Evdokia Kuzminova

Holy Venerable Martyr Evdokia Kuzminova, a novice, was born on 17 August 1884 in the town of Voskresensk in the Zvenigorod district of the Moscow province, in the family of the townsman Peter Kuzminov, and received martyrdom by shooting on 5 February 1938, at the Butovo firing range near Moscow. The Russian Church honours her among the New Martyrs and Confessors of the twentieth century.

After the opening, in 1909, in Moscow, of the Martha and Mary Convent, headed by Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna, Evdokia entered the convent and had the obedience of a sister of mercy. When the convent was closed, she returned to her native place. Because she had stayed at the Martha and Mary Convent, the authorities deprived her of civil rights; in 1934 she asked for their restoration, but was refused.

During the persecution at the end of the thirties, neighbours on the street where Evdokia lived signed, at the request of NKVD agents, false testimonies against her, which said, among other things, that she had said that prisoners in the camps are made to work day and night, to stand in water to the waist, receive only two hundred grams of bread, die by the hundreds from hunger and cold, and that people are arrested more than ever.

On the basis of such testimonies and of the fact that, in the NKVD's opinion, she was a fierce churchwoman, it was decided to arrest her. On 19 January 1938 she was arrested and put in Butyrka prison. The interrogations began the same day. The investigator told her that she was a fierce churchwoman and had conducted counter-⁠revolutionary activity among the inhabitants of Istra. She answered that she was indeed a fierce churchwoman, but had not engaged in counter-⁠revolutionary activity. The interrogations lasted two days and were accompanied by threats, but to all the investigators' efforts to make her admit guilt she answered always: I do not admit it.

On 26 January 1938 the NKVD troika sentenced her to death. The novice Evdokia Kuzminova was shot on 5 February 1938 and buried in an unknown common grave at the Butovo range.

She is commemorated on 5 February, on 29 May in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo, and on 5 September in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow.