Barbara Chernysheva

Holy Martyr Barbara Chernysheva was born in 1888, the youngest daughter of Archpriest Nicholas Chernyshev of Votkinsk, in present-⁠day Udmurtia. Nicholas Chernyshev, born in 1853 in the family of a priest of the Annunciation Cathedral of the Votkinsk Works, finished the seminary in Vyatka in 1875 and from the first day of his independent life was engaged in teaching. For his labour in the people's schools he received the Order of Saint Anne, third class, and for his work in the Red Cross in the Russo-⁠Japanese War, a silver medal. With the blessing of Saint John of Kronstadt he founded the Votkinsk Temperance Society and presided over it, was a beloved preacher and a connoisseur of art, an honorary member of the Tchaikovsky society of music and drama. From 1914 he was dean of the Votkinsk and Galevo districts.

Widowed early, he lived with his youngest daughter, Barbara, who had finished the gymnasium and the higher courses for women in Kazan and worked as a teacher. She remained unmarried so as not to be parted from her father. In August 1918 the people of Votkinsk, especially the workers and employees of the works, rose against Soviet power. Archpriest Nicholas, despite the danger, did not leave his parish, prepared the dying for death and strengthened his flock, while Barbara served as a nurse.

After the suppression of the uprising the city was occupied by the Red Army. After a time an anti-⁠religious debate was held in the cathedral, at which Archpriest Nicholas defended the faith. The next day the priest was arrested. People remembered that Barbara then threw herself on her father and held him so tightly that no one could pull her away, neither the Red soldiers nor the priest himself. So they were led away together. In prison they stayed until 2 January 1919. A relative of the Chernyshevs' housekeeper who visited him found Father Nicholas calm, prayerful and "faithful to Jesus Christ", and according to other recollections he asked for his priestly vestment to be brought so as to serve and to hear the confessions of the arrested.

Archpriest Nicholas and his daughter Barbara were shot on 2 January 1919, on the bank of a pond. When asked to take off his cross, the priest answered: "When I die, then take it off." Barbara, who had not let go of her father, received the martyr's death with him. In April 1919, after Kolchak's army liberated Votkinsk, the townspeople found the bodies and held a public farewell in the cathedral. They were buried by the walls of the Transfiguration church, and the place of the grave is venerated by the people. Cases of wonderful help through prayers to Archpriest Nicholas are known, especially in the passion of drink. Descendants of the Votkinsk people abroad also pray to the family; in the church of Saint John the Baptist in Berkeley there is their image with an unquenchable lamp.

On 7 March 2018 the priest Nicholas Chernyshev and his daughter Barbara were glorified throughout the Church. The Holy Synod fixed their commemoration on 2 January. Saint Barbara is commemorated on 2 January, on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, and on 11 July (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Udmurtia, all in the new style.