Nadezhda Semenova

Holy Confessor Nadezhda Semenova (Nadezhda Vasilievna Semenova) was born on 8 September 1865 in the town of Voskresensk (now Istra), Zvenigorod district of Moscow province, to the townsfolk family of Vasily Alekseevich and Evdokia Ivanovna Semenov. She was baptized in infancy in the church of the Ascension at Voskresensk by the rector of the church, Archpriest Sergius Kholmogorov, a man of deep and sincere faith. She studied at the school beside the church and was then a parishioner, and from 1928 churchwarden of this church, built in 1805 with the parishioners' money and enlarged in 1912, when the number of parishioners had reached two thousand.

With the coming of Soviet power, its representatives began a struggle with the faithful of Voskresensk, aiming at the closing of the Ascension church. In 1922 they took from the church the sacred vessels, the silver parts of the Gospels, four crosses and other objects. On 10 May 1934 a commission appointed by the local authorities came to the church, which was to determine that the church was in an unsafe state and could no longer be used without capital repairs. After the inspection the commission demanded that within a month the dome be pulled down and a flat roof made, the ringing of the bells stopped, the bells removed and the upper tier of the belltower taken down. The members of the parish council contested the decision, appealing to various bodies up to the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee. The chief responsibility for the petition to the Presidium was taken by Militsa Kuvshinova, Evdokia Kuzminova and Nadezhda Semenova (Militsa and Evdokia were arrested and shot; they are now glorified among the holy martyrs). Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky), deputy locum tenens of the patriarchal throne, supported the petition of the faithful, writing on it the resolution: "I ask that what is possible be done to fulfil the legitimate wish of the community to keep its church." A correspondence full of deceit followed between the central and local authorities. The church was closed. In February 1935 the local newspaper wrote that in Istra there was a magnificent building, the former church, long intended for a club, and in August 1935 the conversion of the church into a club began; the cross was taken down, the bells thrown down and the belltower pulled down. The faithful went on seeking the return of the church.

After the closing of the church, Nadezhda Vasilievna began to go, like other townspeople, to the church of the Holy Trinity, two kilometres from Istra, where the priest John Orlov (the holy hieromartyr John Orlov) and the deacon Peter Troitsky (the holy hieromartyr Peter Troitsky), who had served earlier at the Ascension church, were serving. When she was ill, Father John came to her home to anoint and give her Communion, taking with him the deacon Peter. During the Mysteries they spoke quietly, so that her lodger, Pavel Shchapov, though he tried, could not hear what they said.

On 14 February 1937 the young Komsomol member Pavel Shchapov wrote a denunciation to the Istra office of the NKVD, saying that in the house where he lodged, the mistress of the house, Nadezhda Vasilievna Semenova, kept contact with priests and agitated for religion. A few people gathered at her house and read the Gospel; she tried to influence the other lodger, Polina Tvardovskaya, and his wife she wished to persuade by giving her icons, which he refused. On 17 February the head of the NKVD office ordered "Semenova to be taken into development", that is, to gather through secret collaborators data for her arrest. On 14 August 1937 Pavel Shchapov and his wife Claudia were interrogated, who said that Nadezhda Vasilievna spoke critically of the collective farms, that the Communists deceive the people by saying it lives well, when workers and collective farmers eat only black bread, that "the Communists treat the people cruelly, you cannot say anything, for at once you are jailed or shot". Neighbours said much the same, one adding that at the beginning of July 1937 Nadezhda Vasilievna had said, "We have all forgotten God, and God sends us no rain, everything will burn and we shall be hungry." Another, Anna Glushkova, testified that in December 1936 Semenova had told her, "You have hung up a portrait of Lenin and taken down the icons, what has Lenin given you? He is godless and all the Communists are godless, but wait, soon the end will come to them all."

On 21 August 1937 the head of the Istra NKVD office wrote the warrant of arrest, and the same day Nadezhda Vasilievna was arrested and held at Taganka. On 11 November 1937 the troika of the UNKVD of the Moscow region sentenced her to eight years in a labour camp. On 16 December she arrived by transport at Taishetlag, in the Irkutsk region. At the age of seventy-⁠two Nadezhda Vasilievna died on 8 May 1938 at the sixth camp point of Taishetlag and was buried in the Akulshet cemetery in the Taishet district. She was numbered among the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church by decision of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church of 12 March 2024. The building of the Ascension church was damaged in 1941 in the fighting in the Istra area, and its ruins stood long abandoned until the early 1960s, when they were taken down, and on that place a shop of the "Uglemash" works was built. In 2009, near the place where the Ascension church had stood, a small wooden chapel-⁠church was raised, as a monument to the much-⁠tried church and people. Nadezhda Semenova is commemorated on 8 May, the day of her death, in the new style, with the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church (a movable day) and with the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow, on 5 September (a movable day).