Vitaly Kokorev

Holy Venerable Martyr Vitaly Kokorev was a monk of Nilov Hermitage and was shot on 7 October 1937 in the Tver region.

He was born on 10 August 1890 in the village of Dyakovo in the Staritsa district, Tver province, in the family of the peasant Ivan Kokorev. At that time peasants prized the service of God highly, and monasticism was counted among its highest forms. After the village school he went to the Valaam monastery, stayed there half a year and, strengthened in his resolve, returned and in 1912 entered the ranks of the novices of Nilov Hermitage. Later he was received into the brotherhood and tonsured a monk with the name Vitaly. He lived there until the closing of the monastery in 1928. The monks sought to live by the monastic rule outside the walls as well, in communities; he lived in one called "God's Work". After a year the community was closed and the monks were arrested for non-⁠payment of taxes. Vitaly was sentenced to five years in a camp and sent to Nikolayevsk-⁠on-⁠Amur in the Far East.

He returned to the Tver region only in 1935. A priest he knew advised him to take the post of watchman at the church in the village of Khvoshnya, Penovo district, and to serve there also as sacristan. He lived in a rented room in the village of Pustoshka. In January 1937 the head of the Penovo NKVD began to question residents of the district, chosen from those hostile to the Church. They said that the sacristan, the monk Vitaly, went around the houses of individual peasants, even on the day of the census, 1 January 1937, and that the faithful read the Gospel and sang church hymns during working hours. On 7 January, at Christmas, the monk was questioned and answered that he had organized no illegal gatherings and had only prayed alone, from the prayer book, in the evening. The evidence was too weak and he was released.

Only at the end of July and the beginning of August did the orders for the destruction of the Church arrive, and on 4 August Vitaly was arrested and held at Ostashkov. Questioned on 6 August, he said that he did not admit guilt: he had visited peasants' houses but never held anti-⁠Soviet conversations. Witnesses were called, among them the chairman of the collective farm "The Way of Lenin", who told how he had found the peasants in the sacristan's quarters reading Scripture and who thought they formed an anti-⁠Soviet group. At the confrontation the monk denied it, saying he had never been at an illegal gathering, and of his leaving Nilov he said that the monastery had been dissolved and turned into a colony for children. The other witnesses, among them the church warden, did not confirm the accusations. On 9 September the investigation closed, on 3 October an NKVD troika sentenced him to death, and he was shot on 7 October 1937.

He was numbered among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia by the Jubilee Council of Bishops in August 2000. He is commemorated on 7 October and, in the new style, on 7 February (movable) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church and on 18 July (movable) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Tver.