John of Vladimir

Holy Hieromartyr John of Vladimir, called Vladimirsky, a priest, was born on 21 March 1877 in the village of Boronkino in the Staritsa district of the Tver province, in the family of the priest Michael Vladimirsky. He studied at the theological seminary and in 1906 was ordained priest for the church in his native village of Boronkino, where his father had served. In 1924 the authorities deprived him of electoral rights, as a priest.

In 1930 the local authorities, wishing to close the church, demanded of the priest taxes that he could not pay. Unable to pay them, he was arrested in 1931, and the district court sentenced him to five years of exile. He moved to the neighbouring region and served in a church there. At the end of the exile, in 1936, he returned to his native village, where his wife Maria Feodorovna and his son, then ten years old, had remained. After a little over a year a new persecution began, still more cruel and bloody.

On 15 November 1937 Father John was arrested. As usual "duty witnesses" were called, this time the chairman of the village soviet and the head of the reading room, who signed the documents prepared by the investigator about the priest's anti-⁠Soviet words: that he had said that before the revolution people lived better, that from the collective farm even the bread that was left is taken, and that they go hungry. They also said that the priest had been against the closing of the church.

The next day the investigator interrogated him. The priest answered: "I do not admit guilt of agitation against the party and Soviet power. I carry on no counterrevolutionary agitation and propaganda. That war will soon come, that Soviet power will fall and the collective farms be dissolved, I did not say. That before people lived better and now there is nothing, I did not say. That the collective farms were created for the ruin of the people, that the collective farmers are given sowing beyond their strength and that their bread is taken free by the state and they go hungry, I did not say anywhere and did not hear. That the elections to the Supreme Soviet were held long ago and that the preparation for them is made to calm the people, I never said." On 29 November the file was closed and sent to the NKVD troika, which on 5 December sentenced him to death. The priest John Vladimirsky was shot on 8 December 1937.

The Church commemorates him on 8 December, the day of his death, in the new style, on 18 July in the Synaxis of the Saints of Tver, and on the movable day of the synaxis of the new martyrs.