Thecla Makusheva

Holy Confessor Thecla Makusheva was born in 1901. Together with Tatiana Byakireva, born in 1890, she was arrested on 6 November 1937, in a group of twenty-⁠seven people, and held first in the prison of the town of Kasimov, and then all the accused in this case were taken to Ryazan for the passing and carrying out of the sentence.

The confessors Thecla and Tatiana were tried in the group case "The case of the counter-⁠revolutionary insurgent organization of church people, Ryazan region, Belkovsky (Kasimov) district, 1937." On 6 December 1937 the troika of the NKVD administration for the Ryazan region accused them of being active participants in a counter-⁠revolutionary insurgent and terrorist organization, of conducting defeatist agitation among the people and expressing terrorist sentiments. Thecla Makusheva and Tatiana Byakireva, like Anna Ivashkina and Evdokia Martishkina, were sentenced to ten years in a labour camp, while the other twenty-⁠three people in this case were shot.

The Russian Church honours her among the New Martyrs and Confessors. She is commemorated on 23 December (new style), in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church on 7 February, on a movable day, and in the Synaxis of the Saints of Ryazan on 23 June.