Jacob Leonovich

Holy Hieromartyr Jacob Leonovich (1876-1937), a priest of Smolensk province, served in the church of the village of Egorye (today Tver region). He was persecuted several times: at the beginning of the thirties he was sentenced to two years in a camp on the absurd charge of concealing small change (small coins). In September 1937 he was arrested again, on the charge of counter-⁠revolutionary activity. An NKVD troika condemned him to death and he was executed on 28 September 1937 at Smolensk. He was glorified in the year 2000.

By 1936 the leaders of the Soviet state had understood that after eighteen years of persecution and terror against the whole population, only the Russian Church still stood against godlessness, having preserved about twenty-⁠five thousand churches, thousands of ascetic priests and hundreds of thousands of ascetic lay Orthodox, who in no circumstances would renounce the faith. The persecutions, confiscation of property, impossible taxes, hunger, arrests, exiles and camps with forced labour could not break their will, but strengthened them in the faith. They could be dealt with only by killing them. In 1937 the Soviet government proceeded to destroy all real and supposed adversaries.

On 15 August 1937 the NKVD arrested the psalmist in the village of Egoryev, Bely district, who agreed to confirm the testimonies imposed on him by the investigator about the priest Jacob Leonovich, the church warden and the chairman of the audit commission in the parish council. On 3 September the priest, the church warden George Grigorievich Kozlov and the church watchman Evdokim Nilovich Ivanov were arrested. None of those arrested admitted guilt, and some even strove to show the investigation the absurdity of the charges. The chairman of the audit commission, Peter Nikiforovich Kozlov, had always been poor. Left an orphan, from the age of nine he had lived with various rich people, knowing hunger and cold. At eighteen, in 1918, he had enlisted as a volunteer in the Red Army, in which he remained until 1922. Then he married a widow with four children; in their short life together they had more children. In 1934 his wife died and Peter was left alone with small children. Despite his service in the Red Army and the fact that he was among the first to join the collective farm of his own will, he remained a deeply believing man, and for that he was arrested.

Saint Jacob was born on 23 October 1876 in the village of Neelovo, Safonovo district, Smolensk province, in the family of the altar server Timothy Leonovich. He studied at the theological seminary, was ordained priest and served in the church of the village of Nikolo-⁠Kremyanoe, Safonovo district. In the persecution of the early thirties he and his wife, Anna Ivanovna, were arrested because, receiving small silver and copper coins from the peasants for the services performed, they did not hand them over to the state and thus, as the indictment said, contributed to the shortage of small change, hindering the economic development of the Soviet state. The priest was sentenced to two years in labour camps, and his wife, taking account of her advanced age (sixty), to one year suspended with a probation of three years. After release Father Jacob began to serve in the church of the village of Egorye, Bely district, Western region (today Tver region). In autumn 1937 he was arrested again and imprisoned in the Smolensk jail. On 10 September the investigator interrogated him. Asked about counter-⁠revolutionary activity among the people, he answered that he had done no such thing. Asked whether at the meeting of the members of the church council he had carried on counter-⁠revolutionary activity, he answered that he had never done so among those people and had not read them newspapers. Asked whether among the believers of his parish and the surrounding population he had agitated, speaking of the fall of Soviet power, of hunger in the country, of the dissolving of the collective farms, he answered that he had said nothing of the kind to anyone. Asked about the forcible closing of churches and the destruction of religion through large taxes on the Church and clergy, he answered that he had never said this.

Ten days after the interrogation the NKVD troika condemned the priest and the psalmist to death; the warden and the watchman were sentenced to eight years, and the chairman of the audit commission to ten years in the camps. The priest Jacob Leonovich was shot on 28 September 1937, at four in the afternoon. He was numbered among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia at the Jubilee Council of Bishops in August 2000.

He is commemorated on 28 September, on 7 February, in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, on 8 August, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Smolensk, and on 8 December, in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Smolensk Land (new style, the second and third being movable days).