Peter Dyakonov

Holy Hieromartyr Peter Dyakonov, a priest, was born on 13 January 1866 in the village of Polozovskoe in the Sarapul district of Vyatka province, in the family of the psalmist Feodor Dyakonov. At thirteen he entered the Perm seminary, studied there three years and then became a singer in the bishop's choir in Perm. His musical gift tied his whole life to church singing: a service record says that he reads and sings very well and that his conduct is very good. At seventeen he was ordained reader, and three years later Bishop Ephraim of Perm named him psalmist at the cathedral in Perm. In June 1887 he moved to Yekaterinburg, to the Ascension church, and married Olga Ivanovna, aged seventeen; they had several children, among them the daughters Faina (1888) and Olga (1890). On 1 October 1887 Bishop Nathanael ordained him deacon. In 1891 Bishop Polycarp moved him to the cathedral of Saint Catherine, where on 15 May 1891 he was ordained priest, keeping his place as deacon, and taught singing at the parish school.

Later he was rector of the church of Saint John the Theologian at the Verkhnyaya Salda plant, in the Urals, where he became known as a talented regent and missionary. On 1 October 1918 he was savagely killed by Red soldiers, together with the priest Alexis Kuznetsov, during the Red terror. They were killed without trial and without Christian preparation, on the edge of the Nizhnyaya Salda plant, near the station, during the hurried retreat of the First Peasant Communist Regiment under pressure from the Whites. Only a few days later, on 9 October 1918, they were buried in Christian fashion: Father Peter, with five shot peasants and the station master, was buried in the parish cemetery, and Father Alexis in the churchyard. In all, between 1 and 9 October 1918, the Reds shot in the Verkhnyaya Salda district about thirty people, the youngest of them only fourteen. After the last Red detachment left, many residents greeted the Whites with bread and salt. At the place where hundreds of people were killed, near Nizhnyaya Salda station, a cross was later set up; in the summer of 1919 the Reds returned and made a slaughterhouse there, and the cross was set up again only after eighty-⁠seven years.

Saint Peter Dyakonov was glorified in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia of the Yekaterinburg diocese on 17 July 2002. He is commemorated on 1 October, on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church and on 11 February in the Synaxis of the Saints of Yekaterinburg, in the new style.