famous love stories

Quote from ARVIK merciful sister

This story is about a Russian woman who can rightfully be called the Angel of Mercy.
Yulia Petrovna Vrevskaya - Baroness, folk heroine of Russia and Bulgaria.

She was born in the city of Lubny, Poltava province, in the family of a participant in the Battle of Borodino, General Varpakhovsky. The entry in the register of births reads: “1838 on January 25, the commander of the 1st brigade of the 7th infantry division, Major General Pyotr Evdokimov of the Varpakhovsky Orthodox faith and his legal wife Karolina Ivanovna of the Evangelical religion, a daughter, Yulia, was born.”

The Varpakhovsky sisters studied at the Odessa Institute of Noble Maidens.

In the same year, his father was appointed commander of the reserve divisions, and the Varpakhovskys had to move to Stavropol, where Yulia spent her youth. Here she met Baron I. A. Vrevsky, who was a man of great courage, three times awarded with golden weapons with diamonds and the inscription "For Courage". He chose, as they said about him, "the most honorable positions in danger" and, according to M. D. Skobelev, "one was worth four cavalry divisions." Young Julia became a baroness. The newlyweds settled in Vladikavkaz. But their family life was quite short. On August 20, 1858, during the assault on the aul-fortress, Kituri was wounded by two bullets. He was carried out from under the fire. He died nine days later in the arms of his young wife in the town of Telavi.

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Together with her mother and sister, Julia left for St. Petersburg. Alexander II did not disregard the widow of the illustrious general: she was appointed maid of honor to the court of Empress Maria Alexandrovna. But Yulia Vrevskaya was not satisfied with social life. She lived little in St. Petersburg, often traveled.

She was a remarkably beautiful woman. According to contemporaries, “Yulia Petrovna is distinguished by some special charm, something sublime, which is especially attractive and not forgotten, she is charming not only with her appearance, feminine grace, but also with endless kindness and friendliness.”
She was friends with V. Hugo and especially with I. Turgenev, who respected and admired her immensely.
At that time, Russian society was especially preoccupied with the "Slavic question." The April uprising of 1876 in Bulgaria and the Serbian-Chernigov-Turkish war that began after it gave rise to the most severe Ottoman repressions against the Slavic population in the Balkans. Since June, detachments of volunteers began to form throughout Russia to protect the “brothers”. Among those who are not indifferent to someone else's misfortune was Yulia Vrevskaya. With the proceeds from the sale of the Oryol estate, he equips a sanitary detachment of 22 people - sisters of mercy and doctors. At the same time, she herself entered the detachment not as a boss, but as an ordinary nurse, having completed a special training course.
Upon learning of her decision to go to the front, Turgenev writes from Paris: “My most sincere sympathy will accompany you on your difficult journey. I wish with all my heart that the feat you have undertaken does not turn out to be unbearable - and that your health does not suffer.
It is interesting that Turgenev, as it were, foresaw the legendary fate of Vrevskaya, predicted much of the life of Yulia Petrovna in the novel "On the Eve", and now, a quarter of a century later, the story of Elena Stakhova and Dmitry Insarov is repeated in living reality.
In June 1877, the sisters of mercy of the Holy Trinity community and nine "volunteers", including Vrevskaya, were leaving for the war, and her sacrificial ministry began.
The sisters of the Holy Trinity community were sent to the Romanian city of Iasi, where they were to work in the 45th military temporary evacuation hospital - "the main center of Red Cross assistance in the rear of the army."

“The country is wild here, and they don’t eat anything but corn,” she writes, “I live here in a Bulgarian hut, rather cold, and I walk in boots, have lunch and dinner with my sisters on a box ... I don’t have a chair in my room , no table. I am writing on a suitcase and lying on a stretcher ... "The main meaning of her letters is:" The war is terrible nearby, how much grief, how many widows and orphans ... "
The medical staff of the hospital worked almost around the clock. The sisters worked in operating rooms, bandaging the wounded, distributing medicines, supervising the change of linen, delivering food, feeding the sick and seriously wounded, taking turns escorting ambulance trains from freight wagons devoid of the slightest fixtures.
“Many wounded are dying,” Yulia Petrovna writes to her sister, “the officers of the abyss near Plevna were out of order ... You can imagine what we did, we barely had time to land on other trains - groans, suffering, insects ... just tore our souls. We were very tired and when we came home, like sheaves, they fell on the bed ... "
In short moments of rest, Vrevskaya wrote letters to her homeland: short stories about an unprecedented feat and great torment that befell the Russian soldiers. “How can you grumble when you see in front of you so many cripples, armless, legless, and all this without a piece of bread in the future.”
She was given the words of the empress: “I miss Yulia Petrovna. It's time for her to return to the capital. The feat is done. She is presented to the order. Her reaction: “How angry these words make me! They think that I have come here to perform feats. We are here to help, not to receive orders.”

After four months of exhausting work, she was entitled to a two-month vacation, but she did not leave for her homeland, but decided to spend her vacation in Bulgaria, where there were not enough sisters in front-line hospitals and hundreds of wounded were waiting for days for their turn to receive medical care. In addition, she wanted to be at the forefront. In November 1877, an ambulance van drove into the frontline village of Byala, with which Vrevskaya finally reached her new duty station.
The sisters at the frontline dressing stations were called "lucky ones." One of them was Yulia Petrovna. She took part in the battle at the Mechka. A fragile woman, under a hail of bullets, carried the wounded out of the battle and immediately assisted them. “There were only three sisters of us, the others did not ripen,” she writes to her sister, “there were 600 wounded that day at different points with those killed, the wounds were all almost severe and many of them had already died.” She selflessly cared for the wounded and sick, one of the few who went to the typhoid barracks. On January 5, 1878, she fell ill with a severe form of typhus, and on January 24, without regaining consciousness, she died.

Vrevskaya wanted to be buried in the Sergius Hermitage near St. Petersburg, where her mother, brother Ivan, rested, but fate decreed otherwise. She went to the grave, not mourned by either relatives or relatives. She was mourned by the wounded, whom she selflessly cared for. They dug a grave in the frozen ground and carried her coffin. They buried her in the dress of a sister of mercy, near the fence of the local church in Byala, and her bells announced the death of the Russian merciful sister, "who laid down her soul for her friends." She did not live one day before her 40th birthday.
Without such women, Russia would not be Russia; secret Russia would not be Holy Russia.
(Alexander Shitkov http://tver-history.ru/articles/18.html , Oleg Slepynin
http://odnarodyna.com.ua/content/ba...neugasimoy-very)

In modern Byala, one of the streets is now named Vrevskaya. In the reserve park of Byala, on a grave hill, on a small rectangular stone, the words are carved: “Sisters of Mercy Neelova and Baroness Vrevskaya. January 1878

About the life of Vrevskaya, her feat, or, as they used to say, asceticism, her love and death, the story of the Bulgarian writer G. Karastoyanov "Loyalty for Loyalty" was written (having read it for the first time at school, I was forever captivated by the image of Yulia Vrevskaya).
“A particularly important role in her life was played by her friendship with the Bulgarian Stefan Grozev... Not seeing Bulgaria, she selflessly fell in love with her,” writes Karostoyanov. Yulia Petrovna Vrevskaya dedicated their poems to Y. Polonsky - “Under the Red Cross”, V. Hugo - “The Russian Rose that Died on Bulgarian Land”, I. Turgenev “In Memory of Yulia Vrevskaya”, in 1977 the Russian-Bulgarian film “Julia Vrevskaya" with Lyudmila Savelyeva in the title role.

... What are titles and ranks
Compared to a big soul? ..
You wanted freedom for your brothers
You wanted the Bulgarians to be happy...
You died away from Russian rivers,
To become a proud legend through the years.
And outside the window circled the last snow,
To drink the spring of freedom...
(Bulgarian poet Ilia Ganchev - "Julia Vrevskaya")

Monument to Yulia Vrevskaya from the Bulgarian town of Byala.

