John Zemlyanoy

Holy Hieromartyr John Zemlyanoy, a priest, in the world Ivan Petrovich Zemlyanoy, was born in 1867 in the village of Petrikovka (Petranovka), Novomoskovsk district, Yekaterinoslav province. From 1915 he was psalmist in the village of Dmitrievka, Lozovo district, East Kazakhstan region. In 1917 he was ordained priest and served at the church in the village of Pavlovka, Pavlodar region. In 1928 he was deprived of electoral rights, and in 1929 he was arrested, condemned and exiled, and the church was closed. The details of the sentence and of the punishment are not known.

From 1933 he served at the church of Saints Peter and Paul in the village of Petropavlovskoe, Tomsk region, where he was arrested in 1935. From the file: "He said: 'God exists'... He did not pay the taxes: 'Take me, flay me even, I shall not pay.' He had a tax debt of 57 rubles and did not pay it." The special collegium of Tomsk sentenced him to three years of exile. In 1936 he was freed and returned to the village of Pavlovka in the Pavlodar region.

On 25 November 1937 he was arrested again, on a charge of counterrevolutionary agitation and the illegal performance of baptisms and memorial services. At the interrogation he said: "When I returned from exile, in 1936, I was at first afraid to baptize the children, and in 1937 I began again and baptized in the village of Obraztsovka the children of collective farmers, for which I received 280 rubles. In Pavlovka I baptized some seven or eight, for which I received bread and money... I also said that once they came to me and said 'please, father', and now we have come to a life in which people are arrested and things are taken away. I said in passing that under this power I have been left both barefoot and undressed. In general life is bad, in old age I wanted to rest, and again they trouble me." In the indictment it was said that he carried on agitation among the collective farmers, saying that under Soviet power life is bad and that 'they took everything from me'. When the charge was put to him the priest said: "I admit guilt in having performed baptisms. I carried on no agitation among the collective farmers."

On 2 December 1937 the troika of the NKVD Directorate for the North Kazakhstan region sentenced him to death. The sentence was carried out on 30 December 1937, at one o'clock at night. The place of burial is not known. He was rehabilitated on 14 April 1989 by the prosecutor's office of the Pavlodar region. The Council of Bishops of August 2000 numbered him among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia. The Church commemorates him on 30 December, the day of his death, in the new style, and on the movable day of the synaxis of the new martyrs.