In the world, Pelageya Stepanovna Zhidko was born in 1897 in the village of Kucheryaevka, Bobrovsky Uyezd (now Buturlinovsky District, Voronezh Region) in a peasant family.
On January 15, 1937, she was sentenced by the Troika of the NKVD for Voronezh Region on charges of "anti-Soviet propaganda" under Article 58-10 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR. The sentence was 10 years of corrective labor camps. The indictment stated: "Pelageya Stepanovna Zhidko, nun, unemployed before her arrest, is accused of being a member of the Buturlinovskaya group, part of a counter-revolutionary church-monarchist organization, participating in illegal gatherings, conducting anti-Soviet agitation, spreading provocative fabrications about the fall of Soviet power, slandering the leader of the VKP(b) and communists, and calling on kolkhoz workers to leave the collective farms and not to subscribe to the USSR strengthening loan."
On January 16, 1942, she was imprisoned in the Karaganda Correctional Labor Camp (Karlag) of the NKVD in Karaganda Region. Upon admission to the camp, she was deemed unfit for labor due to loss of vision in both eyes.
On June 19, 1944, she was sent for treatment for decompensated myocarditis.
She died in custody on June 26, 1944, in the Zhartyassky sector of Karlag. Her place of burial is unknown.
On April 28, 1989, she was rehabilitated under the law of the Republic of Kazakhstan dated March 14, 1993, for the 1937 repressions.
On August 20, 2000, at the behest of the Almaty Diocese, she was included in the Synaxis of New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia as a venerable martyr, canonized by the Bishops' Council of the Russian Orthodox Church held from August 13-16 of the same year.
Saints of Kazakhstan
