Nikolai Ivanovich Kovalev

Born in 1884 in Novocherkassk into the family of a clerical worker.

In 1919, he was ordained a priest in Anapa.

According to the archival criminal case file on Father Nikolai in Leningrad in the early 1930s, it states, "During the period of Baron Wrangel's presence in Anapa, Priest Nikolai Kovalev was elected by the City Council to the commission for the protection of the population from the Reds."

In 1934, he was arrested in Leningrad, where he had moved to live and where he conducted services at home. As a "socially dangerous element," Father Nikolai was sentenced to expulsion from Leningrad.

From 1935 to 1937, he was in exile in the town of Atbasar, North Kazakhstan Region.

On November 22, 1937, he was arrested by the Atbasar District NKVD. At the time of his arrest, he was unemployed. During interrogation, when the investigator demanded he confess his counter-revolutionary activities, Father Nikolai replied, "I have never engaged in counter-revolutionary agitation and do not consider myself guilty of this."

On November 28, he was sentenced to the highest measure of punishment by the troika of the North Kazakhstan Region NKVD.

On December 27, 1937, he was executed by shooting.

On May 26, 1989, he was rehabilitated by the prosecutor's office of the Tselinograd Region for the 1937 repressions.

He was canonized as a saint among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia for veneration by the whole Church in August 2000 at the Jubilee Bishops' Council of the Russian Orthodox Church.