Vladimir Kholodkovsky

Holy Hieromartyr Vladimir Kholodkovsky was a priest in Perm province and was shot on 13 August 1937, in the Chelyabinsk region.

He was born in November 1895 in the town of Kamensk-⁠Uralsky in the Shadrinsk district, Perm province, in the family of a state official, Pavel Kholodkovsky. He studied at the school for pilgrims in Ekaterinburg, finishing in 1912, and then between 1912 and 1918 was psalm-⁠reader at the church of the Ascension in the village of Zavyalovskoe. In 1916 he married Anna Vasilievna, and in 1918 was ordained deacon for the church at Timokhinskoe. He had his house in the village of Froly, near Timokhinskoe. In the years of the civil war the region passed now to the Reds, now to the Whites, and the inhabitants were divided and embittered. Following the exhortation of Patriarch Tikhon not to take vengeance and not to take part in political parties, the clergy of the church where he served tried to calm the strife, but in vain. In the summer of 1919, when Kolchak's army retreated, Father Vladimir, knowing that priests who remained under the Bolsheviks were punished cruelly, withdrew with the Whites as far as Novosibirsk, where he served at the church of the Protection. On 17 March 1920 he returned to his place of service.

In December 1920 he was ordained priest for the church of Saint Nicholas at Tupitsinskoe. From 1925 to 1927 he served at Yurmytskoe, but the church passed to the Renovationists, and he, who said "Even if they tear me to pieces, I will not enter the schism", returned to Tupitsinskoe, where the parishioners were ready to defend him. On 1 November 1929 he was arrested, on a petition accusing him of agitating against the authorities in his sermons, and held at Shadrinsk. On 26 December 1929 he was sentenced to five years in a camp, which he served in full. In 1935 he returned to Tupitsinskoe and served again at the church of Saint Nicholas. When in 1936 the authorities wanted to close the church, he called a meeting of the faithful and signatures were collected in its defense. He told the people to be patient, for the godless power would not last forever.

In July 1937 he was arrested, having six children, three sons and three daughters. A denunciation said that he kept to secret counsels, sabotaged demonstrations of schoolchildren and disorganized the discipline of the collective farm. He declared that he fought atheism through service, the Mysteries and rites, and despite torture he remained firm and betrayed no one. The troika of the Chelyabinsk regional NKVD sentenced him to death, and on 13 August 1937 at five in the afternoon he was shot.

The saint is commemorated on 13 August and, in the new style, on 7 February (movable) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church and on 11 February in the Synaxis of the Saints of Ekaterinburg.