Peter Solovyov

Holy Hieromartyr Peter Solovyov, an archpriest, was born in 1871 in the village of Podlesnaya Sloboda, Lukhovitsy district, Ryazan province, in the family of the psalmist Timothy Solovyov, who had five children, two of the sons becoming priests. Peter finished the Ryazan seminary and married Alexandra, daughter of the priest Stephen Kedrov, who served at the church of the Kazan Icon in the village of Kartashovo. They had five children. In July 1896 he was ordained priest for the church where his father-⁠in-⁠law served. In the meantime, the village of Kartashovo had merged with Astankino, where the church, the church school and the clergy's houses stood, so the place was called Popovka. The parishioners of the church of the Kazan Icon came from the villages of Astankino, Astapovo, Novoselki, Vyselki and Novaya Derevnya. In this church Father Peter served as abbot all his life, was raised to archpriest and named dean.

The family was united, the children were brought up in love for the church and for village labour, so all the peasant work they did together with their father: they ploughed, mowed hay for the cattle, until the authorities took away the farm and part of the house. The villagers loved and respected him. In the second half of 1937 persecution intensified. On 2 September 1937, on the basis of a talk with the chairman of the collective farm in Astankino, the NKVD drew up a record: in 1936 the chairman was said to have come to the priest to ask him to subscribe to the state loan, and the priest refused, saying he would not help Soviet power, because it persecutes the clergy and took from them all civil rights: You come to ask me for the loan, but where do I get the money, when Soviet power has robbed us and still does? It does not let us earn our bread, forbidding us to go about the parish with molebens. In January 1937 the chairman was said to have told him: It is time to give up the services; the priest was said to have answered: That will never be. I am a shepherd of God; our forefathers lived so and we will live so, and the hard and troubled times will change. At the same time the chairman of the village council was interrogated, who said that the priest had spoken to him about the new constitution and that in May 1937 he urged people to disregard work on the collective farm and to go to church. In July 1937, at the subscription for the loan, the priest was said to have said that he could give ten roubles, and if he were let go about with molebens, he would give a hundred.

He was arrested on 8 September 1937. Asked whether he had carried on counter-⁠revolutionary agitation, he answered: No, I deny this and I do not admit guilt of counter-⁠revolutionary activity against Soviet power. On 10 October 1937 an NKVD troika sentenced him to death. Archpriest Peter Solovyov was shot on 13 October 1937 and buried in an unknown common grave at the Butovo range.

He is commemorated on 13 October, 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.