John Korotkov

Holy Martyr John Korotkov, a peasant, born in 1885 in the Yaroslavl province, belongs to the few laymen of the Russian Church who, in an unbelieving state, became confessors of the truth of Christ and bore witness to their faith even to death. John Petrovich was born in a peasant family. He did not join the collective farm and kept an individual farm. The Korotkov family, large, with six children, was in 1935 laid under an impossible tax, and for non-⁠payment all the livestock and property of the farm were taken, leaving the family without means of livelihood.

In the summer of 1936 he found work as a labourer at the hospital in Masalsk, but after a few months he was dismissed for preaching the Christian faith. He knew Holy Scripture well and, with strength of spirit, gathered around him believing people, drawing them by his fervent preaching of faithfulness to Christ. In 1937 he was arrested and sentenced to ten years in corrective labour camps. On 30 September 1941 the martyr John Korotkov died in Kargopollag, in the Arkhangelsk region, of a crushed skull.

The Church commemorates him on 30 September, the day of his death, in the new style, on 5 June in the Synaxis of the Saints of Rostov and Yaroslavl, on 1 November in the Synaxis of the Saints of Arkhangelsk, and on the movable day of the synaxis of the new martyrs.