Irina Frolova

Holy Venerable Martyr Irina Frolova was a novice of the Spaso-⁠Borodino convent and died in 1931, in the prison hospital at Mozhaisk, as a confessor of the faith. She is numbered among the new martyrs of the Russian Church.

She was born in 1899 in the village of Levino, in the Medyn district of Kaluga province, in the family of the peasant Theodore Frolov. Until she was twenty-⁠five she lived with her parents and worked the land. In 1924 she entered the Spaso-⁠Borodino convent in the Mozhaisk district of Moscow province as a novice. After the convent was abolished, the novice Irina stayed on to work in the Borodino agricultural commune, which the sisters had formed on the territory of the closed convent.

At the end of the 1920s the authorities resolved to disband all the labour communes organized at monasteries. In 1928, when the convent's commune was being dissolved, the nuns gave the novice Irina the obedience not to leave the convent, but to live in it, as if to guard it. Being deeply attached to the Church, she accepted this obedience. All the sisters settled in nearby villages, finding places as readers or watchwomen at churches. Some nuns brought her food in secret, but since everyone lived in great need, this help was very small.

A witness later said at the investigation that when they tried to evict her from her lodging, she climbed to the attic with a single small icon and lived there. When she was evicted from the attic, she moved in winter into a completely cold shed, again with a single icon, and in spite of these hardships still lived at the convent until her arrest. She informed the nuns and the priest of the convent about the state of the convent and the commune, about disorders and events. To the members of the board and to others she answered nothing. In place of the former labour community the authorities organized a new one of local peasants, but Irina did not join it. Several times she was caught and driven out, but each time she returned. Seeing her unyielding, they left her in peace, and sometimes even gave her some work, for which she received food or money. When she had to sign for them, she refused, sincerely considering that since the state was persecuting the Orthodox faith and the Church, that is, was filled with an antichrist spirit, to put her signature on any of its documents meant taking part in its anti-⁠church activity.

On 19 May 1931 the authorities arrested the novice Irina, along with fourteen other nuns and the priest of the convent, accusing them of resisting the measures of Soviet power in the countryside. All were imprisoned in the Mozhaisk prison. On 24 May the investigator summoned her for interrogation and charged her with "anti-⁠Soviet activity and spreading rumours of war". She flatly refused to give any testimony or to sign the interrogation record. On 10 June 1931 the OGPU troika sentenced her to three years in a labour camp. In the Mozhaisk prison she fell ill with tuberculosis of the lungs and was placed in the prison hospital. On 30 September 1931 she died in the hospital and was buried in an unknown grave.

She is commemorated on 30 September, on 7 February (a movable day), in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, and on 5 September (a movable day), in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow, in new style.