Nicholas Kuligin

Holy Hieromartyr Nicholas Kuligin was an archpriest in the village of Rybatskoye, near Saint Petersburg, and was shot on 14 October 1937, on the feast of the Protection of the Mother of God, the patronal feast of his church.

He was born in 1870 in the village of Posolodino in the Luga district of the Saint Petersburg province. In 1884 he entered the Saint Petersburg seminary, and after finishing it, in 1892, he became a first-⁠year student at the Academy, which he finished in 1896 with the degree of candidate in theology. Soon he was named to his father's priestly post, at the church of the village of Posolodino, where he combined his first five years of priestly service with the duties of dean of the churches of the second Luga district. On 9 October 1902 he was named rector of the church of the Holy Spirit in Bolshaya Okhta, in Saint Petersburg, and on 5 February 1905 rector of the church of the Protection of the Mother of God in the village of Rybatskoye. In Rybatskoye he served without interruption the rest of his life, until the shooting in 1937.

He was arrested on 26 June 1937 and charged with counter-⁠revolutionary propaganda among the inhabitants of Rybatskoye. "I carried on no counter-⁠revolutionary propaganda among the people", he answered at the first interrogation. After a week of pressure in prison he was called to the second, and at the third he boldly rejected all the invented accusations. The last interrogation, on 8 August, was a confrontation. For two more months he stayed in the first investigation prison of Leningrad, awaiting sentence, given on 7 October by the special NKVD troika of the Leningrad region: death. He was shot on 14 October, on the feast of the Protection.

He is remembered on 14 October, on 11 July (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Saint Petersburg, and on 7 February (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors, in the new style.