John Vasilyev

Holy Hieromartyr John Vasilyev, a protopresbyter, in the world Ivan Ivanovich Vasilyev, was born on 18 June 1876 in the hamlet of Malaya Kiselenka in the Novotorzhok district of the Tver province, in a pious peasant family. The father wished to prepare him not for earthly labour but for the service of God, and, although in those days it was hard for peasant children to enter a theological school, he sent him to the Tver Seminary, which Ivan finished in 1898. In 1901 he was ordained priest for the church in the village of Osipovo and later was raised to the rank of protopresbyter. There he lived until 1928, when he was moved, to strengthen the parish, to the church in Talozhnya.

The parish of Talozhnya

The spiritual life of Talozhnya had fallen into neglect through the carelessness of the former priest. Father John at once set in order frequent services, not only in the church but also the prayer services in the houses of the parishioners. At each service he gave a sermon urging moral perfection and spiritual renewal, explaining the word of God so that it could be understood by anyone. He called them to frequent prayer and taught them to see in all that happens the work of God's providence. The church filled with the faithful, and the godless authorities, seeing the awakening, began to take measures. In 1929 the only Communist of the place demanded at the village assembly that the keeping of the feasts of Saint Elijah and of the Transfiguration be abolished; the churchwarden Anthony Kuzmin and the peasants Boikov and Skachkov opposed it, but the decision was recorded as if the majority had wished the abolition. The faithful decided the next day to continue to keep the feasts, and the priest paid no heed to the prohibition.

In 1930 the authorities tried to close the church on the ground that it was little attended, but the parishioners gathered many signatures and defended it. Loving him, they took upon themselves the care of the church and of the priest with his wife Elizabeth, bringing firewood and paying the taxes on time. In December 1930 the authorities laid on the building a tax which neither the priest nor the faithful could have paid, especially since the twenty members were only poor people, and forbade the collection of money and signatures. After the service, Father John announced that the tax was demanded, otherwise the church would be closed. The churchwarden Anthony Kuzmin said that the church would gladly pay, but that there was not so much money in the box. Then a collection began at once: the first to give five rubles was the poorest of the parishioners, Maria Feodorovna from Shevkovo, and in half an hour all had gathered the sum.

Arrest and exile

In 1931 the persecution grew harsher. At dawn on 11 March 1931 Father John of Talozhnya and five of the most active peasants were arrested. The OGPU interrogated them only at the end of April. The father answered: "I recognize Soviet power and fulfil all its demands," said that he had met Kuzmin only on matters of the service, that he had gathered no protest signatures, and that in his sermons he had touched only religious and moral questions. The churchwarden Anthony Kuzmin and the peasants Simeon Turbansky and Hilarion Yakovlev also did not admit guilt. On 18 July 1931 the OGPU troika sentenced Father John and Anthony Kuzmin to five years of exile in Kazakhstan, and Simeon Turbansky and Hilarion Yakovlev to three years. Kuzmin was then sixty-⁠five, and the page judges that he hardly survived the journey and the exile.

Father John spent the exile day for day and returned to the Tver diocese in the middle of 1936. Knowing well why he had received these sufferings, like many martyrs of the first centuries he bore the troubles with joy. Back home, he received a blessing to serve at the church in Yakonovo and served for almost a year. On 5 August 1937 the chairman of the Yakonovo village soviet wrote, at the request of the NKVD, a petition for "measures of influence" against him, as one who had carried on agitation. The same day the priest was arrested and imprisoned at Tver. False testimony was given only by representatives of the local authorities, the chairman of the soviet and the brigade leader of the collective farm; none of the peasants consented to accuse the priest.

Martyrdom

On 13 August, after torment by hunger and sleeplessness, he was interrogated. He denied having carried on counterrevolutionary agitation among the collective farmers and having spoken in July in the village of Malinovo against the loan and spread rumours about war. On 10 September the investigation closed, and on 29 September the NKVD troika sentenced him to death. Protopresbyter John Vasilyev was shot on 1 October 1937. The Council of Bishops of August 2000 numbered him among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, for veneration throughout the Church.

The Church commemorates him on 1 October, the day of his death, in the new style, on 18 July in the Synaxis of the Saints of Tver, and on the movable day of the synaxis of the new martyrs.