Nilus Tyutyukin

Holy Venerable Martyr Nilus Tyutyukin was a hieromonk of the Joseph Monastery of Volokolamsk and was shot at Butovo on 20 March 1938.

He was born on 4 May 1871 in the village of Olyavidovo in the Dmitrov district of the Moscow province, in the family of the peasants Fyodor and Anna Tyutyukin, and at baptism received the name Nicholas. After the village school he entered the Pozdnyakov factory in Dmitrov, first as an apprentice, then as a weaver, and later worked at Zimin's weaving factory in Orekhovo-⁠Zuevo. In 1901 he went to Moscow and served in a church. Choosing the monastic path, he entered the Joseph Monastery of Volokolamsk in 1904 and after two years was received as a novice. In 1907 he was tonsured into the mantle with the name Nilus, in 1909 he was named steward, in 1910 ordained hierodeacon, in 1913 named acting dean, and in the same year ordained hieromonk and confirmed in the post. In 1920 the monastery was closed. The first years after it Father Nilus served in the churches of the Volokolamsk district, and from 1925 at the church of the Nativity of the Mother of God in the village of Timoshevo. In 1931 he was moved to the church of the Saviour Not Made by Hands in the village of Kievo, Dmitrov district, a parish which embraced several villages and the settlement near the Lobnya station.

On 21 February 1938 the chairman of the village soviet wrote for the NKVD a characterisation of the priest: "The priest Nilus Fyodorovich Tyutyukin has all the time carried on anti-⁠Soviet work among the people. Lately he told that collective farms are old serfdom, like under the landlords. When the soviet and the party cell held a meeting on the theme of anti-⁠religious propaganda, Tyutyukin sent the whole church council to collect signatures from the people so that the church should not be closed. The soviet considers that in the collective farm discipline weakens from day to day because of Tyutyukin's leadership and, as a dangerous element, he must be isolated from the territory of the village soviet." On the same day the NKVD opened a case and on 28 February 1938 the hieromonk Nilus was arrested, on the charge of counter-⁠revolutionary activity. Asked whether he had spread among the collective farmers a call for mass withdrawal from the farm and the idea that all they had worked would be taken from them, he answered that never, neither among collective farmers nor among believers, had he said that they should leave the collective farm or not work there. At the confrontation with a false witness he rejected all the charges and did not admit guilt at the following interrogations. On 11 March 1938 an NKVD troika sentenced him to death, and on 20 March the hieromonk Nilus (Tyutyukin) was shot and buried in an unknown common grave on the Butovo range.

He is remembered on 20 March, on 29 May (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo, and on 5 September (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow, in the new style.