Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy name give glory (Ps. 113:9).
Abbess Seraphima (Chichagova-Chernaya). Photo: Novodev.msk.ru Abbess Seraphima (secular name: Barbara Vasilievna Chichagova-Chernaya) was a world–renowned Soviet scientist and engineer, a Ph.D in Engineering, a State Prize winner, and the head of the Research Laboratory of the Institute of Organic Chemistry that developed spacesuits for Russian cosmonauts. In her declining years she was tonsured and became the Abbess of the Moscow Novodevichy Convent. Her life is an example of how an Orthodox Christian can combine faith with scientific accomplishments.
The future Abbess Seraphima was born on July 30 (August 12 according to the new calendar), 1914 in St. Petersburg into the family of Vasily Augustovich von Razon, who served in the State Secretariat of the Grand Duchy of Finland. Although he had German roots, Barbara’s father served Russia faithfully as a Court Counselor; at one time he was an assistant to P.A. Stolypin. He went missing at the very beginning of the First World War. Her mother, Leonida Leonidovna (1883–1963),1 was a daughter of Leonid Mikhailovich Chichagov, the now famous Hieromartyr Seraphim.2
In 1914, Leonida Leonidovna was left with two young daughters—Leonida and Barbara. The Revolution found them in Petrograd. Their mother moved with her children to Moscow to live with her father, Archbishop Seraphim (Chichagov), who sent them to the Alexander Nevsky Convent in the Kalyazin district near the town of Kimry (now in the Tver region). Here Leonida Leonidovna began working at the hospital. Under the new Government, the churches remained open for some time, and services were celebrated in them.
“I loved getting up at six in the morning without any prompting and running to the convent church. I enjoyed church services, prayers, and hymns. I eagerly attended the Law of God classes at the village school where my elder sister Leonida studied,” Barbara Vasilievna recalled.
In the 1920s, famine, devastation, and epidemics reigned in the country. The family was in dire need, and the grown-up girls went to day work. At the age of seven Varya [a diminutive form of the name Barbara.—Trans.] began working part-time at an agricultural cooperative. It was then that Varya told her mother:
“I will always be able to support myself: I’ve learned how to wash floors well.”
In 1924, her mother was fired for her religious beliefs, and Barbara became the only breadwinner in the family. Then their mother got a job at a sanatorium near the New Jerusalem Monastery (now in the Moscow region). There the family attended an old church and made friends with local clergy. In New Jerusalem, Varya studied from the fifth to the seventh grade, and every day the girl went to the sanatorium where her mother worked to perform menial labor, as the money was tight in their home. When the family could afford it, they went to visit their grandfather, Vladyka Seraphim (Chichagov), who served at a monastery near Shuya (now in the Ivanovo region) from 1926 to 1928.
Hieromartyr Seraphim (Chichagov) When Barbara was in the ninth grade, her nine-year school was transformed into the Moscow Petrochemical College. She studied at this college between 1929 and 1931, but because of financial strains in her family she had to quit her studies and get a job as a laboratory assistant at the Military Chemical Academy, and then at the laboratory of the Institute of Organic Chemistry of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
In 1933, without leaving her work, Barbara entered the Moscow Institute of Fine Chemical Technologies (the evening department). In 1936–1937, until her grandfather’s arrest, she as a student lived in his summer cottage not far from the Udelnaya train station near Moscow. Barbara Vasilievna recalled that on Sundays, “in the evenings Grandpa would sit down with his harmonium—he never parted with it—and play or compose spiritual music, while I would sit on the sofa, looking at him or reading, and feeling grace radiating from him.”
In December 1937, the eighty-one-year-old Metropolitan Seraphim was arrested: the sick old man was taken by ambulance from Udelnaya to the Taganka Prison, then to the Lubyanka, and from there to Butovo where he was executed by the firing squad. Together with her mother and sister, Barbara went to all the prisons in search of her missing grandfather, and everywhere they received the same answer, “Chichagov is not on our list.”
In 1939, Barbara Razon graduated from the Institute and was sent to work at the famous Moscow Rubber Factory as a rubber production engineer. In 1941, she was charged with the evacuation of the factory to the Urals—to Sverdlovsk (now Ekaterinburg). From October to December 1941, Barbara stood in the open every day, even during the bombing, recording what equipment was being loaded onto each car of the train. In the last days of December, they were ordered to revive the factory in Moscow. The staff was tasked with setting up the production of rubber parts for military needs, for the aviation and automotive industries, etc. as soon as possible. The question arose as to where to get the documentation that had been taken to the Urals. Barbara Vasilievna had to restore it from memory and restart production in the empty workshops of the evacuated factory from scratch. She was in charge of managing technological process. She headed a five–strong scientific team to develop synthetic rubber—latex. Engineering and technical workers toiled in spartan conditions: they lived at the factory for four years, and slept two or three hours a day. This task of national importance was fulfilled—the unique technology developed by the team for the production of synthetic rubber became a great breakthrough in the chemical industry.
