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The story of Kira Obolenskaja

by Anatoly Razumov

The chairman of the Centre for Recovered Names in St. Petersburg presents the figure of Kira Obolenskaja, a library clerk who was shot, drawing the necessary information from the testimony born by one of her granddaughters. The woman says Kira’s father, Ivan Dmitrievic, was a military of the famous princes family the Obolenskij, which had been long impoverished. His five male children lost their lives on the frontline, while Kira started teaching in the school of young workers, becoming her family’s wage-earner.

Suddenly though Kira Obolenskaja disappeared. Mr. Razumov has written that she was arrested in September 1930. In that period she worked in the library of a school in Leningrad.
During questioning Kira Obolenskaja had the courage to say: “I don’t belong to the kind of people who subscribe to the program of the Soviet power. My disagreement starts from the issue of Church-State separation. I believe the expropriation of land from the peasants is unjust and I think the repressive policy of the State, with terror and the rest, is unacceptable in a human and civil Country. I am not aware of any group nor individuals actively opposing Soviet power, but even if I were I would anyway consider it as shameful to reveal their names since I know well under these circumstances that this would mean arrest and deportations for the victims”. She was sentenced to 5 years of internment.

In the lager of Belomorstroe, Kira Ivanovna worked at the camp hospital and taught to the nurses. After being moved to the Svirlag, in 1934 she was freed before the expiration of her term but she was denied the possibility to go back to Leningrad. She worked in some hospitals, then in 1936 she settled in Borovici, in the region of Novgorod, where she taught German in a school.
She was arrested again as a member “of an insurgent church organization” and she was shot. Upon proposal of St. Petersburg’s diocese, Kira Obolenskaja was canonized and proclaimed a martyr by the Synod of 6 October 2001.

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