John Zasedatelev

Holy Hieromartyr John Zasedatelev, a priest, was born in 1867 in the village of Akatnaya Maza, Khvalynsk district, Saratov province, in a family of Old Believer peasants. The household had two horses, a cow and three sheep, the family was counted poor, and Vanya, from childhood, hired himself out to well-⁠off peasants. He finished the parish school. He married in 1883 and had three children: Nicholas (born in 1888), Tatiana (1898) and Anna (1896). By 1934 he was a widower.

Passing to Orthodoxy and ordination

In 1885, under the influence of the local priest Elpidiphor Vladykin, Ivan and his father joined the Orthodox Church. He joined the circle of Father Vladykin, formed for the struggle with the Old Believers, and later told the investigator: "I drew close to the missionaries, went with them to discussions with the Old Believers, most of all with the missionary deacon Karmanov, our aim was to turn them to Orthodoxy." Bishop Abraham (Letnitsky) of Saratov gave him leave to hold talks with Old Believers by himself. With the blessing of Bishop Nicholas (Nalimov) he passed to the Samara diocese and in 1896 was ordained priest for the Edinoverie church of the Nativity of the Mother of God in the town of Nikolaevsk (today Pugachev), where he served thirty-⁠seven years. He had neither an ordinary school nor a seminary and called himself self-⁠taught, which, according to the page, shows his zeal for learning. In 1912 he took part in the first congress of the Orthodox Old Believers (Edinoverie) in Petersburg.

In the first years of Soviet power he took part in public disputes with members of the League of the Militant Godless, but on 24 January 1929 such disputes were forbidden by a secret circular, as a "form of propaganda of religion". From this prohibition began, it seems, his written polemic with atheism: he composed apologetic theological treatises. Between June and October 1932 he served at the church of the Archangel Michael in Sulak, and in February 1933 was moved to the church of the Protection in Korneevka, where he also lived.

The arrest of 1934

On 5 September 1934 he was arrested by the Pugachev district section of the NKVD, on the charge that he "occupies himself with composing 'theological' literature of a counterrevolutionary character and with distributing it illegally". With him were arrested the priests Constantine Samuilov, Mstislav Kurmyshsky, Michael Smirnov, Basil Bannov and three laymen. He was interrogated ten times. On 8 September he said: "The main aim of my life is the struggle with atheism, the struggle to draw the people to faith and to the Church, therefore I write theological works. In my brochures I tried to prove the existence of God and of the soul." Later he added that he regards religion as a personal matter and does not approve the policy toward religion. A witness said that in a talk the father had mentioned Darwin and called his teaching wrong, proving that man was made by God. His treatises, such as "The Genealogy of Man", "The Flood", "The Brain, the Soul and the Spirit" and "On the Soul", were sent to an "expert examination", which judged the manuscripts "a counterrevolutionary outburst"; in 1988 the prosecutor's office showed that the examination was tendentious and that in the manuscripts there is no call against the order in the USSR. On 17 March 1935 he was exiled to Kazakhstan for three years and was allowed to return only in February 1939.

The last years

On returning he went first to his son Nicholas in Saratov, but two days later the authorities ordered him to leave the city, and he settled at Pugachev. To a spiritual daughter he said with bitterness: "The faithful have sinned much before God, therefore this time has come and God has sent a power which does not believe in God and closes the churches. Every power is given by God." He did not serve in a church, but performed services in the houses of the faithful, on request: he baptized and buried the dead. At home he kept an antimension and asked the town for leave to open a house of prayer, but was refused. In April 1941 the town executive committee decided that the Edinoverie church, fallen into ruin, was to be pulled down and the material sold to the population.

On 17 September 1941 the father was arrested again; he was seventy-⁠four. In his home seven searches were made and they found a set of priestly vestments and almost all that a church needs, among them a silk antimension, a sponge, two vessels of chrism, a chalice, a spoon, a lance, two censers and forty-⁠seven candles, a sign that he was preparing for the opening of a church. At the trial he said: "I do not admit the charge of counterrevolutionary agitation. I admit the charge that I am a believer and that I baptized infants." In his statement in court he said: "I trust in God, from God I shall not turn away. Against the authorities I never murmured, because it is a sin, every power is given by God." On 21 December 1941 the travelling session of the Saratov Regional Court sentenced him to death. He appealed, asking that death be replaced by imprisonment, and on 14 March 1942 the Judicial Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR changed the shooting into ten years in a camp, with deprivation of rights for five years.

Father John arrived at the Karaganda camp on 25 October 1942 and died four days later, on 29 October, at the station of Karabas, of right-⁠sided pneumonia and exhaustion. He was rehabilitated in 1988 for the case of 1934-35 and in 1994 for that of 1941-42. He was numbered among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia at the Council of Bishops in August 2000, for veneration throughout the Church.

The Church commemorates him on 29 October, the day of his death, in the new style, on 12 September in the Synaxis of the Saints of Saratov, and on the movable day of the synaxis of the new martyrs.