Peter Markov

Holy Hieromartyr Peter Markov (Pyotr Ivanovich Markov), a priest, was born on 15 October (according to other data 14 August) 1881 in the village of Sechenki in the Bronnitsy district of Moscow province, in a large family of a psalmist. He attended the Don spiritual school (finished in 1897) and the Moscow seminary, finished in 1904. In 1905 he was ordained priest and began serving at the church in the village of Malakhovka, Ukhtomsky district, Moscow region. He served there all his life, surrounded by loving children, his own and spiritual; he and his wife had nine children, and the flock loved him greatly.

In 1930 he was arrested and charged with not fulfilling the grain delivery quota. The sentence was relatively light: three weeks of corrective labour and a fine of 2000 roubles. Freed, he went on serving at Malakhovka. On 22 January 1938 the second and last arrest followed, on the charge of counter-⁠revolutionary agitation of an insurgent character, under article 58-10. The indictment said that Markov, a close friend of the priest Sergius Tsvetkov, arrested for counter-⁠revolutionary activity, had carried on among the inhabitants of Korenevo activity bordering on terrorist intentions toward the leaders of the party and of the authorities. He was said to have told the peasants: I told you, Orthodox, already in 1918, that the barbarian Bolsheviks will force us Orthodox to live like cattle, in one shed; let us struggle together against the communists. He was also charged with defeatist moods: The end of Soviet power is not far; the power of the tyrant tormentors of the Russian people will soon be crushed.

Father Peter did not admit guilt of counter-⁠revolutionary activity and anti-⁠Soviet agitation. A harsh sentence followed: the supreme penalty. He was shot on 21 February 1938 at Butovo. The request for review, submitted by his daughter Vera Petrovna, was examined and rejected on 26 November 1939, when the sentence had long since been carried out.

He is commemorated on 21 February, on 29 May (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo and on 5 September (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow, in the new style.