Alexandra Dyachkova

Holy Venerable Martyr Alexandra Dyachkova, a novice, was born in 1893 in the village of Chernogolovka in the Bogorodsk district of the Moscow province, in the family of the peasant Ivan Dyachkov. She received the crown of martyrdom by shooting on 14 March 1938 at Butovo, near Moscow. The Russian Church honours her among the New Martyrs of the twentieth century.

She finished the village school and lived with her parents, helping with the household. In 1914 she entered the Holy Trinity Alexander Nevsky Monastery in the Klin district, near the village of Akatovo, which is why it was often called the Akatovo Monastery. The community had been opened in 1890 and received the rule of a common-⁠life monastery in 1898; about seventy sisters lived there.

After the godless authorities came to power, the monastery was turned into an agricultural artel, still led by the abbess. In 1927 the artels kept by nuns were dissolved, the community at Akatovo was scattered, and the abbess was arrested. Alexandra went back to her own village, but her love for the monastery drew her again to live near its walls. From 1930, when repression of the nuns grew harsher, she returned once more to her parents' house. The village church had lost its priest, and she laboured to obtain one and helped him settle there.

On 21 May 1931 she was arrested with other monastics and imprisoned at Noginsk. Witnesses said that she spread rumours about the collective farm and organised religious feasts; she denied having agitated against the collective farms. On 29 May 1931 she was sentenced to five years in a labour camp and sent to build the White Sea-⁠Baltic Canal. She was released in 1934. In the same year her mother died, and she moved to the Volokolamsk district, where she lived with acquaintances and worked by the day.

In October 1937 she took a post as watchwoman and cleaner at the church of the Nativity of the Mother of God in the village of Shestakovo, and lived in the church's hut, where the priest also lived. The priest was arrested and the services ceased. On 28 February 1938 Alexandra too was arrested and imprisoned at Volokolamsk. It was said that she had spoken in the village about the unjust arrest of the priest. She replied that she had not agitated against the authorities, but had only urged the people to go to church and pray to God.

On 4 March 1938 the NKVD troika sentenced her to death, and she was taken to the Taganka prison in Moscow. She was shot on 14 March 1938 and buried in an unknown common grave at the Butovo firing range. She is commemorated on 14 March, the day of her witness, and in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo.