Catherine of Petrograd

Saint New Martyr Catherine of Petrograd (Ekaterina Andreevna Arskaya) was born on 1 April 1875 in Saint Petersburg and shot on 17 December 1937 at Borovichi. She was glorified as a martyr by a decision of the Holy Synod of 7 May 2003, on the proposal of the Saint Petersburg diocese. She is commemorated on 17 December (4 December by the old calendar), on 7 February, in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, and on 11 July, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Saint Petersburg.

She was born into a large family, with nine more children: the daughters Elizabeth, Eugenia, Maria, Alexandra and Xenia and three sons, Andrei, Alexei and Pavel. Her father, Andrei Urtiev, a merchant by origin and honorary citizen of Saint Petersburg, was warden of the church of the Sorrowing. Her mother, Xenia Filippovna, kept the house. Catherine studied at the Alexander Institute, where, unlike the Smolny Institute for noble girls, the daughters of townspeople were educated. In 1899 she married an artillery officer of the Russian imperial army, Pyotr Arsky. Five children were born in the family: the daughters Galina, Iraida, Pavla, Natalia and the son John. The girls followed their mother and were raised at the Alexander Institute too, and John studied at the real school.

In 1912 her husband (already a reserve officer) took the post of warden of the Resurrection cathedral of Smolny. Soon the First World War began and Pyotr was mobilised. After a year, because of a wound, he was transferred to Petrograd. After the events of 1917 the family's way of life changed: the Arskys lost their fortune, two daughters, Galina and Natalia, died suddenly, and within the next two years the woman lost her whole family. After these events, it seems, Catherine began to associate with the members of the Alexander Nevsky Brotherhood, which included Gurias (Egorov), Barlaam (Satserdotsky), Leo (Egorov), Gabriel (Voevodin) and Barsanuphius (Verevkin). The Brotherhood was put under the surveillance of the GPU, but, contrary to the opinion of the Soviet government, the organization did not engage in political intrigues.

On 18 February 1932 Catherine Arskaya was arrested as an active participant in the Alexander Nevsky Brotherhood and accused of counter-⁠revolutionary activity against the Soviet power by systematic propaganda and the creation of a network of illegal cells. At the investigation she showed striking courage, naming no one. The sentence: three years in labour camps. After her release she was forbidden to return to Leningrad and was forced to settle in the Novgorod region, at Borovichi, where she worked. In 1937 Arskaya was arrested again, in the case of Archbishop Gabriel (Voevodin), and imprisoned in the Borovichi prison, which became her last refuge. On 17 December 1937 she was shot on the same day as Archbishop Gabriel and Princess Kira Obolenskaya. The burial place of Saint Catherine and of the new martyrs killed with her has not yet been found.

In 2008, in the church of the icon of the Mother of God Joy of All Who Sorrow in Saint Petersburg, an exhibition of Catherine Arskaya's works, Flowers of the New Martyr, was held. The drawings were discovered by chance in February of that year at Borovichi, where Catherine Arskaya spent the last years of her life.