Commemorated August 27
The Holy Martyr Eva Pavlova, in the world Akilina Vasilievna Pavlova, was born on July 10, 1879 in the village of Issa, to a family of farmers. She labored in the Shikhan Pokrovsky Monastery. In 1929, she was arrested in the village of Balki. There are contradictions in the completed questionnaires in the investigation file: in one place it was said that she was sentenced to 3 years of exile in Kazakhstan. The details of her imprisonment are unknown, but her investigation file states that her term of exile ended in 1932.
For a short time after her imprisonment, she was the Abbess of the Moscow Sretensky Convent where she headed a community of nuns located in the Sretensky Monastery, which was closed by that time. In the mid-1930s, she was exiled to the city of Chimkent, where she organized a secret monastic community under the spiritual leadership of Metropolitan Joseph (Petrovykh).
On June 23, 1937, she was arrested along with a large group of clergymen serving exile in Kazakhstan. On August 23, 1937, in case No. 723, on charges against Metropolitan Kirill (Smirnov), Metropolitan Joseph (Petrovykh), Archbishop Alexy (Orlov) and others, an indictment was issued, which, among other things, stated: "Eva Pavlova, the head of a secret monastery in the city of Chimkent, was under the leadership of Joseph (Petrovykh) and Kobranov, sent women recruited by her to the Petrovs for tonsure. Systematically conducted counter-revolutionary agitation, expressed defeatist sentiments with the expectation of the restoration of the monarchist-bourgeois system." During the investigation, Matushka Eva stated: "I was not involved in counter-revolution and did not conduct such work."
The troika of the NKVD Directorate for the South Kazakhstan Region sentenced Abbess Eva Pavlova to capital punishment. She was shot on August 27, 1937, in Lisya Balka, Chimkent, South Kazakhstan Region. She was buried in a common grave at the site of her death. Their burial site is currently unknown.
St. Eva Pavlova was canonized as a New Martyr and Confessor of Russia at the Bishops' Council of the Russian Orthodox Church in August 2000.
