Peter Grigoriev

Holy Hieromartyr Peter Grigoriev (Pyotr Fedorovich Grigoriev) was born in May 1895 in the town of Oboyan, in the family of a personal nobleman who worked as an observer in the Kursk-⁠Oryol forestry. In 1916 he finished the Kursk seminary. The February revolution of 1917 found him in Petrograd, where he studied at the Theological Academy; the events forced him to break off his studies and return to his mother in Oboyan. In 1919 he began serving as psalmist at the church of the Smolensk Icon and in the same year was ordained priest. He married Zinaida Ivanovna and they had a daughter, Olga.

In 1930 he was deprived of electoral rights, and in February he was arrested and sentenced by the OGPU for systematic anti-⁠Soviet and anti-⁠collective-⁠farm agitation, but in June 1930 he was released for lack of evidence. He returned to Oboyan and went on serving at the Smolensk church. On 17-18 October 1931 he was arrested again, at home; a hundred and fifty-⁠eight church books were taken from him. On 16 April 1932 an OGPU troika sentenced him to ten years in a camp, as the leader of a counter-⁠revolutionary church-⁠monarchist organization, which counted thirty-⁠six people. He was accused also of wide ties with counter-⁠revolutionary clergy and monastics and of collecting money for the imprisoned Archbishop Damian of Kursk. He was kept in strict isolation and did not admit guilt.

From 1932 he was in the Volgolag camp, at Uglich. There, despite prohibitions, he secretly served services with other prisoners, among them the priests Istomin and Ilyin. In 1937 he was tried again by an NKVD troika, for counter-⁠revolutionary agitation and organizing collective prayers. At the interrogations he held amazingly firm, without naming any acquaintances: I am a Christian, I believe in God and I preach the Christian confession. He categorically rejected all charges. He was shot on 23 September 1937 in Volgolag, Uglich district. He was rehabilitated on 8 August 1989 and canonized by the Council of Bishops of 13-16 August 2000, at the proposal of the Yaroslavl diocese.

He is commemorated on 23 September, the day of his martyrdom, on the Sunday nearest to 7 February in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors, on 5 June in the Synaxis of the Saints of Rostov and Yaroslavl and on 1 August in the Synaxis of the Saints of Kursk, in the new style.