Matrona Navolokina

Holy Martyr Matrona Navolokina is one of eleven Christian women who were shot in the Karlag camp on 11 January 1942 for confessing their faith and refusing to work for a power they held to be the power of the antichrist. The company consists of Natalia Sundukova, Natalia Siluyanova, Evdokia Nazina, Anna Borovskaya, Matrona Navolokina, Varvara Derevyagina, Anna Popova, Evdokia Guseva, Euphrosyne Denisova, Agrippina Kiseleva and Natalia Vasilyeva.

The Azbyka page says nothing in particular about Matrona Navolokina, only what concerns the group. Natalia Sundukova, born in 1887 into a priest's family, had been exiled in the 1930s to Stalinabad in Tajikistan, where she was arrested again and sentenced to five years of imprisonment, charged with leading a cell of the True Orthodox Church there. The camp report on her records that she did not work a single day, saying that she would not labour for the antichrists. Ten other women were arrested with her in Karlag, among them Natalia Siluyanova, also a priest's daughter; the other nine came from peasant families.

All eleven were charged with sabotage and with propaganda against the authorities, carried on by means of religion. At their interrogation they did not plead guilty, but said as one that they were believing Christians and did not go out to work because they held Soviet power to be that of the antichrist. They were shot on 11 January 1942, and the place of their burial is not known.

The holy women are commemorated on 11 January, the day of their confession, in the new style, with the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, kept on a movable day, and with the Synaxis of the Saints of Ryazan on 23 June.