Apollinaria Tupitsyna

Holy Martyr Apollinaria Tupitsyna (Apollinaria Petrovna Tupitsyna) was born on 24 December 1878 in the village of Shelyubinskaya, in the Velsk district of the Vologda province, in a peasant family. She was shot on 13 October 1937 at Butovo, near Moscow. The Russian Church honours her among the New Martyrs of Moscow. She is commemorated on 13 October, in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo, the Synaxis of the Moscow Saints and the Synaxis of the Saints of the Arkhangelsk Metropolis, on 1 November.

She received her schooling at the progymnasium in Velsk. Before the revolution she worked as a nurse, and after the revolution began to wander, in Moscow doing now laundry, now work as a nanny. All her free time she gave to the church. A false witness said later that he knew her "as a counter-⁠revolutionary person": that since 1936, at the church of the Sign at Krestovskaya Gate, she had gathered around her a counter-⁠revolutionary group and carried on active anti-⁠Soviet propaganda; that when people came to her for healing she always began anti-⁠Soviet propaganda and said she would not pray until the person who had come renounced the power of Satan; that she told the collective farmers who came to her that they fall ill because in the collective farm they have to do with Satan; and that to the wife of a militiaman, who had come for her husband's leg illness, she had said she would pray only if her husband left the militia.

Apollinaria Petrovna was arrested on 17 September 1937 and imprisoned at Butyrka in Moscow. Learning her way of life, the investigator was fully satisfied with the false witnesses' testimony and did not seek to learn whether she admitted carrying on anti-⁠Soviet activity. On 8 October the NKVD troika sentenced her to death. Apollinaria Petrovna Tupitsyna was shot on 13 October 1937 at the Butovo firing range and buried in an unknown common grave.