Mother Ariadna entered monastic life in 1917 as a novice of the Ioanno-Bogoslovskii Convent in the town of Cherdyn', Perm' guberniia. She was taken in by the abbess of that convent, Rufina, with whom she would spend the next twenty years. Together they fled the Bolsheviks to Vladivostok in 1919, where Rufina was appointed abbess of the Smolensk Odigitriia Convent, and then again to Harbin, where Rufina established the Bogoroditse-Vladimirskaia zhenskaia obitel' in 1924.
Ariadna was fully tonsured in 1931, becoming Rufina's deputy, and taking over as abbess upon Rufina's passing in 1937. She presided over the most difficult years of the convent's existence: its evacuation to Shanghai in 1937-38, then to the Tubabao refugee camp in the Philippines, and finally to San Francisco, California, in 1948. This process was the more difficult because of the important role the convent played in the religious and social life of the Russian community, particularly caring for poor and orphaned children and infants. Coming to America before the bulk of refugees, Ariadna was effective in relieving immigration problems and helped many of the Russians to establish themselves in the United States.
The Bogoroditse-Vladimirskaia zhenskaia obitel' thus became one of the first Russian Orthodox convents in the United States, and continues to exist to this day. The collection includes materials on its history, and primarily on the life and activities of Abbess Rufina.
Detailed processing and preservation microfilming for these materials were made possible by a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and by matching funds from the Hoover Institution and Museum of Russian Culture. The grant also provides for depositing a microfilm copy in the Hoover Institution Archives. The original materials and copyright to them (with some exceptions) are the property of the Museum of Russian Culture, San Francisco.
Mother Ariadna Papers Register pdf 86 K