Deacon
Saint Nikolai was born in 1880 in the village of Obukhovo, Solnechnogorsk district of the Klinsky county of Moscow province. After finishing the village school, he worked in peasant farming. In 1902, he was drafted into the army but received an exemption from service. After that, he moved to Moscow in search of work, where he worked as a waiter and later as an altar server in the home church of the First City Hospital.
In 1919, he returned to his native village and began serving as a psalmist in the Assumption Church. In 1920, he was ordained as a deacon, and in 1924, he was elevated to the rank of protodeacon. He served in the church until 1929 when he was forced to leave due to the inability to pay taxes. He found work as a firefighter and a laborer at a factory.
In March 1938, he was arrested on charges of counter-revolutionary agitation. On March 15, the NKVD troika sentenced his father to execution. Protodeacon Nikolai was shot on March 22, 1938, and buried in an unmarked common grave at the Butovo firing range near Moscow.
