John Emelyanov

Holy Martyr John Emelyanov, a layman, was born in 1876 in the village of Rykovo in the Pereslavl district of the Vladimir province, in the family of the peasant Arseny Emelyanov. He finished the village school, moved to Moscow and worked as a clerk in an institution. He lived on Donskaya Street, in a flat where Alexei Petrovich Gavrin later came to live; like him, Ivan Arsenievich was a parishioner of the church of the Deposition of the Robe on Donskaya Street. In the flat there lived with him his brother and his sister. All were of one Christian spirit, and their life became like that of a monastic community, especially after the persecution began, when the monasteries were destroyed and monks settled in flats and private houses. In Ivan Emelyanov's room Alexei Gavrin was tonsured a monk, which the authorities afterward held against the owner of the flat. Ten days after the arrest of the monk Alexei, on 2 November 1937, Ivan Arsenievich was arrested as well and imprisoned in Butyrka.

At the interrogation he said that many came to Gavrin: the priest Alexander Khotovitsky and others from the nearby villages, to seek advice and medical help, since he had been a veterinary assistant and healed both people and cattle. Asked whether Gavrin carried on anti-⁠Soviet work with those who visited him, he answered "NO", signing in large letters. He admitted that he had been present at Gavrin's talks, mostly on religious subjects, and that he honoured the departed Athonite monk Aristocles, to whose grave he had gone several times with Gavrin, who glorified him as a holy elder. Of Soviet power he said that his attitude was loyal, but confessed that in his conviction it is the power of the antichrist, sent to the people as a punishment. On the idea of overthrowing authority by violence, he said that, being a believer, he considered all people brothers and that he was against all violence, supporting a peaceful reshaping of society.

On 21 November the investigation was closed. He was accused of being "an active participant in a counterrevolutionary church-⁠monarchist group, of having glorified for counterrevolutionary purposes the grave of the hieromonk Aristocles, of having organized pilgrimages to it and of having placed his flat at the disposal of secret monastic tonsures". On 23 November the NKVD troika sentenced him to death. Ivan Arsenievich Emelyanov was shot on 10 December 1937 and buried in an unknown common grave at the Butovo firing range near Moscow.

The Church commemorates him on 10 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.