John Smirnov

Holy Hieromartyr John Smirnov, a protopresbyter of Moscow, was born on 25 January 1879 in the village of Lopasnya in the Serpukhov district of the Moscow province, in the family of the priest Michael Smirnov, who died before his son was born. His mother, to feed the family, went to Moscow, to her brother, a priest, who helped her settle as a prosphora baker at the church of Saint Elijah on Vorontsovo Field; she also sewed at home.

After finishing the Moscow Theological Seminary in 1899, Ivan Mikhailovich was ordained deacon in 1901 and served at the house church of the Ascension on Bolshaya Serpukhovskaya Street, being at the same time teacher of religion in several city girls' schools. In 1907 he entered the Moscow Theological Academy, which he finished in 1911, and in the same year was ordained priest. Between 1914 and 1918 he held the chair of Slavic studies at the Academy. He received the degree of master of theology in 1918 for the work "The Sinai Paterikon in Old Slavonic Translation". While working on his thesis he made several discoveries in church history and received the Makarios prize. After the closing of the Academy, in 1919, he served until 1923 at Buturlinovka, in the Voronezh province.

From 1923 to 1932 he served at the church of the Holy Spirit at the Lazarev cemetery in Moscow, and from 1925 was its rector. On one Sunday in 1932 the church was suddenly surrounded by the militia, and the rector learned that it was being closed and its property confiscated. From 1932 to 1935 he served at the Tikhvin church in Sushchevo, from which on 25 March 1935 he was moved to the Trinity church at the Pyatnitskoe cemetery. On 30 December 1935 he was appointed to the church of the Sign near the Krestovskaya Gate, where he served until his arrest on 22 November 1937.

On the day of the arrest he was interrogated. Asked about arrested priests, he said that he knew Boris Pavlovich Ivanovsky, a former fellow servant at the Pyatnitskoe cemetery, now arrested, with whom he had kept in touch. He denied any connection with foreign countries and any counterrevolutionary group. On 7 December 1937 the NKVD troika sentenced him to death. On 10 December 1937, on the feast day of the church of the Sign where he served, he was shot at the Butovo firing range near Moscow and buried in an unknown common grave.

The Church commemorates him on 10 December, the day of his death, in the new style, and on the movable days of the synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo (29 May) and of the Saints of Moscow (5 September).