Nicholas Vinogradov

Holy Hieromartyr Nicholas Vinogradov was an archpriest in the village of Vasilyevskoye, in the Ruza district, near Moscow, and died in a camp in Komi on 24 December 1937.

His life

He was born on 5 April 1876 in the town of Dmitrov, in the Moscow province, in the family of the priest Michael Vinogradov, of a line of priests. After the seminary he was a teacher of religion. He lived in the house of the Ascension Convent, where the family of the priest John Mitropolsky lived, and on 1 July 1898 he married his daughter, Antonina Ivanovna Mitropolskaya; the wedding took place at the church of the Protection on Varvarka. Soon after the wedding he was ordained deacon and assigned to the Ascension convent in Moscow. About 1917 he was ordained priest and moved to the church of the Holy Great Martyr George on Pskov Hill, on Varvarka. In 1918 the church was closed and he was assigned to the church of the Holy Great Martyr Nikita on Shvivaya Gorka, where he served about eighteen years. Even after the closing of the Ascension Convent he did not cease to care for its nuns. In a petition of 1 October 1923 to Patriarch Tikhon, the abbess Eugenia wrote that Father Nicholas, in twenty-⁠five years of service, had not abandoned her or the sisters even when they were driven from the convent, and had guided them and shared with them all the hardships of the time; the patriarch put on the petition the resolution: "Rewarded" with a cross. When his children grew up, the apartment became cramped, so Father Nicholas and his wife moved into a room in the belfry, under the place where the bells are rung.

About 1935 the authorities closed the church of Saint Nikita, and he had to move again. He served briefly at the church of the Nativity of Christ in Izmailovo, and in 1935 he was assigned to the church of the Resurrection in the village of Vasilyevskoye, Ruza district. The village soviet had been installed in the priest's house by the church, so he lived with his wife in a ramshackle hut in the church yard. The parishioners did not abandon him in those hard years; they came to him for confession from Moscow, nuns among them, and several women took upon themselves the care of the church and the priest. In summer the grandchildren lived at Vasilyevskoye. The eldest, Kolya, was called "grandfather's tail", because he wished always to be near the priest; he helped in the altar, went with him to the forest for mushrooms and put questions to him. Once he asked what to do when you pass a church that is perhaps closed, whether to take off your cap and cross yourself; Father Nicholas answered that if you feel that those around you will understand and stop too, you should do it.

Arrest and death

A newspaper article said that Father Nicholas arranged services on purpose, drawing people from work, and lured children to church with sweets; in the arrest paper it says that he "gathers collective farmers near the church and reads them the Bible". At Pascha 1937 he arranged with a boatman to carry all who were going to the service across the Moskva river for nothing; he was later charged with having disrupted the collective farmers' "anti-⁠Paschal evening". He was arrested in the night of 24 to 25 August 1937, on a charge of counter-⁠revolutionary agitation. Two NKVD workers made a search and ordered him to dress and follow them. According to his grandson's memories, Father Nicholas set off on his way of the cross in his cassock, evidently ready for what awaited him. The day before he had hurt his foot and walked with a stick. They led him limping from the yard, took him briefly to the village soviet, then put him in a car and took him away. His relatives never saw him again. He was taken to Butyrka. At the interrogation, when the investigator told him he had carried on counter-⁠revolutionary activity among the collective farmers, he answered: "I never carried on counter-⁠revolutionary activity." On 15 October 1937 an NKVD troika sentenced him to ten years in a camp. After only seven days, on 22 October, Father Nicholas was in Ust-⁠Vymlag, in Komi. The children tried to find out what had happened and received the answer that he had been sentenced to ten years. In December 1937 a letter came from him, on a scrap of paper: "Good day, my dear children. I am still alive. Are you alive and where? I work. If you can, send me some white rusks, sugar and salt... My address: town of Ust-⁠Vym, NKVD camp, separate section 3, settlement of Ust-⁠Koin, prisoner Nicholas Vinogradov. P.S. May the Lord send you all good." The children gathered a parcel and sent it to the address; the parcel came back marked "addressee not listed", and in place of food there were stones. On 24 December 1937 the Holy Hieromartyr Nicholas Vinogradov died in the NKVD camp and was buried in an unknown place.

His memory is kept on the day of his martyrdom, 11 (24) December, and in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, on 25 January (7 February), or on the nearest Sunday after 25 January.