Agrippina Lesina

Saint Agrippina Lesina (1897 to 1938) was a novice of the Exaltation of the Cross monastery in Belev and was shot on 8 January 1938. She is commemorated on 8 January, on 7 February with the synaxis of the new martyrs and confessors of the Russian Church, and on 5 October with the saints of Tula.

Agrippina Ivanovna Lesina was born on 6 July 1897 in the village of Belyaevo, in the Belev district of the Tula region. It is known that in 1913 she became a novice at the Exaltation of the Cross monastery in the town of Belev, Kaluga province. After the monastery was closed, in the time of Soviet rule, the nun worked as a seamstress in the cooperative "Red Producer", without giving up her labour of prayer.

On 16 December 1937 Agrippina Lesina was arrested by the Belev section of the NKVD. She was accused of "belonging to an underground monastery" and of "counter-⁠revolutionary activity". The investigator, threatening her, demanded a confession, and she answered firmly: "I have not been engaged in any anti-⁠Soviet activity."

On 30 December 1937 the troika attached to the NKVD administration of the Tula region sentenced her to death. On 8 January 1938, the day of the Synaxis of the Most Holy Mother of God, the martyr Agrippina was shot together with other martyrs. She was buried in a common grave at the 162nd kilometre of the Simferopol highway.