Nicholas Nekrasov

Holy Martyr Nicholas Nekrasov was a psalm-⁠reader at a church in Moscow and died on the way to a camp on 7 March 1938, at the age of sixty-⁠six.

He was born in 1872 in Moscow, in the family of the psalm-⁠reader Nicholas Ilyich Nekrasov and Daria Alexandrovna. Between 1881 and 1888 he studied at the theological school at Pererva, then at the Moscow seminary (1888-1890) and at the Bethany one, which he finished in 1897 "with very good conduct and good and very good marks, and excellent marks in church reading and singing". He was made reader in May 1897. Between 1897 and 1903 he was teacher of the parish school at the Resurrection Cathedral in Volokolamsk and in 1903 received from the Holy Synod a Bible for his service as a teacher. He was psalm-⁠reader at the church of Saint Alexis, Metropolitan of Moscow, in Rogozhskaya Sloboda, and from 1904 at the church of the Nativity of the Mother of God in Vladykino, on the Altufyevo highway. Information survives on his appearance: middle height, dark-⁠haired, with a small beard. He was married to Ekaterina Petrovna and raised a foster daughter, Nina Petrovna Remizova (1911-1957), his niece left without parents.

In November 1937 he was arrested with the rector of the church, the priest John Khrustalev, and the protodeacon Sergius Stanislavlev, on the denunciation of Grigory Rumyantsev, the son-⁠in-⁠law of Father John. The investigator said he had carried on counter-⁠revolutionary agitation with the others, and he answered: "I have never carried on counter-⁠revolutionary agitation and I do not admit guilt." Witnesses signed the records drawn up by the investigators. On 5 December 1937 an NKVD troika sentenced the archpriest John Khrustalev to death, and the protodeacon Sergius Stanislavlev, the psalm-⁠reader Nicholas Nekrasov and his accuser, Grigory Rumyantsev, to ten years in a camp. Nicholas Nekrasov was sent to the Suslovo section of the Siblag camp and died on 7 March 1938, on the way, before reaching the place of confinement. He was rehabilitated on 16 November 1957, and on 27 March 2007 the Holy Synod numbered him among the holy martyrs, at the proposal of the Moscow diocese.

He is remembered on 7 March (a movable day), on 5 September (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow, and on 7 February (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors, in the new style.