Peter Belyaev

Holy Hieromartyr Peter Belyaev, a priest, was born in 1874. After the Vladimir seminary, in 1895 he was appointed psalmist at the Dormition church in the village of Karacharovo and in 1897 was ordained priest. In 1904 he served at the church of the Kazan Icon of the women's community at the Kasli plant, in the Yekaterinburg district of Perm province, and on 17 August 1905 was moved to the Dormition church of the same plant. The parishioners soon knew him as a labourer who bore his pastoral cross with patience and love.

In September 1905 he was named head of the shelter for Bashkir children at Kasli, opened in 1891, closed in 1901 and reopened in 1904 on the initiative of Bishop Vladimir. The diocese's aim was to teach the Muslim Bashkir children to read and write Russian so that they would more easily accept Orthodoxy. Father Peter, with his only helper, a missionary teacher, achieved some successes and in 1907 was rewarded for them. He also taught the Law of God at the church school for girls in Kasli. In 1915 he was a member of the missionary committee of the Kasli plant.

On Great Wednesday, 18 April (1 May) 1918, the Bolsheviks organized an atheist rally at Kasli, at which many speakers attacked the Church and its servants, but no one took the Church's part. A few days later, on the second day of Pascha, a procession of all the churches nevertheless went to the chapel of the Great Martyr George, with at least five thousand people. But this attachment to the Church proved only outward. When persecution intensified, none of the five thousand took the part of their shepherd.

On 3 June 1918 Father Peter served the Liturgy, performed the funeral service for a deceased parishioner and accompanied him on the way to the cemetery. Then exchanges of gunfire were heard between the Red Guards and a detachment of local people's militia. Soon after returning from the cemetery, the priest was arrested. Taking leave of his family, guessing at martyrdom, he was entirely calm; he asked his relatives to tell all whom he had grieved, willingly or unwillingly, to forgive him. He was shot almost at once, in the night toward 4 June, at the Red Guard headquarters in the Kasli plant. His wife, who came in the morning to learn his fate, was told that he had been taken to Yekaterinburg. The body was found a few days after Kasli was freed from the Bolsheviks.

On 7 July the burial and funeral service were held for those killed by the Bolsheviks. Together with Father Peter were buried Archpriest Alexander Miropolsky, the priest Peter Smorodintsev and twenty-⁠seven laymen. A contemporary describes the procession, with ten thousand people, banners and bells, and the singing of We have sinned, we have transgressed, we have done unjustly before You. The grave of the priest-⁠martyrs rose beside the right wall of the main altar of the Dormition church.

He is commemorated on 17 June, on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church and on 11 October (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of the Chelyabinsk Metropolis, in the new style.