Schemanun
Saint Martyr Raphael was born in 1887 in the village of Vilyatovo, Novogrudok district, Minsk province, in the family of peasant Arkhip Vishnyakov and was named Marina at baptism. At the age of nineteen, she entered a women's monastery in the Grodno province; during World War I, the monastery was evacuated deep into Russia, and Marina settled in the Spaso-Vlahern Monastery in Moscow province. It is unknown when she took monastic vows, but during the persecutions under Soviet power, she was tonsured into the schema with the name Raphael. She did not have a permanent place of residence, living for a time with believers and nuns.
On January 21, 1938, schema nun Raphael was arrested along with a large group of monks from the Trinity-Sergius Lavra and believers and was imprisoned in Butyrka prison in Moscow. On the same day, the investigator interrogated schema nun. The first thing the investigator was interested in was where and on what means she lived. Schema nun Raphael replied that she did not have a permanent place of residence and lived on donations. The investigator demanded to tell who she stayed with while living in Moscow, to which schema nun replied that she would not answer this question.
Upon her arrest, the NKVD officers photographed her in her schema attire, which they considered sufficient evidence of her criminal activity, and the investigator did not bother to ask her if she admitted her guilt.
The summoned witnesses for the interrogation testified that schema nun Raphael was hostile towards the Soviet government, that she constantly visited holy places and conducted significant anti-Soviet work, that she said it was God punishing for the sins of the people who sent them an atheistic government, but He would have mercy — there would be war, and this anti-Christian government would be purified by fire; the witnesses also testified that schema nun was engaged in predictions, proving the inevitable demise of the Soviet government. Schema nun Raphael 'lived illegally without a passport, walked around Moscow churches... spread... rumors... about the alleged persecution of religion, clergy, monks, and believers in the USSR. Thus, she said in the Znamensky Church at the Krestovskaya Zastava that the Soviet government was the government of the Antichrist, arranging persecution against religion, breaking holy places, and that the clergy and monks were innocently arrested and exiled to remote places in Russia, where they were subjected to torture.' During the voting in the Supreme Soviet, she told her followers: 'Do not go to vote for the Antichrists, who only know how to destroy the Orthodox faith.'
On February 14, 1938, the NKVD troika sentenced schema nun Raphael to execution by shooting. Schema nun Raphael (Vishnyakova) was shot on February 17, 1938, and buried in an unknown common grave at the Butovo firing range near Moscow.
