John Lomakin

Holy Martyr John Lomakin, a peasant, in the world Ivan Vasilievich Lomakin, was born in 1884 in the village of Staroe Chetovo in the Spassk district of the Tambov province (now the Torbeevo district of Mordovia), in a peasant family. His parents were strong peasants, with a house, a plot of land, one or two horses, one or two cows, some sheep and a mill of their own. In the hard time of collectivization Ivan Vasilievich did not break the order of the family and went on with his farm as an individual peasant. Seeing the failures of the first collective farmers, he said that the land needs a true master, who puts his soul into it and does everything with diligence, and that the collective farmers had not yet sorted out who is responsible for what. He was a deeply believing man, never refused travellers to rest in his house, went often to church and on feasts invited the priest to his home. The family was large, of eight people.

In 1937 he was arrested and accused of being "a participant in a religious counterrevolutionary organization, on whose assignment he carried on anti-⁠collective-⁠farm agitation, spread rumours of war, of the overthrow of Soviet power and the restoration of the monarchy." He did not admit guilt and did not cast the false charge on others. On 5 August 1937 the NKVD troika of the Mordovian ASSR sentenced him to the supreme penalty, and on 10 August the sentence was carried out by shooting. The martyr John was glorified among the saints at the jubilee Council of Bishops of the Russian Church in August 2000.

The Church commemorates him on 10 August, the day of his death, in the new style, and on the movable day of the synaxis of the new martyrs.