Antonina Novikova

Holy Venerable Martyr Antonina Novikova, a novice, was born in 1880 in the village of Gorki, in the Zaraysk district of the Ryazan province, in the family of Andrei Novikov, owner of a brick factory. She was shot on 20 March 1938 at Butovo, near Moscow, together with Venerable Martyr Nadezhda Kruglova. 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, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Ryazan, on 23 June, and in the Synaxis of the Moscow Saints.

The Yegoryevsk monastery

Antonina's parents had land and fourteen villas rented out. From the age of eight she lived with an aunt in a monastery in Ryazan, where she learned to read; she grew up a religious girl and then entered the Holy Trinity-⁠Mariinsky Monastery in the city of Yegoryevsk. The monastery had been founded in 1900 through the efforts and gifts of Nikifor Mikhailovich Bardygin, a baker's son, who through work, tenacity and diligent reading acquired knowledge in various fields and became the owner of factories in Yegoryevsk. Brought up in full piety, at the first stroke of the bell he was already in church, stood the whole liturgy, read the Apostle and sang in the choir. Around him lovers of old church singing gathered and a wonderful choir was formed. From 1872 to 1901 he was elected mayor and the city owed him almost all its improvements: water supply, paved streets, lighting, fire brigade, barracks, gymnasium, girls' school, public garden, a house of industry. With his means the church of Saint George the Great Martyr was built and, wholly at his expense, the Holy Trinity-⁠Mariinsky convent, which from the first day drew many girls desirous of salvation.

Saint Nadezhda was born in 1891 in the village of Denisovo, in the family of the peasant George Kruglov. From the age of nine her parents sent her to the parish school, where she studied three years, then she worked with her parents on the peasant farm. At twenty she entered the same monastery at Yegoryevsk as a novice. Both novices laboured in the monastery until its closure by the godless authorities, in 1918; then they settled in Yegoryevsk and, earning their living by handwork, helped at the church, keeping all the monastic rules, which witnesses reported at their arrest and which the OGPU counted as their chief guilt. They were arrested on 19 May 1931 and imprisoned at Yegoryevsk; in that case thirty nuns and novices were arrested, accused that, after the closing of the monastery in 1918, they stayed in the town, lived as monastics and kept the monastery rules, that some bought houses of their own in which they gathered, and that in 1930 they had agitated against the closing of the old cemetery. Those questioned did not admit guilt of anti-⁠Soviet agitation, only that they had continued to live as monastics. On 29 May 1931 the OGPU troika sentenced the novices to five years of exile in Kazakhstan.

Return and martyrdom

Returned in 1935 to Yegoryevsk, they settled in the same apartment; Nadezhda, the younger, took Antonina into her care and took a job as a cleaner at a school. They lived devoted to the service of God, keeping all the monastic rules, but after exile they held themselves with caution and avoided ties with unbelievers. In her work Nadezhda was conscientious in the Christian way; the director of the school wrote of her, at the NKVD's request, that she did her duties well and behaved quietly and warily. But in the authorities' eyes monasticism itself was a crime, and the secretary of the Yegoryevsk town council wrote in her character report that she had earlier been exiled for monasticism. On 1 March 1938 the novices were arrested again and imprisoned at Yegoryevsk. The investigator told Antonina that she was against the Soviet authorities and had slandered the authorities and the collective farms; she answered: "Against the Soviet authorities I have never said anything and I have slandered neither the authorities nor the collective farms." She did not admit guilt; Nadezhda answered likewise. The duty witnesses, the landlords and neighbours of the house where they lived, signed false testimony composed by the NKVD men. On 8 March the investigation ended, and on 11 March the NKVD troika sentenced them to death. After the decision they were taken to Taganka in Moscow. The novices of the Holy Trinity-⁠Mariinsky Monastery of Yegoryevsk, Antonina Novikova and Nadezhda Kruglova, were shot on 20 March 1938 and buried in an unknown common grave at the Butovo firing range.