John Derzhavin

Holy Hieromartyr John Derzhavin, a protopresbyter, was born on 25 May 1878 in the village of Anufrievo, Nikolskaya volost, Ruza district, Moscow province, in the family of the psalmist Nikolai Derzhavin. In 1894 he finished the theological school at Kolomna, and in 1901 the Moscow Seminary, and was appointed teacher at the church school at the church of the Nativity of the Mother of God in Vikhorevo, then from 1902 to 1904 teacher and catechist at the school in Gorshkovo. He married Pelagia Petrovna, with whom he had nine children.

On 7 August 1904 Bishop Tryphon (Turkestanov) ordained him priest for the church of Saint Nicholas in the village of Milet, and he was catechist at the zemstvo school. In 1911 he received the leg-⁠guard. The dean's report noted that "by his gentle and kind nature he enjoys the respect and love of his parishioners". The church in Milet had been built on the estate of the princes Golitsyn and Ukhtomsky, a parish church appearing only at the beginning of the twentieth century. The parish was small, and with the persecution and the weakening of faith it was left almost empty. The father and his family lived in want, selling all they could, but he did not leave the parish.

In 1929 the persecution grew fiercer, and in December false witnesses testified that he had preached that Soviet power is godless and forces religion, that one must fight the unbelievers, and that he no longer gave sermons since he would be imprisoned. On the strength of this, the OGPU arrested him on 3 February 1930 and imprisoned him in Butyrka. The next day he said that he had carried on no anti-⁠Soviet agitation and that his sermons had been purely religious in character. On 22 March 1930 the OGPU troika sentenced him to three years of exile in the Northern Region, and it was recommended that any petition to ease the sentence be refused.

After the exile he served in the village of Ilinskoe-⁠Yarygino, Sychevka district, Smolensk region, on 12 February 1935 at Novo-⁠Alexandrovka, Shakhovskaya district, and on 5 March 1937 at the church of the Holy Trinity in Kamenka, Noginsk district, living with his family at Milet. For his blameless service he was raised to the rank of protopresbyter and received a cross with ornaments. On 29 November 1937 he was arrested and imprisoned at Noginsk. It was reported on him that he said that the faithful forget God and go little to church, that Soviet power persecutes the faith and puts innocent people in prison, and that he cried out in the church yard: "Orthodox, come to your senses, you have forgotten the faith and God, you listen too much to these antichrist Communists, it is time you used your minds." He was charged with active counterrevolutionary activity, but Father John did not admit guilt. The investigator asked whether he had frightened the faithful in the church yard, and he answered that he never frightened them in order to draw them to church or to stir discontent with Soviet power. On 3 December 1937 the NKVD troika sentenced him to death. Protopresbyter John Derzhavin was shot on 15 December 1937 and buried in an unknown grave.

The Church commemorates him on 15 December, in the new style, and on the movable days of the synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo and of the Saints of Moscow.