Barbara Vasilievna Chichagova-Chernaya After the Great Patriotic War, Barbara married Nikolai Valentinovich Cherny (†1983), an art historian—a man who had gone through many trials in life. In 1937, he was arrested as an “enemy of the people” and was in prison five years. He fought in the war but could not get a job for a long time after that. It was only after Stalin’s death, in the mid-1950s, that he was exonerated and found a job in his field. The couple happily lived together for thirty-eight years, but they remained childless.
In 1946, Barbara Vasilievna was transferred to work at the newly opened Scientific Research Institute for the Rubber Industry. After postgraduate studies and defending her master’s in 1951, she headed the laboratory of this institute, and after defending her doctoral thesis in 1970, she received a Ph.D in engineering, became a professor (1972), and was subsequently awarded the title of academician. Between 1966 and 1982, Barbara Vasilievna was the Deputy Director for research work. For two years she served in place of the absent Director and was involved in the construction of the Institute’s high-rise building.
Barbara Vasilievna Chernaya became a highly accomplished scientist.
“I developed a technology for producing superthin rubber. My technological process formed the basis of several new factories—for example, for medical products, rubber gloves for surgeons, valves for artificial hearts, tubes, probes and catheters. Back then it was a major breakthrough in the chemical industry. I was involved in the creation of materials for manufacturing protective equipment for cosmonauts and other specialists working under conditions of hazardous radiation,” Barbara Chernaya related in an interview.
Interestingly, these developments helped Yuri Gagarin fly into outer space. In 1960, Barbara Vasilievna, as one of the chief experts, took part in making a spacesuit for the first cosmonaut. She designed special rubber joints, which gave the suit greater mobility. The cosmonaut wearing it could bend his arms and legs and turn his head. This invention earned Barbara Vasilievna the State Prize and the title of Honored Worker of Science and Technology. From the 1970s on, she was invited abroad to various conferences and symposiums where she made reports in English. Barbara Vasilievna authored over 150 works and thirty-six inventor’s certificates.
In 1963, Nun Seraphima (Leonida Leonidovna) passed away. When Barbara Vasilievna was asked about her mother, she would reply, “She’s dead.” And indeed, after becoming a nun, she died to this world. Living very modestly, Barbara Vasilievna gave most of the money she earned to Pyukhtitsa Convent where her mother was buried. In 1983, her husband, Nikolai Valentinovich, reposed. She arranged for the funeral service for him to be celebrated in church and put a cross on his grave—the only cross in the entire Kuntsevo Cemetery. Her husband’s sudden death made her seriously think about her future life.
In 1986, Barbara Vasilievna retired. One day she entered the Church of St. Elias on Obydensky Lane in Moscow and was dumbfounded. Christ in a white tunic gazed directly at her from an icon, stretching out His arms to her. She immediately recognized that icon. It was painted by her grandfather, Metropolitan Seraphim. In the same church she saw another icon painted by him—St. Seraphim of Sarov, praying on a rock.
Barbara Vasilievna began to work at the church candle shop. The elderly lady always greeted those entering the church affectionately with her radiant smile. Gradually, she started organizing trips to holy sites and monasteries for the parishioners, accompanied by professional guides. At the same time, she began to hold Orthodox workshops at home, thanks to which many intellectuals in the capital became church-goers. Over her six years of work in the church, she acquired humility, patience and mercy. She used to say, “Keep your head low and your heart high.”
It occurred to her to write memoirs about her grandfather, Metropolitan Seraphim (Chichagov), who contributed to her spiritual development in childhood and adolescence.
“Collecting all possible information about him and restoring his vivid image in the memory of the Russian people became the main goal of my life,” she confessed.
In the 1980s, Barbara Vasilievna devoted a lot of time to research in the archives and collecting her grandfather’s spiritual legacy. She decided to do everything in her power for his well-deserved canonization. It turned out to be difficult; the documents had been confiscated during his arrest, and her mother and aunts were gone. Bit by bit, she had to collect information about him and about the events of those troubled years. In 1993, two volumes of Metropolitan Seraphim’s works were published, entitled Thy Will Be Done, which contains his sermons, spiritual writings, and research work.
