sight of her pain and helplessness, that he was unable to hear her cries with indifference, as they tortured her for a long time. When they asked her why she wouldn’t talk if she was in so much pain, she answered that God wouldn’t allow it. They decided to violate her, and called Cyril into the room to help. As soon as he saw Lydia, and understood the new torture they had devised, his entire soul was filled with revulsion, and a miracle like that worked in many of the torturers of the ancient Martyrs took place. He seized his revolver and instantly shot two of the torturers. He himself was soon shot by one of the survivors. As he lay dying, he said to Lydia, “Saint, take me with you.” “I will take you,” said Lydia with a joyous smile. This conversation as it were opened a door on the other world before the two remaining GPU torturers, and terror darkened their minds. Shouting like madmen, they emptied out their revolvers on Cyril and Lydia; those who came at the sound led them away shouting insanely and themselves were seized with an undefinable terror. One of these two GPU agents completely lost his mind. The soon died of nervous shock, but not before telling everything to his friend, Sergeant Alexei Ikonnikoff, who came to faith and brought this account to the Church, for which he himself was killed.
This account of them is abridged from Russia’s Catacomb Saints, pp. 329–33.
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