You Refuse the Ship to Exile - You Spend Eight Years in Solitary

A Russian heiress refuses exile in 1922 and chooses to stay in Moscow; her refusal risks everything as the Soviet state tightens around her.

You Refuse the Ship to Exile - You Spend Eight Years in Solitary

In this episode, we follow Anna Ivanovna Abrikosova from a Cambridge education to a quiet conversion in Paris and back into a Moscow that closes its doors. We trace the choices she and her husband made, the community she built in an apartment, and the costs of staying when escape was possible - what would you have done?

Person: Anna Ivanovna Abrikosova Date: December 20, 1908 (received into Catholic faith at 9:00 a.m.) Location: Chapel of the Daughters of Charity, Church of the Madeleine, Paris Event: Refused emigration from Moscow in 1922; remained under Soviet rule Period: Born January 23, 1882 - arrested and spent eight years in solitary confinement

- Granddaughter of a freed serf and heiress to an Abrikosov commercial dynasty who grew up in a Moscow house with iron chains visible in its walls - Studied at Girton College, Cambridge (arrived 1901), nicknamed "In Dead Earnest," fluent in five languages and classmates with future notable intellectuals - Converted to Catholicism on December 20, 1908 in Paris; husband Vladimir followed into the same faith one year and one day later - Returned to Moscow in 1910, faced social ostracism for Eastern Rite Catholicism and transformed apartment 34 at 23 Prechistenskii Boulevard into a religious and community space - Offered passage out of Russia in 1922 by the Soviet government and urged by her husband to leave, but she refused and remained in Moscow under escalating state repression

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