Peter Yudin

Holy Martyr Peter Yudin was born in 1877 in the village of Siblovo, Goritsa volost, Korchev district of Tver province, in the family of the peasant Lavrenty Yudin. He was a carpenter and, seeking work, travelled through Tver and Moscow provinces. The church nearest to his home was that of the village of Boklanovo, where for many years, in the time of the atheists' persecution, he was assistant to the church warden and had the duty of buying what the church needed.

On 25 March 1931 the meeting of the church twenty sent him to Moscow for candles, as a man who knows where things can be bought. He set off at once, but did not find them in Moscow and was told to go to Khotkovo to ask the nuns there where they bought candles. On the way to the church, along the railway, he met a railway worker and they talked. The worker asked how the collective farms were going in his region. Peter answered that some enrol, others flee; of the authorities he said that the government rides in cars, eats roast meat and harms the people, at Kimry people are forced into collective farms and all go hungry. The worker told him he had no business going about agitating workers, and Peter answered that he was misunderstood and went off toward the station. The worker went home, took his service pistol, found a Komsomol member, and together they caught him and took him to the village council of Khotkovo. A militiaman sent him to the prison in Zagorsk.

On 2 April he was interrogated by the OGPU: he said that the twenty takes purely practical decisions, such as collecting money for the priest, the watchman and taxes. He was then sent to Butyrka, where his case was joined to a file in which more than fifty people were arrested, mostly monks and nuns. Answering the investigator, he said: I am religious and I submit to every power, even a godless one, because a deeply believing man should not resist any power, but also should not do what is displeasing to God. Now the clergy are being driven out, and soon they will be shot; hard times have come, and the present power, with its sorrows, was sent to us by God for our sins. At the last interrogation, at the end of April, he rejected the charge that he was anti-⁠Soviet and a member of an anti-⁠Soviet group of churchmen.

On 6 June 1931 the OGPU Collegium sentenced him to death. He was shot on 10 June 1931 and buried in an unknown common grave at the Vagankovo cemetery in Moscow. He is commemorated on 10 June, on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, on 18 July (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Tver and on 5 September (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow, in the new style.