John Glazkov

Holy Hieromartyr John Glazkov, a priest, in the world Ivan Ivanovich Glazkov, was born in the city of Nizhny Tagil, in the Perm province, in a worker's family. As a priest he served in the village of Kolyushevo, in the Sarapul district of the Udmurt ASSR, until 20 March 1934, the day of his arrest. He was sentenced to five years' loss of freedom and sent with the Sverdlovsk convoy to Karlag in Kazakhstan. On 18 November 1937 he was arrested again in his place of exile and accused of having "in the Samara section of Karlag, among the prisoners, carried on anti-⁠Soviet agitation against the authorities and the Communist party, agitated for refusal to go to work, and said in conversations that the Renovationist priests had betrayed the Christian faith."

Father John declared: "I do not admit guilt of the charge brought against me. I have said and say that Soviet power isolates innocent people in camps, and that we priests are tried because we believe in God. I was isolated in a camp not for agitation against Soviet power, but because I am a believer, and I have said that I suffer for the faith of Christ. As for the fact that in the Soviet Union those who believe in God are persecuted, I have already said it about myself, and this speaks for everything: that I was condemned because I am a believer. The same lot awaits all believers, not I alone... I carried on no agitation for refusal to go out to work and I do not admit guilt in this."

On 8 December 1937 the NKVD troika sentenced him to the supreme penalty, and on 10 December he was shot. The Church commemorates him on 10 December, the day of his death, in the new style, and on the movable days of the synaxis of the new martyrs and of the Saints of Udmurtia.