As a member of a socialist revolutionary (SR) flying combat detachment, she came to fame for assassinating the former Russian Minister of War Viktor Sakharov in 1905.

For her achievements, the party designated her as their representative within the Soviet delegation for the German-Russian peace negotiations in World War I, which resulted in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.

Anastasia (Nastya) Kameristaya was born on 10 November 1875 in the small village of Aleksandrovka (now part of Donetsk) in the Bakhmutsky Uyezd of the Yekaterinoslav Governorate, Russian Empire.

[4] In St. Petersburg Nastya became a full-time activist of the SR party and was involved in a female terrorist group aiming at assassinating the Minister of the Interior, Vyacheslav von Plehve.

[6] She was captured, brought to trial, and initially condemned to be hanged; but her punishment was soon commuted to penal labour for life to be served at the Nerchinsk katorga in Transbaikal (east of Lake Baikal, near the border of China).

She participated during the October political uprising as a member of the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee and then joined the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries rising through the ranks of the new party.

In November she joined the newly renamed Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), later holding various political and committee positions in the Soviet Union.

After the death of Lenin, widespread purges were extended to the ranks of the Communist Party by the new Soviet supreme leader Joseph Stalin, and she became one of the many targets.