Anastasia Lebedeva

Holy Martyr Anastasia Lebedeva (Anastasia Alexeevna Lebedeva) was born on 28 October 1899 in the village of Nazarovo, in the Poshekhonye district of the Yaroslavl province, in a peasant family. She died in the camp, in the war years, after being sentenced in 1937. She was glorified by the Council of Bishops of the Russian Church of 13 to 16 August 2000.

She was little schooled but full of zeal for the Christian faith. After her husband's death, in 1930, she was left with three children and ran the farm alone; the crushing tax laid on her, as an individual peasant, forced her to join the collective farm. In the mid-⁠thirties, when many renounced the faith for fear of persecution, she took on the duty of chairwoman of the church council of the village of Guzhovo, in the Danilov district, and fulfilled it diligently. She was arrested on 6 April 1937 as a member of an "anti-⁠Soviet group of churchmen", accused of spreading provocative rumours among the collective farmers. No evidence was found. At the interrogations she held firm, rejecting the invented guilt. On 10 October 1937 the NKVD troika of the Yaroslavl region sentenced the widow to eight years in a concentration camp. She died in the camp, in unknown circumstances, during the war. She is commemorated on 11 November, on 7 February and in the Synaxis of the Saints of Rostov and Yaroslavl, on 5 June.