Date: 05/18/22
Author: Kent Moors, Ph.D.
Beginning next week, two Classified Intelligence Brief Spy Tale entries will comprise my annual return to a series of events that began on a Memorial Day weekend years ago. Next week’s tale will address the worst episode of my intelligence career. The second will explain how we got even.
Thereafter, some of the more personal unsavory and troubling elements of my experiences in the shadows will finally see the light of day, thanks to the latest vetting by “mother.”
Today, I find a recent Moscow newspaper story once again rustling some remembrances. While attention remains transfixed on the invasion of Ukraine – what one Russian contact calls “Putin’s Folly,” (privately of course) – some other matters are also gracing the national press.
One of these has prompted the renewed interest in a decades old murder. Yet there days, even crimes committed decades ago have a way of circling forward to the current war, at least in the minds of opinion spinners in the Kremlin. More on that later.
The last time this sordid matter was addressed, I was still living in Moscow and the affair found its way into the coded notes kept of just about everything occurring around me. This story captivated the city and involved a location I would past frequently.
It also centered about one of the strangest figures to ever appear in my “journal.” Because at the time of her death Sister Varvara was one of the last survivors of a cloistered convent and a protector of secrets.
The Bogoroditse-Rozhdestvensky Convent sits on the corner of Ulitsa Rozhdestvenka and Rozhdestvensky Bulvar. Tradition has it that the convent had been founded in 1386 by Princess Maria Andreevna of Serpukhov who became a nun and died there in 1389. Many other royal ladies took the veil at the convent, not all of them willingly. This had been the place were tsars sent unwanted wives.
For example, Solomnia Saburova, the first wife of Grand Prince Vasili III, was sent here so that the prince could marry Yelena Glinskaya. The new wife would succeed where Solomnia had failed by giving Vasili an heir – Ivan the Terrible. The convent was closed in 1923 by the Bolsheviks. Over 800 were evicted although some of its nuns remained living there. The complex was largely turned over to state functions. In 1993 a decision was made to reopen the convent after the land had been returned to the Orthodox Church.
But well before that, a murder had captivated Moscow.
Photo: rusmania.com
Well before the Soviet Union had ceased to exist in January 1992, Varvara had been killed, the apparent murderer found guilty and sentenced. Later events, however, would cast doubt on one person’s guilt and produce media speculations about another’s treasures.
The buildings overseeing the convent grounds rise in the east like a fortress above Rozhdestvensky Bulvar, casting a penumbra far and wide within the walls until the sun is almost straight up in the noonday sky. At night, the moon plays games with the turrets. Area residents regard the nocturnal reflections as the presence of a saint. Saint Nikolai the Miracle Worker was among them, they would say, referring to the relics that used to be at the convent. Belief holds that the sacred objects struck French soldiers with sudden illness and halted Napoleon’s advance in 1812.
Unfortunately, there was little heavenly about the death of Sister Varvara or in the revelations that would cause her murder to be reexamined and lately resurrected yet again in the press.
Even during the dark times, the few sisters remaining were allowed to live among the spartan cells of the main building. Which explained why Varvara, a young novice when the revolution began in 1917, would remain there all her life.
By the time of her death, by strangulation with her own beads, only Varvara and blind Sister Viktorina still lived in the convent. And both were well over 90.
A local man had been detained trying to make off with a few icons of no particular value. “Murder for profit” was the decision by the people’s court. End of story.
Not quite. Several years later, another fellow was caught trying to smuggle icons out of the country. That followed with a private collector from Belgium returning a piece and then others being confiscated awaiting auction in Italy. Some of these items are among the most valuable religious works ever examined by curators. All were traced back to the convent.
According to testimony by members of the family who took in Viktorina after the murder, the convent had been the repository of priceless icons – the safekeeping of which had been entrusted to Varvara by the last mother superior. According to the story, they were hidden in a wall of the murdered nun’s cell but had vanished.
Media suspicion would fall upon a ring among the local police themselves, those who had been delegated with the investigation of the entire affair. At the time, several present and former officers had been questioned. All had been leading figures in the official attempt to determine what happened. According to one of the most recent local newspaper accounts, one confession admitted that objects were placed in the clothing of the convicted murderer to deflect attention while the more valuable artifacts were removed from the convent.
Yet that same individual, once again according to the media, claimed that the correct person was found guilty of the murder. Some policemen merely used the event as a convenient way to dispose of treasures found during the investigation.
The convicted man, however, had always claimed he had been framed. Released after serving ten years, an unusually light sentence given the graphic nature of the crime, he contended in an interview he was merely a scapegoat for local police who had the nun killed.
He continued to make the claim until he was killed in a hit and run accident. At the time of his death, no firm corroboration for his version had surfaced with the rumors circulated by Moscow equivalents of the gossip “newspapers” available at any American checkout counter.
Popular interest has been renewed by a reopened museum exhibit of jewel encrusted icon and gold artifacts among the recovered pieces. A TV show has taken the nation on a tour of the convent with voiceovers intimating details that have never been proven. A dramatization of the murder has been in the works for years but is yet to move forward.
The most recent addition to this tale that will not die emerged earlier this month and ties it to the tragedy unfolding in Ukraine, at least according to the Kremlin. It seems that the government has petitioned for a bonded warehouse outside Zurich be opened. In papers filed with the Swiss authorities, the claim is made that the bulk of the convent’s icon treasures (labeled “treasures belonging to the Russian people”) is ensconced there – in the private vault of an unnamed Ukrainian official.
It seems after decades of silence, the Russian government appears now only to ready to admit the icon treasure had been hidden in the convent where Varvara was murdered and stolen by parties other than the guy who spent time for it. If in the process Russian can claim that the theft can be laid at the feet of the “Nazis” in Kyiv, so much the better
Strange result from the death of a nun who least wanted to be in the world of a media whirlwind or for that matter central to what is now a geopolitical intrigue.
Dr. Kent Moors
This is an installment of Classified Intelligence Brief, your guide to what’s really happening behind the headlines… and how to profit from it. Dr. Kent Moors served the United States for 30 years as one of the most highly decorated intelligence operatives alive today (including THREE Presidential commendations).
After moving through the inner circles of royalty, oligarchs, billionaires, and the uber-rich, he discovered some of the most important secrets regarding finance, geo-politics, and business. As a result, he built one of the most impressive rolodexes in the world. His insights and network of contacts took him from a Vietnam veteran to becoming one of the globe’s most sought after consultants, with clients including six of the largest energy companies and the United States government.
Now, Dr. Moors is sharing his proprietary research every week…knowledge filtered through his decades as an internationally recognized professor and scholar, intelligence operative, business consultant, investor, and geo-political “troubleshooter.” This publication is designed to give you an insider’s view of what is really happening on the geo-political stage.
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