Nicholas Kandaurov

Holy Hieromartyr Nicholas Kandaurov was an archpriest in the Moscow region and was shot at Butovo on 17 February 1938.

Family and calling

He was born on 21 January 1880 in the stanitsa of Barsukovskaya, on the Kuban, in the family of a soldier, Andrei Kandaurov, who later became a village teacher and inspector of public education for the North Caucasus. His mother, Anna Alexandrovna, came from a line with many priests. In 1898 his father was killed by terrorists, senselessly and by chance, as they later admitted, coming to offer the widow material help; she answered: "Lord, what help? Forgive them, Lord, for they know not what they do." At the start of the century, when atheist propaganda was so strong that sons of priests refused the priesthood, Nicholas, raised in a believing military family, resolved to choose the hardest path: "Someone has to be a priest", he told his mother. In 1907 he finished the seminary at Stavropol and married Elena, the daughter of the priest John Karagachev; they had three sons and three daughters. In 1907 he was ordained deacon at the church of the Transfiguration in the stanitsa of Staroshcherbinovskaya, and in 1911 priest at the Kazan church in the stanitsa of Yasenskaya, being named also teacher of religion.

Ministry and persecution

In 1919 he was named rector of the church in the stanitsa of Vozdvizhenskaya, in the midst of the civil war. Without regard to whether the region was held by Reds or Whites, he told both sides that he regarded the civil war as the suicide of a nation. Sometimes White officers asked him after the sermon to stop speaking so. After the establishment of Soviet power, in 1922, with the confiscation of church valuables, local officials, who respected him, came several times to warn him of arrest: "Nicholas Andreevich, the papers for your arrest are being prepared, leave, we will give you horses." The faithful also asked him to leave, but he stayed and went on preaching about the destruction caused by atheism and the mockery of Orthodox Russia, so closely to the hearts of the Cossacks, who had been through several wars, that many wept. To those who told him his sermons were counter-⁠revolutionary he answered: "There is nothing counter-⁠revolutionary in my sermons, I speak of the fate of our Russia." In 1924 he was sent to the stanitsa of Novoalexandrovskaya, and in 1929 to Novorozhdestvenskaya. He was arrested in 1930 and sentenced to two years in a camp. In the camp he was first a peat loader, then a storekeeper at the Shatura power station. During his imprisonment his wife Elena died at home of hunger.

Later Father Nicholas served in the Moscow region. He cared for the sick and never refused those in need; sometimes he came home without money, telling his mother: "Mother, today I can give you nothing to eat, all I had I gave to the sick." His sister, a singing teacher, urged him to become a theatre singer, but he said he had taken up his cross and would carry it to the end.

On the evening of 25 January 1938, after the service, the family sat in the room with a single candle lit; Father Nicholas stirred the embers in the stove and told the children something cheerful. Suddenly there was a loud knock at the door, it flew open and the candle went out. A man in a greatcoat, with a pistol at his belt, asked loudly: "Does Kandaurov live here?" "Children, this is the end", said Father Nicholas, at once becoming composed and serious. During the search he stayed calm and, though it was frosty, took only a padded jacket. On leaving he said farewell warmly to everyone, for ever. He was imprisoned at Kolomna, then in Moscow. The next day he was interrogated, charged with anti-⁠Soviet agitation and the spreading of counter-⁠revolutionary rumours. He did not admit guilt. On 2 February an NKVD troika sentenced him to death, and on 17 February 1938 he was shot at Butovo and buried in an unknown common grave.

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.