Nikita Pribytkov

Saint Nikita (in the world Nikolai Grigorievich Pribytkov, 1859-1938), hieromartyr, was Bishop of Belev, vicar of the Tula diocese, born in the Altai, formerly a sexton, deacon and village priest, a widower who became monk and bishop. Old and ill, he was arrested in December 1937 and shot on 3 January 1938 in the Tesnitsa forest near Tula. He was numbered among the New Martyrs by the Holy Synod on 17 July 2001. He is commemorated on 3 January (21 December by the old calendar) and in the synaxis of the saints of Tula, on 22 September.

Beginnings

He was born on 6 December 1859 in the village of Elbanskoe in the Biysk district of the Altai, Tomsk province, in the family of a sexton. He graduated from the church school at Barnaul. From 1880 he was a psalm-⁠reader in Tomsk province, in 1884 he was ordained deacon, and in 1888 priest at the church of the Nativity of Christ in the village of Podgornoe, Kuznetsk district. In 1896 he became rector of the church of Saint Nicholas at Zhulanikha and opened a parish guardianship at the church. He preached much, served with devotion and was beloved of parishioners. In 1899-1918 he was a member of the Altai Orthodox Missionary Society. From 1910 he served at the Tikhvin convent at Biysk. In 1912 he was widowed, and in 1914 he was tonsured a monk with the name Nikita. Around 1920 he was abbot, and in 1921 or 1922 he was raised to archimandrite by Archbishop Innocent of Biysk.

Bishop

On 23 January 1924 he was consecrated Bishop of Kuznetsk, vicar of the Tomsk diocese. At the end of 1924 he was appointed head of the Biysk diocese, with the title Bishop of Rubtsovsk, and from 1927 Bishop of Biysk. He had to carry out his duty in hard conditions, often suffered disrespect from the authorities and in 1927 was arrested. The OGPU followed his every step and word. On 23 January 1931 he invited some priests with their wives to his birthday, and the next day all were questioned whether the gathering had an anti-⁠Soviet character. In a search a memorandum of the locum tenens Sergius was found, asking for relief of the Church's situation, and the reply of Smidovich, and both documents were declared counter-⁠revolutionary. On 8 February he was arrested again, and on 13 June 1931 was sentenced as "head of a counter-⁠revolutionary organization of churchmen" to five years of exile, served in the Turukhansk region. In 1933 he was convicted again as initiator of the Altai branch of a counter-⁠revolutionary insurgent organization and given five years of camp, changed to exile because of his age. Of the forty-⁠six clergy in his case, twenty-⁠four were shot. He was released because of deep old age. On 7 November 1934 he was named Bishop of Malmyzh, and from 22 May 1935 Bishop of Belev, vicar of the Tula diocese. At Belev an Orthodox community had existed since 1922, which he supported, with daily services at the church of Saint Nicholas in Kazatskaya Sloboda.

Martyrdom

On 18 November 1937 the destruction of the community began, with the arrest of fifty-⁠one clergy and monastics, accused of making underground monasteries, and all were shot on 10 December 1937. On 16 December, old and gravely ill, he too was arrested, with nineteen others, among them Schema-⁠Archimandrite Isaac (Bobrakov), an Optina elder. He was accused of having, as organizer of an underground monastery of Tikhonite orientation, given clergy and monastics directions for counter-⁠revolutionary activity and for spreading provocative rumours about the coming of the Antichrist and an approaching war. On 30 December all were sentenced to death by the NKVD troika of the Tula region, and on 3 January 1938 they were shot in the Tesnitsa forest. On 17 July 2001 the Holy Synod decided to enter him among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia.