Presbyter
Saint Martyr Nicholas was born on April 23, 1901, in the village of Gusevsky Pogost, Ryazan Province, into the family of a peasant carpenter. He graduated from a teacher's school and served in the local church as a singer and psalmist. In the 1920s, he was ordained as a deacon and continued to fulfill his church duties despite persecution. In 1935, he was arrested by the NKVD but was released due to lack of evidence.
In 1937, he had three children. Father Nicholas was ordained as a priest shortly before his arrest on September 27, 1937, accused of participating in a counter-revolutionary organization. The interrogations lasted until December 1937, during which he was pressured to accept false accusations, but he rejected them all.
At the last interrogation on December 1, 1937, when he was supposed to sign the protocols, he tore them into small pieces. The case of Father Nicholas was submitted to the review of the 'troika' of the U.N.K.V.D., which on December 6, 1937, sentenced him to execution along with a group of innocently convicted priests and laypeople.
