Nicholas Rozov

Holy Hieromartyr Nicholas Rozov was an archpriest in Saint Petersburg, a writer against drunkenness, and was shot on 5 March 1938, after exile at Ufa.

His life

He was born on 27 November 1877 in the village of Zhdanovo in the Kurmysh district of the Simbirsk province, in the family of the priest Basil Rozov; all three of his sons became servants of the Church, among them the well-⁠known patriarchal archdeacon Constantine Rozov. He studied at the theological school at Alatyr and in 1898 finished the Simbirsk seminary. He married Olga, the daughter of a priest, who was a faithful help to him and shared with him the hardships of persecution and exile. In 1898 he was ordained deacon for the church in the village of Annenkovo, named head of two parish schools and teacher at the zemstvo school, and in 1900 he was missionary of the fourth district of the Simbirsk district. On 14 December 1904 he was ordained priest for the church of the Nativity of Christ in Baryshskaya Sloboda, Alatyr district. In 1906 he moved to Saint Petersburg and entered the Theological Academy, finishing in 1910 with the degree of candidate in theology, then taught religion at the Elenin Institute.

All his life he was a resolute opponent of drunkenness. He told those close to him that in him lay the pain of the passion of his father and elder brother. At table, neither at home nor on visits, was wine ever served in his presence. In Saint Petersburg he took an active part in the Alexander Nevsky Temperance Society, and in 1908 the society printed a brochure of his against drunkenness, in which he wrote of the waves of vodka rolling over the plain of Russia and of the Russian people perishing, drowned in a sea of vodka. In 1918 he served at the church in Grigorovo, near Alatyr, until 1922, then at Konokleyki, in Mordovia. Between 1925 and 1931 he served at the wooden church of Saint Gerasimus of the Jordan in Kupchino, near Petrograd, and was raised to archpriest. In 1932 the warden of the Greek church Kolkhitis on Ligovsky Prospect invited him as rector, and he accepted. Only a few Greek families remained, but the church had the status of an embassy church, with a professional choir, and sometimes the ambassador of Greece came.

Exile and death

In 1935 mass arrests of the clergy took place in Leningrad. On 19 March 1935 Father Nicholas was arrested too. Asked why he chose service at the Greek church, he answered that he went at the written invitation of the warden, who knew him through the deacon; that he knew no one from the Greek consulate; that he was dismissed because he did not get along with the administration, wishing to establish order like that at his own church. Of his exiled colleagues he said that he did not know why they were sent away and that he pitied them as people who had not deserved it. The investigator wrote that Rozov is an anti-⁠Soviet type, who shows his hostility, gathers the monastic element around him and carries on anti-⁠Soviet agitation. On 28 March 1935 the Special Council of the NKVD sent him, as a socially dangerous element, for five years to Ufa, together with his wife. At Ufa he learned the trade of bookbinder and bound archive documents for various institutions.

In 1937, with the government's decision to destroy the clergy, priests who were at liberty, in exile and in prison were arrested. On 9 December the warrant for the arrest of the archpriest Nicholas was issued. At the interrogation he said that in Ufa he knew only a few people, among them the priest Dimitri Vladimirovich Razumov, exiled from Leningrad with him, with whom they visited each other and spoke of release from exile, and that, after being sent from Leningrad, he had said that he had been sent without grounds and had been deceived. Of the conversation with Bishop Gregory Kozlov, he said that he had asked him for news about the release of the exiles and that the bishop told him nothing concrete. Of the charges of fascist propaganda and praise of Hitler he said that he did not admit guilt. He admitted only that perhaps he had sometimes spoken for the strengthening of the Sergian orientation, which he thought the most right compared with the autocephalous and the Renovationist ones. The interrogations lasted a month. On 13 February 1938 an NKVD troika sentenced him to death, and on 5 March 1938 the archpriest Nicholas Rozov was shot and buried in an unknown common grave.

He is remembered on 5 March (a movable day), on 11 July (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the Saints of the Saint Petersburg Metropolis, and on 7 February (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors, in the new style.