Olga Zhiltsova

Holy Venerable Martyr Olga Zhiltsova was a novice in the village of Goretovo, in the Ryazan province, and was shot at Butovo on 14 March 1938, together with the Holy Venerable Martyr Evdokia Arkhipova and the Holy Martyr Basil Arkhipov.

The two nuns and the martyr

Evdokia was born in 1886 in the village of Goretovo in the Lukhovitsy district, in the family of the peasant Sergei Arkhipov. In 1902 she entered as a novice the old Kazan Monastery in Ryazan, where over three hundred and fifty nuns lived; in 1909 she received the rasophore. In 1919 the monastery was closed and she returned to her parents and nephews, in Goretovo. In 1935 she was elected churchwarden. Then the chairman of the village soviet informed the faithful that they must repair the church, otherwise it would be closed. In 1936, at the warden's house, the church council resolved to raise funds, and Evdokia told all who came to buy candles or take prosphora that money must be collected for repairs. People gave what they could, told others, and so little by little the sum of four thousand roubles was gathered, and the church was repaired.

Olga was born in 1887 also in Goretovo, in the family of the peasant Egor Zhiltsov. At eighteen she entered as a novice the Kazan Monastery in Ryazan. After the closing of the monastery she returned home and lived alone with her mother. When the danger of the closing of the church arose, Olga went to some believers to urge them not to forget the house of God and to help as they could with the repairs, for otherwise the church might be closed and they would have nowhere to pray.

Basil was born on 26 July 1876 in Goretovo, in the family of the peasant Maxim Arkhipov. He finished the parish school; in 1916-1917 he served in the army as a private. Returned to the village, he was a peasant, and when collectivisation began he joined the collective farm. He sang several years in the choir and in 1937 began to fulfil the duties of reader.

The arrest

In the autumn of 1937 an NKVD worker came to Goretovo to the secretary of the local Komsomol organisation and, summoning the warden Evdokia, demanded of her a list of the priest, the reader and the members of the church council. He took the list and left. After a time the head of the Lukhovitsy district NKVD office received a denunciation that in Goretovo, at Evdokia Arkhipova's, a "conspiratorial conference of ministers of religion" had been held, from nine in the morning to four in the afternoon, with the doors locked from inside and the windows curtained. On 15 February 1938 NKVD workers asked Evdokia's neighbour to knock at her door; he agreed, she opened to him as a neighbour and was arrested. On 26 February Olga and Basil were arrested. At the interrogation Olga answered that she had not drawn villagers into the group of believers, had not agitated against state loans and had not collected money, and the investigator accused Basil that, as reader, he had agitated among the collective farmers to draw them into the group of believers, had said that Soviet power was given us as a punishment, and had agitated against the constitution, saying that there is a constitution but in fact the Orthodox Church is persecuted. Basil answered: "No, I did not agitate, I did not fight against the constitution and I did not agitate against Soviet power. I do not admit guilt." The secretary of the district Komsomol committee, Skotnikov, said as a witness that on 22 November at the nun Arkhipova's dwelling an illegal meeting of the priests and nuns of Goretovo had been held, in which "the whole priestly pack carries on counter-⁠revolutionary activity among the collective farmers", and that the former nun, now churchwarden Evdokia Arkhipova, under the priest's direction, had collected money for the capital repair of the church.

On the same day, 26 February 1938, the inquiry ended, and on 8 March the NKVD troika sentenced the novices Evdokia Arkhipova and Olga Zhiltsova and the reader Basil Arkhipov to death. After the sentence they were taken to the Taganka in Moscow, where on 13 March the prison photographer photographed them, so that among the multitude of those condemned they could be compared with those taken out for execution. They were shot on 14 March 1938 and buried in the unknown common grave at Butovo.

They are remembered on 14 March, on 29 May (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo, on 23 June in the Synaxis of the Saints of Ryazan, and on 5 September (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow, in the new style.