Vera Grafova

Holy Confessor Vera Grafova was a novice of the Dormition monastery of Brusensky at Kolomna and died in exile in Kazakhstan in the year 1932.

She was born in 1878 in the village of Sobolevo in the Bogorodsk district, Moscow province, in the family of the peasant Chariton Grafov. In 1903 she entered the monastery at Kolomna and had various obediences there until 1918, when it was clear that the Bolsheviks would destroy the community. She then lived with believers, first in a village and then in Kolomna, earning her bread by sewing blankets.

On 21 and 22 May 1931 all the nuns and novices of the monastery, more than thirty women, were arrested and imprisoned at Kolomna. Questioned, Vera said that she had never had any hostile attitude toward Soviet power and had no acquaintances; she added that she had met some nuns at the church of the Protection of the Mother of God and had sometimes spoken with them about the lack of food and firewood and the long queues, which come, according to Scripture, from sins. On 24 May the investigation closed. She and the nun Antonina Stepanova were charged with anti-⁠Soviet agitation and with contact with the exiled Archimandrite Nikon Belyaev, to whom they sent letters and parcels of clothing, food and money.

On 29 May 1931 an OGPU troika sentenced both to five years of exile in Kazakhstan. Vera Grafova died in exile in 1932; the exact date is not known. The nun Antonina came back after serving her term, was arrested again in 1937 and shot on 15 December 1937 at Butovo, together with the novice Maria Zhuravleva.

Vera was glorified together with the two on 20 April 2005. She is commemorated on 15 December and, in the new style, on 7 February (movable) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church and on 5 September (movable) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow.