Alexis Nikatov

Holy Hieromartyr Alexis Nikatov, a protopriest, was born in 1875 at Dofnary, in the Brest-⁠Litovsk district of the Grodno province, in a village teacher's family. He was shot on 3 December 1937 at Butovo, near Moscow. The Russian Church honours him among the New Martyrs of Moscow.

His father, Gabriel Nikatov, was a teacher; soon after his birth the family moved to Russia. Alexis finished one class of the seminary and from 1899 to 1901 served in the army as a private. He married Elizabeth and they had five children. In 1905 he became psalm-⁠reader at the church of the village of Knyazhevo, in the Mozhaisk district, and in 1906 moved to the village of Petrovskoe, in the Vereya district, where he served until 1920, first as psalm-⁠reader, then as deacon, and in the last year as priest. From August 1920 to July 1921 he was a teacher in the village of Suvernya in the Saratov province, and in the same year received a priest's post at the church of Voskresenki, in the Podolsk district. In 1923 he was moved to the church of the Tikhvin Icon of the Mother of God in the village of Ignatovo, in the Dmitrov district, where he remained many years. For his pastoral labours he received many church awards, among them the rank of protopriest. Witnesses say that he had a large flock, and people came to him from other towns and villages.

From the nineteen-⁠twenties he was deprived of the vote as a servant of the Church, his farm was requisitioned, and the large family found it hard to feed itself in those hungry years.

On 19 November 1937 he was arrested on a charge of counter-⁠revolutionary activity, of agitation to wreck the collective farms, of "vile slanders" against the authorities and of terrorist sentiments. He was held in the Taganka prison. He rejected all the charges and did not admit guilt. On 27 November 1937 the NKVD troika of the Moscow region sentenced him to death. Protopriest Alexis Nikatov was shot on 3 December 1937 at the Butovo firing range and buried in a common grave. He is commemorated on 3 December, in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo and the Synaxis of the Moscow Saints.