Nora Rubashova was born in
Minsk,
Belarus, in a wealthy
Orthodox Jewish family. In April 1926, under the influence of her high school teacher Tamara Sapozhnikova, she converted to
Catholicism of the
Byzantine Rite and took vows as a nun of the community of Sisters founded by Mother
Catherine Abrikosova. Rubashova adopted the
monastic name Catherine after
Catherine of Siena. According to Fr. Georgii Friedman, Rubashova's parents were heartbroken by her conversion and entrance into the
Dominican Order. Her father, though, eventually came to terms with the fact. He used to joke whenever his daughter visited along with her fellow nuns, "Here come my in-laws!" She studied at the Faculty of History and Philology of
Moscow State University. Rubashova was a parishioner of former
Russian Symbolist poet Fr.
Sergei Solovyov, who offered the
Divine Liturgy in the
Old Church Slavonic liturgical language at the
side altar dedicated to
Our Lady of Ostrabrama inside what is now the
Immaculate Conception Cathedral in
Moscow. Rubashova later recalled, "Father Sergey said [Divine Liturgy] each day at this altar, and on the eve of major feasts he observed the
All Night Vigil. Rarely would one ever see so beautiful a Liturgy. The Church was large, tall, and unheated. Father Sergey's lips became bloodied from touching them every day to the freezing cold metal of the chalice." Following the
Great Turn, a government crackdown on religious practice made life in the parish ever more difficult. Nora Rubashova later recalled, "When [the Liturgy] in Slavonic was no longer permitted in the Church, Father Sergei continued to say [the Liturgy] in his friends' apartments. He also gave papers in their apartments; I remember his works on Sts
Sergius of Radonezh,
Serafim of Sarov, the
unification of the Churches, and other theological themes. He has an excellent command of language, both in conversation and in scholarly works; his thinking was always original and deep, his speech was artistically gifted." On 15 February 1931, she was arrested for belonging to the
Russian Greek Catholic Church. On August 18, 1931 she was sentenced to 5 years of labor camps in the
Mariinsky District, was released in 1936 and sent into exile in
Michurinsk. In 1937, she left for
Maloyaroslavets, where she joined the sisters, the remains of
Anna Abrikosova's Dominican community. After December she lived in
Bryansk and in October 1937 moved to
Maloyaroslavets. During
World War II Maloyarolavets was occupied by
Nazi Germany and, along with fellow
Soviet Jewish Sister
Theresa Kugel, Nora Rubashova survived the
Holocaust in Russia by working as a nurse in a German
military hospital. Whenever possible, both sisters attended the
Masses offered by
Wehrmacht military chaplains and knelt at the
Communion Rail alongside German soldiers who
were fully aware of their Jewish ancestry. Many years later, Secular Tertiary Ivan Lupandin asked Rubashova why one of the Catholic chaplains, whom she jokingly called a
Hochdeutsch for his staunch belief in
German nationalism, never reported her or Sister Theresa's Jewishness to the
Gestapo or the
SS. Rubashova replied, "Well, he was a Catholic priest. He was nationalistic, but not
that nationalistic." In May 1944, Maloyaroslavets was liberated by the
Red Army and Rubashova traveled to the Novo Shulba near
Semipalatinsk, to help sister
Stephanie Gorodets who was there in exile. Meanwhile, Sister Theresa Kugel, despite her Jewishness, was arrested by the
NKVD on charges of collaboration with Nazi Germany. According to Ivan Lupandin, the NKVD's logic was that Sister Theresa must have been a collaborator because, "how else could she have worked in a hospital and not been shot by the Nazis?" In 1947, together with Sister Stephanie, Rubashova returned to Maloyaroslavets, and in summer of 1948 moved to
Kaluga. On 30 November 1948, she was re-arrested for belonging to the
Russian Catholic Church and, on 29 October 1949, was sentenced to 15 years of labor camps. Rubashova was sent to
Vorkuta Gulag and, in 1954, to
Karlag, staying there until May 1956. After her release from the
Gulag during the
Khrushchev thaw, Rubashova went to Moscow. Mother Stephania Gorodets soon joined her and they lived together in a small flat in a communal apartment building near the
University Station of the
Moscow metro. Nora Rubashova got a job at the
State Historical Library, where she worked until retirement. She attended the
Church of Saint Louis, and united around her the surviving community of Russian Catholics. Her room became a meeting place for the sisters and the spiritual center of the new community, which later attracted young people,
Moscow State University students, and
Soviet dissidents. Visitors included the poet
Arseny Tarkovsky.
Sergey Averintsev and Anna Godiner, Furthermore, because
Nobel Prize-winning
Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn interviewed Rubashova in
Moscow during his research process, Mother
Catherine Abrikosova and the persecution of her monastic community are mentioned briefly in the first volume of
The Gulag Archipelago. Following his illegal
seminary training and secret ordination by an underground bishop of the
Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, the Moscow Catholic community arranged clandestine offerings of the
Byzantine Rite Divine Liturgy beginning from October 1979 by a visiting Greek-Catholic priest from
Leningrad, Fr. Georgii Friedman. In her final years, Rubashova rejoiced in the beginning of
glasnost and
perestroika, but often said cautiously and in
Gulag slang about Soviet Premier
Mikhail Gorbachev, "I can believe any beast, but as for him -- I'll wait a bit." Towards the end of her life, Rubashova often confided in fellow Dominican tertiary Anna Godiner, "I am alone a lot, and I simply sit and timidly talk with God." Compounding her loneliness was that Rubashova's brother and relatives emigrated to the
United States under the
Jackson-Vanik Amendment and settled in
Brighton Beach. Sister Nora Rubashova died on 12 May 1987 in
Moscow,
Russia, and was buried at the Khovanskoye cemetery near Moscow. A
Byzantine Rite funeral Liturgy, or
Panikhida, was secretly offered for the repose of her soul by Fr Georgii Friedman. ==Sources==