Barbara Derevyagina

Holy Martyr Barbara Derevyagina, by her full name Barbara Dmitrievna Derevyagina, was born in 1912 in the village of Burminka in the Ryazhsk district of Ryazan province, in the family of the peasant D. I. Nazin. She studied at the parish school. In 1926 she was given in marriage, but her husband was not a believer, so she returned to her parents' house and gave her life to prayer and the service of God. After the church in Burminka was closed in 1937, the faithful gathered in homes for common prayer and went on pilgrimage to the open churches of Skopin and Ryazan and to revered springs.

On 7 June 1940 all of them, among them Barbara and her father, were arrested and held in Ryazhsk. Barbara refused to answer questions and to sign the record at the end of the investigation. The trial of the believing peasants of Burminka took place in Ryazhsk from 23 to 25 October 1940. Before the court she said that she did not admit guilt, that she had never been in the collective farm, that she was a believer, would believe in God and would pray. The judicial college of Ryazan region sentenced her to eight years in a camp, and her father to death, a sentence later changed to ten years in a camp.

On 11 July 1941 Barbara was arrested in the Karaganda camp, together with the martyrs Natalia Sundukova, Natalia Siluyanova, Evdokia Nazina, Anna Borovskaya, Matrona Navolokina, Anna Popova, Evdokia Guseva, Euphrosyne Denisova, Agrippina Kiseleva and Natalia Vasilieva, for failing to go out to work. All refused to give testimony, to sign the records and to admit guilt, and by the sentence of the permanent session of the Karaganda regional court at Karlag of 29 September 1941 they were condemned to death. Saint Barbara was shot on 11 January 1942 and buried in an unknown common grave. She was glorified by the Jubilee Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church in the year 2000.

She is commemorated on 11 January, on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, and on 23 June in the Synaxis of the Saints of Ryazan, all in the new style.