Paraskeva Makarova

Holy Venerable Martyr Paraskeva Makarova, a novice, was born in 1878 in the village of Makarovo in the Volokolamsk district of Moscow province, in the family of Kosma Makarov, who besides his peasant farm had a small trade in Moscow and in the village. After his death in 1907 the family gave up the trade and lived only by working the land. Paraskeva finished the village school and in 1903 settled in a women's monastery of Kaluga province, where she struggled until its closure in 1925. Then she lived for a time in Moscow, and in 1929 returned home to Makarovo.

In October 1937, at the request of NKVD agents, the village council issued a certificate stating that the novice Paraskeva had close ties with priests and other churchmen, took part in funerals, and with her singing gathered crowds around the departed. On 9 February 1938 she was arrested, held in Volokolamsk prison and interrogated two days later. She denied having carried out counter-⁠revolutionary agitation and refused to admit guilt.

The same day witnesses were questioned, peasants of the same village, who signed statements in which the investigator had written that at Trinity in 1937 she had urged them to go to church instead of work, saying that the Bolsheviks despise the church but God is and will be, and Soviet power will soon fall. It was also said that on the feast of the Dormition she had taken women to church and stopped the field work. The investigation ended on 15 February, and on 25 February an NKVD troika sentenced her to death. She was taken to Taganka prison in Moscow and shot on 7 March 1938, then buried in the common grave at the Butovo range near Moscow.

She is commemorated on 7 March, on 29 May (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo and on 5 September (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow, in the new style.