Nicholas Beltyukov

Holy Hieromartyr Nicholas Beltyukov was an archpriest in the village of Kultaevo in the Perm province and was killed by the Reds in December 1918, together with the priest Alexander Savelov.

His life

Nicholas Alexandrovich Beltyukov was born on 21 July 1870 in the village of Kosmodamianskoye in the Solikamsk district, in the family of the priest Alexander Andreevich Beltyukov. He finished the Perm seminary and was a teacher and instructor of religion at a district school. At twenty-⁠four he married Anfia Mikhailovna Demeneva, a graduate of the Mariinsky gymnasium at Perm. On 4 September 1894 Bishop Peter of Perm ordained him priest and sent him to the church of Saint Nicholas in the village of Kalinovskoye. His service there lasted less than a year: his grandfather, the archpriest Andrei Beltyukov of the church of Saint John the Baptist in Kultaevo, fell ill and was retired, and on 2 June 1895 he died, aged seventy-⁠three, having received the Holy Mysteries from his grandson's hands. On the day of his grandfather's death Father Nicholas was moved to Kultaevo and served there twenty-⁠three years, until his martyrdom. He laboured much for education, as teacher of religion at the Kultaevo peasant school and at several literacy schools, and the diocese appreciated his work many times.

Alexander Nikanorovich Savelov (c. 1859-1918) graduated from the Perm seminary in 1882, was ordained priest, between 1894 and 1911 was rector of the church of the Holy Cross in the village of Gorskoye, and then served at Kultaevo together with the archpriest Nicholas.

Martyrdom

The year 1918 was tragic for the servants of the church of Kultaevo. In December, as Kolchak's army advanced toward Perm, the Reds retreated through Kultaevo, and people were cruelly killed. On 15 (28) December 1918, when the Reds left the village, the archpriest Nicholas was killed. Those who killed him led him from village to village, urging him on with blows of sabre and bayonet, and when, weak from loss of blood, he fell, they finished him with a rifle butt to the face. The body lay in the snow for more than a week, until peasants found it. He was buried in the yard of the church he had built. In the church register for 1918 it was written: "Rector of this church, archpriest Nicholas Alexandrov Beltyukov, aged 49. Killed on 15 December. Buried on 23 December." The page also gives, in a summary, that both priests were shot and wounded, then cut down with sabres, on 30 December 1918.

The relics

In 1937 the church was closed, and for more than fifty years the building served as a store; the graves around it were levelled. In 1991 the church was returned to the faithful and restored. On 6 August 2018, during work on the foundation behind the southern altar, an unknown grave was found, with a body vested in priestly garments. A forensic commission concluded that these were the remains of the archpriest Nicholas Alexandrovich Beltyukov. On 2 April 2019 Patriarch Kirill blessed the veneration of the holy relics found at Kultaevo.

He is remembered on 30 December, on 14 February (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the Saints of the Perm Metropolis, and on 7 February (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors, in the new style.