Alexandra Samoylova

Holy Venerable Martyr Alexandra Samoylova, a nun, was born on 22 April 1882 in the village of Gridnevo in the Gzhatsk district of the Smolensk province, in the family of pious peasants Nikita and Evdokia Samoilov. She was shot on 22 March 1938 at Butovo, near Moscow.

Nikita Samoilov's brother and sister had become monastics. Alexandra finished the village school and at fifteen entered the Spaso-⁠Borodino Monastery in the Moscow province. In 1919 the monastery was turned into a commune and lived on in that form until 1931, when the authorities destroyed even the monasteries that survived as artels and communes. The nun Alexandra returned to her native village. Her father was dead, and she lived with her mother, Evdokia Ivanovna, modestly, working the land, keeping the monastic rule and singing in the choir of the village church.

In 1937 the authorities decided to arrest and destroy all clergy and monastics. Alexandra was arrested on 27 January 1938 and imprisoned at Mozhaisk. An assistant secretary of the local party cell gave false testimony, presenting her words in a distorted and exaggerated way: she was said to have told the village women not to vote for the antichrists in the elections to the Supreme Soviet, because their kingdom is not on earth. It was also said that on election day, 12 December, she did not go to vote, told the members of the election commission that she was ill and would rather lie in her grave than vote, and lay down on her bed in a white dress with her arms crossed.

Questioned by the investigator, she said that she read religious books only by herself and that she had not gone to vote because of her religious convictions. She did not admit guilt of any counter-⁠revolutionary conviction. On 15 March 1938 the NKVD troika sentenced her to death. She was shot on 22 March 1938 and buried in an unknown common grave at the Butovo firing range. She is commemorated on 22 March and in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo.