Vladimir Pisarev

Holy Hieromartyr Vladimir Pisarev was an archpriest in the village of Kostino near Moscow and was shot on 16 November 1937 at the Butovo firing ground.

He was born on 11 July 1881 in the village of Kostino in the Dmitrov district, in the family of the priest Alexander Pisarev, rector of the church of the Tikhvin icon of the Mother of God. After his father's death his mother, Serafima Fyodorovna, worked as prosphora baker at the same church. In 1911 he married Olympias, daughter of the priest Theodore Arkhangelsky, and was ordained deacon for the church at Kostino. The couple had three children, two sons and a daughter, raised in faith and piety; the eldest read the Six Psalms at five and became a good connoisseur of the typikon.

Persecution reached him too. His farm was ruined, and as a priest he was deprived of civil rights. The parish was small and poor, so he worked hard to feed his family: often he rose at four in the morning, worked in the field and then went to serve. In 1930 he was ordained priest, in 1937 he became archpriest, and he also cared for the parish of the neighboring village, Gorki. He was arrested on 27 October 1937, accused of counter-⁠revolutionary activity, and held at Taganka. He did not admit guilt. On 15 November an NKVD troika sentenced him to death. He was shot on 16 November 1937 and buried in an unknown common grave at Butovo. After his arrest the church at Kostino was closed, the house burned, and the widow with the children sought shelter with relatives.

The saint is commemorated on 16 November 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.