Victor Frolov

Holy Martyr Victor Frolov was a young layman of Moscow, subdeacon and reader at the church of Saint Sergius at Rogozhskaya Zastava, and he was shot on 21 October 1937 at Butovo together with Archpriest Peter Nikotin and other parishioners.

He was born in 1913 in Moscow, in the family of the worker Basil Frolov. He studied until 1929 and then worked as a bookkeeper at a factory. He was first arrested in 1934, with a friend, at the apartment of Archimandrite Alexis Patrikeev, was held four hours at the militia, questioned about the reason for the visit and let go. The archimandrite sheltered monastics, wanderers escaped from exile and believers living illegally in Moscow.

Archpriest Peter Nikotin, born in 1889 in Astrakhan, had graduated from the Kazan Theological Academy and served in several churches of Moscow; from 1935 he was at the church of Saint Sergius at Rogozhskaya Zastava, where he was loved especially by the young. The NKVD began to gather information about him and about the believers of the parish in July 1936. On 20 August 1937 Father Peter was arrested, and on 27 August Victor was arrested too. With them were arrested John Rybin, Elizabeth Kuranova and Nicholas Kuzmin. At the interrogation Victor said that he took part in the services as a reader, vested in the sticharion, and that he was regarded as a subdeacon; that he had served with Archbishop Seraphim Silichev, whom he had known since 1935, and wished to leave his job in a Soviet institution to serve the Church alongside him. Asked about his companions, he answered that neither he nor his friends had carried on anti-⁠Soviet agitation. Witnesses from the clergy, among them a protodeacon who was an informer, spoke against Father Peter.

On 17 October 1937 an NKVD troika sentenced them all to death. Father Peter, Victor Frolov, John Rybin and Elizabeth Kuranova were shot at the Butovo firing ground on 21 October 1937, and Nicholas Kuzmin on 31 October. All are buried in an unknown common grave.

Saint Victor is commemorated on 21 October and, in the new style, on 29 May (movable) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo and on 5 September (movable) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow.