Peter Nikotin

Holy Hieromartyr Peter Nikotin was an archpriest of the Russian Church. He was born on 23 September (5 October) 1889 in the village of Bolkhuny, Yenotayevsk district, Astrakhan province, and was shot on 21 October 1937 at the Butovo firing range near Moscow. He was numbered among the New Martyrs of Russia by a decision of the Holy Synod of 7 October 2002, for veneration throughout the Church. His commemoration is on 21 October (8 October by the old calendar), in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo and in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia.

He studied at the theological seminary, then entered the Kazan Theological Academy, which he finished in 1919 with the degree of candidate of theology. He served as priest at Tsaritsyn and at Astrakhan. He was arrested three times, but each time was released for lack of proof. He moved to Moscow, where he served in various churches. In 1935 he began to serve at the church of Venerable Sergius of Radonezh. Besides sermons, he held conversations with the faithful and gave spiritual care to nuns of several monasteries by then closed. He liked, after services, to talk with young people about church and moral subjects. This drew the attention of the political police, and in 1936 they began to gather information about him.

In 1937 Father Peter was arrested. He was accused of having spoken critically about the newspaper Pravda and about the constitution, of having a worldview that did not coincide with the Soviet one, and of having organized a counter-⁠revolutionary group of priests. The church watchman and even some faint-⁠hearted priests gave testimony against him. From the testimony of one of them: on great religious feasts he delivers sermons of an anti-⁠Soviet character, for example that mankind cannot live without Christ and that where Christ is not there are quarrels, fights and abuse, and neither honour nor shame; he systematically spreads church literature among mothers, for the education of children in the spirit of faith; he preaches the Church as the only place of salvation for the human soul.

On 17 October 1937 Father Peter and four parishioners of his church (Viktor Frolov, John Rybin, Elizaveta Kuranova and Nikolai Kuzmin) were condemned to death by the three-⁠man tribunal of the political police for the Moscow region. On 21 October 1937 they were shot at the Butovo range and buried in an unknown common grave.