Martyr Nina Kuznetsova

Saint Nina was born on December 28, 1887, in the town of Lalsk (then Vologda, now Kirov region), the only daughter of police official Alexei Kuznetsov and his wife Anna. From a young age she refused proposals of marriage and devoted herself to prayer and solitary asceticism; her father built her a separate cell-like room with a library of spiritual literature. She never married, ate only soaked dry bread, slept no more than four hours a night, and knew the Psalter and the order of services by heart, assisting the clergy during worship.

After her elderly parents were arrested by the Soviet authorities (c. 1932), the shock caused Nina to suffer paralysis of the right side of her body; her resulting disability led to her release after a brief imprisonment. Despite her physical incapacity, she turned her large family home into a refuge for the persecuted, sheltering homeless monks from the closed Koryazhma Monastery (including Abbot Pavel Khotemov) and other persecuted believers.

In October 1937 the NKVD arrested Nina for organizing resistance to church closures and supporting arrested clergy. On November 23, 1937, an NKVD troika sentenced her to 8 years in labor camps. The saint died on May 14, 1938, in one of the camps of the Kargopol camp system in the Arkhangelsk region.

She was glorified in the Synaxis of New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church by the Jubilee Bishops' Council of 2000. Her feast is kept on May 1/14 (the day of her repose), as well as in the general celebration of the Synaxis of New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church.