"On the mud, on the stinking damp straw, under the canopy of a dilapidated barn, on hastily turned into a camping military hospital, in a devastated Bulgarian village - she was dying of typhus for more than two weeks.
She was unconscious - and not a single doctor even looked at her; the sick soldiers she cared for, while still able to stand, rose in turn from their infected lairs to bring to her parched lips a few drops of water in a shard of a broken pot.
She was young, beautiful; the highest society knew her; even dignitaries inquired about it. The ladies envied her, the men trailed after her... two or three people secretly and deeply loved her. Life smiled at her; But there are smiles worse than tears.
A tender meek heart... and such strength, such a thirst for sacrifice! Help those in need of help ... she did not know another happiness ... did not know - and did not know. All other happiness passed by. But she reconciled with this long ago - and all, blazing with the fire of unquenchable faith, gave herself to the service of her neighbors.
What cherished treasures she buried there, in the depths of her soul, in her very hiding place, no one ever knew - and now, of course, they will not know.
Yes, and why? The sacrifice has been made... the deed is done.
May her dear shadow not be offended by this late flower, which I dare to lay on her grave! ... ". I. Turgenev "In memory of Yu. P. Vrevskaya"

Vrevskaya Yulia Petrovna(January 25, 1838 or 1841 Lubny, Poltava province - February 5, 1878, near the city of Byala, Bulgaria) - Baroness, nee Varpakhovskaya. Friend of I. S. Turgenev. During the Russian-Turkish war, nurse of the field hospital of the Russian Red Cross.

Biography

Born in the city of Lubny, Poltava province, in the family of a participant in the Battle of Borodino, commander of the Separate Reserve Cavalry Division, Lieutenant General Pyotr Evdokimovich Varpakhovsky (c. 1791 - 1868) and Karolina Ivanovna (née Blech) (c. 1805 - 1870). Yulia Petrovna studied first at the Odessa Institute for Noble Maidens, and then, after the family moved to Stavropol in 1848, at the Stavropol "Secondary Educational Institution of St. Alexandra for the Education of the Female". In 1857 she married I. A. Vrevsky. After the wedding, they moved from Stavropol to Vladikavkaz. However, they living together did not last long. At the end of August 1858, I. A. Vrevsky was seriously wounded in battle and died a few days later. Left a widow at the age of eighteen, Yu. P. Vrevskaya moved to St. Petersburg, where she was invited to the court and received a place as maid of honor Maria Alexandrovna. For ten years of court life (1860-1870), Vrevskaya visited with the Empress in France, Italy, Syria, the best resorts Europe, Africa, Palestine, Jerusalem.

The active nature of Yulia Petrovna demanded more than court duties and social life. Among her friends in Russia were writers D. V. Grigorovich, I. S. Turgenev, V. A. Sollogub, poet Ya. P. Polonsky, artists V. V. Vereshchagin and I. K. Aivazovsky. She travels a lot in Europe, the Caucasus, the Middle East; meets wonderful people (including Victor Hugo and Franz Liszt). Vrevskaya amazed everyone who knew her with her erudition. Since 1873, Yulia Petrovna has been friends and corresponded with I. S. Turgenev.

In 1877, with the beginning of the Russian-Turkish war, he decides to go to the Active Army. With the proceeds from the sale of the Oryol estate, he equips a sanitary detachment. Yulia Petrovna herself becomes an ordinary sister of mercy from June 19, 1877 in the 45th military temporary evacuation hospital in the city of Iasi (Romania), and from November 20, 1877 in the 48th military temporary evacuation hospital near the town of Byala in Bulgaria, does the hardest and dirty work. “The war near is terrible, how much grief, how many widows and orphans,” she writes to her homeland. In December, Vrevskaya works at a front-line dressing station in the village of Obretenik. Julia Vrevskaya wrote her last letter to her sister Natalya on January 12, 1878. On January 17, she fell ill with a severe form of typhus. She died on February 5, 1878. She was buried in the dress of a sister of mercy near Orthodox church in Byala.

tribute

Yulia Petrovna Vrevskaya dedicated their poems to Y. Polonsky - "Under the Red Cross", V. Hugo - "Russian rose that died on Bulgarian soil." I. Turgenev responded to her death with one of his most remarkable poems in prose - “In Memory of Yu. Vrevskaya”.

