Pelagia Zhidko

Holy Martyr Pelagia Zhidko was born in 1897 in the village of Kucheryaevka in the Bobrov district of Voronezh province, in the family of the peasant Stepan Stepanovich Zhidko. Her heart no longer found full satisfaction in the life of the world, so she resolved to devote her life to God. In the twenties the monasteries of the Voronezh region were closed and the monks scattered through the villages, many serving in parish churches; Christian communities gathered around them. People made monastic vows and received tonsure as in the Christian communities of the early persecutions; two or three of like mind lived in village houses and led a monastic life. After the nearby churches were closed, they began to invite priests home for services.

The persecution did not cease and by the end of 1937 no priest was left in the Buturlinovka district, but those seeking monastic life still gathered for prayer, choosing as leader the eldest and more experienced one in spiritual matters. In 1937 the NKVD of Voronezh began to destroy the last Christian communities. They uncovered and liquidated a counter-⁠revolutionary church-⁠monarchist organization in five districts, with 127 people arrested. Among them Pelagia was arrested on 27 November 1937 and interrogated the same day. She denied having carried on counter-⁠revolutionary propaganda and admitted only that she had shown dissatisfaction with collective-⁠farm life, saying that life would be better without collective farms. A witness said that Pelagia had told her: you bear children, work and suffer, and we are tormented by Soviet power and the communists.

Although the accused rejected the charge, the investigation, relying on witnesses, held it proved that they were active members of a counter-⁠revolutionary organization. On 15 December 1937 an NKVD troika sentenced her to ten years in a camp. She had then begun to go blind, and when she arrived, on 16 January 1942, after many prisons, in Karlag in Kazakhstan, she was already completely blind. The outer world darkened for her, but for the zealous Christian the vista of the inner eyes opened. Pelagia Zhidko died on 26 June 1944 at the Dzhartas point of Karlag and was buried in the camp cemetery, in an unknown grave.

She is commemorated on 26 June, on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church and on 17 September in the Synaxis of the Saints of the Voronezh Metropolis, in the new style.