Eva Pavlova

Holy Venerable Martyr Eva Pavlova, an abbess, in the world Akilina Vasilievna Pavlova, was born on 10 July 1879 in the village of Issa in the Insar district, in a peasant family. She received martyrdom by shooting on 27 August 1937, at Lisya Balka in Chimkent, in the South Kazakhstan region. She was numbered among the saints in the year 2000.

It is known that she was abbess of one of the Penza monasteries. In 1929 the mother was arrested in the village of Balki in the Saratov region. In the investigation file there are contradictions in the filling out of questionnaires: in one place it was said that she was sentenced to three years of exile in Kazakhstan, in another, eight years. The details of her detention are unknown, but one questionnaire said that her term of exile ended in 1932.

She was arrested a second time on 23 June 1937. On 23 August 1937, in case no. 723, on the charges against Metropolitan Cyril Smirnov, Metropolitan Joseph Petrovykh, Archbishop Alexis Orlov and others, an indictment was drawn up, which said, among other things, that Pavlova Eva was the head of a secret convent in Chimkent, was under the guidance of Joseph Petrovykh and Kobranov, sent to Petrovykh women recruited by her for tonsure, systematically conducted counter-⁠revolutionary agitation and expressed defeatist moods, awaiting the restoration of the monarchist and bourgeois order.

At the investigation the mother declared: I have not engaged in counter-⁠revolution and have not done such work. The troika of the NKVD of the South Kazakhstan region sentenced Abbess Eva Pavlova to the highest penalty, and on 27 August 1937 she was shot at Lisya Balka in Chimkent.

She is commemorated on 27 August, on 12 June in the Synaxis of the Saints of the Penza Metropolis, and on 7 February in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church (new style).