Paul Ansimov

Holy Hieromartyr Paul Ansimov was an archpriest of the Russian Church. He was born on 24 August 1891 in the village of Chetyre Bugra, Astrakhan district, and was shot on 21 November 1937 at the Butovo firing range near Moscow. He was numbered among the New Martyrs of Russia in 2005. He is the father of the theatre director and People's Artist of the USSR, Georgy Ansimov.

He was born into the family of a priest. In 1906 he graduated from the Astrakhan clerical school, and in 1911 from the Astrakhan seminary. In 1912 he married Maria, the daughter of Priest Vyacheslav Stefanovich Sollertinsky, a graduate of the Higher Courses, and in the same year he was ordained priest. In 1919 he graduated from the Kazan Theological Academy. From 1921 to 1923 he served in the stanitsa of Ladozhskaya in the Kuban. He then served in the churches of Moscow: the Entrance of the Mother of God into the Temple in Semyonovskaya Sloboda (1925 to 1929), Saint Nicholas in Pokrovskoye (1930 to 1931), the Resurrection of Christ at the Semyonovskoye cemetery (1931 to 1935) and the Nativity of Christ in Izmailovo (1935 to 1937).

He was confessor of the Moscow Protection community of sisters of mercy, from 1929 to 1932. For leading an illegal sisterhood he was arrested in 1930, but was released, and the case was closed. According to some data, he was arrested three times during 1930. The last time he was arrested was on 2 November 1937, he was condemned by the three-⁠man tribunal of the political police for counter-⁠revolutionary anti-⁠Soviet agitation, and shot at the Butovo range.

His wife, Maria Vyacheslavovna (born Sollertinskaya), lived from 1895 to 1958. They had four children: Nadezhda (1914 to 2006), Vyacheslav (1919 to about 1920), Georgy (1919 to 1922) and a second Georgy (1922 to 2015), director of opera and operetta, actor, teacher, publicist and People's Artist of the USSR (1986). The life of Archpriest Paul Ansimov is the subject of the book by his son, the director Georgy Ansimov, Lessons of the Father (Moscow, 2005).

He was numbered among the New Martyrs of Russia by decision of the Holy Synod of 16 July 2005, for veneration throughout the Church. His commemoration is on 8 November by the old calendar, in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia and in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo.