Martyr
Martyr Pelagia Zhidko
1897–1944
Also known as: Мц. Пелагия (1944), Пелагия Степановна Жидко, Пелагия Жидко, инокиня
A peasant woman from Voronezh province who lived as a nun in an underground Christian community; arrested in 1937 and sentenced to ten years, she died blind in the Karaganda camp on 26 June 1944.
Martyr Pelagia Zhidko was born in 1897 in the village of Kucheryaevka, Bobrov district, Voronezh province, into the family of the peasant Stepan Zhidko. After the monasteries of the region were closed in the 1920s, scattered monks and believers formed small Christian communities in the villages, taking monastic vows and living a monastic life in ordinary houses; Pelagia belonged to such a community.
In 1937 the Voronezh NKVD set out to destroy the last of these communities, arresting 127 people as members of a so-called church-monarchist organisation. Pelagia was arrested on 27 November 1937. She denied conducting counter-revolutionary propaganda, admitting only that she had complained about collective-farm life. On 15 December 1937 an NKVD troika sentenced her to ten years in a labour camp.
In prison she began to lose her sight and was completely blind when she reached the Karaganda camp in Kazakhstan in January 1942. She died at the Dzhartas section of the camp on 26 June 1944 and was buried in an unmarked grave. She is commemorated on 13/26 June.