Augusta Zashchuk

Venerable Martyr Augusta (in the world Lydia Vasilievna Zashchuk, née Kaznakova) was a schemanun, founder and first head of the "Optina Pustyn" museum and abbess of a hidden convent in Belyov, in the Tula region. She was born on 2 July 1871 in Saint Petersburg and shot at Tula on 8 January 1938. She is remembered on 26 December on the old calendar, which is 8 January on the new, the day of her death, which was also the day of the Synaxis of the Mother of God.

Youth

She was born in Saint Petersburg, into a family of hereditary nobles, of the privy councillor Vasily Kaznakov, and was given the name of her mother, Lydia, daughter of a staff captain, Glavatsky. She spoke six foreign languages, had literary talent and, in the Petersburg period, worked as a journalist. On 1 September 1880 she was admitted to the seventh class of the Alexander Smolny Institute, which she finished on 30 May 1887, in the 55th class. Then she married Vsevolod Zashchuk. They separated in 1906, but did not break contact. At the beginning of the 1900s she worked at the Admiralty shipyard as a clerk and translator, and at the beginning of the revolution of 1917 she worked at the Petrograd city Duma, issuing trade certificates.

At Optina

After the revolution she moved to Kozelsk and Optina Pustyn, where she still found some of the Optina elders, among them Venerable Nectarius of Optina. After moving to Kozelsk she worked about a year and a half on a state farm, as an accountant distributing bread. In December 1919 she founded the Optina museum and began to work in it. On 20 June 1920 she was appointed head of the museum, a post she held until 1924. Her assistant was Venerable Confessor Agapit (Taube). In the time of the confiscation of church valuables she was arrested several times for obstructing their removal from the "Optina Pustyn" museum. In 1924 charges were brought that, with her knowledge, services were held in the museum, monks were not evicted from the monastery and help was given to needy monks, including employing them on the museum staff. As a result she was removed from the post of head and released on her undertaking not to leave. After her dismissal she earned her living with private lessons in foreign languages.

The hidden convent and martyrdom

On 17 June 1927 a new arrest followed. On 19 December 1927 she was sentenced to three years' deprivation of the right to reside in certain places. After exile she returned to Belyov. In the early 1930s Bishop Ignatius (Sadkovsky) founded at Belyov a hidden convent, at the church of the Cossacks (Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker). With the blessing of Bishop Ignatius, his brother, Bishop George (Sadkovsky), tonsured Lydia Zashchuk a nun, giving her the name Augusta. In 1934 he also made her a schemanun and appointed her abbess of the hidden convent.

On 16 December 1937 she was arrested, together with the last abbot of Optina, schema-⁠archimandrite Isaac (Bobrakov, in another source Bobrikov), for forming a hidden monastery "of the Tikhonite orientation". At her arrest she was subjected to an interrogation of sixteen days, in which she was not allowed to sleep or even to sit, and when she fell from exhaustion she was doused with cold water. Despite the torments, she did not give the names of the sisters of the convent and gave no testimony about the activity of the convent. On 25 December 1937 the indictment was drawn up. The troika attached to the NKVD directorate of the Tula region sentenced her to death on 30 December 1937. She was shot at Tula on 8 January 1938. At the same time, in the case of Bishop Nikita (Pribytkov), there were shot the last abbot of Optina, Isaac (Bobrikov), hierodeacon Vadim (Antonov), novices Gregory Larin and Daniel Pyatibrat and novices Maria Laktionova and Agrafena Lesina. Augusta Zashchuk was buried in the Tesnitsky forest, at the 162nd kilometre of the Simferopol highway, near Tula. Our sources call her venerable martyr and new martyr, but do not give the date of canonization.