John Zabolotny

Holy Venerable Martyr John Zabolotny, a hieromonk, in the world Ivan Vasilievich Zabolotny, was born in 1899 in the village of Klinovoe in the Balta district of the Podolia province (today the Golovanevsk district, Kirovograd region, Ukraine), in a peasant family. In 1918 he was called into the Red Army, but hid from military service. At the end of 1919 he was arrested for desertion and later imprisoned in a forced labour camp near Odessa. After his release, in 1922, he entered the Uman monastery, where he received monastic tonsure and stayed until the monastery was closed. In 1927 he was ordained priest and served in various churches of Ukraine, and from 1935 in churches of the Zaraisk district, Moscow region.

On 16 November 1937 he was arrested at Streletskaya Sloboda, Zaraisk district, on a charge of "active counterrevolutionary activity and the expression of terrorist moods against the Communists". He was held in the prison of Kolomna and did not admit guilt. On 27 November 1937 the special troika attached to the NKVD Directorate for the Moscow region sentenced him to death. He was shot on 3 December at the Butovo firing range near Moscow and buried in an unknown common grave. The name of the hieromonk John Zabolotny was entered in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia by a decision of the Holy Synod of 26 December 2001.

The Church commemorates him on 3 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).