Theodore Nikitin

Holy Venerable Martyr Theodore Nikitin, a monk, was born in 1873 into a peasant family in the village of Soldatskoe in the Oryol province, and received monastic tonsure. He received the crown of martyrdom by shooting on 29 July 1937.

In 1931 the monk Theodore was sentenced to ten years in a concentration camp in Siberia, from which he was released early on account of his health and sent into administrative exile in the village of Kolbany in the Gryaznukha district of the West Siberian region, where he worked as watchman at the church. On 17 November 1936 he was arrested. The investigator told him that he had been a participant in a counter-⁠revolutionary insurgent organization and asked him about Daniil Noskov, dean of the Smolensk district. Theodore answered that he knew Noskov, whom he had met in the village of Tochilino, that Noskov too had been in Siblag, and that they had met rarely since. He said that Noskov had sent him round the parishes with an order from the bishop to collect donations for the upkeep of the patriarchate, but denied that he had carried notes or looked into the priests' attitudes. Repeatedly, questioned ever more insistently, he answered that he had not been part of any organization and did not admit guilt.

On 7 to 9 April 1937 the trial took place, in which the accused who had admitted guilt and informed against others stated that they had done so under threats and pressure from the investigators, and the hearing was postponed and the case sent back for further investigation. On 25 July 1937 the NKVD troika sentenced to death Archbishop Jacob (Maskaev) of Barnaul, Archpriest Peter Gavrilov, the priest John Mozhirin, the monk Theodore and laymen, among them Ivan Protopopov. Archbishop Jacob, the priests Peter and John and the monk Theodore were shot on 29 July 1937 and buried in an unknown common grave. The layman Ivan Protopopov was shot on 4 August 1937.

Archbishop Jacob (in the world Jacob Ivanovich Maskaev) was born on 13 October 1879 in Uralsk, in a family of peasants from Simbirsk, graduated from the Orenburg seminary and was a priest in the village of Zobovo. The priest Peter Gavrilov was born in 1870 in the village of Utkino, Kazan province, was ordained priest in 1895 and in 1929 exiled from Barnaul to Narym.

Theodore is commemorated on 29 July (new style), in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church on 7 February, and in the Synaxis of the Saints of Altai on 26 September, these two being movable, and in the Synaxis of the Saints of Lipetsk on 23 September.