Nicholas Vasyukovich

Holy Hieromartyr Nicholas Vasyukovich was a deacon in the village of Litvyany, in Belarus, and was shot at Minsk on 26 September 1937.

He was born on 28 March 1882 in the family of a priest, whose father served as rector of the church of the Holy Righteous Anna in the village of Koski, Minsk district. After the theological school, finished in 1908, Nicholas was a teacher in people's schools, then a reader at the church of the Nativity of the Mother of God in the village of Litvyany, Igumen district. After ordination as deacon he went on serving in the same church. In 1930, when the Bolsheviks set fire at night to the church of Litvyany, Father Nicholas wept and said: "Is this authority, when the Bolsheviks are in power? They are not people who do not believe in God, but a gang of scoundrels who mock the Orthodox people." In 1936, when people were being compelled to subscribe to the state loan, he refused to buy the useless bonds, saying: "I will not subscribe, I have no reason to strengthen this power." He was arrested on 6 August 1937. At the interrogation he spoke little. Unable to make him renounce his rank, the Chekists sentenced him to death and he was killed at Minsk on 26 September 1937.

He is one of the twenty-⁠three martyrs of Minsk, glorified as local saints of the Minsk diocese by the Synod of the Belarusian Exarchate in 1999 and numbered among the new martyrs and confessors of Russia by the Jubilee Council of Bishops in August 2000. He is remembered on 26 September, on 11 July (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Belarus, and on 7 February (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors, in the new style.