Nicholas Golyshev

Holy Hieromartyr Nicholas Golyshev was a priest in the village of Krutiny, near Yegoryevsk, and was shot at Butovo on 17 February 1938.

His life

He was born on 3 May 1882 in the village of Gubino in the Ashitkovo volost of the Bronnitsy district, Moscow province, in the family of the peasant Vlasius Golyshev. In 1893 he finished the zemstvo school at Ashitkovo. Between 1903 and 1914 he was an accountant at the Bardygin factory in Yegoryevsk, then assistant accountant at the town hall and, until 1920, head of the accounts and cash department. This was his last worldly post. On 22 March 1920, when the Church was passing through persecution, he declared resolutely that he wished to serve God and was ordained deacon for the Dormition Cathedral of Yegoryevsk.

The revolution brought not only persecution but schism and confusion. After Patriarch Tikhon was arrested, in May 1922, the dean of Yegoryevsk, the priest Nicholas Svetlov, proposed to the clergy that the new Supreme Church Administration be commemorated at the services in place of the patriarch; Deacon Nicholas, obeying, was among those who joined the Renovationists. In May 1923 he took part in their council, which condemned Patriarch Tikhon. After the patriarch's release the deacon bitterly recognised his error and his guilt toward the Church and asked the patriarch's forgiveness; he was received into communion of prayer and given a blessing to serve again at the Dormition Cathedral. On 15 August 1929 he was ordained priest for the church of Saint Nicholas in the village of Krutiny. He served there only about a year and a half; when he arrived in the village, the OGPU began to gather information about him.

The arrests

Some villagers said that the priest Golyshev had come to break up the collective farms and carry on anti-⁠Soviet agitation, that he had gathered around himself a group of "anti-⁠Soviet elements", nuns, a kulak and exiles, who discussed in the watchman's hut or in the church the forms of struggle against collectivisation, and that at the Thursday evening service he urged the faithful to patience, saying: "What can we do, it must be God's will, endure, a better time will come." In the autumn of 1930 the nuns who collected potatoes and rye for the priest allegedly said that the priest was crushed by taxes. On 3 February 1931 he was arrested, then a group of nuns and two laymen, all imprisoned at Butyrka. At the interrogation he said: "I do not agree with the policy of the Soviet power, a godless power, but I pray that God enlighten it... I do not admit guilt. I did not carry on agitation against the collective farm movement." He refused to sign the record of the inventory of his property and wrote instead that it was a persecution of him as a servant of the Church. On 25 February 1931 the OGPU sentenced him to five years in a camp, and the nuns and one layman to three. He was sent to the Vishera camps in the Urals. Returned, he served at the same church. In 1935 he received the pectoral cross.

In the summer of 1937, after the persecution resumed, the NKVD again gathered information about him. A godless paramedic and his sister, the chairwoman of the church council, were summoned, at their father's burial. The paramedic said that the priest had given a sermon in which, in his opinion, he spoke first against the authorities and then against the dead man's unbelieving children. On 19 January 1938 Father Nicholas was arrested and interrogated. Asked about slander, he answered that he had never slandered; he only admitted that he had asked the faithful for money help on feast days, without making attacks on the authorities. He did not admit guilt. On 2 February 1938 an NKVD troika sentenced him to death, and on 17 February he was shot and buried in an unknown common grave on the Butovo range.

He is remembered on 17 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.