Nikon Belyaev

Holy Venerable Martyr Nikon Belyaev was an archimandrite and abbot of the Staro-⁠Golutvin Monastery and was shot at Butovo on 10 December 1937.

The teacher

In the world George Nikolaevich Belyaev, he was born on 15 August 1886 in the village of Savelyevo in the Serpukhov district of the Moscow province, in the family of the priest Nicholas Nikolaevich Belyaev. In 1902 he finished the theological school at Kolomna, in 1908 the Moscow seminary, and was named teacher at the school in the village of Chashnikovo, with a boarding house, where he was not only a teacher but a wise educator and loving father of the children; he lived so close to them, as in a large family, that he no longer thought of one of his own. He educated also the children's parents, founding a Trinity and Saint Alexis brotherhood against drunkenness and, beside it, a missionary circle. For the circle he asked for books and pamphlets from Archbishop Nikon (Rozhdestvensky), with whom he had long ties; in February 1917 the archbishop wrote to him: "I rejoice that your missionary circle is opening. May God help you... We can doze no longer. The wolves prowl around."

In March 1918 he was ordained priest, but remained a teacher in the school until August 1918, when his father, a priest at the church of the Holy Trinity in the village of Protopopovo, fell gravely ill and he was named there. Archbishop Nikon wrote to him on 20 November 1918: "The time is fearful: the signs of the antichrist are seen... But these are only the outward signs of the great sorrow of the Church. The apostasy foretold by the Apostle Paul is being accomplished before our eyes... I think, too, lest the servants of the antichrist read these lines; better burn the letters... My heart has grown very weak... You, who have dedicated yourself to God alone, give yourself wholly to His service."

The priest

As a priest, Father George resolved to ask nothing for services but to accept only what the parishioners gave. But the parish also had a reader and a watchman, so in August 1919 he organised a collection of food for their upkeep. When the food had been gathered and taken to the warden, the representatives of the authorities came, requisitioned everything, and he was arrested and taken to Kolomna; after three days he was told he was sentenced to two weeks of forced labour. Returned to the village, he began his ministry with still greater zeal: he preached daily, every Sunday evening he held religious talks, gathered the children for religion lessons and gave each a little Gospel. In March 1920, when a public debate with the unbelievers was proposed, he refused: "Truth needs no defence, and the madmen who rise against truth will dash their own empty heads against its walls." The local informers did not manage to learn what went on in the parish; one wrote that the priest's affairs were done so secretly that he could not penetrate his circle. In January 1921 an informer reported that a placard hung on the church porch: "Religion is the light of the people." After Pascha of 1921, in the village of Sychevo, after the Paschal service, the priest cried "Christ is risen." and only the Orthodox answered, not the Old Believers; then he gave them all a fiery sermon, saying that the common enemy is unbelief and that they must unite against it, and at the end all answered "Truly He is risen."

On 4 November 1921 his house was searched, he was arrested and imprisoned at Butyrka. At the GPU interrogations he said: "I have given myself wholly to church service... I consider it a duty of my conscience to submit to the existing power. The tsarist power fell like a tree with rotten roots. The priest today is not a full citizen... for me, as I am, this does not sadden me at all, because I would like to give myself wholly to church service." On 7 February 1922 he was sentenced to indefinite exile in the Arkhangelsk province; on 25 February he reached Arkhangelsk under escort and was sent on to Mezen, where he found no work and was not allowed to look outside the little town. He wrote to the Red Cross that the charge was not for a concrete deed but for a counter-⁠revolutionary orientation in general, though his activity was only priestly service. He was not allowed to return home, only "free movement within the limits of the Arkhangelsk province".

The monk

In 1925 he returned, and Bishop Theodosius (Ganitsky) of Kolomna, to strengthen spiritual life in the Staro-⁠Golutvin Monastery, proposed that he take the tonsure and lead the monastic brotherhood; he consented, and in August 1925 the bishop tonsured him with the name Nikon, raised him to archimandrite and made him abbot. In 1929 a new persecution began, aimed at closing all monasteries; Staro-⁠Golutvin was closed, and on 14 May 1929 the OGPU arrested him, charging him with anti-⁠Soviet agitation in sermons. At the interrogation he said that on feast days he read a prayer copied at the Petrovsky Monastery in Moscow, which asks that the Orthodox shepherds be kept, the sheep of Christ preserved, the wolves driven away; by wolves he meant all who rise against the Church and the faith, active atheists among them. On 26 July 1929 the Special Council sentenced him to three years at Solovki, and on 9 August 1932 added, without trial, three years of exile in the Northern Territory.

Returned, he was named to the church of the Three Hierarchs in the village of Belo-⁠Omut, then to the church of Saint Blaise in Volokolamsk, where in 1936 he was fined two hundred roubles for burying a parishioner without registering the death. In 1937, at the NKVD's request, the secretary of the town soviet gave a characterisation of him: "He carries on lively work in the town among churchmen, holding all sorts of meetings and mobilising them for religious propaganda." On 27 November 1937 he was arrested and imprisoned at Volokolamsk. A neighbour said: "His house is visited systematically by clergy from the villages, in his apartment secret counter-⁠revolutionary gatherings take place. Belyaev spoke in the spring of 1937 of the law on free sale of bread, which the authorities do not respect; in November 1937 three collective farmers from Chenty knocked at his house, and he said: 'The communists will arrest me soon; please come less often to me.' 'In Soviet power there is no truth in anything and will not be; I was tried three times without guilt; so it will be with the new constitution.'" On 28 November the investigator interrogated him; Father Nikon said: "I do not belong to a counter-⁠revolutionary organisation and I have never engaged in counter-⁠revolutionary anti-⁠Soviet activity." On 5 December 1937 an NKVD troika sentenced him to death, and on 10 December the archimandrite Nikon was shot and buried in an unknown common grave at Butovo.

He is remembered on 10 December, on 29 May (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo, on 23 August in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Solovki, and on 5 September (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow, in the new style.