Nicholas Gavarin

Holy Hieromartyr Nicholas Gavarin (Nikolai Ivanovich Gavarin) was a priest of the Russian Church, born on 23 December 1870 at Jakobstadt, in Courland province, and died on 24 April 1938 in the Ukhtpechlag camps. The Holy Synod of the Russian Church glorified him on 24 December 2004, among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia. His commemoration is on 11 April by the old calendar (24 April by the new) and on 29 January (11 February) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Komi, as also in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Russia.

He was born into the family of the psalm-⁠reader Ivan Ivanovich Gavarin (1841 to 1906). In 1893 he finished the Riga seminary in the first category and one year of the theological academy. At the end of the nineteenth century he was psalm-⁠reader in various parish churches in Latvia, then teacher at the model primary school attached to the Riga seminary. On 15 August 1901 he married the daughter of a priest, Valentina Ivanovna Bogonostseva (1881 to 1968), and they had two children: Tatiana (1903 to 1989) and Evgeny (1905 to 1941).

On 3 March 1902 Bishop Agathangel (Preobrazhensky) of Riga and Mitau ordained him priest. In the autumn of 1902 he was moved to the diocese of Grodno and was first observer of the church schools of the district. From 1903 he served at the Saint Sophia cathedral in Grodno and showed himself a remarkable preacher. In the First World War, in 1915, his parish was evacuated to Moscow, and he served at the church of Saint Nicholas at Shchepy. He was raised to the rank of archpriest, and in 1929 he received the right to wear the mitre.

In 1930 he was expelled by the authorities from Moscow, settled in the settlement of Nemchinovka in the Moscow region and served at the church of the Nativity of Christ. In 1935 the church was closed by decision of the local authorities, and Father Nicholas Gavarin, together with Archpriest Alexei Sokolov and Deacon Elisey Stolder, moved to the village of Romashkovo, where he served at the church of Saint Nicholas. On 29 August 1937 he was arrested and put in the Taganka prison. On 15 September 1937 the NKVD troika of the Moscow region found him guilty under article 58 and sentenced him to ten years in a labour camp, and he was sent to Ukhtpechlag, in the Komi Republic. He died in the camp on 24 April 1938 and was buried in an unknown grave. A new investigation of his case, made in 1939, was forced to admit that all those sentenced in that case had been condemned without grounds, but the sentence was not annulled.