Theodore Yakovlev

Holy Hieromartyr Theodore Yakovlev, a priest, was born in 1897 in the family of the peasant Michael Yakovlev of the Saint Petersburg province. He received the crown of martyrdom by shooting on 2 August 1930, near Voronezh, together with a group of Voronezh clergy.

He finished seven classes of the Voronezh real school. After the October coup he was mobilized into the Red Army, then served in the militia, in the food committee of the province. At the height of the persecution of the Church he was ordained priest, served in the church of the Alexeevsky monastery in Voronezh and, with the monastery's clergy, was arrested at the beginning of 1930. At the interrogation of 2 March, asked about counter-⁠revolutionary activity, he answered that he did not admit guilt: when he served at the Alexeevsky monastery, peasants of the surrounding villages confessed to him, and did not ask him at confession about joining the collective farm, but there was a case when two peasants, in December 1929, asked him after the service what to do about the collective farm. He told them that he saw nothing sinful or criminal in joining the collective farm. At another interrogation, asked about Archimandrite Ignatius, abbot of the Valuyki monastery, he said that Ignatius enjoyed great respect from parishioners as the senior of the clergy and that he could say nothing about political power, for he had not concerned himself with it, having neither the ability nor the wish, but only with the duties of a priest in the narrow sense.

With them were arrested the hieromonks George (Pozharov) and Cosmas (Vyaznikov), the priest George Nikitin and the laymen Efimy Grebenshchikov and Peter Vyaznikov. They did not admit guilt. On 14 July 1930 the decision closing the investigation was presented to them, on 23 July the indictment was sent to the OGPU Collegium, and on 28 July the Collegium sentenced them to death. On the evening of 2 August the sentence was announced to them, then they were put in a truck to be taken to the outskirts of Voronezh. At ten that evening, the same day, the archimandrite of the Alexeevsky monastery, Tikhon (Krechkov), the hieromonks George and Cosmas, the priests John Steblin-⁠Kamensky, Sergius Gortinsky, Theodore Yakovlev, Alexander Arkhangelsky, George Nikitin and the laymen Efimy Grebenshchikov and Peter Vyaznikov were shot.

He is commemorated on 2 August (new style), in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church on 7 February, on a movable day, and in the Synaxis of the Saints of the Voronezh Metropolis on 17 September.