Anna Ivashkina

Holy Confessor Anna Ivashkina (Anna Polikarpovna Ivashkina) was born in 1894 in the village of Levino, in the Kasimov district of the Ryazan province, in a pious peasant family. She died in a camp hospital in 1948, at Tashkent, after her sentence had expired. The Russian Church honours her among the New Martyrs and Confessors.

After being abandoned by her husband soon after the wedding, she took the counsel of blessed Matrona Anemnyasevskaya and married a widower with three children. In 1934, after the closing of the nearest church in the village of Sheenki, Anna Polikarpovna organised a prayer house; then the villagers began to gather for prayer in various houses, so as not to arouse the suspicion of the Soviet authorities. In the night of 6 November 1937 Anna Ivashkina was arrested as an "active churchwoman", on a charge "of organising village communal prayer", and taken to Ryazan with all the others. On 6 December 1937 the confessor Anna was sentenced to ten years in a camp. She served the sentence in various camps. On 6 November 1947 her term expired at Tashkent, but a grave heart disease, dystrophy and dysentery did not let her go free: for almost three months she lay in the camp hospital, where she reposed. She is commemorated on 23 December, on 7 February, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Ryazan, on 23 June, and in the Synaxis of the Saints of the Central Asian Metropolitan District, on 8 September.