Nicholas Smirnov

Holy Martyr Nicholas Smirnov was a psalm-⁠reader at the church of Saint George in Kaluga and died in a camp, after being sentenced in 1937.

He was born on 6 May 1886 in the village of Staraya Kashira in the Kolomna district of the Moscow province, in the family of the peasant Peter Smirnov. He finished school and until 1922 was a village teacher. In 1922 he moved to Kaluga and, until the arrest of 1937, served as psalm-⁠reader at the church of Saint George and sang in the choir.

At the interrogation the investigator told him that he was arrested for counter-⁠revolutionary activity and had agitated against Soviet power. He answered that he had done nothing of the kind and did not admit guilt; he was told that sincere confession would be taken into account on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the October revolution, but he kept to his answer. Signing the record, he added at the end of the page: "I have read it. I do not (he underlined 'not') admit guilt and I consider myself, according to my convictions, unfit for such things." On 19 November 1937 an NKVD troika sentenced him to ten years in a labour camp, where, soon after arrival, he died.

He is remembered on 23 November, on 31 July in the Synaxis of the Saints of Kaluga, and on 7 February (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors, in the new style.