Elizaveta Kuzmina-Karavaeva (also known as Mère Marie) was a poet, novelist, publicist, artist, philosopher, public and religious figure. She grew up in the estate of Dzhemete near Anapa with her parents and received her education in private gymnasiums and at the philosophical department of the Faculty of History and Philology of the Higher Bestuzhev courses. In 1910, she married Dmitry Kuzmin-Karavaev, who introduced her to the literary circle in St. Petersburg. She was involved with various literary and artistic groups and published several works, including a collection of poems and a philosophical novella.

After leaving her husband, she became politically active, joining the Socialist-Revolutionary Party and being elected as the mayor of Anapa. She later participated in the illegal congress of the Right Party in Moscow and conducted underground anti-Bolshevik work. After the defeat of the White Movement in the Kuban, she moved with her family to Georgia and then emigrated to Constantinople and later to Paris. She became an active figure in the Russian Student Christian Movement and was involved in charitable and preaching activities. She also turned to artistic creativity, painting house churches and pictures of religious content. During the Nazi occupation of Paris, she participated in the Resistance, trying to save Jewish children and prisoners of war. She was arrested by the Gestapo and held in various prisons before being sent to the Ravensbruck concentration camp, where she died in a gas chamber, a week before the liberation of the camp by the Red Army.