John Piramidin

Holy Hieromartyr John Piramidin, a priest, in the world Ivan Petrovich Piramidin, was born in 1877 in the village of Ivanisovo in the Pereslavl district of the Vladimir province, in a priest's family. Following the family tradition, he finished the Theological Seminary. In 1904 he was ordained priest for the church in the village of Gruzdevo, in the Yuzha district, Ivanovo industrial region. On 21 October 1930 he was arrested. In the indictment it was written that, "being a priest in Gruzdevo, by systematic anti-⁠Soviet talk, by agitation among the peasants, he succeeded in frustrating the campaigns and measures of Soviet power in the district". In May 1930, speaking with a group of peasants in the church watchman's lodge, he was said to have thanked them for not joining the collective farm and called them to refuse in future. Going round the houses with molebens on the day of the Protection, on 14 to 18 October, he was said to have told the peasants that Soviet power robs them with taxes and levies. At the same time, besides the Soviet campaigns, he was said to have carried on his own campaigns of collecting money for the church, and at the general meeting of 14 October to have threatened that if they did not pay the church tax, the church would be closed.

In the only protocol of interrogation, of a few lines, Father John wrote: "I do not admit guilt of the charge brought against me. I spoke with the peasants in the lodge, but said nothing against the authorities. I did not manage to hand in the silver." On 27 November 1930 he was sentenced to three years in a corrective labour camp, with confiscation of property. He was arrested again on 21 March 1937 and, for "counterrevolutionary activity", sentenced to five years of exile in Kazakhstan, where he came among the exiled priests at the mine in the settlement of Maiskoe. Like his brothers in the priesthood, he was arrested on 25 November 1937 in the file of "Archimandrite Gregory (Rebeza) and others". On 1 December came the decision of the NKVD troika: for counterrevolutionary activity, shooting. The priest John Piramidin received the death of martyrdom at two o'clock in the night, on 2 December 1937. The place of his burial is not known.

The Church commemorates him on 2 December, the day of his death, in the new style, on 6 July in the Synaxis of the Saints of Vladimir, and on the movable day of the synaxis of the new martyrs.