Irina Smirnova

Holy Martyr Irina Smirnova was the warden, that is the starosta, of the church of Saint Nicholas in the village of Cherlenkovo, and was shot in 1938 at Butovo, together with her priest. The Church numbers her among the new martyrs of the twentieth century.

She was born on 16 April 1891 in the village of Rameshki, Volokolamsk district, Moscow province, in the family of the peasants Alexei and Matrona Petrov. In 1912 she married Nikolai Alexeyevich Smirnov in the village of Sutoki. Her husband was sentenced to several years of hard labour, and she was left with two children in her father-⁠in-⁠law's house, and later built a household of her own. From 1931 to 1936 she was in the collective farm, which she left because of illness. Her family, like many others, was stripped of its property by Soviet power, and her father was sent into exile.

As starosta of the church of Cherlenkovo, Irina Smirnova was in close contact with the priest Victor Ivanovich Morigerovsky. In the certificate for her arrest, an NKVD worker wrote that both gathered the faithful around them and organized collections of help for the church and the clergy. Words were attributed to her about the authorities' struggle against the faith, said in November 1937 and January 1938, when two priests had been arrested.

At the investigation she said that she kept service ties with the priest, therefore religious ones, that she had not organized collections and that she had not carried on agitation against the authorities. She refused to admit guilt. On 27 February the NKVD troika sentenced Father Victor and Irina Smirnova to death. The priest Victor Morigerovsky and the starosta Irina Smirnova were shot on 7 March 1938 and buried in an unmarked common grave at the Butovo firing range near Moscow.

She is commemorated on 7 March (a movable day), on 29 May (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo, and on 5 September (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow, in new style.