Plato Kolegov

Holy Venerable Martyr Plato Kolegov, a hieromonk, was imprisoned twice for his faith and was shot near Syktyvkar on 15 August 1937. He was canonized in 2001.

In the world he was called Peter Tikhonovich Kolegov and was born on 20 August 1865 into a poor peasant family in the village of Gayny, Cherdyn district, Perm province. He became a hieromonk of the Trinity and St Stephen Monastery of Ulyanovo, in the Ust-⁠Sysolsk district, Vologda province. After the arrest of the abbot, Father Arsenius, he was elected to take his place. From November 1918 the village of Ulyanovo passed from the Whites to the Reds, and in March 1919 Father Plato was arrested, with twenty other residents of the monastery, on the charge of having helped the Whites. He was sentenced to five years in a labour camp. Freed in 1925, he served another twelve years in the church of the Saviour in the village of Chasovo, in the Komi Autonomous Region.

He was arrested again on 12 June 1937, charged that as a minister of religion he had carried on counter-⁠revolutionary activity, held gatherings, spoken of the coming collapse of communism, Soviet power and the collective farms, and urged people not to join the collective farms. On 13 August 1937 the NKVD troika of the Komi Republic sentenced him to death, and the sentence was carried out on 15 August. He was shot and buried not far from Syktyvkar.

By decision of the Holy Synod of 6 October 2001 he was numbered among the New Martyrs of Russia. He is commemorated on 15 August, on 11 February in the Synaxis of the Saints of Komi and on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, in the new style.