Boris Ivanovsky

Holy Hieromartyr Boris Ivanovsky, a priest, was born in 1897 in Moscow, in the family of the postal clerk Pavel Ivanovsky, and received the crown of martyrdom by shooting on 10 December 1937, at the Butovo firing range near Moscow. He is commemorated on 10 December, in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo and in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow.

He graduated from the real school and the theological seminary, at the time when the coup took place in Russia and the godless came to power. Until 1923 he worked as an editor at the Russian Telegraph Agency ROSTA. In 1923 he was ordained priest and served in the churches of the Pavlovsky Posad district. In 1930 leaflets appeared on the walls of the Pokrovsko-⁠Vasilyevsky Monastery in Pavlovsky Posad, which were regarded as counter-⁠revolutionary. Father Boris was arrested on suspicion of having posted them, but after two weeks was released.

At the end of 1930 he was sent to serve in Moscow, at the church of the Holy Trinity in Listy, on Sretenka street. In the 1930s the church was closed, and Father Boris was moved to the church of Saint Gregory of Neocaesarea on Bolshaya Polyanka. For blameless service he was raised to the rank of archpriest. He lived in the village of Leonovo, on the edge of the city, where the priests Pavel Felitsin and Alexander Kedrov also lived. On 15 November 1937 all were arrested and imprisoned at Taganka.

The priest Alexander Kedrov testified that Felitsin and Ivanovsky were convinced Tikhonites and had great hatred for Soviet power. Archpriest Boris said at the investigation that the church where he served belonged to the Tikhonite orientation and that he himself was a Tikhonite by conviction. He said that he had not gathered with the other priests anywhere, except in chance meetings, and denied any anti-⁠Soviet agitation, apart from the priest's duty to make people believe in God. On 5 December the NKVD troika condemned Archpriest Boris to death, and the other accused were sentenced to years in a camp. He was shot on 10 December 1937 and buried in an unknown common grave.