In the 1920s, the Russian Union (Community) of Sisters of Mercy named after Vrevskaya worked in Paris.

About the fate of Yu. P. Vrevskaya in 1977, a joint Soviet-Bulgarian film was filmed Feature Film Yulia Vrevskaya.

The Mishkovo estate, which belonged to Yu. P. Vrevskaya, near the village of Dubovik, Maloarkhangelsk district, Oryol province, has not been preserved.

Biography of Yu. P. Vrevskaya in the Encyclopedia of Great Women

Laureate in the nomination "Youth" in the essay-competition on the topic: "Merciful service" for the I International Forum "Mercy" on November 1, 2014. In total, there are 62 works in the nomination of schoolchildren of 9-11 grades of secondary general education schools and students from 1st to 4th year)

Sister of Mercy, Baroness Vrevskaya

In our country, on the vast land, there are very kind and sympathetic people who will always come to the rescue. The Russian people have big hearts, but there are hearts among them that are the largest. Such hearts beat among the sisters of mercy.
Not everyone consciously experienced the feeling of mercy, but absolutely everyone at least once selflessly helped a person, that is, they showed mercy, without even suspecting it. Mercy is one of the most important Christian virtues, performed through love for one's neighbor...

... After Russia declared war on Turkey on April 12, 1877, Yulia Petrovna Vrevskaya joined the detachments of volunteers who were not indifferent to the misfortune of the Slavic brothers.

Yulia Petrovna Vrevskaya was the daughter of the famous Major General Pyotr Evdokimovich Varikhovsky. Her family moved to the Caucasus from the Smolensk province. Even as a child, Julia was charged with an atmosphere of heroism, exploits, and the suffering of the distorted and wounded. These stories left an indelible mark in the heart of a kind and sympathetic girl, nurtured in her spiritual warmth, which she strove to give to people.

She obtained permission at her own expense to organize a sanitary detachment of 22 doctors and nurses.
On June 19, 1877, Yulia Petrovna arrived in the Romanian city of Iasi and began to work as a nurse of the Holy Trinity community. There were not enough medical personnel, 11 thousand wounded people came. The sisters of mercy distributed medicines, fed the seriously wounded, managed the kitchen, and supervised the change of linen.

But the baroness, a court lady accustomed to luxury, never complained about the hardships of war. Yulia Petrovna worked without holidays, she knew that hospitals could be closed due to the lack of nurses. She spoke sparingly of deprivation. But in detail, with pain and pride, she wrote to her relatives about Russian heroes: “It is a pity to see these unfortunate truly heroes who suffer such terrible hardships without grumbling, all this lives in dugouts, in the cold, with mice, on some breadcrumbs, yes, great Russian soldier!"

Then Yulia Petrovna ended up in Bela, in fact, on the front line, took part in the battle at the Swords, carried the wounded soldiers out of the battle under bullets and provided them with first aid. She was called to the court, her duty was considered fulfilled, her behavior was considered very extravagant.

But Yulia Petrovna was indignant at the speeches that courtiers she knew spoke to her. After all, she did not consider her actions heroic. She believed that mercy and help to other people is the duty of every person.
The conditions in which Vrevskaya lived then were terrible. The wounded and personnel were housed in damp wagons, in dugouts. The wounded began to fall ill with typhus. And the weak body of Yulia Petrovna could not stand it. She also contracted typhus. The wounded themselves looked after the kind and sympathetic sister. When Julia died - delirious and in a terrible state - they themselves dug a grave and buried her.

Yulia Petrovna Vrevskaya proved that there is no limit to mercy and selflessness.

Julia was a baroness, the smartest woman of that time. She was accustomed to the luxury of high society. She was young, beautiful, famous.

But in a difficult moment for the country, the baroness chose a different path. The path of mercy.

For Vrevskaya, helping those in need was true happiness. She knew no other happiness.

In September 1878, after Yulia's death, her close friend I. S. Turgenev wrote the epic work In Memory of Vrevskaya. He wrote: “A tender meek heart… and such strength, such a thirst for sacrifice! Help those in need of help ... She did not know another happiness ... did not know - and did not know. All other happiness passed by. But she reconciled with this long ago and all, blazing with the fire of inextinguishable faith, gave herself up to the service of her neighbors.

Yulia Petrovna Vrevskaya, by her actions, showed us, ordinary residents, that it is necessary to bring love, selflessness, faith, mercy and sacrifice to other people. And being a sister of mercy is not so easy. You work in difficult conditions and give every second a piece of your heart to those who need it.

I believe that everyone should do acts of mercy. Those are merciful! And don't even expect a simple "thank you". After all, this is the essence of mercy - the commission of a disinterested act in the name of good.

Christina Kubova,
Sosnovoborsk, Krasnoyarsk Territory,
16 years, secondary school No. 2, 10 "A" class.

Your brick in the construction of the House of Mercy. !
Remember the widow's mite and donate as much as you can. If you cannot donate today, take a breath, pray for a common cause. Donate when you can.
God bless you!

Julia Petrovna Vrevskaya (January 25, 1838 or 1841 Lubny, Poltava province - February 5, 1878, near the city of Byala, Bulgaria) - Baroness, nee Varpakhovskaya. Friend of I. S. Turgenev. During the Russian-Turkish war, nurse of the field hospital of the Russian Red Cross.

The Varpakhovsky sisters studied at the Odessa Institute of Noble Maidens.
In the same year, his father was appointed commander of the reserve divisions, and the Varpakhovskys had to move to Stavropol, where Yulia spent her youth. Here she met Baron I. A. Vrevsky, who was a man of great courage, three times awarded with golden weapons with diamonds and the inscription "For Courage". He chose, as they said about him, "the most honorable positions in danger" and, according to M. D. Skobelev, "one was worth four cavalry divisions." Young Julia became a baroness. The newlyweds settled in Vladikavkaz. But their married life was very short. On August 20, 1858, during the assault on the aul-fortress, Kituri was wounded by two bullets. He was carried out from under the fire. He died nine days later in the arms of his young wife in the town of Telavi.

Together with her mother and sister, Julia left for St. Petersburg. Alexander II did not disregard the widow of the illustrious general: she was appointed maid of honor to the court of Empress Maria Alexandrovna. But Yulia Vrevskaya was not satisfied with social life. She lived little in St. Petersburg, often traveled.

Since June, detachments of volunteers began to form throughout Russia to protect the “brothers”. Among those who are not indifferent to someone else's misfortune was Yulia Vrevskaya. With the proceeds from the sale of the Oryol estate, he equips a sanitary detachment of 22 people - sisters of mercy and doctors. At the same time, she herself entered the detachment not as a boss, but as an ordinary nurse, having completed a special training course.
Upon learning of her decision to go to the front, Turgenev writes from Paris: “My most sincere sympathy will accompany you on your difficult journey. I wish with all my heart that the feat you have undertaken does not turn out to be unbearable - and that your health does not suffer.

It is interesting that Turgenev, as it were, foresaw the legendary fate of Vrevskaya, predicted much of the life of Yulia Petrovna in the novel "On the Eve", and now, a quarter of a century later, the story of Elena Stakhova and Dmitry Insarov is repeated in living reality.

In June 1877, the sisters of mercy of the Holy Trinity community and nine “volunteers”, including Vrevskaya, were leaving for the war, her sacrificial service began. The sisters of the Holy Trinity community were sent to the Romanian city of Iasi, where they were to work in the 45th military temporary evacuation hospital - "the main focus of Red Cross assistance in the rear of the army."

“The country is wild here, and they don’t eat anything but corn,” she writes, “I live here in a Bulgarian hut, rather cold, and I walk in boots, have lunch and dinner with my sisters on a box ... I don’t have a chair in my room , no table. I am writing on a suitcase and lying on a stretcher ... "The main meaning of her letters is:" The war is terrible nearby, how much grief, how many widows and orphans ... "

The medical staff of the hospital worked almost around the clock. The sisters worked in operating rooms, bandaging the wounded, distributing medicines, supervising the change of linen, delivering food, feeding the sick and seriously wounded, taking turns escorting ambulance trains from freight wagons devoid of the slightest fixtures.
“Many wounded are dying,” Yulia Petrovna writes to her sister, “the officers of the abyss near Plevna were out of order ... You can imagine what we did, we barely had time to land on other trains - groans, suffering, insects ... just tore our souls. We were very tired and when we came home, like sheaves, they fell on the bed ... "
In short moments of rest, Vrevskaya wrote letters to her homeland: short stories about an unprecedented feat and great torment that befell the Russian soldiers. “How can you grumble when you see in front of you so many cripples, armless, legless, and all this without a piece of bread in the future.”

She was given the words of the empress: “I miss Yulia Petrovna. It's time for her to return to the capital. The feat is done. She is presented to the order. Her reaction: “How angry these words make me! They think that I have come here to perform feats. We are here to help, not to receive orders.”

After four months of exhausting work, she was entitled to a two-month vacation, but she did not go home, but decided to spend her vacation in Bulgaria, where there were not enough sisters in the front-line hospitals and hundreds of wounded were waiting for their turn for days to receive medical care. In addition, she wanted to be at the forefront. In November 1877, an ambulance van drove into the frontline village of Byala, with which Vrevskaya finally reached her new duty station.

The sisters at the frontline dressing stations were called "lucky ones." One of them was Yulia Petrovna. She took part in the battle at the Mechka. A fragile woman, under a hail of bullets, carried the wounded out of the battle and immediately assisted them. “There were only three sisters of us, the others did not ripen,” she writes to her sister, “there were 600 wounded that day at different points with those killed, the wounds were all almost severe and many of them had already died.” She selflessly cared for the wounded and sick, one of the few who went to the typhoid barracks. On January 5, 1878, she fell ill with a severe form of typhus, and on January 24, without regaining consciousness, she died.

Biography

Born in the city of Lubny, Poltava province, in the family of a participant in the Battle of Borodino, commander of the Separate Reserve Cavalry Division, Lieutenant General Pyotr Evdokimovich Varpakhovsky (c. 1791 - 1868) and Karolina Ivanovna (née Blech) (c. 1805 - 1870). Yulia Petrovna studied first at the Odessa Institute for Noble Maidens, and then, after the family moved to Stavropol in 1848, at the Stavropol "Secondary Educational Institution of St. Alexandra for the Education of the Female". In 1857 she married I. A. Vrevsky. After the wedding, they moved from Stavropol to Vladikavkaz. However, their life together did not last long. At the end of August 1858, I. A. Vrevsky was seriously wounded in battle and died a few days later. Left a widow at the age of eighteen, Yu. P. Vrevskaya moved to St. Petersburg, where she was invited to the court and received a place as maid of honor Maria Alexandrovna. For ten years of court life (1860-1870), Vrevskaya visited the Empress in France, Italy, Syria, the best resorts in Europe, Africa, Palestine, Jerusalem.

tribute

In the 1920s, the Russian Union (Community) of Sisters of Mercy named after Vrevskaya worked in Paris.

In 1977, a joint Soviet-Bulgarian feature film Yulia Vrevskaya was filmed about the fate of Yu. P. Vrevskaya.

The Mishkovo estate, which belonged to Yu. P. Vrevskaya, near the village of Dubovik, Maloarkhangelsk district, Oryol province, has not been preserved.

Biography of Yu. P. Vrevskaya in the Encyclopedia of Great Women