George of Arkhangelsk

Holy Hieromartyr George of Arkhangelsk, a priest, by family name Arkhangelsky, was born in 1872 in the village of Yaropolets in the Volokolamsk district of the Moscow province, in the family of the psalm reader Feodor Arkhangelsky, and died shot on 14 October 1937 at the Butovo firing range.

After the church school he entered the seminary, studied one year, and then began to serve as psalm reader in a church. In 1908 he was ordained deacon, and in 1917 priest, and served until his arrest in the churches of the Naro-⁠Fominsk district. In 1935 he served at the church of the Beheading of John the Baptist in the village of Afineevo; shortly before his arrest he was appointed rector of the church of the Nativity of the Mother of God in the village of Rudnevo. Round that church a small community of nuns from the closed Zosima Hermitage gathered. The nuns helped him in church and sang in the choir.

In 1937, at the request of the head of the NKVD section of Naro-⁠Fominsk, the chairman of the village soviet of Rudnevo drew up a note about Father George, in which he wrote that the priest George Arkhangelsky had united the nuns of the closed monastery of Zosima Hermitage and was their leader, that all the nuns living in the surrounding villages went each Sunday to church and also came to the priest's lodging, that the nuns' singing in church drew believers from work on the collective farm and that Arkhangelsky's policy was to draw as many believers as possible to the church. On 4 September 1937 Father George was arrested and imprisoned at Naro-⁠Fominsk, where he was savagely beaten to make him incriminate himself. False witnesses were called, a priest and a psalm reader, who signed the testimony that the investigators needed.

Asked whether he was pleased that nuns had gathered round him, he answered that yes, because they helped him in church, sang in the choir, and thereby more people came to church. Asked to give testimony about the anti-⁠Soviet activity of the group of nuns, he answered that he knew nothing of such activity nor of their thoughts about the Soviet power. Asked to give testimony about his own counterrevolutionary activity, he answered that he had not engaged in any and had avoided holding conversations on such subjects. The investigation was concluded, and the priest was moved to the Taganka prison in Moscow. On 9 October 1937 the NKVD troika sentenced him to death. The priest George Arkhangelsky was shot on 14 October 1937 and buried in an unknown common grave at the Butovo firing range near Moscow. He is commemorated on 14 October.