John Kalabukhov

Holy Hieromartyr John Kalabukhov, a priest, in the world Ivan Lukich Kalabukhov, was born on 13 November 1873 in the village of Tolbino, Khatun volost, Serpukhov district, Moscow province. From 1900 he worked as a shop assistant at the firm of Filippov, which baked and sold bread and baked goods. In the revolution of 1905 he took part in the revolutionary movement, as a member of the Bakers' Union, then led by the Socialist Revolutionary party. In 1908 he went to Arkhangelsk, where he worked a year as a weigher on the railway, then as a shop assistant for a private baker. The Lord sobered him: he saw the falseness of godless revolutionary ideals and understood that the only way of salvation for man is the service of God, and that the good of the people lies in religious enlightenment. He entered a church as psalmist. In 1915 he prepared for the Arkhangelsk Seminary, which because of the revolution he had to finish as an external student.

In April 1917 he was ordained priest for the church in the village of Vaimuga, and in 1920 sent to the church in the village of Smotrakovskoe, in the Shenkursk district, where units of the White Army then held sway. After their departure he was arrested for an anti-⁠Soviet sermon preached in the church and sentenced to three months in prison. Returned, he went on serving. Around 1924 he met the priest George Belyaev, exiled from the Moscow province and living in the neighbouring village of Bogolyubskoe, who suffered much that the parish of Protopopovo, beloved by him and founded by his labour, had been left without a priest. Seeing in Father John a worthy pastor, he gave him a letter of recommendation to go to Protopopovo. When he arrived in 1925, the parish assembly heard the letter and approved him unanimously, and the bishop blessed him to serve there.

The church of the Holy Trinity in Protopopovo, beautiful, in the old Russian style, had been built at the end of the 1870s through the zeal of the parishioners. The initiator, donor and trustee of the building had been the merchant Andrei Pavlovich Saltykov, who owned steamships and barges on the Oka. His close helper in church matters was his son-⁠in-⁠law Ivan Leontievich Letnikov, who remained the church warden without interruption until his arrest in 1929. Before Father John's arrival, fifty kopeks were collected voluntarily from each house for the church; he proposed three roubles, and the parishioners agreed gladly. The money went for repairs and heating. The local authorities, learning of it, forbade the collection, accusing the priest of extortion, but the villagers took no notice of the decision of the village council and gathered money themselves.

The case at Kolomna

On 20 September 1929 Olga Makeeva of Protopopovo died in hospital, whose daughter Claudia, who had joined the Communist party in 1927, wanted to give her a civil funeral with an orchestra. The relatives, believing people, prepared the church service, removed the portrait of Lenin set in the place of the icons, and the village women read the Psalter over the dead. The village chairman gave written permission for the service, at the relatives' request. On the day of the burial, when Father John came, Claudia shouted at him, but the relatives took her into another room and held her there until the coffin was carried out. For this Father John was arrested on 26 September 1929 and imprisoned at Kolomna. At the investigation he said that after the February Revolution he had felt no sympathy for Soviet power, because churches were entered without decorum, with caps on, smoking and even dancing, but that later he regarded it, like any power, as given by God. Asked whether he admitted guilt of consciously stirring the religious feelings of the relatives to prevent Claudia from holding a civil funeral, he answered no, and that he had been misled by the written permission of the village council.

The chairman of the village council testified that the village is distinguished by an unusual religiousness, though ninety percent of the inhabitants work at the plant in Kolomna, and that the priest Kalabukhov is always held in honour. Parishioners who were questioned said that the priest never spoke in his sermons against Soviet power, but always called the faithful not to abandon the faith, to live in peace and love. A teacher said that the priest had great influence on the children, many of whom served in the altar. On 1 and 2 October 1929 the church council met and decided to ask for the pastor's release, but some members of the council were arrested, among them the warden Ivan Leontievich Letnikov. On 23 December 1929 the Special Council of the OGPU sentenced him to three years in a camp, and he was sent to Kotlas.

The last years

In 1932 the father returned to Protopopovo, but was not allowed to live there, and the bishop blessed him to serve at the church of Saint Elias in the village of Ozeritsy, in the Lukhovitsy district. He was arrested on 16 February 1938, imprisoned at Kolomna and interrogated the same day. Asked about a moleben on 11 December 1937, he answered that it was a Saturday and there had been no service. About going round the houses with molebens, he said that the permission of the village council was needed, which he had not received in 1936, and since then he had not asked. About the sermon "Christ is risen" found with him, he said it is the Paschal catechetical homily of Saint John Chrysostom, left by his predecessor. He said that he had carried on no agitation and was loyal toward Soviet power. On 21 February 1938 the NKVD troika sentenced him to death, and he was taken to Taganka. The priest John Kalabukhov was shot on 26 February 1938 and buried in an unknown common grave at Butovo. The page commemorates him together with the confessor John Letnikov.

The Church commemorates him on 26 February, the day of his death, in the new style, on 1 November in the Synaxis of the Saints of Arkhangelsk, and on the movable days of the synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo and of the Saints of Moscow.