In 1988, Barbara Vasilievna submitted an application to the State Security Committee of the RSFSR for her grandfather’s rehabilitation, and on November 10, 1988, the Moscow Regional Court decided to exonerate Metropolitan Seraphim (Chichagov) “for lack of corpus delicti”. However, she did not know the place of his execution and burial for a long time, and it was not until January 8, 1994 that she learned that her grandfather had been shot by the NKVD at the Butovo firing range. When the site of Metropolitan Seraphim’s martyrdom was found, she began to travel to the Butovo firing range frequently and joined a group of enthusiasts who searched for archival documents about the sites of mass shootings and burial of clergy during the years of Communist terror. She made a significant contribution to the construction of the Memorial Church of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia in Butovo, and helped compile a list of the clergy who were victims of repressions and buried there.
Abbess Seraphima (Chichagova-Chernaya) and Metropolitan Juvenaly (Poyarkov) In 1994, at the advanced age of eighty, Barbara Vasilievna received the monastic tonsure with the name Seraphima, in obedience to her spiritual mentor, Metropolitan Juvenaly of Krutitsy and Kolomna (from 1992). On November 27, 1994, during the Divine Liturgy, Nun Seraphima was elevated to the rank of Abbess of the Moscow Novodevichy Convent and was given the abbess’ staff. At the International Conference on Rubber Research in Moscow a few days after Barbara Vasilievna’s tonsure, she delivered a report, wearing her monastic garb.
“’Coming full circle’ is an apt description of my destiny. After all, I spent my childhood in a monastery.” That’s how Abbess Seraphima characterized her tonsure to the angelic rank.
At first, the nuns of the newly opened convent slept in the attic of the Holy Dormition Church—on blankets spread out on the floor. In five years, Abbess Seraphima revived the monastic life at the convent and its two dependencies. The sisterhood had grown to thirty nuns. During her abbacy the monastic rule was introduced, the convent choir was organized, and a six-volume prayer commemoration book was compiled to commemorate the clergy and nuns who labored at the convent from the day of its foundation. Under Abbess Seraphima, the Holy Dormition Church was restored, the nuns’ living quarters were equipped with modern amenities, the Church of St. Ambrose of Milan was restored and consecrated, and new living quarters for the sisters were built. When the convent obtained a loom, carpet weaving and vestment making resumed there. She opened icon painting and gold embroidery workshops. A farm was organized at the convent’s dependency in the village of Shubino, Domodedovo district, Moscow region.
Monument on the grave of Abbess Seraphima (Chichagova-Chernaya) on the territory of the Dormition Church of the Novodevichy Convent, the north side At the request of Abbess Seraphima and thanks to her searches in church archives, Patriarch Alexei II blessed the resumption of the prayerful veneration of the Novodevichy Convent’s first abbess, St. Elena (Devochkina). For her zealous efforts to revive the Novodevichy Convent, His Holiness Patriarch Alexei II of Moscow and All Russia awarded Abbess Seraphima with a decorated cross on the occasion of her eighty-fifth birthday (1999) and the Order of the holy Princess Olga Equal-to-the-Apostles, second degree (1999).
Abbess Seraphima’s testament reads: “Russia will be reborn. It cannot be otherwise... there are so many talented people in Russia.” On December 16, 1999, Abbess Seraphima fell asleep in the Lord at the age of eighty-five. She died of bilateral pneumonia after catching a cold during restoration work at the new dependency, the St. Zosima Convent near Naro-Fominsk in the Moscow region. Clergy, prominent scientists, and even cosmonauts came to bid farewell to her. She was buried near the Holy Dormition Church in the Novodevichy Convent, on the north side. In 2000, a small memorial museum dedicated to her was opened at the Dormition Church.
To Abbess Seraphima, eternal memory!
Bibliography:
Thy Will Be Done: The Life and Works of the Hieromartyr Seraphim (Chichagov). Moscow, 2003.
The Moscow Encyclopedia. Vol. 1, Faces of Moscow. Moscow: The Moskovskye Uchebniki Public Corporation, 2012.
Abbess Seraphima. Compiled by O. I. Pavlova. Moscow: Sretensky Monastery Publishing House, 2005.
Nikolskaya, Olga. “A Monastery Is Built by Prayer... Interview with the Abbess of the Novodevichy Convent, Nun Seraphima.” The Moscow Patriarchate’s Journal, 1995.
Lyudmila (Grechina), Novice Nun. “Abbess Seraphima (Chernaya), First Abbess of the Revived Novodevichy Convent.” Moscow Diocesan Gazette, no. 11–12 (2005).
