John Kastorsky

Holy Hieromartyr John Kastorsky, a deacon, was born in 1848 in the village of Nikolo-⁠Berezovets in the Soligalich district, in the family of the deacon Alexei Kastorsky. After the theological school in Soligalich he was a watchman and reader at the cathedral of Soligalich, then psalmist at the Theodorovsky monastery of the Mother of God. In 1880 he was ordained deacon. He was shot on 22 February (7 March) 1918, together with Protopresbyter Joseph Smirnov, the priest Vladimir Ilyinsky and John Perebaskin.

The Azbyka page tells their passion as follows. The Bolsheviks had taken power in Soligalich, Kostroma province, through a coup made by Vasily Vyluzgin in the night of 5 (18) December 1917. After the decree of 23 January 1918 on the separation of the Church from the state, protest processions were held throughout the country. On 11 (24) February there was one in Soligalich too, in which took part Protopresbyter Joseph Smirnov, the priest Vladimir Ilyinsky, the deacon John Kastorsky and John Perebaskin, superintendent of the town's theological school. On 12 (25) February representatives of the Bolshevik Soviet came to the Theodorovsky convent in Ratkovo, two versts from the town, and said that the next day they would come to take the bread. The priest of the convent, Vasily Ilyinsky, went to the city Duma and asked for help. The next day several hundred of the faithful gathered at the convent. After the liturgy the priest Dimitri Potekhin preached, and at the assembly in the refectory it was decided to send a delegation to the garrison. A crowd of some six hundred people set out toward the Soviet building. The delegates demanded the stopping of the requisition of bread and the disarming of the Red Guard. The Soviet agreed to stop the requisition but refused disarmament. Vyluzgin came out, ordered the crowd to disperse and fired into the air, and someone shouted "Fire". From the building shots were fired in disorder, several were wounded, and Pavel Vasilievich Orlov was killed. Vyluzgin was beaten by the crowd and lightly wounded in the head, and at midnight, in the hospital, was stabbed with a bayonet by a group of armed men.

After a week a punitive detachment of three hundred and fifty Red Guards arrived from Kostroma, led by the commissar Zhurba. Fifty-⁠two people were arrested at once, ninety-⁠five in all. The investigation was lightning-⁠quick, without any real inquiry into the circumstances. When the detachment came to the convent to arrest the nuns and the priest, the priest Vladimir Ilyinsky, father of the priest Vasily, aged eighty-⁠five and retired, came out instead of his son and was arrested. On 22 February (7 March) there were shot, among others, Protopresbyter Joseph Smirnov, the priest Vladimir Ilyinsky, the deacon John Kastorsky and John Perebaskin. Joseph Smirnov, born in 1864, finished the Kostroma Seminary, was a teacher at the school in Soligalich, was ordained priest in 1886 at the cathedral of the Nativity of the Mother of God, was confessor of the town prison, rector of the cathedral from 1905 and protopresbyter from 1907. Vladimir Ilyinsky, born in 1833, served in the village of Solda and lived in Soligalich in retirement. Perebaskin, born in 1862, graduated from the Kostroma Seminary and the Saint Petersburg Academy, was superintendent of the school from 1897 and taught church singing, history, geography and Greek.

The shooting was done at night. Those killed were thrown in a heap into a pit, and the bodies were not given to the relatives. On the place of the common grave a cross and fence were set up, torn down in the 1930s and restored in 1996.

The Church commemorates Saint John on 5 February, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Kostroma, on 7 March (a movable day) and on the movable day of the synaxis of the new martyrs, in the new style.