Nicholas Burlakov

Holy Martyr Nicholas Burlakov was a layman of the town of Kirillov, shot on 15 September 1918 together with Bishop Varsonophius of Kirillov, Abbess Seraphima of the Ferapontov Monastery and three other laymen.

With him suffered the Holy Hieromartyr Varsonophius (Lebedev), bishop of Kirillov, the Holy Hieromartyr John Ivanov, the priest, the Holy Venerable Martyr Seraphima (Sulimova), abbess of the Ferapontov Monastery, and the laymen Anatoly Barashkov, Mikhail Trubnikov and Philip Maryshev. Nicholas Ignatievich Burlakov had been born in 1889 in the town of Kirillov and, before the Bolsheviks seized power, had been a member of the town duma.

Ferapontov

The Ferapontov Monastery, twenty kilometres from Kirillo-⁠Belozersk, had been founded by Saint Ferapont, friend of Saint Cyril, and reopened as a monastery at the beginning of the twentieth century. At the end of January 1918 the decree separating the Church from the state was issued, and in May a commission came to make an inventory of the monastery's property. Abbess Seraphima announced the commission, and the priest John Ivanov informed the faithful; discontented people gathered in front of the monastery, and she tried to calm them. Father John was arrested on 9 May by Red guards, though blameless, and the abbess was summoned to Kirillov and arrested on 12 May, charged with having stirred up the peasants. The monastery was plundered. Only after a month did the parishioners try to ask for the priest's release, but the petition was destroyed.

The killing

On 14 September Bishop Varsonophius, returning from Goritsy, was stopped by two guards and arrested; he spent the night in prayer in the Kirillov prison. The next day, Sunday 15 September, about five in the morning, the bishop, Abbess Seraphima and the four laymen, among them Nicholas Burlakov, were taken out of the prison and led on the old road to Goritsy, along Lake Siverskoye. They were placed facing Mount Zolotukha. When the abbess, who used to ask the sisters' forgiveness every evening, said to the killers, "Forgive me, wretched as I am", they thought she was cursing them and shot her. Volleys followed; all fell, only the bishop remained standing, praying with raised arms; when he had finished the prayers for the departing soul and said "amen", he blessed the monastery and was shot at close range. The killers were a punitive detachment from Cherepovets. The grave was long venerated; in the 1960s the authorities destroyed it, and in 1998 a cross was set at the place of the killing. Father John Ivanov was shot a few days later, on 19 September.

He is remembered on 15 September, on 7 February (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors, and on 11 July (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Vologda, in the new style.