Nicholas Goryunov

Holy Hieromartyr Nicholas Goryunov was a protodeacon in the village of Obukhovo, in the Moscow region, and was shot at Butovo on 22 March 1938.

He was born in 1880 in the village of Obukhovo, in the Solnechnogorsk volost of the Klin district, Moscow province, in the family of the peasant Basil Goryunov. Finishing the village school at twelve, he worked on the farm beside his father. In 1902 he was called into the army but was exempted, being an only son and the family's support. He went to Moscow in search of earnings and, brought up in a devout family, wished his work to be connected with the church. He was a waiter for two and a half years at a tea room of a temperance society, then five years a watchman and altar server at the house church of the First City Hospital, and for almost six years an altar server at the church of the Deposition of the Robe on Donskaya Street. For a time he worked as a locksmith at a cement depot in Podolsk, where he founded a cooperative which prospered until the Bolsheviks came to power and abolished it.

In 1919 he returned to his native village and was a reader at the church of the Dormition; in 1920 he was ordained deacon, and in 1924, for blameless service, he was raised to protodeacon. He served until 1929, when the authorities demanded of him a tax he could not pay, and he had to leave the church; he took work as a fireman, then as a factory worker.

In March 1938 the authorities charged him with being hostile to Soviet power and the communist party, carrying on counter-⁠revolutionary agitation at Obukhovo and holding terrorist intentions. On 11 March he was arrested. Witnesses were asked whether they knew him and, as they did, signed the page on which the investigator then wrote, in their absence, what he wanted. On 12 March the protodeacon was interrogated and denied any guilt and any such sayings. On 15 March an NKVD troika sentenced him to death. He was taken to the Taganka in Moscow, and on 22 March 1938 he was shot and buried in an unknown common grave on the Butovo range.

He is remembered on 22 March, 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.