Vsevolod Poteminsky

Holy Hieromartyr Vsevolod Poteminsky was a priest in the Komi land and was shot on 19 September 1937 near Syktyvkar.

He was born on 30 March 1870 in the town of Nikolsk in Vologda province, in the family of the sacristan of the Annunciation church of Lyamenskaya, John Poteminsky. He completed three classes at the Vologda seminary. From 1890 he was deacon at the church in Simonovolomskaya, Ustyug district, and from 1900 at the church of the Entry into the Temple in the Nikolsk district. Between 1891 and 1900 he worked as a teacher in the village of Simonovolomskaya Pustyn. In 1903 Bishop Alexis Sobolev of Vologda and Totma ordained him priest for the church of Saint Nicholas in the village of Semukovo, and he was at the same time teacher of religion at the people's school. From 1910 he taught at the primary school in the village of Kyrs. He had a great library, among it many books on agronomy, opened a school in the village where he taught from textbooks of his own, and enjoyed authority among the parishioners, who several times protected him from arrest.

He was tried in 1928, 1934 and 1936, deprived of electoral rights and driven with his family from his house. In the winter of 1937 the church at Semukovo was closed, and it was intended to open a club in the building; the crosses carved into the walls of the church were several times effaced, but each time they appeared again. The priest could be arrested only by a trick, being called as if to a baptism. On 7 August 1937 he was held at Syktyvkar. He was accused of having "systematically carried on counter-⁠revolutionary activity" and of having spread in June 1937 provocative rumors about war and the fall of Soviet power, prepared the elections to the local soviets and agitated for candidates from counter-⁠revolutionary elements. The case was conducted with grave violations: the right of defense was not ensured, and the indictment was not reasoned or approved by the prosecutor. He did not admit guilt. He was shot on 19 September 1937, by the decision of the Komi NKVD troika of 16 September, in the area of V. Chov. The Holy Synod numbered him among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia on 6 October 2001.

The saint is commemorated on 19 September 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 Komi.