The martyr John was born in 1891 in the village of Ostrovo, Moscow Province. He received his education at a village school. With the beginning of the First World War, he was mobilized into the army, and in 1918 into the Red Army, where he served until 1921.
In the 1920s, Ivan Vasilyevich moved with his family to Moscow and settled on Nikolo-Yamskaya Street, near the Church of St. Sergius of Radonezh in the Rogozhskaya Sloboda, whose parishioner he became. Over time, he became increasingly active in parish life. He worked as an electrician at the “Hammer and Sickle” factory, located not far from the church. Ivan Vasilyevich took care of all electrical work in the church, helped clean and decorate it for the feasts, arranged garlands of small electric lamps around the icons, and collected donations during services. In December 1937, he became a member of the parish council. Though he had already devoted much of his time to the church, from then on he spent nearly all his free hours there.
In the spring of 1938, he was arrested by the NKVD and imprisoned in Butyrka. During interrogations, he resisted pressure from investigators. During a search, a gramophone and twenty pre-revolutionary records were found in his possession — with church hymns and the imperial anthem “God Save the Tsar.” This was considered sufficient for an accusation.
On July 27, 1938, he was sentenced to five years in a corrective labor camp in Kolyma. There he fell seriously ill and reposed on January 19, 1940 — the Feast of the Theophany of the Lord. He was buried in an unmarked grave.
