John Smolichev

Holy Hieromartyr John Smolichev, a priest, in the world Ivan Ivanovich Smolichev, was born on 27 January 1889 in the village of Knyazhichye in the Glukhov district of the Chernigov province, in a priest's family. He finished the Chernigov Theological Seminary in 1912 and spent two years at the Theological Academy in Saint Petersburg. Between 1915 and 1917 he was a medical orderly in the army, and in 1918 entered Tomsk University, where he heard courses in a few subjects. Between 1917 and 1920 he lived at Nezhin, as a clerk; in 1919 he was mobilized into Kolchak's army, as an orderly, and from the end of 1919 he worked for a year as a medical assistant in the Red Army. Between 1920 and 1924 he was a teacher at Krolevets.

In May 1924 Bishop Damascene (Tsedrik) ordained him priest for a church in Glukhov, where he served zealously for six years. In 1930 he was arrested on a charge of "counterrevolutionary activity" and sentenced to five years in a camp, which he served in Svirlag, in the Leningrad region. Freed in 1933, he continued his priestly service in the village of Malaya Suna in the Vyatka region. In 1936 he was arrested a second time, in the case of Bishop Damascene, and sentenced again to five years. On 4 November 1936 he was sent to Karaganda, to Karlag, where, as an educated man, he worked as an accountant. On 14 August 1937 he was arrested in the camp itself, in a new case of a group of priests of the same faith around Bishop Damascene.

From the indictment: together with Bishop Damascene he allegedly held services at feasts before those of their barrack, the bishop allegedly blessed him, and he wrote prayers by hand. Asked whether he knew that religion is the opium of the people, Father John answered: "I do not agree that religion is the opium of the people, but on the contrary I affirm that the idea of religion, rightly understood, certainly ennobles man." On 10 September 1937 the troika of the NKVD Directorate for the Karaganda region sentenced him to death and on 15 September he was shot. The page does not say where he was buried.

The Church commemorates him on 15 September, the day of his death, in the new style, on 21 October in the Synaxis of the Saints of Vyatka, and on the movable day of the synaxis of the new martyrs.