Anastasia Kamaeva

Holy Venerable Martyr Anastasia Kamaeva, a nun, was born in 1879 in the village of Staroe Drakino, in the Narovchat district of the Penza province (now the Kovylkino district of Mordovia), in a Mordvin peasant family. She was shot on 10 August 1937. She was glorified by the Council of Bishops of the Russian Church in the year 2000.

In the world she was called Anastasia Leontievna Kamaeva. She received the monastic tonsure at the Kadom Monastery of the icon of the Mother of God "Merciful", and after its closing lived at Staroe Drakino with her sister, keeping a household of her own. Even outside the monastery she kept the monastic way of life, standing apart from the new currents of life and directing all her thoughts to God. Mother Anastasia was entrusted with the leadership of the church council; through her efforts vestments and church vessels were bought, she always sought to adorn the village church and took care that at the service the faithful could buy candles for prayer.

She was arrested as a member of a "counter-⁠revolutionary (church-⁠monarchist) group" and charged with organising illegal counter-⁠revolutionary gatherings at which she systematically carried on anti-⁠Soviet agitation of a terrorist character. Mother Anastasia did not admit guilt and was shot on 10 August 1937, on the sentence of the NKVD troika of Mordovia of 5 August. She is commemorated on 10 August and on 7 February, in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church.