Presbyter
Saint John was born on May 25, 1878, in the village of Anufrievo, Moscow province, in the family of psalmist Nikolai Derzhavin. He graduated from the Kolomna Spiritual School and the Moscow Spiritual Seminary. From 1901, he served as a teacher in a church parish school, and from 1904, he was a priest of the Nikolsk Church in the village of Milet. For his diligent preaching of the Word of God, he was awarded the nabedrennik.
With the onset of persecutions against the Russian Orthodox Church, Father John and his family experienced poverty, but he did not leave his parish. In 1929, he was arrested on a denunciation, accused of anti-Soviet agitation, and sentenced to three years of exile in the Northern region.
Upon returning from exile, he served in various churches and was elevated to the rank of protopresbyter. On November 29, 1937, he was arrested again, accused of counter-revolutionary activity. On December 3, 1937, the NKVD troika sentenced him to execution. Protopresbyter John Derzhavin was shot on December 15, 1937, and buried in an unmarked grave.
