Evdokia Arkhipova

Holy Venerable Martyr Evdokia Arkhipova, a novice, was born in 1886 in the village of Goretovo in the Lukhovitsy district of the Ryazan province, in the family of the peasant Sergei Arkhipov. She received martyrdom by shooting on 14 March 1938, at the Butovo firing range near Moscow, together with the venerable martyr Olga Zhiltsova and the martyr Basil Arkhipov. The Russian Church honours her among the New Martyrs and Confessors of the twentieth century.

The monastery and the church of Goretovo

In 1902 she entered the old Kazan Monastery in Ryazan as a novice, where there were then more than three hundred and fifty sisters. In 1909 she was clothed in the ryassophore. In 1919 the monastery was closed by atheists, and Evdokia returned home to Goretovo, where she lived with her parents and nephews. In 1935 she was elected church warden. At that time the chairman of the village council told the believers that they must repair the church or it would be closed.

In 1936 a meeting of the members of the church council was held in the warden's house, at which it was decided to raise money for the repair, and Evdokia told everyone who came to church to buy candles or take prosphora that money must be raised. People gave what they could, told others, and so, little by little, the sum of four thousand rubles was collected, and the church was repaired.

Olga Zhiltsova was born in 1887 in the same village, in the family of the peasant Egor Zhiltsov, and at eighteen entered the same Ryazan monastery as a novice. After the monastery was closed she returned home and lived alone with her mother. When the threat of the church's closing arose, she went to some believers to urge them not to forget the house of God and to help as they could with the repair.

Basil Arkhipov was born on 26 July 1876 in the same village, in the family of the peasant Maxim Arkhipov. He finished the parish school, served in the army as a private in 1916-1917, then farmed and, at collectivization, joined the collective farm. He sang in the choir for several years, and in 1937 began to perform the duties of psalm-⁠reader.

Arrest

In the autumn of 1937 an NKVD agent came to the secretary of the local Komsomol organization and summoned the warden Evdokia Arkhipova, asking her for a list of who the priest of the church was, who the psalm-⁠reader and who the members of the church council. He took the list and left. Soon after, a denunciation was sent to the head of the Lukhovitsy NKVD section that at Goretovo, at Evdokia Arkhipova's, a conspiratorial meeting of ministers of the cult had taken place, from nine in the morning to four in the afternoon, with the room locked from inside and the windows curtained.

On 15 February 1938 NKVD agents asked a neighbour of Evdokia to knock at her door, and she opened the door to her neighbour and was arrested. On 26 February Olga Zhiltsova and Basil Arkhipov were arrested and put in prison at Kolomna.

Investigation and martyrdom

The investigator asked the warden why she spoke ill of the collective farm and urged people to give money for the church, not for the state loan. She answered that she had not spoken ill of the collective farm and had not spoken against the loan, but had only collected money for repairing the church. Called to the interrogation, Olga said she did not admit guilt of anything.

Basil was told that, as psalm-⁠reader, he had agitated and had said that Soviet power was given us as a punishment, and he answered that he had not agitated. A false witness, the secretary of the district Komsomol committee, said that on 22 November at the nun Arkhipova's lodging an illegal meeting of the priests and nuns of Goretovo had taken place. The same day, 26 February 1938, the investigation ended, and on 8 March the NKVD troika sentenced the novices Evdokia Arkhipova and Olga Zhiltsova and the psalm-⁠reader Basil Arkhipov to death.

After the sentence they were taken to the Taganka prison in Moscow, where on 13 March the prison photographer photographed them, so that among the many people condemned to death it could be checked that the right ones were led to execution. They were shot on 14 March 1938 and buried in an unknown common grave at the Butovo range.

She is commemorated on 14 March, on 29 May in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo, on 23 June in the Synaxis of the Saints of Ryazan, and on 5 September in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow.