Evdokia Andrianova

Holy Venerable Martyr Evdokia Andrianova, in the world Evdokia Prokhorovna Andrianova, was born on 1 March 1875 in the village of Gubino in the Bronnitsy district of the Moscow province, in the family of the peasants Prokhor and Nadezhda Fomin, who had three sons and two daughters, Evdokia and Akulina. She received martyrdom by shooting in 1942, in Kazakhstan. She was numbered among the saints at the Council of Bishops of the Russian Church in August 2000.

In the monastery and after its closing

In 1892, at seventeen, Evdokia entered the Exaltation of the Cross and Jerusalem Monastery together with her elder sister Akilina, then twenty-⁠two. They had the obedience of gardeners, then of psalm-⁠readers. After the revolution of 1917 the monastery began to be harassed and then was closed, and the buildings housed first homeless children, then a trade-⁠union rest home. Left without shelter, the sisters returned to their native village, Gubino.

Probably out of fear of persecution, they changed their surname to Andrianova. They settled in a small old house in Staraya Slobodka, which served them as a cell, and lived according to all they had learned in the monastery. Their piety drew the attention of the authorities.

In February 1930 the sisters were arrested, but their guilt could not be proved and after five weeks they were released. On 1 June 1931 they were arrested again. Villagers hostile to Orthodoxy were questioned, who said that the sisters gathered like-⁠minded people in their house, talked, sang prayers, agitated against the collective farms, saying that to join a collective farm was a sin, and urging the peasants to endure all torments.

According to the witnesses, because of their agitation, out of a hundred households in Staraya Slobodka only ten joined the collective farm. The sisters did not admit guilt; asked by the investigator for whom they prayed, they answered that in prayers they commemorated Patriarch Tikhon and Metropolitan Peter of Krutitsy. Evdokia said that they considered themselves Orthodox Christians, that they prayed at home only the two of them, that their brothers seldom visited them and nuns sometimes.

The investigation lasted three days. On 28 June 1931 the OGPU troika found them guilty of anti-⁠Soviet propaganda and of spreading counter-⁠revolutionary literature and sentenced them to three years of deprivation of liberty. They were sent to Kazakhstan with a large transport of prisoners. The sisters served their whole term and in 1934 were released.

After her release

After release they returned to Gubino, but their house in Staraya Slobodka had been destroyed, and relatives sheltered them. Akilina settled in the house of the Karasev family, where there were four children, orphans of their father since 1931 and of their mother since 1934, left in her care. Evdokia lived with relatives and worked as a cleaner at the Gubino school. She often visited her sister and the orphans.

The nuns read the Gospel and lives of saints to the children and prayed with them. In 1937 Evdokia had to leave work because of her health. A denunciation said that backward collective farmers came to her, with whom she did sectarian work, that she visited an orphan girl, urged her to pray and hung a little cross on her neck. On 27 October 1937 Evdokia was arrested again.

NKVD agents also meant to arrest Akilina; they came several times to the Karasev house, but the orphans hid their grandmother and always answered: She is not at home and we do not know where she is. Akilina was not arrested; she died in the mid-1950s and was buried in the cemetery of the neighbouring village of Ashitkovo.

Sentence and camp

On 21 November 1937 the NKVD troika of the Moscow region sentenced her to eight years of deprivation of liberty for conducting among the local collective farmers a counter-⁠revolutionary sectarian activity. She arrived at Karlag with the Moscow transport on 20 December 1937 and was in the Akmolinsk section of the camp. In the file there is a character report: a good, conscientious worker, loves work, exceeds the norm, disciplined, disabled of group B. In 1942 she was arrested in the camp, accused of counter-⁠revolutionary activity and counter-⁠revolutionary religious agitation.

With her eleven believing women prisoners of peasant origin were arrested, who had earlier received sentences of from two to ten years: Natalia Karikh, Anna Vodolanova, Akilina Dubovskaya, Natalia Kopytina, Alexandra Smolyakova, Irina Gumenyuk, Ksenia Radun, Marfa Dudarenko, Domna Efimovna Vasilkova, Tatiana Kushnir and Iustina Melanich. They were tried in the group case The case of Evdokia (Andrianova) and eleven prisoners, Akmolinsk, 1942. The indictment said that, serving their sentence, they were hostile to Soviet power, conducted anti-⁠Soviet agitation under cover of religious convictions, and that from 3 July 1941, though fit for work and supplied with food, they did not go to work until the day of arrest. They did not admit guilt, except that they were religious and performed religious rites.

Martyrdom

On 20 April 1942 the judicial collegium for criminal cases of the Karaganda regional court sentenced Evdokia Andrianova and ten fellow ascetics to the highest penalty, except Iustina Melanich, who received ten years in the camp and died in detention. The sentence was carried out soon afterwards. Evdokia was rehabilitated by the law of the Republic of Kazakhstan of 14 April 1993.

She is commemorated on 19 September, in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Kazakhstan, on 5 September in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow, and on 7 February in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church (new style).