Andrew Bystrov

Holy Hieromartyr Andrew Bystrov, a priest of the Ploskosh district, Tver region, was shot on 7 October 1937 together with the peasants Vasily Vinogradov, Sergei Mikhailov and Spiridon Saveliev. They were glorified by the Council of Bishops of the Russian Church in August 2000, for veneration throughout the whole Church. They are commemorated on 7 October, on 7 February and in the Synaxis of the Saints of Tver, on 18 July.

On 3 July 1937 Stalin ordered a telegram sent to the secretaries of the regional party committees calling for all kulaks who had returned home to be put on record and the most hostile of them to be arrested and shot, through troikas. As early as 22 July the head of the NKVD department of the Ploskosh district, Popov, drew up a paper for the arrest of Priest Andrew Bystrov and the peasant Vasily Vinogradov. They were accused of having earlier been deprived of the vote, of having been arrested, of knowing one another, visiting one another and, above all, of Andrew Bystrov being a priest. At the NKVD's request, the village council of Zhidulino drew up a character report on the priest, in which it was written that before the revolution he had a hundred and fifty hectares of land, cattle and hired workers, that in 1930 he had been exiled for three years to Arkhangelsk for counter-⁠revolutionary activity, that is, for opposing the Soviet authorities and the building of collective farms, and that after his return, in 1934, he had continued this work, calling kulaks to secret meetings. The peasants Sergei Mikhailov and Spiridon Saveliev were arrested later.

At the interrogation Vasily Vinogradov rejected everything: he had never gathered with the priest and the others and had held no anti-⁠Soviet conversation. On 20 September the assistant of the NKVD plenipotentiary, Livanov, drew up the indictment; although there was no evidence at all, the "case" was considered closed and sent to the troika. On 3 October the NKVD troika sentenced to death the priest Andrew Bystrov and the laymen Vasily Vinogradov, Sergei Mikhailov and Spiridon Saveliev. They were shot on 7 October 1937. Semyon Nikandrov, aged sixty-⁠seven, was sentenced to ten years in a camp.