Tamara Satsi

Holy Venerable Martyr Tamara (Maria Satsi, in the world) was an abbess, born on 8 February 1876 at the Uustalo farm in Estonia and dead on 1 May 1942 at Alatyr, in Chuvashia. The Holy Synod of the Russian Church numbered her among the saints, the new martyrs and confessors, on 12 October 2007. She is commemorated on 18 April by the old calendar (1 May by the new). Our calendar, however, shows another date, 25 January, which does not agree with the source.

She was born into a Lutheran peasant family. At seven she lost her parents, and in 1888, at twelve, she entered an orphanage for girls attached to a women's community at Jõhvi. In 1892 the community was turned into the Orthodox Dormition convent, whose abbess became Varvara (Blokhina). In 1895 Maria was moved from the orphanage into the convent and became a novice. In 1898 Abbess Varvara was transferred to Kazan because of a conflict with Princess Elizaveta Shakhovskaya, who lived near the convent. Six novices followed her, among them Maria.

Maria lived in a convent in Kazan until 1902, when Abbess Varvara was appointed abbess of the Holy Trinity convent in Kozmodemyansk. Maria followed her again. On 19 July 1917 she received monastic tonsure with the name Tamara. From 1918 nun Tamara was treasurer and in fact directed the women's community in honour of the Vladimir icon of the Mother of God in Cheboksary. In 1924 Bishop Athanasius (Malinin) of Cheboksary declared the Vladimir community an independent convent, and nun Tamara was appointed abbess and raised to the rank of abbess.

In 1926 the convent was closed by the authorities, but continued to exist as the Vladimir religious community, finally closed in 1930. After the dissolution of the community, Mother Tamara settled with a former assistant of hers in Cheboksary. At that time she became acquainted with a former priest, Khudov, who later gave false testimony about anti-⁠Soviet statements of Abbess Tamara. On 25 June 1941 NKVD officers searched Abbess Tamara's house, and at night she was arrested and imprisoned in the Cheboksary prison. On 31 July 1941 she was found guilty under article 58 of "anti-⁠Soviet agitation" and sentenced to ten years of imprisonment. She served her sentence in labour camp no. 1 of the People's Commissariat of Justice near Alatyr, in Chuvashia. On 1 May 1942, according to the death certificate, Abbess Tamara died of a heart defect and was buried in an unknown grave in the camp cemetery.