Nymphodora Zhuravleva

Holy Venerable Martyr Nymphodora Zhuravleva, a nun, was born in 1869 in the village of Gorodets in the Kolomna district, Moscow province, in the family of the peasant Martinian Zhuravlev. In 1886 she entered the Assumption Brusensky Monastery in Kolomna, where she struggled until it was closed in 1920, and then settled in Kolomna. In 1932 she was driven out of the city as an alien element in the godless order of life, but after some time she returned on her own and lived in the same apartment with the nun Antonina (Stepanova). On 27 November 1937 both were arrested and shut in prison at Kolomna. The saint's monastic name was entered in the calendar with the blessing of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill, on 22 January 2024.

Witnesses on duty were questioned, neighbours from the same street, who said that the nun still dressed in monastic clothes and went to church, that she said that a hard time had come, that people were worn out with taxes and loans and that beggars had multiplied in the streets. The day after her arrest she was questioned. She rejected the charge of anti-⁠Soviet agitation, said that she knew the witnesses but did not confirm their testimonies, and that she knew many nuns by monastic names, without their surnames or addresses. On 1 December 1937 the NKVD troika sentenced the nuns Antonina and Nymphodora to death by shooting, and, awaiting execution, they were taken to the Taganka prison in Moscow. The nuns Antonina (Stepanova) and Nymphodora (Zhuravleva) were shot on 15 December 1937 and buried in an unmarked common grave at the Butovo range near Moscow.

Saint Antonina, born in 1886 in Moscow, in the family of the craftsman Ivan Stepanov, received the name Anna at Baptism. At eleven she entered the same monastery in Kolomna and was tonsured with the name Antonina. On 21 and 22 May 1931 all the nuns and novices of the monastery, over thirty, were arrested and shut in prison at Kolomna, among them Antonina and the novice Vera Grafova. On 29 May 1931 the OGPU troika sentenced them to five years of exile in Kazakhstan. Vera died in exile in 1932, and Antonina returned after serving her term and settled at Kolomna.

Nymphodora is commemorated on 15 December, the day of her death, in the new style, on the movable day around 29 May in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo and on the movable day around 5 September in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow.