Peter Troitsky

Holy Hieromartyr Peter Troitsky, a deacon, was born on 9 June 1897 in the town of Istra (then Voskresensk), Zvenigorod district of Moscow province, in the family of the psalmist John Troitsky. He finished the seven-⁠year school and took work at the telegraph. From August 1918 until 1919 he served in the Red Army as a clerk, and between 1919 and 1922 he was a prisoner in Poland. Returning to Istra, he worked again at the telegraph. In 1925 he left civil service, began to attend church and took a place as psalmist, and in 1930 was elected warden of the church.

On 22 May 1931, together with the hieromonk Vasily (Krasnokov), he was arrested, held at Istra and interrogated on 20 June. He said: I carried on no anti-⁠Soviet agitation nor against the collective farms. I do not admit guilt. Being among clergy, I noticed no counter-⁠revolutionary activity in them. In 1930 the faithful sent me around the tea-⁠rooms to explain what religion is and to urge people to faith. The accountant of the Istra communications section, as a witness, described him as an element hostile to Soviet power, who left his job to live from the church, becoming its most ardent activist; he said that in 1930, when at a town meeting the question of closing the church was raised, Troitsky ran through all the surrounding villages and informed the faithful, and the peasants all came and had the matter taken off the agenda; and that when he was advised to give up this business, he answered firmly: I will die in the name of Christ and will always agitate against all who are against God. Since the charge was not proven, on 1 September 1931 the case was closed, and the hieromonk Vasily and the warden Peter were freed.

In 1933 he was ordained deacon and served at the Ascension church in Istra, and in 1934 was moved to the Holy Trinity church in the village of Troitskoe-⁠on-⁠Istra. In the summer of 1937 mass arrests began. On 7 November 1937 the priest Alexander Mashkov, who served with him at Troitskoe, was arrested and, at the interrogation, accused himself and the priest John Orlov, the deacon Peter Troitsky and the warden Mikhail Stroev of having formed, under his leadership, a counter-⁠revolutionary group. On 18 November 1937 Deacon Peter was arrested. At the interrogations he said each time that he was not a member of a counter-⁠revolutionary group, that he had known the priest Mashkov since 1937, and that he denied his statements. He was taken to Taganka. On 27 November 1937 an NKVD troika sentenced him to ten years in a camp. Deacon Peter Troitsky died on 28 July 1938 in Bamlag and was buried in an unknown common grave.

He is commemorated on 28 July, on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church and on 5 September (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow, in the new style.