John Parusnikov

Holy Hieromartyr John Parusnikov, a protopresbyter, was born on 2 June 1869 in the village of Zakharovo in the Klin district of the Moscow province, in the family of the deacon Vasily Parusnikov. In 1890 he graduated from the Moscow Seminary and was a teacher in church schools. On 2 March 1892 he was ordained priest and served in various parishes of the Moscow diocese until the day of his arrest. In 1916 he received the pectoral cross, in 1920 he was raised to the rank of protopresbyter, in 1924 he received a pectoral cross with ornaments, and in 1931 a mitre.

In 1934 he was appointed rector of the Dormition church in the village of Uspenskoe, Noginsk district. The church had been built in 1756 and in the course of a hundred and fifty years, through the care of the parishioners, had been richly adorned and had a rich sacristy. In January 1930 it had been closed and turned into a club, and the sacristy plundered. In July 1930 the authorities gave it back to the Orthodox community; much that had been in it had vanished, but for the service all that was needed was found. After a time Father John was moved to the church of the Nativity of the Mother of God in the village of Nesterovo, Orekhovo-⁠Zuevo district, where here too he found that the authorities used every occasion for persecution. From the church in Nesterovo thieves had stolen the covers of the icons and the pyx. Since everything in the church, including the objects of worship, belonged to the state under Soviet law, the authorities demanded of the priest, under threat of prosecution, that he return to the state the value of the stolen objects, and the community, having no money, had to ask for a delay.

In October 1937 the NKVD questioned the witnesses on duty, the chairman of the Nesterovo collective farm and a local Komsomol member, who signed the statements required. On 10 February 1938 Father John was arrested and imprisoned at Taganka in Moscow. He denied that he had carried on anti-⁠Soviet agitation among the collective farmers; he did not deny that, gathering in the street and other places, the farmers expressed discontent with Soviet power and that sometimes, when someone drove him somewhere with a horse, he expressed discontent. He said that such cases had been also at memorial meals. He denied the agitation of 19 October 1937 and the words about a coming war.

On 17 February 1938 the investigation was closed, and on 19 February the NKVD troika sentenced him to death. Protopresbyter John Parusnikov was shot on 7 March 1938 and buried in an unknown common grave at the Butovo firing range near Moscow.

The Church commemorates him on 7 March, the day of his death, in the new style, and on the movable days of the synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo and of the Saints of Moscow.