Nicholas Pokrovsky

Holy Hieromartyr Nicholas Pokrovsky was an archpriest in Moscow and then in the village of Yamkino, in the Moscow region, and was shot at Butovo on 10 December 1937.

His life

He was born on 14 August 1890 in the village of Arkhangelskoye in the Volokolamsk district of the Moscow province, in the family of the deacon Dimitri Pokrovsky. In 1905 he finished the theological school at Volokolamsk, in 1912 the Bethany seminary, and was named teacher at the parish school in the village of Gubinskoye, Pokrov district, Vladimir province. In 1915 he was ordained deacon and sent to the Protection Monastery in Khotkovo, near Sergiev Posad. In 1916 he was moved to Moscow, to the church of the Holy Trinity in Troitskoye, on Samotechnaya Street, and in 1919 he was ordained priest for the same church. After the revolution he was called into the rear militia of the Red Army and worked in the fuel department of the Kremlin administration. After dismissal he was named again to the Holy Trinity church. In 1923 he was moved to the church of Spas na Peskakh in Karetny Ryad, and in 1930 to the church of the Sign in the Second Kolobovsky Lane. He was raised to the rank of archpriest.

In the summer of 1930 the OGPU arrested Father Nicholas's cousin, the priest Alexander Pokrovsky, of the church by the Dorogomilovo cemetery, falsely accused of "preparing terrorist acts against members of the government". Suspected of complicity, on 6 October 1930 Father Nicholas too was arrested and imprisoned at Butyrka. At the interrogation of 21 October he said that he visited his cousin rarely, only twice in a year, as a relative, drinking tea and speaking of church matters, taxes and relatives, not politics. The investigator wrote that the preparation of a terrorist act was not established by concrete data, but, given the "social composition" of the group, there were grounds to believe one was being prepared, above all against Stalin. On 30 November 1930 an OGPU troika sentenced him to three years in a camp.

Yamkino

After serving the sentence he was rector of the church of the Nativity of Christ in the village of Yamkino, Noginsk district, Moscow region. On 19 November 1937 an electoral meeting was held at Yamkino in the building that had been the church, turned into a club by unbelievers. Few people came, and the blame for the failure was laid on Father Nicholas. Informers told the NKVD that he had said: "These communists, antichrists, have profaned the holy place and made it a public house; you believers, for the salvation of your souls, do not go to any meeting in that room." False witnesses said that after the services he gave anti-⁠Soviet sermons, for example that faith must be strengthened, that they should not fear persecution, should attend church more often and draw others to it, and that he urged them to bear the persecutions as the apostle Peter bore them, who, though he denied Christ, came back to Him.

On 26 November 1937 he was arrested and imprisoned at Noginsk, together with the deacon Nicholas Shirogorov, the choir director Michael Amelyushkin and the priest Dimitri Belyaev of the village of Voskresenskoye, to whom he went to confess. At the interrogation of 27 November he admitted the ties with them but denied any counter-⁠revolutionary activity, any anti-⁠Soviet sermon and any attempt to disrupt the electoral meetings or the May Day demonstration by solemn services. He did not admit guilt. After two days the inquiry ended, and on 1 December 1937 an NKVD troika sentenced him to death. He was shot on 10 December 1937 at Butovo and buried in an unknown common grave.

He is remembered on 10 December, on 29 May (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo, on 11 July (a movable day) in the Synaxes of the Saints of Novgorod and Saint Petersburg, and on 5 September (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow, in the new style.