John Rybin

Holy Hieromartyr John Rybin, a priest, in the world John Yefimovich Rybin, was born in 1877 in the village of Zhuravlino in the Samara province, in a peasant family. He served as psalmist and singer, and in 1924 was ordained deacon, and a year later priest, and served in churches of the Samara region. In 1929 he was arrested and sentenced to exile with confiscation of property. In exile, in the Karaganda region, he served at the church of the village of Tavolzhanskoe. In 1931 he was sentenced to another five years of exile, but continued to serve in the Tavolzhanskoe parish until 1933, when a new sentence came: three years of loss of freedom for "non-⁠delivery of grain and meat and failure to fulfil the obligations to the state to deliver potatoes". From the prison in Akmolinsk he was released because of his health. Father John returned to Tavolzhanskoe, where he went on serving and shepherding his flock.

In 1937 he was arrested on a charge of anti-⁠Soviet agitation. In the file it is said that he "began to organize illegal services in the houses of collective farmers and at his own. He called the collective farmers to keep the religious rites and feasts. He gathered prayer meetings at his house." Holy Hieromartyr John Rybin was sentenced to death under article 58-10 and shot on 19 October 1937.

The Church commemorates him on 19 October, the day of his death, in the new style, and on the movable day of the synaxis of the new martyrs.