John Milyoshkin

Holy Martyr John Milyoshkin, a peasant, in the world Ivan Vasilievich Milyoshkin, was born in 1902 in the village of Salazgor in the Spassk district of the Tambov province (now the Torbeevo district of Mordovia), in a peasant family. Between 1924 and 1926 he was a private in the Red Army, and in 1927 he returned to his native parts and took up farming. Moved to the village of Moksha in the Torbeevo district of the Mordovian ASSR, he joined the collective farm and was even elected its chairman.

He was first arrested in 1932, on a charge of "negligent attitude to duties", and received a month of corrective labour. His unsuccessful attempts to learn to live in the new conditions brought him close to the local priests. He began to "wander" through the villages of the Torbeevo, Temnikov and Kovylkino districts, learning himself and teaching others the faith of Christ. In those times this could not last long: the second arrest took place in 1937. The charge said: "participant in a religious counterrevolutionary organization, played the role of liaison between the leaders and the members of the group, led illegal gatherings and recruited new members." If "negligent attitude to service" had been forgivable to the Bolsheviks and the punishment almost conditional, everything connected with the Church and with religiousness was then pursued without mercy and without justice. On 5 August 1937 the NKVD troika of the Mordovian ASSR sentenced Ivan Vasilievich Milyoshkin to the supreme penalty, and on 10 August he was shot.

At the jubilee Council of Bishops of the Russian Church in the year 2000, the martyr John Milyoshkin was numbered among the saints. 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.