Alexandra Ustyukhina

Holy Martyr Alexandra Ustyukhina was born in 1882 in the village of Gus-⁠Zhelezny in the Kasimov district of the Ryazan province, in a worker's family. She was arrested a second time on 29 September 1937 and sentenced to death on 6 December 1937, as a defender of her church.

She finished the village school and learned the craft of dressmaking, working at home on commission. From 1930, a deeply believing and solitary person, she gave all her strength to the service of the church, as chairwoman of the church council of the Holy Trinity church in Gus-⁠Zhelezny. Her only close relative was her younger sister, Anna Potapovna, a pensioner; their household was only a house and one cow.

In 1935 Alexandra Potapovna was arrested and spent three months in prison for "arbitrariness": she had refused to hand the keys of the church to the commission that had come to close places of worship. Then, despite her arrest, the church could be defended.

On 29 September 1937 she was arrested again, as a member of an alleged insurgent and terrorist organisation. She firmly rejected all the false accusations, but on 6 December 1937 she was sentenced to death. She is commemorated in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church on 7 February, and on 23 June in the Synaxis of the Saints of Ryazan.