Anna Korneeva

Holy Venerable Martyr Anna Korneeva, a novice, was born in 1880 in the village of Shcherbinino, in the Kolomna district of the Moscow province, in a peasant's family. She was shot on 26 February 1938 at Butovo, near Moscow, together with other members of the church council and with Protopriest John Pokrovsky. She was numbered among the holy New Martyrs of Russia by a decision of the Holy Synod of 26 December 2001, for veneration throughout the whole Church.

She received a basic education. In 1895 she entered a monastery of the Kostroma diocese as a novice; after the Reshma Makaryev Monastery was turned into a convent, in August 1901, she moved there and laboured until 1902, when she returned to her native village. She was a member of the church council of the church of the Protection in the village of Chirkino, in the Malino district. On 12 February 1938 she was arrested and at once interrogated. She admitted a close tie with the priest Pokrovsky, who often visited her home. She denied having agitated against the authorities. Of the words of 1937, that she told the collective farmers that the communists had driven the peasants into collective farms and wanted to set up serfdom, or that war would come and Hitler, she answered that she had not spoken so, but only that earlier peasants lived better and that now the Soviet authorities persecute honest people. She always told the collective farmers that every authority is from God. She refused to admit guilt of agitation.

On 21 February the NKVD troika of the Moscow region sentenced her to death for "counter-⁠revolutionary activity, spreading anti-⁠Soviet slanders against the government, provocative rumours of war and praise of the fascist dictatorship". On 26 February 1938 the church council members Anna Korneeva and Domna Kotova, the warden Natalia Figurina and Protopriest John Pokrovsky were shot and buried in an unknown common grave at the Butovo firing range. She is commemorated on 26 February, in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo and the Synaxis of the Moscow Saints.