Matrona Makandina

Holy Venerable Martyr Matrona Makandina, a novice, was born in 1889 in the village of Konstantinovo in the Aleksandrov district of Vladimir province, into a peasant family. In the world she was named Matrona Alekseevna Makandina.

In 1910 she entered the Alekseevsky Convent in Moscow as a novice. After the convent was closed by the godless authorities, she lived in an apartment with other sisters of the suppressed convents, keeping the monastic rule. On 28 December 1930 she was arrested and held in the Butyrka prison. At her interrogation she said that she had at first been indifferent to the new government and then came to oppose it, because it closed monasteries and did not let people serve God, and the old government had seemed better to her. On 8 February 1931 she was sentenced to three years of exile in the Arkhangelsk region and served it in the town of Pinega. When it ended in 1934 she returned to the village of Konstantinovo.

On 26 February 1938 she was arrested again, on a charge of systematic counter-⁠revolutionary agitation and active propaganda. She did not admit guilt. On 8 March 1938 the NKVD troika of the Moscow region sentenced her to death for spreading rumours that Soviet power would soon fall.

She received her martyr's end on 14 March 1938 at the Butovo range near Moscow, together with her sister, the nun Anna. The Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church decided on 21 August 2007 to number her among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia. She is commemorated on 14 March, in the new style, and a service for the venerable martyrs Anna and Matrona Makandina of the Alekseevsky Convent was approved by the Holy Synod on 26 December 2019.