Presbyter
Saint Nikolai was born in 1884 in Novocherkassk to a family of a civil servant. In 1919, he was ordained as a priest in Anapa. The records state that '...during the period of Baron Wrangel's presence in Anapa, Priest Nikolai Kovalev was elected by the City Duma to the commission for the protection of the population from the Reds.' In 1934, the priest was arrested in Leningrad, where he had come to live and where he performed services at home. As a 'socially dangerous element,' Father Nikolai was sentenced to exile from Leningrad. From 1935 to 1937, he was in exile in Kazakhstan, where he was arrested for the second time on November 22, 1937, and accused of 'conducting anti-revolutionary agitation among the population, aimed at discrediting the measures of the party and government.' During the interrogation, Father Nikolai did not admit his guilt. On November 28, the troika of the NKVD for the North Kazakhstan region sentenced the priest to the highest measure of punishment, and on December 27, 1937, he was executed.
