Nicholas Biryukov

Holy Hieromartyr Nicholas Biryukov was a monastery priest in the Kamyshlov district, near Yekaterinburg, and was shot on 2 September 1919.

Father Nicholas was a zealous shepherd, strict with himself and with others, with active love for his neighbour and care for the spiritual and moral upbringing of his flock. He was reckoned a good preacher, who could explain the Gospel in terms his hearers understood. After the revolution, when the settled life of the parishioners shook and unrest, drunkenness, murders and violence arose, he taught people not to give in to revolutionary passions, not to attend rallies and to pray more. In spite of the anti-⁠religious prohibitions of the local authorities, he performed all the services appointed, the processions and the visits with holy icons to the homes of the faithful. In the years of the civil war, 1918-1919, in a region full of destroyed churches, beaten priests and murdered civilians, he blessed his son to serve in the White army and went on urging the people to stand firm in the faith.

On 10 August 1919 he was arrested by the Cheka. In the search an unfinished letter to his son was found, in which he advised him to be careful with mercy toward evildoers, recalling Christ's rebukes to the scribes and the driving of the merchants from the temple. On the strength of the letter and two denunciations he was charged with "pogrom-⁠minded, anti-⁠Soviet and anti-⁠Semitic agitation". The pretext also included a sermon on the Gospel words about the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees, in which he had said that the Sadducees denied the resurrection and that the enemies of the people today say the same at rallies; asked by the investigator, he explained that by enemies of the people he meant all those who go against the Christian Church, not only Jews. He was also charged with refusing to bury a Red soldier; he explained that he was a monastery priest, not a parish priest, and that he regarded as excommunicated those who had profaned holy things and beaten priests, in the spirit of Patriarch Tikhon's appeal of 19 January 1919, which anathematised those who commit killings. He was shot on 2 September 1919 by the Yekaterinburg provincial Cheka.

He was numbered among the saints by the Council of Bishops of 13-16 August 2000. He is remembered on 2 September, on 11 February in the Synaxis of the Saints of Yekaterinburg, and on 7 February (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors, in the new style.