Paul Moiseev

Saint Paul Moiseev, an archimandrite and venerable martyr, was the abbot of the Saint Nicholas Monastery at Koryazhma and was killed on 30 September 1918 together with Archimandrite Theodosius Sobolev and the hieromonks Nicodemus Shchapkov and Seraphim Kulakov. He was born on 16 February 1849 in the village of Dresvishchi in the Gryazovets district of Vologda province, in a peasant family. He taught himself to read from the Psalter, liked lives of saints and kept away from village games. He decided on monasticism after thirty; on 19 March 1880 he was received as a novice at the Pavlo-⁠Obnorsky Monastery and on 9 October was tonsured a monk with the name Paul. He was ordained hierodeacon on 16 November and hieromonk on 24 June 1881, ran the monastery for six months and was its treasurer. In 1890 he came to Ustyug, as abbot of the Saint Nicholas Monastery at Priluki, then dean of the monasteries of the Veliky Ustyug vicariate. On 24 June 1898 he was raised to hegumen, and on 13 March 1902 he became abbot of the Saint Nicholas Monastery at Koryazhma, where he served until his death. For the brethren he was a strong moral support and comforted, strengthened and guided them, especially the weak.

In August 1918, worried by the decree separating the Church from the state, he received at the monastery a visit from Archimandrite Theodosius (Feodor Sobolev), aged seventy-⁠six, born on 11 September 1842, a former priest and teacher at Totma, widowed, who became a monk in 1881 and later abbot of several monasteries; in 1907 he had been named archimandrite of the Presentation Monastery in Solvychegodsk and in 1916 had been retired.

On 30 September 1918, after a report that wealthy people were hiding in the monastery, the military commissar and members of the extraordinary commission from Solvychegodsk came. They demanded to be shown the hiding places and the money. The monks answered that there was nothing more. The commission took the answer for resistance to authority. The whole interrogation was set down on a single sheet: Archimandrite Paul said that there was nothing more in the monastery, the hieromonks Nicodemus and Seraphim admitted nothing, and Archimandrite Theodosius said that he had not interfered in the monastery's affairs and had lived apart. The commission counted all four as the monastery's administration and decided to shoot them. The reason for the execution was not recorded. The decision did not wait for confirmation.

At two in the afternoon on 30 September 1918, on the road from the monastery, on one of the deserted islands of the Vychegda river, were shot: Archimandrite Theodosius, in his seventy-⁠seventh year, Archimandrite Paul, in his seventieth, the hieromonk Nicodemus, aged sixty-⁠five, and the hieromonk Seraphim, aged forty-⁠five.

Saint Paul is commemorated on 30 September, on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church and on 1 November in the Synaxis of the Saints of the Arkhangelsk Metropolis, in the new style.