Paul Kozlov

Saint Paul Kozlov, a hieromonk and venerable martyr, was born on 24 June 1879 in the village of Zuevo in the Zubtsov district of Tver province, in the family of the peasants Feodor and Maria Kozlov, and at baptism was named Peter. From childhood he dreamed of being a monk, and on 15 January 1906 he entered Valaam Monastery as a novice. On 14 December 1908 he was moved to the Ascension Monastery at Kremenets, as cell attendant to Abbot Apollinarius. Tonsured a monk on 28 February 1911 with the name Paul, he was ordained hierodeacon on 30 October. On 24 October 1913 he returned to Valaam, and on 31 December 1916 he entered the community of the Nilo-⁠Stolobensky Hermitage in Tver province, where on 9 May 1917 he was ordained hieromonk.

Around the middle of the twenties the hermitage was closed and Father Paul served at a parish church. In 1930, taking advantage of the fact that he could not pay his taxes on time, the authorities sentenced him to five years of exile in Yeniseisk. Taught all kinds of trades in the monastery, he earned his bread mending footwear and cutting wood. Weakened, he asked for his exile to be shortened and after four years was allowed to return. In 1935 Archbishop Thaddeus of Tver sent him to the church in the village of Borki, Zubtsov district, where he served until his arrest on 19 February 1938.

On the day of his arrest he was interrogated together with the secretary of the village council. The latter said that the priest told what the camp was like: theft, potato peelings given to prisoners. He also said that, when paying the taxes, the priest had said that the Bolsheviks take taxes from the collective farmers and from the church alike, though they say the Church is separate from the state, and that the peasant now works worse than under the landlord. Father Paul rejected all the charges, saying only that at the election meeting he had declared he did not know whom to vote for, having no newspapers. On 26 February an NKVD troika sentenced him to death. He was shot on 28 February 1938 and buried in an unknown common grave.

He is commemorated on 28 February, on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church and on 18 July (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Tver, in the new style.