Peter Voskoboynikov

Holy Hieromartyr Peter Voskoboynikov, an archpriest, served his whole life in the village of Batkopolye and was shot at the Butovo range near Moscow on 13 November 1937, accused of having helped the families of those repressed.

He was born in 1867 in the village of Pokrovskoe, Novosil district, Tula province, in the family of the priest Alexei Voskoboynikov, who served at the Kazan church in the village of Batkopolye, Kashira district. He finished the Tula Seminary and, after ordination, was sent to serve in Batkopolye, in the church where his father had served. In December 1933 he was raised to archpriest. His whole pastoral life passed in that village, and there too he was arrested.

In January 1937 an NKVD report from Kashira about a woman in the collective farm who had allegedly spoken against the authorities reached the head of the department, who wrote on it that the priest from Batkopolye should be taken into development. In August 1937 mass arrests of clergy and laity began. Father Peter was arrested on 9 September and held in Kashira. At the interrogation of 11 September he said that he had been arrested once by the OGPU and released, that he had been dispossessed as a kulak several times, and that he had carried on no anti-⁠Soviet agitation anywhere.

The witnesses were of various kinds. The chairman of the village council stated that he had heard no anti-⁠Soviet words from the priest but knew his state of mind, and that he helped repressed families from church funds, went through the villages to perform services without the council's leave, and urged everyone to attend church. An older statement from 1935 was also added to the file, saying that the priest had given money from the church treasury to poor peasants. Considering the guilt proved, the investigator passed the file to the NKVD troika, which sentenced him to death on 11 November 1937.

Father Peter was shot on 13 November 1937 at the Butovo range and buried in an unknown common grave. He is commemorated on 13 November, 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.