Spiridon Savelyev

Holy Martyr Spiridon Savelyev was a peasant of the village of Pikachi in Tver province and was shot on 7 October 1937, together with the priest Andrew Bystrov and two other peasants. He was canonized in August 2000.

He was born in 1875 in the village of Pikachi, Ploskosh district, in the family of the peasant Savely Savelyev. In the First World War he was called into the army and served in 1916-1917 as a private. Almost all his property was taken by the authorities and only a hut and a bath were left to him. In 1935 he was sentenced to six years of imprisonment for failing the sowing plan. At the interrogation, in August 1937, he said that before the revolution he had a house, two sheds, a stable, a barn, a horse, two cows, one or two heifers and a piglet, and six desyatinas of land, and that after the revolution he had the same; in 1932 a firm quota was imposed on him and a cow was taken, in 1935 for not sowing flax the horse, the cow and a shed were taken, and in 1937 the barn for non-⁠payment of tax, so that he had nothing left but chickens. Asked whether he had visited Semyon Nikandrovich Nikandrov, he answered never, since the man lived four kilometres away, and he rejected the charge of agitation: "Nowhere and never did I carry on agitation, and I do not admit guilt."

The inquiry was hurried, and the peasants were questioned briefly. On 3 October an NKVD troika sentenced him to death, and on 7 October he was shot together with Andrew Bystrov, Basil Vinogradov and Sergius Mikhailov. Semyon Nikandrov, aged sixty-⁠seven, received ten years in a camp.

Spiridon is commemorated on 7 October and, in the new style, on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church and on 18 July (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Tver.