Irina Khvostova

Holy Venerable Martyr Irina Khvostova was a nun of the Novodevichy convent in Moscow and was shot in 1938 at Butovo. The Church numbers her among the new martyrs of the twentieth century.

She was born in 1882 in the village of Agintovo, in the Sergiev district of Moscow province, in the family of the peasant Michael Khvostov. After the village school she entered the Novodevichy convent in Moscow, where she struggled also when the godless authority came, the persecution of the Church began and monastery buildings were seized. In 1932 she left the place of her ascetic labours and settled in her father's house in her native village.

On 23 January 1938, in the time of the fiercest persecutions, the NKVD questioned as witnesses of convenience some officials, who gave the testimony the investigation needed. On 27 January the nun Irina was arrested and imprisoned in Sergiev Posad. On 31 January the investigator asked her whether she admitted guilt of anti-⁠Soviet agitation and of disrupting the work of the collective farm. She answered that she did not admit guilt, but explained that in December 1937 she had indeed said that there was war on the territory of the USSR, that Japan was already fighting there and that therefore the communists had arrested good people and exiled them, and she had also said that God exists and that we must put our hope in Him.

On 19 February 1938 the NKVD troika sentenced her to death. She was shot on 26 February 1938 and buried in an unmarked common grave at the Butovo firing range near Moscow. She is commemorated on 26 February, on 29 May (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo, on 5 September (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow, and on 10 December in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Radonezh, in new style.