Alexandra Bulgakova

Saint Alexandra Bulgakova (1886 to 1938) was a believing peasant woman who died of hunger in the hospital of a prison in Moscow on 15 October 1938, because she refused to vote in the elections of the godless authorities. She is commemorated on 15 October, on 7 February with the synaxis of the new martyrs, and on 5 September with the saints of Moscow.

Alexandra Ioakimovna Bulgakova was born in 1886 in the village of Koblovatka, Kozlov district, Tambov province, into a peasant family. She was a religious person, often went to holy places and to the many priests she knew; for three years she lived in a convent. Wholly devoted to God, she tried to keep peaceful relations even with unbelievers. After the constitution was adopted in 1936 and all were invited to the elections, she went with the rest. On returning home her feet swelled and sores opened on them; Alexandra connected the illness with this step and concluded that it was not blessed to choose the authority of the godless, whether she went or not, for the election of representatives of a power with which she had and could have no sympathy, because it set itself the aim of destroying churches and wiping out everything holy in people's souls, and she could not change it.

The refusal

Other elections came, and in June 1938 an agitator, in whose care was the house in Bolshoy Cherkassky Lane where Alexandra lived, brought her a card with an invitation to come to the polling station. She did not even read it but tore it up at once before the agitator and her flatmate, not wishing to have anything in common with the godless. On the very day of the elections, 26 June 1938, the agitator told the members of the electoral commission that Bulgakova had refused to go to vote and had torn up the invitation. The commission decided to go to her home to invite her again, and if she was ill to take her by car. Entering the apartment, they knocked on her door. Without opening, Alexandra asked who they were and why they had come. The agitator answered that they had come to invite her to the elections. Then she opened the door and, coming out to them with an icon in her hands, began to read prayers, among others the prayer "Let God arise". When she finished, the commissioner of the polling station began to persuade her to go to vote, but she said firmly: "I will not go, I believe in God; when I went the first time, after voting my feet swelled and sores appeared: so the Lord punished me for betraying Him. I am not with you, I am with God, I am against you, and I will not go to vote, because there all the people are strangers." For three quarters of an hour the representatives of the authorities tried to persuade her, but she would not agree; when she grew tired of the persuasion, she said once more that she was not with them but against them. The commission members left with nothing, but the same day the commissioner reported all that had happened to the representatives of the district party committee, and a report was sent to the NKVD, which on 28 June ordered witnesses summoned and questioned, so that Alexandra might then be arrested.

The arrest

On 1 and 4 July the members of the electoral commission were questioned; they said that Alexandra Bulgakova passed for a nun, was very religious and carried out all the church rites. On 10 July her neighbour was questioned, who answered that Alexandra was a religious person, lived secluded and kept in touch with no one known to her. After that, on 13 July the arrest note was written, on the 26th permission was given, and on the 27th the warrant was written, valid until 30 July. But, it seems, after what had happened Alexandra had gone away, and the NKVD officers arrested her only on 2 September. After the arrest interrogations began at once, but Alexandra, having answered the questions of the questionnaire, refused to give any other testimony. For several days the investigators pressed her to answer, but could not succeed, and on 10 September they were forced to draw up a record that "the accused Bulgakova Alexandra Akimovna categorically refused to give testimony". The interrogations went on until 27 September, when they drew up a new record of refusal. Despite the pressure and the hard conditions of imprisonment, Alexandra stood firm, and on 28 September the investigator ordered her sent to the hospital. She died of hunger in the prison hospital on 15 October 1938.