Peter Novoselsky

Holy Hieromartyr Peter Novoselsky (Pyotr Ivanovich Novoselsky), a priest, was born in 1883 in the village of Smirnovo in the Arzamas district of Nizhny Novgorod province, in the family of a deacon. He studied at the Nizhny Novgorod seminary and in 1905 was ordained priest for the Transfiguration church in the village of Nikolo-⁠Pogost, Balakhna district, and in 1908 was moved as second priest to the Intercession church in Balakhna. He was a wonderful orator and preacher, loved by the parishioners; people came to his sermons from all around. He stood firmly for Orthodoxy and openly held disputes with atheists. When in 1918 representatives of Soviet power questioned the need to teach the Law of God in schools, he said that a life without religion could bring spiritual degeneration of the young generation.

In the campaign for the confiscation of church valuables he showed himself opposed to this atheist movement and suffered for it. In 1925, with a group of pastors of Nizhny Novgorod, he was sentenced to three years of administrative exile in Voronezh, where he served at the Intercession church and, despite the ban, preached. In 1927 a new arrest followed for anti-⁠Soviet propaganda and a new exile, of three years, in Siberia. Returning, he served at the church of the Kazan Icon of the former Exaltation of the Cross convent in Nizhny Novgorod. The Azbyka page mentions also an arrest in 1929, with exile at Turukhansk.

On 23 May 1935 he was arrested again, charged with having organized on 1 May, by agreement with Metropolitan Eugene Zernov, the clergy and the church council, a solemn service with the aim of diverting people from the May Day demonstration. He was sentenced to three years in a camp and sent to Karlag, the Koktun-⁠Kul section, in Kazakhstan. There he was an accountant, milk recorder and beekeeper. A character reference said: He took part in wiping out illiteracy. Blameless conduct in daily life and at work. Even so, on 31 August 1937 he was arrested in the camp, in the group case of the priest Vasily Zelensky. He was charged with holding services and baptizing children; it was said that in March 1937 he had illegally baptized the child of a prisoner in a cowshed, using as a font a basin in which calves were watered. He denied the baptism and demanded that the slander be exposed. On 10 September 1937 the NKVD troika of the Karaganda region sentenced him to death; he was shot on 15 September 1937 in the Koktun-⁠Kul section of Karlag.

He was numbered among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia in August 2000. He is commemorated on 15 September (2 September, old style), on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church and on 12 September (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Nizhny Novgorod.