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Metropolitan Anthony on Mother Maria Skobtsova
From that period I was told that she went to the steel foundry in Creusot, where a large number of Russian soldiers and officers were working. She came there, she was not yet a nun, and announced that she was preparing to give a series of lectures on Dostoevsky. She was met with general howling: ‘We do not need Dostoevsky, we need linen ironed, we need our rooms cleaned, we need our clothes mended, and you bring us Dostoevsky!’ And she answered: ‘Fine, if that is needed, let us leave Dostoevsky alone.’ And for several days she cleaned rooms, sewed, mended, ironed, cleaned. When she had finished doing all that, they asked her to talk about Dostoevsky. This made a big impression on me, because she did not say: ‘I did not come here to iron for you or clean your rooms — can you not do that yourselves?’ She responded immediately and in this way she won the hearts and minds of the people.
Another impression relates to the period when she had already become a nun. She was a very unusual nun in her behaviour and her manners. I was simply staggered when I saw her for the first time in monastic clothes. I was walking along the Boulevard Montparnasse and I saw: in front of a cafe, on the pavement, there was a table, on the table was a glass of beer and behind the glass was sitting a Russian nun in full monastic robes. I looked at her and decided that I would never go near that woman. I was young then and held extreme views.
Then I learned something different about her. At that time she opened a hostel in Rue Lourmel, where some remarkable people were gathered. Mother Mary went through the most dangerous and dubious streets of Paris, entered those guest houses where other people were simply afraid to go, found out whether there were Russians there, took them out of that place — beggars and drunkards, took them to Rue Lourmel, washed, clothed and fed them and for some time they lived there. But then they went away again, went back to their previous situation, because their poverty and living conditions were such that it was very difficult to hold out, when you had lost everything and taken only a short rest. And she would then again return to the same place, bring them back, again wash them, dress them and feed them, and so years passed like this. And Mochulski took part in this work with her, although he was not concerned with the physical work, but immersed them in his culture. He was also a Dostoevsky specialist. But he did not teach them Dostoevsky, but simply Russian culture and tried to awaken in them some interest in life, which would draw them away from drink or unemployment.. It was in the late twenties — early thirties. Even the French went hungry, but Russians even more so, because apart from anything else they were foreigners. We did not have passports: in 1925 we lost our Russian citizenship, and they did not give us a new one.
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