John Selmanov

Holy Martyr John Selmanov, a shoemaker, in the world Ivan Ilyich Selmanov, was born in 1900 in the village of Salazgor in the Spassk district of the Tambov province (now the Torbeevo district of Mordovia), in a peasant family. His father was engaged for a time in trade. Ivan learned shoemaking and earned his bread by it. In 1920 he was called into the Red Army. His wife, Olga Evdokimovna, was expecting their first child; the daughter Claudia was born in 1921, and the father saw her when the girl was nearly in her third year. After the civil war Ivan returned to his native village and continued his trade. In the 1920s he was deprived of the right to vote because of his origin, from a merchant family.

The first arrest came in 1931. Sentenced to ten years, he was released early because of a serious illness. He returned to Salazgor and lived there until 1937. At that time wanderers went through the villages and said that "the tsar Romanov" had remained alive and "was only hiding until the time", that "soon Soviet power will fall" and the country would be ruled by "one decent man, not like the blasphemers". The wanderers promised a good life and said: "Then the Orthodox will rise again and remember the traditions by which their ancestors lived for centuries." Such talk was wholly to Ivan Selmanov's liking. He greatly wished the churches to be opened as soon as possible and even resolved not to wait for the promised "good time" and became the initiator of the movement of the villagers for the opening of the local church. Arrest followed, and his house was searched. The accusation said that he "was a participant in a religious counterrevolutionary organization, carried on counterrevolutionary anti-⁠Soviet and anti-⁠collective-⁠farm agitation and expressed terrorist intentions toward the leaders of the party and the government". At the first interrogation Ivan said that he would not admit what he was charged with.

On 5 August 1937 the NKVD troika of the Mordovian ASSR sentenced him to death. On 10 August the sentence was carried out. At the jubilee Council of Bishops of the Russian Church in the year 2000 the martyr John Selmanov was numbered among the saints. The Church commemorates him on 10 August, the day of his death, in the new style, and on the movable day of the synaxis of the new martyrs.