Nikolay Rozanov

Archpriest Nikolai Rozanov (1867-1938) served for forty-⁠eight years as a priest in the Moscow province and was shot at the Butovo firing range on 4 July 1938. He was glorified in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, as a hieromartyr; he is commemorated on 21 June (4 July).

He was born in 1867 in the village of Muromtsevo, Dmitrov district, in the family of the priest Peter Alexeevich Rozanov. He entered the seminary at Vifania but finished only two classes. In 1890 he was ordained deacon at the Protection church in Kulikovo, and in 1905 priest at the church of Saint Nicholas in Cherlenkovo, Volokolamsk district. From 1914 he served in Moscow, at the church of the Holy Archangel Michael at the Solodovnikov almshouse, from 1920 at the church of Saint Mitrophan in Petrovsky Park, and from 1921 at the Ascension church in Zvenigorod. From 1901 he also taught Church Slavonic at the school in Kulikovo. In 1928 he was raised to archpriest and received the mitre.

On 18 March 1938 an inspector of the financial section sent the NKVD a denunciation which wrote of a servant of religion from Zvenigorod who, on a train, had spoken about the Constitution. The inspector then testified that one of two old men in the carriage, the priest Rozanov, had said that the arrest of priests was unjust and that the Constitution was false, made to deceive workers and peasants. The archpriest, aged seventy-⁠two, was arrested on 21 March 1938 and held at Zvenigorod; at the interrogation he said that he had served as a priest for forty-⁠eight years without interruption. The first investigator was arrested, and on 8 May another came, who did the same and brought a standing witness. The priest answered: "I do not admit guilt. It is true that I expressed my displeasure at the unbearable taxes laid upon me, as a priest, by the district finance section."

On 7 June 1938 the NKVD troika sentenced him to death, and on 10 June, in Taganka prison in Moscow, he was photographed for the executioner. He was shot on 4 July 1938 at the Butovo firing range near Moscow and buried in an unknown common grave.