John Karabanov

Holy Hieromartyr John Karabanov, a priest, was born in 1885 in the village of Gerasimovo, Shablykin volost, Karachev district, Oryol province, in the family of the peasant Fyodor Karabanov. In 1905 he graduated from the teachers' seminary in Karachev and was a teacher and head of a school in the village of Znamenskoe, Bolkhov district. In 1915 he was mobilized and served in the 203rd Infantry Regiment. On 1 January 1916 he was sent to the Alexandrovsky military school, and after graduation, on 1 May 1916, was appointed platoon commander, then company commander at the front, near Dvinsk. Demobilized in 1917, he returned home and was a teacher. In 1918 he was sent to courses at Oryol for the training of teachers of higher primary schools. In 1919 he was called into the Red Army, where he was a platoon and company commander in the 2nd engineer labour battalion at Oryol, Nikolaev and Ochakov. In 1921 he was demobilized and returned to teaching. In 1922 he was ordained priest for the church in the village of Gnezdilovo, and after a time was sent to the church in Khotkovo, Shablykin district.

At the end of the 1920s and the beginning of the 1930s the authorities decided to close churches, on the pretext that they hindered the setting up of collective farms. The OGPU wrote that the priest Karabanov and the kulaks had made a group around them, gathered in the priest's lodging, criticized the measures of Soviet power and decided on actions against them, which was said to be systematic counterrevolutionary activity. On 6 January 1932 the OGPU arrested Father John and the members of the church council. Interrogated the next day, he answered that in all his life under Soviet power, as a teacher and as a commander in the Red Army, he had defended the interests of the proletariat in the wars of 1919 to 1921 against Denikin and Wrangel, and that now he served the people and its welfare. He said that he had explained to the people the advantages of collectivization, but that the people, not seeing well-⁠organized collective farms, did not decide in mass to join. On 21 January the second and last interrogation took place, at which he admitted guilt only in part: sometimes, in the watchman's lodge, which was also his dwelling, they met to discuss the repair of the church, the church tax, and sometimes political questions, for example the setting up of collective farms. When the faithful asked him about joining the collective farm, he answered: "You must join." He denied any anti-⁠Soviet talk.

On 28 February 1932 the OGPU troika sentenced him to eight years in a concentration camp. He was sent to the Temnikov labour camp in Mordovia. In 1937 new cases were opened against the clergy held in detention. On 25 August, in the settlement of Yavas, where the third section of the Temnikov camps was, NKVD officers drew up, on the basis of false testimony, a certificate on Father John, who was not called to interrogation but was told only before the execution what sentence he had received. On 30 August the NKVD troika sentenced him to death. The priest John Karabanov was shot on 5 September 1937 and buried in an unknown common grave.

The Church commemorates him on 5 September, the day of his death, in the new style, on 8 September in the Synaxis of the Saints of Oryol, and on the movable day of the synaxis of the new martyrs.