Anna Gorokhova

Holy Venerable Martyr Anna Gorokhova, a novice, was born in 1896 in the village of Chanki, in the family of the peasant John Gorokhov. She was shot on 20 March 1938 at Butovo, near Moscow, together with Venerable Martyr Xenia Petrukhina. The Russian Church honours them among the New Martyrs of Moscow. They are commemorated on 20 March, in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo and the Synaxis of the Moscow Saints.

Both laboured in the Dormition Brusensky Monastery in the city of Kolomna, Moscow province. Xenia was born in 1897 in the village of Chanki, in the family of the peasant Semyon Petrukhin, and in 1913 entered the Dormition Monastery in Kolomna as a novice. In 1919, when monasteries were beginning to be closed by the godless authorities, she returned to her native village and helped at the church of the Presentation; at first she lived in the church hut, then with acquaintances, earning her food sewing quilts. Anna was born in 1896 in the same village, in the family of the peasant John Gorokhov; in 1914 she entered the Dormition Brusensky Monastery as a novice, then, like Xenia, returned in 1919 to her native village and helped with the household of her aged father.

In the time of persecution of monastics in the early thirties, both were arrested on 22 May 1931 and imprisoned at Kolomna. At the interrogations they admitted that they went with other believers to the church of the Presentation, that they talked among themselves around the church of supplies, harvests and of the fact that the Lord, for sins, gives neither harvests, nor food, nor goods, and that all this comes from unbelief and mockery of the Holy Church. On 10 June 1931 the OGPU troika sentenced the novices to three years of exile in Kazakhstan and they were sent by stages to Karaganda. In 1934, at the end of their exile, they returned to their village: Xenia worked as a nurse at the dispensary by the Golutvino station, and Anna entered the collective farm. But they did not give up quilt-⁠sewing and went to church as before, and soon a new wave of persecution of the Russian Church reached them. The novices Xenia and Anna were arrested on 5 March 1938 and imprisoned at Kolomna.

The duty witnesses said that although the novices after their return from exile visited no one and had even taken Soviet work, they still kept contact with the local priest and that many people came to them, not only from that village but from other villages, and that at home they carried on anti-⁠Soviet propaganda. A few days after the arrest the investigator questioned them. Asking what they had done and why they had been arrested before, he read out the duty witnesses' testimony; Xenia and Anna rejected it categorically, saying that they had carried on neither anti-⁠Soviet activity nor agitation against the government among the people. On 10 March the investigation was closed. On 12 March 1938 the NKVD troika sentenced them to death and they were taken from Kolomna to Taganka in Moscow, where on 17 March the prison photographer photographed them for the executioners. The novices Xenia Petrukhina and Anna Gorokhova were shot on 20 March 1938 and buried in an unknown common grave at the Butovo firing range.