Nicholas Dunaev

Holy Hieromartyr Nicholas Dunaev was a priest at Pereslavl-⁠Zalessky and was shot at Yaroslavl on 27 November 1937.

He was born on 30 November 1878 in the village of Zimenki in the Kovrov district of the Vladimir province. He finished the seminary and was ordained priest. From 1901 he was confessor of the Feodorovsky convent in Pereslavl-⁠Zalessky. In 1920 his family, with three children, was stripped of rights; in 1924 it was restored, but left with a heavy tax. After the closing of the convent, from 1923 he served at the cemetery church of the town, and from 1929 at the church of the Protection of the Mother of God. He was a modest, kindly and open man, respected by the teachers of the town, himself a teacher for many years, and he had standing among the parishioners.

On 23 January 1930 a criminal case was opened with twenty accused, among them him, as a member of the Pereslavl Society for Enlightenment, charged with anti-⁠Soviet activity. In the year of the inquiry he was questioned twice and described the society as entirely apolitical, with "religious, moral and enlightening aims". On 2 November 1930 he was arrested, and on 28 February 1931 he was sentenced to three years of exile in the Northern Territory. After exile he could no longer serve, and his house had been sold. He lived in Feodorovskaya Sloboda, where he was known and loved; people helped him, and he did not shun work: he went with the peasants to mow, fished, gathered mushrooms, and in winter stayed with various relatives.

On 25 October 1937 he was arrested again, charged with "taking part in a counter-⁠revolutionary organisation". At the interrogation he was asked to admit his part in a church-⁠monarchist organisation led by the dean of Uglich, Father Leonid Gilyarevsky, but he did not. On 25 November 1937 an NKVD troika of the Yaroslavl region sentenced him to death, and on 27 November he was shot at Yaroslavl. His wife, Maria Ivanovna, was told that he had been sentenced to ten years without the right of correspondence, and in 1947 she was informed that he was alive. At her request, in 1956 the case was reviewed and it was established that the charge rested on false testimony. He was rehabilitated on 20 February 1958 and numbered among the saints in August 2000.

He is remembered on 27 November, on 5 June in the Synaxis of the Saints of Rostov and Yaroslavl, and on 7 February (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors, in the new style.