Timothy Kucherov

Holy Martyr Timothy Kucherov was born in 1871 in the village of Stepanovo in the Mikhailov district of Ryazan province, in the family of the peasant Ivan Kucherov. He was called up for military service in 1893 and remained until 1896. After returning he joined the police and became senior constable of the first Khamovniki precinct in Moscow, with more than seventy constables under him, and for good service he received two silver medals. In 1917 he was called into the army again, returned in 1918 and worked as an unskilled labourer.

In the hard years of the Church, when the godless authorities persecuted the clergy and the faithful, he grew firm in his wish to serve the Church of Christ. In 1930 he was elected chairman of the parish council of the church of Saint Nicholas in Khamovniki, one of the oldest and most beautiful churches in Moscow, of which he was a parishioner. He used his gift for organization to arrange and preserve the life of the church, despite the harsh times.

Before arresting him, the NKVD questioned witnesses who signed statements that he was a "former policeman and active churchman" engaged in counter-⁠revolutionary activity. The chairman of the tenants' committee wrote that Kucherov had for many years, until 1936, been chairman of the church council, that priests sometimes came to his apartment, and that records of church songs could be heard through his open windows. On 31 October 1937 he was arrested and held in Taganka prison, and on 18 November he was interrogated. He was asked about taking part in executions of revolutionaries on Khamovniki square in 1906-1907, and answered that he had not taken part personally, since these were carried out by a special detail. He admitted that from 1930 to 1935 he had been an active churchman and chairman of the church council, but denied recruiting anyone or conducting anti-⁠Soviet agitation.

On 29 November 1937 an NKVD troika sentenced him to death. The warden of the church of Saint Nicholas in Khamovniki, Timothy Ivanovich Kucherov, was shot on 2 December 1937 at the Butovo firing range near Moscow and buried in an unknown common grave.

He is commemorated on 2 December, on 29 May (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo, and on 5 September (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow, all in the new style.