Anna Lykoshina

Holy Martyr Anna Lykoshina (Anna Petrovna Lykoshina, 1884 to 1925) was born in Saint Petersburg and died in the Solovki camp on 11 October 1925. The Russian Church honours her among the New Martyrs and Confessors.

She married; her husband was the brother of a deputy minister of the interior. Anna Petrovna was a deeply believing person and a faithful parishioner of the church of Venerable Sergius of Radonezh on Sergievskaya Street. After the revolution and the law on the separation of Church and state, the authorities demanded that parishes form parish councils of laity, who were to answer for the safekeeping of the nationalised church property. A priest of the Sergievskaya church persuaded her to join, as a faithful parishioner, the parish council. Because of her health she could not take an active part in its work, but nevertheless, in February 1924, she was arrested with the other members of the council and the priests. At the interrogations she did not admit guilt of the charges brought.

On 26 September 1924 the Special Council of the OGPU Collegium sentenced her to two years in the Solovki concentration camp, and in October of the same year she was sent to the island of Solovki. The conditions there were so harsh that she did not live to the end of her term and died at Solovki on 11 October 1925. She is commemorated on 11 October, on 7 February, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Saint Petersburg, on 11 July, in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Solovki, on 23 August, and in the Synaxis of the Saints of the Arkhangelsk Metropolis, on 1 November.