Peter Uspensky

Holy Hieromartyr Peter Uspensky, an archpriest, served in the Zaraisk district of the Ryazan diocese and died in prison on 23 January 1930, after being arrested because of his church ties with the priests of the surrounding area.

He was born in 1863 in the village of Menshie Mozhary, Sapozhok district, Ryazan province, in the family of the priest Nicholas Uspensky. He finished the Ryazan Seminary in 1884 and for ten years taught in the schools of the villages of Yurakovo and Pankino. In 1894 he was ordained priest for the church of the Nativity of the Mother of God in the village of Makovo, and in 1903 he was moved to the church of the same name in Radushino, in the Zaraisk district. He was raised to archpriest and in 1914 appointed dean of the district.

He was first called in for questioning in October 1925, in connection with the diocesan chancery and with Archbishop Boris (Sokolov) of Ryazan, who then lived near Moscow and governed his diocese by circular letters. Father Peter answered, in brief, that such a chancery may exist beside a bishop, that collecting funds for the bishop's needs is permitted, and that the sisterhoods founded by the archbishop were a good thing.

At the end of December 1929 a postcard sent by a priest of the Zaraisk district aroused the suspicion of postal workers and reached the OGPU. In that priest's home many church letters were found, among them messages of Patriarch Tikhon, of the bishop and of the dean himself. The authorities took them as proof of a counter-⁠revolutionary organization. Father Peter was arrested and held in the Kolomna prison. Asked about the circulars of the archbishop, who had already reposed, he said that he had read one on the moral upbringing of the young in a religious spirit to his parish council, and had passed on to the priests another about a church library of books against Darwinism and atheism, which was never set up for lack of means.

In January 1930 he fell ill with pneumonia in prison. On 15 January he was taken in grave condition to a city hospital, and he departed to the Lord on 23 January 1930. He was buried in an unknown grave.

He is commemorated on 23 January, on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, on 23 June in the Synaxis of the Saints of Ryazan and on 5 September (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow, in the new style.