John Pankov

Holy Hieromartyr John Pankov, a priest, was born in 1873 in the family of the psalmist Lev Pankov. From 1900 he was a teacher at the boys' school in the town of Livny, Oryol province. Ordained priest, from 1915 he served at the church of the Holy Trinity in the village of Ust-⁠Nugr, Krivtsovo volost, Bolkhov district, and was catechist at the primary schools of Kurasovo and Tolkachevo.

Half a verst from the church there was a water mill of the Optina hermitage. When the unbelievers seized power, the mill was requisitioned by the committee of the Krivtsovo volost, and its management was entrusted to the soldier Tikhon Kutuzov, brother of the commissar of justice of Bolkhov. Kutuzov showed from the start his attitude to the church, by his blasphemous conduct and by his persecution of the priest John Pankov. An impression arose that he might kill him, and Father John asked the peasants to defend him in case of attack. On Holy Saturday of 1918, Kutuzov, drunk and armed, visited the psalmist and the teacher, then made for the priest's house. Seeing him armed, Father John ordered the alarm bells rung. It seems that the drunken Tikhon had come before Pascha to ask forgiveness for his misdeeds.

The peasants, outraged at the seizure of the mill, went on the first day of Pascha, 22 April, to the mill to drive him out, and, if he resisted, to arrest him. Kutuzov would not leave and fired several times with his rifle into the crowd, killing two peasants and wounding a third. The enraged crowd fell on Kutuzov and killed him. On the morning of 26 April a punitive detachment of seven to ten Red soldiers arrived in the village. Father John was accused of inciting rebellion, was pierced with bayonets and shot. With him his sons were killed: the elder, Nicholas, an officer, and the younger, Peter, a second-⁠year student at the Oryol Seminary. The bodies of the priest John Pankov and of his sons Nicholas and Peter remained unburied for a week, then were buried not far from the church of Ust-⁠Nugr. The priest's property was plundered, and the Red soldiers profaned the tabernacle of the church.

The Church commemorates him on 9 May, in the new style, that is 26 April in the old style, the day of the killing, on 8 September in the Synaxis of the Saints of Oryol, and on the movable day of the synaxis of the new martyrs.