Nicholas Kobranov

Holy Hieromartyr Nicholas Kobranov was an archpriest in Moscow, a thinker and poet, and he died shot on 31 December 1937, after years of exile and camps.

Ministry in Moscow

He was born on 10 May 1893 in the village of Blagoveshchenye in the Dorogobuzh district of the Smolensk province, in the family of the deacon Jacob Kobranov. In 1913 he finished the seminary at Smolensk and studied law for three years at the University of Warsaw. In 1918 he came to the Crimea, where he was a singer at the cathedral of Simferopol, then subdeacon of the bishop of Taurida. In 1920 he was ordained deacon for the Cross church in Simferopol, in 1921 priest. At the retreat of Wrangel's army he decided to remain in Russia and served in a village of the Melitopol district. In 1922 he served half a year at the Novospassky Monastery in Moscow, and in 1923 was sent to the church in the village of Voskresenskoye, Mozhaisk district. In 1925 the hierarchy named him rector of the church of the Holy Trinity in Kozhevniki, in Moscow, and he was raised to archpriest. The church, built in 1689, was surrounded by factories, with few parishioners and little money, and priests assigned there tried to leave as soon as they could. In 1925 it had been closed and had stood two weeks without services when Father Nicholas was named. He began by creating a living parish around the church.

He appealed to the parishioners for repairs, writing that "the ruin of holy places is the ruin of the honour of our faith", served often and preached at all services, organised theological conversations on Sunday evenings with well-⁠known professors, brought wonderworking icons into the church, and founded a society of steady donors for repairs and a sisterhood. At the parish meeting in the third year of his service he gave an account of the funds spent and answered the rumours that he used the church's money for health resorts or for overly lavish services.

Arrests

On 28 October 1929 he was arrested and imprisoned at Butyrka. At the interrogation he explained the sisterhood and the collection of funds, but the inquiry saw in them a "group of believers organised for anti-⁠Soviet propaganda under a church flag". On 20 November 1929 the Special Council sentenced him to three years in a camp and he was sent to Solovki, then to exile. After his return, in 1935, he was arrested again on 27 April 1936 and imprisoned at Butyrka, charged with having organised an illegal monastery and illegal services in an abbess's home. He denied the charges, saying only that he disagreed with the authorities' policy on religion, because it destroys churches and persecutes the innocent. The investigator told him that even his wife thought him mad over religion, but he did not yield. On 16 May 1936 he began an indefinite hunger strike, demanding release. On 21 May 1936 the Special Council sentenced him to five years in a camp. He was taken to Ukhtpechlag, to the town of Chibyu, then to the Shor point, where on 1 December 1936 he began a new hunger strike, demanding isolation or exile. His condition was so grave that he was put in the infirmary. On 15 July 1937 he ended the strike, after the prosecutor promised that his request for isolation would be met. Though very weak, he was taken from the infirmary to general work, and on 27 August 1937 he was shut in the investigation isolator, charged with anti-⁠Soviet agitation. On 11 September, when interrogated, he refused to sign the decision and said that he was a man of his own convictions, who says what he thinks, and that it was all the same to him whether he was given life imprisonment or death, but he did not want freedom. That same day the inquiry ended. On 29 September 1937 an NKVD troika sentenced him to death, and on 31 December 1937 he was shot and buried in an unknown place.

Kobranov sent his spiritual children verses, from freedom and from camp, and one of them urges: pray on the day of happiness, before a hard struggle, in misfortune, when troubled, when you endure an insult, in danger, when you ask for those you love, for the wicked enemy, when strength fails, when you are lifted up, at a dear grave, in temptation, when you have overcome yourself, in a sad moment, that God may forgive you.

He is remembered on 31 December, on 7 February (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors, on 11 February in the Synaxis of the Komi Saints, on 23 August in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Solovki, on 5 September (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow, and on 8 December in the Synaxis of the Saints of the Smolensk land, in the new style.