Nicholas Pyatnitsky

Holy Hieromartyr Nicholas Pyatnitsky was a priest in Siberia and then in the Moscow region and was shot at Butovo on 16 November 1937.

He was born on 3 March 1884 in the town of Lodeynoye Pole in the Saint Petersburg province, in the family of the psalm-⁠reader Alexei Pyatnitsky. After the theological school he became reader at the church in the village of Krivoy Poyas, and in 1910 was moved to the church in the village of Krivandino, Yegoryevsk district, Ryazan province. In 1913 he was ordained priest for one of the churches of Tyumen. In 1919 Tyumen was occupied by Kolchak's troops, with whom Father Nicholas withdrew, in the general retreat of the Whites, as far as Tomsk. When it became clear that the White movement would be crushed, he resolved not to go abroad and returned to Tyumen, to his old place. In 1921 he was moved to one of the churches of Yalutorovsk and served there until 1931.

In 1931 the Tyumen OGPU arrested him and he spent about half a year in prison. After release he moved to the Moscow region and served at the church in Nikolsky Pogost. On 29 October 1937 he was arrested, charged with counter-⁠revolutionary activity and with spreading provocative rumours about Soviet power, and imprisoned at the Taganka in Moscow. He rejected all the accusations. On 14 November an NKVD troika sentenced him to death, and on 16 November 1937 he was shot and buried in an unknown common grave on the Butovo range.

He is remembered on 16 November, on 29 May (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo, on 23 June in the Synaxis of the Saints of Tobolsk, and on 5 September (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow, in the new style.