Antonina Stepanova

Holy Venerable Martyr Antonina Stepanova, a nun, was born in 1886 in Moscow, in the family of the craftsman John Stepanov, and received at Baptism the name Anna. She was shot on 15 December 1937 at Butovo, near Moscow, together with the novice Maria Zhuravleva. With them is also commemorated Venerable Confessor Vera Grafova. The Russian Church honours them among the New Martyrs of Moscow. They are commemorated on 15 December, in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo and the Synaxis of the Moscow Saints.

The Brusensky Monastery

At eleven she entered the Dormition Brusensky Monastery in Kolomna and there received monastic tonsure with the name Antonina. She laboured in the monastery until its closing in 1920, when the buildings were turned into hostels, inhabited mostly by militant atheists, and the church was used as a vegetable store. The nuns settled in apartments around the town and gathered for prayer in the church of the Resurrection, but that too was closed in 1929. In two days, 21 and 22 May 1931, all the nuns and novices of the Brusensky Monastery, more than thirty, were arrested and imprisoned at Kolomna, among them the nun Antonina and the novice Vera Grafova. The clash with the cruel and evil atheists shook her, and at the interrogation she admitted that she had said to the faithful: "We are living through a hard time, a punishment from God for unbelief, as it is written in Holy Scripture", adding at once that she had said it out of ignorance, with no thought of harming the Soviet authorities. The novice Vera was born in 1878 in the village of Sobolevo, in the Bogorodsk district, in the family of the peasant Chariton Grafov, and in 1903 entered the Brusensky Monastery, where she performed various obediences until 1918, when it was clear that the atheists would destroy the monastery; she then lived with believing people, first in a village, then at Kolomna, earning her living sewing quilts. Interrogated, she said: "Against the Soviet authorities I have never had any hostile attitude."

Exile and martyrdom

On 24 May 1931 the investigation closed: the nun Antonina and the novice Vera were accused of having carried on anti-⁠Soviet agitation systematically and of having, through a link with Archimandrite Nikon Belyaev, exiled for counter-⁠revolutionary activity, written to him, collected things, food and money and sent them in parcels into exile. On 29 May 1931 the OGPU troika sentenced the nun Antonina and the novice Vera to five years of exile in Kazakhstan. The novice Vera Grafova died in exile, in 1932, and the nun Antonina, at the end of her term, returned from Akmolinsk and settled at Kolomna. She was arrested in the time of mass persecution, on 27 November 1937, and imprisoned at Kolomna, together with the novice Maria Zhuravleva. Maria was born in 1869 in the village of Gorodets, in the Kolomna district, in the family of the peasant Martinian Zhuravlev, entered the Brusensky Monastery in 1886 and laboured there until 1920; in 1932 she was removed from the town, as an alien element, but after a time returned secretly and settled in the same apartment as the nun Antonina. The duty witnesses, neighbours on the street, said that Maria still dressed as a nun and went to church and that she had spoken of the hard times, of the countless beggars in the streets, more than before. At the interrogations both denied the charges. On 1 December 1937 the NKVD troika sentenced them to death. The nun Antonina Stepanova and the novice Maria Zhuravleva were shot on 15 December 1937 and buried in an unknown common grave at the Butovo firing range.