Jacob Bobyrev

Holy Hieromartyr Jacob Bobyrev (Yakov Ivanovich Bobyrev), a priest, was born on 25 November 1883 in the village of Bukreevka, Kursk district, in a peasant family with strong Orthodox traditions and an ascetic spirit: his uncle on his father's side, Sergius, had gone to the Kalyazin monastery and was tonsured there with the name Alexis. He was shot on 17 October 1937 and canonised in the year 2000.

Until the arrest of 1931

Jacob finished five classes of the parish school and the two-⁠class school, which allowed him in 1901 to be a teacher at the parish school in the village of Shchetino. In 1903 he became psalmist at the church in the village of Plaksino, Kursk district, where he served until 1915, when he was called into the army. In 1918 he returned to the same village as psalmist, and two years later was ordained deacon, but continued to fulfil the duty of psalmist too. At the end of the twenties the persecution of the Church began, and Deacon Jacob was sentenced to three years' banishment from the bounds of the Kursk region for non-⁠delivery of grain. He went to the village of Vysokoe, Nerl district, Tver region, where nearby, in the village of Nikulino, his uncle, the monk Alexis, lived, settled there after the closure of the Kalyazin monastery. He lived as an exile, under supervision, and had to present himself twice a month at the district militia office.

In February 1930 he was ordained priest for the church of the village of Vysokoe. The peasants came to love the exiled priest for his zeal in the service, and when on 13 December 1931 Father Jacob was unexpectedly arrested, the parish council appealed at once to the authorities asking for his release. They wrote: On 13 December 1931, for some unknown reason, they took our priest Jacob Bobyrev. We, the church council, ask that he be returned to us again to serve, because we noticed no unlawful acts in him. He paid his tax on time, lived quietly, went nowhere, because he was afraid, being an exile. He carried on no agitation, and we think he was taken on someone's slander.

The persecution of the Church had gone on since the end of 1929, but did not cease in 1930 or in 1931. Reports of groups of religious peasants, dissatisfied with Soviet power, in the villages of Sorokino, Porechye, Boldinovo, Vysokoe, Popovki and Nikulino, flowed to the Kalinin operational sector, led at the time by Uspensky. With the priest there were arrested and imprisoned Orthodox lay people: Mikhail Egorovich Galkin, fifty-⁠four years old, Anastasia Vasilievna Savina, fifty-⁠eight, Varvara Tarasovna Smirnova, forty-⁠four, Egor Vasilievich Ustinov, twenty-⁠seven. On 23 December the OGPU also arrested Darya Dmitrievna Ustinova and the brothers Zaitsev, Ivan and Vasily. Grigory Egorovich Galkin-⁠Sharunov, whom the OGPU regarded as the head of the organisation, was brought to Tver at Christmas 1932 from the Kashin prison.

In 1930 and 1931 the state began organising the collective farms, not only as a form of farming but as a deliberately godless organisation. Believing peasants were forced to work not only on the great feasts that fell on working days but on all Sundays. Refusal to work on Sunday became then an act of confession. Those who for religious reasons did not wish to fall into the captivity of the godless were subjected to economic pressure: their farms were taxed beyond measure, then inventoried for debts. Among Orthodox peasants, accustomed to the idea of the state as an Orthodox monarchy, confusion grew, leading to a negative attitude to the godless authority and to refusal to pay taxes. The group around Galkin-⁠Sharunov considered itself made up of true Orthodox Christians who did not recognise Soviet power, which they called the power of the antichrist, and recognised only the power of the tsar. Father Jacob told the investigator that he had had no ties with the citizens of the Nerl district, that he knew them as parishioners of the neighbouring village of Porechye, that Galkin came with books to the church watchman's hut in Vysokoe and read them to the faithful before the service, proving that Soviet power is that of the antichrist. He knew Ustinov and had been to him only once, he knew Anastasia Savina, she had ordered a vigil for 19 December, which was not served, because he was arrested. He denied having said among the people that one should not join the collective farms but push women to revolt and prepare weapons, or that this power would soon be driven out, as the French were in 1812.

Only Mikhail and Grigory Galkin and Darya Ustinova admitted guilt; the others rejected the charge, some adding a word of their own. Anastasia Savina told the investigator that before the authorities she would never admit guilt, only before God. Varvara Smirnova said that she would die but not change her convictions. On 13 March 1932 the OGPU troika decided: for Grigory Galkin-⁠Sharunov, ten years in the camps; for his brother Mikhail, five; likewise for all the others, including the priest, five years.

Martyrdom

Father Jacob Bobyrev and six other condemned were sent to the Svir camps, near the station of Lodeynoye Pole. At the end of 1933, at the halfway point of the sentence, he wrote a petition for review of the case and for release, since he did not consider himself guilty. The OGPU rejected the petition. At the end of 1936 he returned to the village of Vysokoe, where he had been arrested five years before, and began again to serve in the same church. Some of the parishioners were no more: some had been exiled or imprisoned in camps, others had died, and others had withdrawn from the Church and looked on the Orthodox faith, the church, the service and the priest as something that reproaches them and therefore hateful. But there were others, mostly women, who had remained faithful and ready for martyrdom.

Not a year had passed since his return when the persecution broke out with new force, and on 27 September 1937 the priest was arrested and imprisoned in the Kashin jail. As witnesses, the chairman of the council, the brigadier of the collective farm and ordinary collective farmers were interrogated. The most typical was the testimony of the brigadier, who said that Jacob Bobyrev was hostile to Soviet power, undoubtedly carrying on secret counter-⁠revolutionary activity among the farmers, as could be seen in the farm's work: especially on religious feasts people go to church and the work is spoiled; he could not point out facts exactly, as he acted very secretly; he should long ago have been removed from the village, so that the farm's work could go normally. On 4 October the investigator interrogated him. He denied that he had carried on anti-⁠Soviet agitation after returning from exile, that he had spoken of the elections to the Supreme Soviet, that he had threatened the collective farmers or that he had agitated against the defence loan. He said that this opinion had arisen with the chairman of the council because once he stopped to speak with a villager, but he had said nothing to him about the loan.

On 15 October an NKVD troika condemned him to death. The priest Jacob Bobyrev was shot two days later, on 17 October 1937.

He is commemorated on 17 October, on 7 February, in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, and on 18 July, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Tver (new style, the last two being movable days).