Nicholas Rozov

Holy Hieromartyr Nicholas Rozov was a priest in the Yaroslavl province and died in the Yaroslavl prison on 20 March 1930, because he called the faithful to confession in the time of collectivisation.

He was born in 1870 in the village of Ivankovo in the Rostov district of the Yaroslavl province, in the family of the priest Nicholas Rozov. After the Yaroslavl seminary he was ordained priest for the church in the village of Spassk-⁠Gorodets, Rostov district, where he served until 1928, then was moved to the church in Chashnitsy, in the same district.

At that time the Bolsheviks were carrying out collectivisation: some peasants were driven by force into collective farms, from others property and land were taken, and whole families were sent to uninhabited regions. The people received it as a war begun against them, with the danger of calamity and death, and began to hurry to the churches to confess and to receive Communion. The church at Chashnitsy was full of people on the feast of the Meeting of the Lord, 15 February 1930. Almost all who came confessed and received Communion. Before the confession, Father Nicholas told them: "Orthodox, perhaps this confession is taking place for the last time, then they will drive us from here or close the church; I wish you from my heart a better life in the new circumstances, but do not forget the faith of Christ." In the closing word he repeated: "Orthodox, a troubled time has come, now all the churches are being closed, surely they will soon close ours too, we shall have nowhere to serve..." The people wept, no one wished to lose the house of God.

Two days after the feast, the commissioner for collectivisation in the district sent his superior a report that the priest of Chashnitsy held confessions on feast days and Sundays, that people came to them from the whole district, and that after the confessions withdrawals from the collective farm were observed, and he demanded the priest's removal, as soon as possible. On 18 February, the following Sunday, the number of those who confessed was double that of the first time, and the service lasted until one in the afternoon. The commissioner demanded removal again. On 22 February 1930 Father Nicholas was arrested and imprisoned at Yaroslavl. At the interrogation he said that, indeed, at the Meeting there were in the church about fifty parishioners who had come to confess, but that he had not given sermons about the persecution of religion and did not admit guilt of agitation against the authorities and the collective farms. On 28 February the inquiry ended, and on 16 March an OGPU troika sentenced him to three years of exile at Arkhangelsk. He died on 20 March 1930 in the Yaroslavl prison and was buried in an unknown place.

He is remembered on 20 March, on 5 June in the Synaxis of the Saints of Rostov and Yaroslavl, and on 7 February (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors, in the new style.