Nicholas Bogorodsky

Holy Hieromartyr Nicholas Bogorodsky was a deacon in the Tver province and was shot on 27 November 1937.

He was born in 1877 in the family of the priest Basil Bogorodsky of the church of the Dormition in the hamlet of Okatovo, Kimry district, Tver province. After the seminary he served as a reader from 1892 to 1906, when he was ordained deacon for the church of the Annunciation in the hamlet of Blagoveshchenye, Rzhev district. There he served throughout the persecution, there he confessed, and there he was arrested for the last time. His children, two daughters and a son, had scattered, and he remained with his wife Maria Vasilievna; the children's nurse, who had bound her life to their family, helped them with the household.

Until 1929 he had a small holding: a little land by the church, a horse and two cows. In 1929 he was asked for a tax so large that he could not pay it on time; the authorities took his property and personal belongings, and for the late payment sentenced him to a year in a camp and a fine of three hundred roubles. After the camp he returned to his church and served there until the persecution of the late thirties.

He was arrested on 6 November 1937 and imprisoned at Rzhev. The next day he was asked only one question, whether he had carried out anti-⁠Soviet activity; he answered that he had not and did not consider himself guilty. There was no evidence, so the interrogation ended. On 19 November the chairman of the village soviet and the head of the reading hut were questioned; they could say nothing of the deacon's "criminal activity", but said that Father Nicholas was an active man in the church "twenty" and told the peasants not to abandon the faith and to go to church. On 25 November an NKVD troika sentenced him to death, and on 27 November 1937 the deacon Nicholas Bogorodsky was shot.

He is remembered on 27 November, on 7 February (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors, and on 18 July (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Tver, in the new style.