Hi, I am new here.
I just finished reading Grand Duchess Elizabeth of Russia - New Martyr of the Communist Yoke.
I enjoyed this book very much. It is a good book to read to get an idea of what it was like for the Royal Family of Imperial Russia before and during the revolution, as well as being a life of a great saint and martyr. The Grand Duchess, granddaughter of Queen Victoria, whose husband Grand Duke Serge Alexandrovich was assassinated by revolutionaries, afterwords abandoned the privilege and luxury of the court to become a monastic and found the Martha and Mary convent. Her convent was different from the usual Orthodox monastic community - the nuns would care for orphans, war wounded and provide an education to poor children rescued from the slums, alongside a life of prayer and ascetic struggle, thus - Martha and Mary. Her life as a monastic spanned the years of the first world war and the outbreak of revolution, until she was finally martyred under orders from Lenin, by being thrown down a mineshaft along with some other confessors.
It's an inspiring book, and I think the saint was with me as I read. I have a cold heart but every time I picked it up to read I always felt a warm comfort and sometimes some tears for my sins and the poor world. Reading some of her letters, it's almost hard to believe people were once this noble and good, before our lamentable times where revolution is a daily event and this lost culture is almost forgotten.
All martyrs of Russia pray for us.