Mother Tatiana Răduleț in the communist dungeon
In our column in “Lumina Newspaper” we have often recalled the trials of some monks during the communist period. Along with these people persecuted by the atheist dictatorship, there were also the much prayed-for monks living in the monasteries of the Romanian Patriarchate, about whom we recently found more information in the archives of the former Security Service. One of the nuns persecuted by the communists was Mother Tatiana Răduleț, abbess of the Tismana convent.
A native of Berivoii Mici, formerly Făgăraș County, she was born on 22 July 1921 into a large family of simple and devout people, and was given the name Victoria at her baptism. After finishing primary school in her hometown, she was taken to Bucharest and brought up by an aunt who ran a tailoring shop.
She attended tailoring school and completed her secondary education. She worked in her relative’s workshop in Bucharest until she decided to follow the path of monastic life. She took her vows at Bistrița Monastery in Vâlcea, and in 1950 she joined the young Tismana Monastery, becoming abbess two years later. The settlement where she lived had just escaped the threat of closure by the communist authorities.
In the summer of 1948, Tismana was raided by the communist Security Service forces, and shortly afterwards, Abbot Gherasim Iscu himself was arrested for supporting members of the anti-communist resistance in Oltenia, led by General Iancu Carlaonț and Radu Ciuceanu. In this situation, the regime demanded the closure of the Tismana Monastery, but the Metropolitan of Oltenia, Firmilian, refused and came up with the solution of transforming the monastery into a nunnery. Thus, at the beginning of 1950, a convent of nuns from Bistrița, Gura Motrului and Gologanu was established in Tismana. At the same time, following the initiative of Patriarch Justinian to create monastic cooperatives, the “Propășirea” cooperative was founded in the Oltenia Metropolitanate, uniting the monastic workshops of Tismana, Polovragi, Strâmba-Jiu and Gura Motrului under a single management. Each monastery produced household items, with Tismana making paint and pig-hair brushes. Obviously, the ‘watchful eye of the Party’ – the Security Service – closely monitored all activity, both spiritual and productive.
The Security Service’s attention peaked around 1958 with the discovery of Colonel Iulian Popovici in the Polovragi monastery. He was a fugitive and had been sentenced for having been commander of the Odessa gendarmerie during the war. There were suspicions, which the Security Service could not confirm, but this discovery set the repressive authorities on fire. Searches and investigations were carried out during Passion Week 1958 and even in the monastery itself, with the main accused being the hieromonk Veniamin Nicolae, president of the “Propășirea” cooperative, and Mother Nicodema Vasilache, secretary of the Tismana monastery. But for the Securitate, the two accused could not be the only ones guilty of this “legionary conspiracy”, especially as the regime was preparing to implement a plan to limit the number of monastic staff in all Romanian monasteries.
Together with them, Mother Tatiana Răduleț and two other Bessarabian priests, “refugees from the Soviet regime”, were arrested in June 1958. After a long and tortuous investigation, which did not lack accusations of “embezzlement from the funds of the Propășirea Cooperative”, “conspiracy and legionary activity” and many others, on 24 October 1959, by decree no. 197, the Bucharest Military Tribunal sentenced Mother Tatiana Răduleț to 16 years of hard labour for the crime of “conspiracy against the social order”.
She was imprisoned in Craiova, Jilava and Târgșor prisons. In 1964 she was not released with the other political prisoners, but continued to serve her sentence until 1972. As a result of the beatings and humiliations she suffered in prison, she developed a nervous illness. After a period in Căldărușani, she managed to return to the monastery of her soul, Tismana, in December 1977, from where she died on 24 February 1986.
(Adrian Nicolae Petcu – Lumina Newspaper)