Nicholas Tarbeev

Holy Hieromartyr Nicholas Tarbeev was an archpriest at Krasny Yar, on the lower Volga, and was shot on 8 January 1931 together with the priest Nicholas Zalessky and the deacon Michael Smirnov.

Nicholas Tarbeev

He was born in 1875 in the town of Chyorny Yar, in a townsman's family. In 1896, finishing the Astrakhan gymnasium, he was named teacher at the parish school at the Kazan church of the town. On 31 May 1898 he was ordained deacon for the church of the Holy Trinity in the village of Sredne-⁠Pogromnoye, and passed the seminary examination externally. He was then moved to Nikolskoye, to Vladimirovka, in 1906 to the cemetery church of Saint Elijah in Krasny Yar, and in 1907 to the church of the Entry into Jerusalem in the same town, in place of Nicholas Zalessky, who in turn replaced him at the church of Saint Elijah. Both worked in the Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood, taking turns in running its book depot. In 1910 he was ordained priest for the village of Kiselevo, then moved to Zavetnoye, and in 1915 to the Don church in the stanitsa of Kosikinskaya, where he was also secretary of the land department. In 1919, after the Bolsheviks shot the priest of Vladimirovka, Gabriel Bogdanov, he was named to his parish. He served there until 1928, enduring the confiscation of valuables and the Renovationist turmoil and firmly rejecting the attempts of the "Living Church" to seize the parish. In 1928 Archbishop Philip (Stavitsky) sent him to Krasny Yar. The Renovationists had occupied the churches of the Protection and of Saint Elijah and wished to win over the council of the Vladimir cathedral. With his coming things were put right; he knew how to win the people's respect, and the Renovationist churches emptied. He was helped by the deacon Michael Smirnov (born in 1880 at Astrakhan, son of a priest, reader at the cathedral from 1906, deacon from 1922).

The case

The Renovationists did not give up and resorted to denunciations and slander. On the other side, the Chekists were preparing a case against a "kulak-⁠monarchist group", led by the former police bailiff Victor Klyukovsky, on the basis of a tattered portrait of Emperor Nicholas II found at his house. A Renovationist cleric said that Father Tarbeev had formed around himself, under the guise of ministry, a counter-⁠revolutionary core of "Black Hundred" monastics, among them the priest Nicholas Zalessky of Vatazhnoye, the deacon Michael Smirnov and some nuns, who worked against collectivisation and other campaigns. To the clergy were attributed words such as "the Renovationists are agents of the GPU" and "the time will come when the Renovationists will be hanged together with the communists". The case embraced thirty-⁠eight people: twenty-⁠five kulaks, three middle peasants, a former bailiff, an employee, three clergy and five churchmen, and the three clergy, Nicholas Zalessky, Nicholas Tarbeev and Michael Smirnov, were counted in the "top of the conspirators". On 17 December 1930 the OGPU troika of the Lower Volga Territory sentenced them to death, with four other accused. Yet they were kept long in prison.

The end

The youngest son of Father Nicholas Zalessky kept coming from Krasny Yar to Astrakhan to bring him parcels. When he came on 9 January, a guard told him to bring no more, for they would no longer be needed, and gave him the boots and the sack with which Father Nicholas had been taken. A man from Krasny Yar who had been in the same cell and was released in January told: Father Nicholas was firm in prison; the guards wanted to take his priest's cross, but he said: "Not by you was the cross hung, not by you will it be taken off." They were held until Christmas. In the night of the great feast, Father Nicholas resolved to serve the Nativity matins, supported by the other clergy. They sang loudly, not hiding, though the guards shouted and banged on the door, and they finished the service, and all the prisoners in the cell prayed with them. The next morning Father Nicholas Zalessky and the other clergy were called with their belongings; they left and did not return. The execution is dated 8 January, at eleven fifteen, "outside the city, in a place that guarantees complete secrecy".

He is remembered on 8 January, on 7 February (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors, and on 24 May in the Synaxis of the Saints of the Astrakhan Metropolis, in the new style.