Militsa Kuvshinova

Holy Martyr Militsa Kuvshinova was born on 23 November 1891 in the village of Ulinovka, Kobelyaki district of Poltava province, to the railway official Ivan Kuvshinov. She studied at the gymnasium. At the beginning of the thirties she settled in the town of Istra, in the Moscow region. She lived alone and was close only to the nuns of the closed convents, many of whom had settled in the town at that time. She was a deeply churchly person, and so the NKVD men, gathering data for an arrest, described her as a former nun and a fervent churchwoman, but at the inquiry Militsa Ivanovna said that she had never been tonsured.

On 15 January 1938 a false witness said that she had said, "This is not Soviet power but monsters: they have closed all the churches, complete persecution of believers, they arrest all believers for nothing. There is Stalin's constitution for you." On 22 January 1938 she was arrested, held at Butyrka and questioned the same day. The investigator told her she was arrested for counter-⁠revolutionary agitation, and she answered that she had never done such a thing. The interrogation lasted all day and all night, only the investigators changing. She was also told that in October 1937 she had expressed terrorist sentiments toward the Party and the leaders of the Soviet government, and the false witness's testimony was read to her. She answered that she had held no such conversation, that she had carried on no counter-⁠revolutionary activity and that she was telling the truth.

On 23 January 1938 the inquiry was ended, and on 26 January the NKVD troika sentenced her to death. A day before the execution an NKVD worker photographed her, so that the executioners should not make a mistake. Militsa Kuvshinova was shot on 5 February 1938 and buried in the unknown common grave at the Butovo range near Moscow. She is commemorated on 5 February, the day of her death, in the new style, with the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo (a movable day) and with the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow, on 5 September (a movable day).