Nicholas Morkovin

Holy Hieromartyr Nicholas Morkovin was a priest in the Tver province and was shot on 28 February 1938.

His life

He was born on 15 May 1889 in the village of Ilgoshchi in the Kashin district of the Tver province, in the family of the psalm-⁠reader Peter Morkovin. In 1913 he finished the Tver seminary, married Maria, and they had six children. In the same year he was ordained priest for the church in the village of Petrovskoye, Kimry district, and after the revolution he was moved to the church in Losevo, Goritsy district. In 1929 he and his wife were arrested, charged with refusing "to fulfil state tasks" and resisting representatives of the authorities, and sent into exile in the Vologda region.

In a letter to his brother, a priest, Father Nicholas tells: ceaseless work for bread had shaken his health, the house had to be built quickly, the elder girls were at school in Kashin, the taxes had multiplied, the harvest was poor, the only cow was sold, and the debts to the state grew, so that all his movable goods were taken and sold, even the piglet. In the last year he sowed more flax and planned to pay with the seed for the lack of bread, but the seed came under the inventory for non-⁠payment of taxes, as did his padded winter cassock, the daughters' only hope for a coat. He and his wife decided not to give up these things, to defend their children. Two trials followed: the first sentenced him to six months of exile and his wife to six months of forced labour; the second, him to five years and her to two years of exile. He was arrested on 1 November, and his wife came after him. They travelled in one carriage to Moscow and then by truck to Kotlas, where they were sent to different districts, which weighed on both, until they succeeded, by petitions, in serving their sentences together. Of the children he wrote that the absence of the "disenfranchised" parents had brought one good thing: the eldest daughter was restored to her rights, and the property and land remained with the children, now counted as poor.

Arrest and death

After the end of the exile, in August 1933, he returned to the Tver region, and Archbishop Thaddeus (Uspensky) sent him to the church of the Ascension in the village of Voznesenye, Kashin district, where he served until the last arrest, on 16 February 1938, when he was imprisoned at Kashin. On the day of the arrest a witness on duty from the village was heard, who said that in November 1937 the priest held illegal meetings with church women, read them religious literature and urged them not to go to the village soviet meetings on the elections to the Supreme Soviet; and that in July 1936, when asked to subscribe to the state loan, he had said: "I will not sign; Soviet power has robbed me and made me poor", and that talk of equality was premature and laws were made to deceive the people: "I do not believe in your constitution." On 19 February, interrogated, he denied all accusations and did not admit guilt. On 26 February 1938 an NKVD troika sentenced him to death, and on 28 February Father Nicholas was shot and buried in an unknown common grave.

He is remembered on 28 February, on 18 July (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Tver, and on 7 February (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors, in the new style.