Matthew Gusev

Holy Martyr Matthew Gusev (1868-1938) was a well-⁠off peasant of Nakhabino, near Moscow, a member of the church council of the church of the Protection of the Mother of God. Born on 9 August 1868, he worked on his father's farm, then had a large one of his own and supplied oats and hay to an inn. In 1933 he was arrested for not fulfilling his agricultural quota, his property was confiscated and he was sentenced to eight years, but the sentence was annulled after petitions and he was freed after fifteen days.

The arrest

In 1937 the chairman and secretary of the village council wrote of him that he was a "fierce churchman", and witnesses said that, speaking of the closing of the church, he had said that if he were younger it would not be closed, and that Soviet power spoke of freedom of religion but wanted to close the church. He was arrested on 7 September 1937, at seventy, nearly blind and frail with age, and taken to Taganka. At the investigation he said that he had never been warden but had been on the church council, that he had spoken of the constitution only to show that the church could be repaired, and that he had said a hard time had come, with enmity all round, as it is written in the Gospel; he did not admit guilt.

His end

On 10 October 1937 the NKVD troika sentenced him to ten years of labour camp. He died in Siblag on 18 January 1938 and was buried in an unknown grave. He is commemorated on 18 January, the day of his death, in the new style, on the movable day around 7 February in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church and on the movable day around 5 September in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow.