Ananias Boykov

Holy Martyr Ananias Boykov (Ananias Silantievich Boykov, 1877 to 1929) was the church warden of the Transfiguration church in the town of Kimry and was shot in Moscow on 29 November 1929, for having defended the church from closing. In 1997 he was canonized as a locally venerated saint of the diocese of Tver, and in August 2000 he was numbered among the New Martyrs and Confessors for veneration throughout the whole Church.

He was church warden of the Transfiguration church until its closing, on 19 May 1929. After the authorities' order to close the church, the parishioners would not submit, kept watch around the church and did not let in the commission of the town council, which had come to inventory the church property. In May 1929 Ananias was arrested together with the rector, Father Theodore Kolerov, and others, and sent to Tver. In the "trial of the churchmen of the Transfiguration" nineteen people were accused. From Tver the accused were brought by barge to Kimry for a show trial, which began on 20 October.

On 26 October 1929 the district court at Kimry sentenced him to death. The lawyers appealed, and the condemned men were taken, while the appeal was heard, to Moscow, to the Taganka prison. On 20 November it was announced that the death sentence was confirmed. He was shot on 29 November 1929 in Moscow, together with Protopriest Theodore Kolerov and Mikhail Boldakov. The funeral service of the murdered martyrs was held in the cathedral at Kimry, before a great crowd of believers. He is commemorated on 29 November, on 7 February and in the Synaxis of the Saints of Tver, on 18 July.