Nicholas Rein

Holy Martyr Nicholas Rein was a layman and a scientist, shot at Butovo on 21 October 1937 together with Archbishop Dimitri (Dobroserdov) and other martyrs.

Nicholas Rein

He was born on 21 January 1892 in the village of Sosnovka in the Morshansk district of the Tambov province, in the family of the hereditary honorary citizen Alexander Rein. Alexander Rein had been by birth a Prussian subject, come to Russia as an estate steward, but in 1903 had taken Russian citizenship. Nicholas finished the Kreiman gymnasium in 1911 and the agricultural institute in 1918. Between 1920 and 1930 he worked as a researcher at the Timiryazev Academy in Moscow, and from then until his arrest at the institute of vegetable growing. In the time of persecution he sheltered in his home the Athonite hieromonk Hilarion (Gromov) and supported him materially. At the interrogation he admitted that he might have spoken of the persecution of religion, but denied having spread provocative rumours; he said that in his home and those of acquaintances services had been held on occasions such as funerals and festal prayers, but not secret services. Of Soviet power he said that he considered it legitimate, but that it did not respect the outlook of believers and fought religion and the Church as counter-⁠revolutionary organisations.

Those with whom he suffered

Archbishop Dimitri (in the world John Ivanovich Dobroserdov) was born on 22 January 1864 in the village of Pakhotny Ugol in the Tambov province, in a priest's family, finished the Tambov seminary in 1885, was a teacher, a priest, then, after the death of his wife and children, attended the Moscow Theological Academy (1898), was teacher of religion at a gymnasium and, on the advice of Metropolitan Vladimir, was tonsured a monk in 1908. In 1914 he was consecrated bishop of Mozhaisk, and in 1921 named bishop of Stavropol. With him were arrested the archimandrite Ambrose (Astakhov), born in 1860 in a peasant family, a monk in a monastery until its closing in 1925, then confessor of the nuns of Moscow; the abbot Pachomius (Turkevich); the deacon John Khrenov; the monk Barlaam (Efimov); the nun Tatiana (Besfamilnaya); and the laywomen Maria Volnukhina and Nadezhda Azhgerevich. Maria Nikolaevna Volnukhina, born on 3 March 1876 in Moscow in a merchant's family, wife of a factory owner, had been left a widow soon after the revolution, had her property nationalised in 1927, was sentenced in 1932 to three years of exile at Kotlas, which she soon left, wandering without a fixed place, and was honoured by the faithful for her ascetic life and foresight. Nadezhda Azhgerevich, a person of deep faith, had received a blessing to become a nun but had not managed to take the habit; she had no home and lived with the nuns of the closed monasteries of Moscow. At the inquiry she said that she lived without occupation, wandering and begging, admitted that she had helped the arrested with money and said that Soviet power arrested innocent people.

On 17 October 1937 an NKVD troika sentenced them all to death. On 21 October Archbishop Dimitri, the archimandrite Ambrose, the abbot Pachomius, the deacon John Khrenov, the nun Tatiana and the laymen Nicholas Rein, Maria Volnukhina and Nadezhda Azhgerevich were shot at Butovo and buried in the unknown common grave.

He is remembered on 21 October, on 29 May (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo, and on 5 September (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow, in the new style.