Peter Antonov

Holy Martyr Peter Antonov (Pyotr Ivanovich Antonov) was born in 1872 in the stanitsa of Kamenskaya in the Donetsk region. Before the revolution he was an officer in the tsarist army, and after the revolution he chose the service of the Church, as a psalmist. In 1923 he was accused of religious propaganda and sentenced to one year in prison. He was arrested again in 1930 and, for anti-⁠Soviet propaganda, received ten years of imprisonment and five years of loss of rights. After five years of his sentence, in 1935, he tried to escape; a new sentence followed, another ten years in a camp. He was sent by transport to Karlag, in Kazakhstan.

On 21 November 1937 he was arrested again and a new file was opened: he was charged with spreading provocative rumours and his own prophecies, from a religious point of view, about the coming fall of Soviet power. The indictment says that he did not admit guilt, but did not deny that he took part in gatherings at which he spoke of his visions. On 17 December 1937 an NKVD troika sentenced him to the supreme penalty. The sentence was carried out on 7 March 1938.

He is commemorated on 2 December and on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, in the new style.