Paul Uspensky

Holy Hieromartyr Paul Uspensky (Pavel Nikitich Uspensky) was born on 21 January 1874 in the village of Romanovo in the Pereslavl district of Vladimir province, in the family of the priest Nikita Uspensky. He finished the Vladimir seminary, returned to his native village and served as sexton in the church where his father was rector. On 22 May 1897 he was ordained priest for the same church. Later, in the time of persecution, he was moved to the church in the village of Vashka, then from 30 September 1936 he served at the church in the village of Solomidino, Pereslavl district.

He was still free when, on 14 October 1937, an NKVD troika sentenced him to eight years in a camp. He was arrested on 17 October and interrogated the next day. The investigator said he was arrested as a member of an anti-⁠Soviet church-⁠monarchist organization; he said he had not been a member of any such organization. He did not admit guilt either about anti-⁠Soviet gatherings or about rumours of war and urging people to leave the collective farm. On 19 October a member of the church council was questioned, who signed a statement suggested by the investigator, according to which the priest Uspensky had preached on great feasts against Soviet power, had spoken of the collective farms as the ruin of the peasants and had said that the time of the antichrist had come and that people should repent and leave the collective farms.

The priest Paul Uspensky was sentenced to eight years in a camp and died after three and a half months, on 30 January 1938, and was buried in an unknown grave. He is commemorated on 30 January, on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church and on 5 June in the Synaxis of the Saints of Rostov and Yaroslavl, in the new style.