Victor Karakulin

Holy Hieromartyr Victor Karakulin was a priest at the church of the Holy Trinity in Kursk and died in a camp of the Far East on 7 May 1937, the Friday of Bright Week, worn out by labor and illness.

He was born on 29 July 1887 in the village of Volokonskoe in the Sudzha district, Kursk province, in the family of the psalm-⁠reader Constantine Nikanorovich Karakulin and his wife, Natalia Grigorievna. In 1909 he finished the Kursk seminary and was appointed secretary of the editorial office of the Kursk Diocesan Gazette. In 1910-1911 he was teacher of religion at the second girls' school of the Streltsy district of Kursk. In 1910 he was ordained deacon at the Smolensk church of the city, later priest, and served at the church of the Holy Trinity.

On 23 July 1935 he was arrested together with Archbishop Onuphrius of Kursk (Gagalyuk) and other priests of the church of the Savior. The archbishop was accused of preaching too often, of having blessed monastic tonsures, among them that of his own mother, and of having given material help to those released from prison, and at the search extracts from the books of the holy Fathers were found, which the investigators regarded as counter-⁠revolutionary. Father Victor did not admit guilt and refused to sign false statements against himself and others. At confrontations with false witnesses he did not confirm their words. At the closed session of the Special Panel on 8 December he declared categorically that he did not consider himself guilty and that his ties with Archbishop Onuphrius had been those of a priest with the local bishop, strictly ecclesiastical.

On 9 December 1935 the Special Panel sentenced him to ten years in a camp. He was sent to a camp in the Far East, in the Khabarovsk region, where he was together with Archbishop Onuphrius and Bishop Anthony. His health was weak and the labor was beyond his strength. He died on 7 May 1937.

The saint is commemorated on 1 June and, in the new style, on 7 February (movable) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church and on 1 August in the Synaxis of the Saints of Kursk.