Nicholas Dobrolyubov

Holy Hieromartyr Nicholas Dobrolyubov was a priest in the Podolsk district and was shot at the Butovo range on 26 February 1938.

He was born on 20 April 1875 in the village of Mavrino in the Bogorodsk district of the Moscow province, in the family of the church servant Alexei Dobrolyubov. He finished the Zaikonospassky theological school and between 1891 and 1893 was a supernumerary reader at the church of Saint John the Theologian at the Bethany seminary. Between 1894 and 1900 he was a reader at the church of Saint Sergius at the Lepekhin clinic in Moscow. In 1901 he passed the teacher's examination and taught at the Domodedovo parish school. Between 1904 and 1921 he was a clerk at the Moscow post office. In 1921 he was ordained deacon for the church of Saint John the Theologian on Bronnaya Street in Moscow, from 1926 he served at the church of the Great Martyr Demetrius of Thessalonica at the Tver Gates, and in 1933 he was ordained priest and sent to the church of Saints Boris and Gleb in the hamlet of Borisoglebsky, Podolsk district.

He was arrested on 24 January 1938 and imprisoned at Serpukhov. The next day the interrogations began, about his ties with the priest Agafonikov of Yerino, arrested in 1937. He answered that he had known him since 1932, that they visited each other, that Agafonikov was a true believer and that they spoke together about the unbearable taxes laid on priests; he admitted sharing his views, but denied having carried on agitation among the people or having said that life was harder now and that the aim was to destroy religion. His parish had seven villages. On 19 February 1938 he was sentenced to death, and on 26 February he was shot at Butovo and buried in an unknown common grave.

He is remembered on 26 February, on 29 May (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo, and on 5 September (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow, in the new style.