Priest Ivan Prozorov was Nicholas F. Prozorov’s brother and became priest Stephen Kuzmich Nikolsky’s son-in-law after marrying one of his daughters, Lydia.
Like his brother, Father John was born in Pokrovskaya Varezhka, Nizhnelomovsky uyezd (now Kamensky district) on February 23, 1895. In 1910 he finished Tikhon’s Theological School, after that he graduated from the Penza Theological Seminary in 1916. In the early 1920s he served as a deacon, and then as a priest of the village Podkhvatilovka (Kadomtsevo), Nizhnelomovsky uyezd. From 1925 to 1929 he was a priest in the village of New Tolkovka, Pachelmsky district.
In 1927 Fr. John was arrested for the first time in the course of proceedings against Bishop of Penza Philip (Perov), who had blessed him to conduct a census of the citizens in his parish. This action was considered anti-Soviet by the State Political Directorate, and the priest was imprisoned in the town of Chembar (now Belinsky). During the investigation there were several attempts to recruit him for the role of an informant. On September 26, 1927, like many others who were involved in the case, he was discharged.
From 1929 to 1931 Fr. John served as a priest of the Nativity Church of Penza, (the cafe “Prague” is located on the spot nowadays), and from 1931 to 1935 he was a priest at the Mitrophan church. At that time both churches belonged to the Gregorian group, but in June 1934 the Mitrophan’s church was returned to the legitimate Church and Fr. John was apparently accepted into the canonical communion.
On April 17, 1935 the priest was arrested again. This time he was accused of anti-Soviet propaganda. On September 26, he was sentenced to three years in prison. It turns out that he spent almost half a year in prison under examination. However, there are other data according to which Ivan Fyodorovich was arrested later, in 1937, and died in Penza on the 10th day after his arrest.
Fr. John’s daughter Nina as a child experienced all the hardships that a priest’s family could suffer in the 1930s, but found the strength to leave memories of that terrible time.
From the memoirs of the daughter, Nina Ivanovna Prozorova-Kochegarova:
“I am 79 years old. I live in Simferopol. My father, John Prozorov, was a priest, we were five in the family. We lived a poor life in the countryside. I remember our cow to be taken away for not paying the tax, everyone was crying: we, the children, were left without milk. Then our family moved to Penza, it was in 1930. Dad served in the Nativity Church, we lived in the lodge there. We lived very poorly. We did not have felt boots, it was very cold in winter. It was only for Easter when my mother made a new calico dress for me, and the old clothes were reshaped, repaired and worn again. We, the children, had toys – plaster moneyboxes. I had a kitty, Zhenya had a dog, and Kolya had a house. On Sundays my father gave us coins, mostly copper coins, we were happy to drop them into our moneyboxes. I dreamed of saving money for felt boots. But I did not. Three men in civilian clothes came at night to search, they looked for gold, silver … They found nothing, but they broke our moneyboxes, for some reason they hit them on the floor. The coins rolled, we shouted, and Kolya bit one of the men by the hand.
Three blocks away from the church there was the Trinity Monastery, it was disbanded, but then, as they said at the time, a miracle happened: at night a bright spot began to appear on the dome of the church, which was rather small. People filled the whole street. The police dispersed them but people gathered again. None of the old-timers had ever seen this before. It lasted for several days, or rather nights. Then the dome was painted black but the light bright spot appeared again. The dome was curtained with sackcloth and it was glowing again. Then the dome and the bell tower were dismantled. I remember it well.
In 1931 they closed and demolished our church. I remember the icons being transported on carts, they fell, they were trampled. It was a terrible sight.
Dad began to serve at the Mitrophan cemetery church, and our family settled in the church lodge. There were built-in shelves on the left side, where Mom and the three children slept, and Dad slept on the trestle bed below. There were built-in shelves on the right side, too, where there was a place for a deacon without kith or kin, he had a mighty bass. The worst thing was Merkulovich, an old watchman, who lived downstairs, he was deaf and never wiped his nose … it was terrible. We could not find an apartment anywhere, no one wanted to lease a flat to such a big family. From the built-in shelves, one could see crosses through the window, especially in the moonlight on a winter night. I was very frightened, I could not sleep and cried. We lived there for two years and then we managed to rent a house across the road, opposite the cemetery.
There were four priests at this church: Fr. Ivan Prozorov, Fr. Vasily Archangelov, Fr. Nikolay Lapin, Fr. Pavel Remezov. The latter was a heart sufferer, about seventy, very sick. But there was so much warmth emanating from him, he knew how to console everyone, people went to him to talk.
The Liturgy was served daily. The priests took turns to serve and be on duty in the church: it is a cemetery; people came to celebrate a memorial service at the grave and various other rites. But infants were brought to be baptized in the evening: parents were afraid as it was a reason to be fired. There were no church wedding ceremonies at all.
Like all the priests, we lived a very poor life. The income was meagre. The rules were very different from the current ones when there is a fixed fee for a memorial service, for a funeral, etc. People decided how much to donate themselves. There stood a closed offertory box, where people dropped their money, and on Sunday the content was divided between the ministers. We were hungry, dressed more than modestly, but we did not complain, we thought it should be so, we did not know another life. My dad had a good tenor and I loved to listen to his service.
I remember the terrible year of 1933. We were starving so much! There was no bread. Ministers were not given bread cards. Others got at least 200 grams while we got nothing. We ate cakes made of barley coffee with grated beet – awful stuff. I never parted with Gogol’ book “Old World Landowners”. What tasty things they ate, especially pies with buckwheat! And I would read this page again and again: it seemed that Pulcheria Ivanovna was feeding me. At school there were cases when children fainted at the blackboard, these were famine faints.
In Moskovskaya street they opened a posh grocery store “Torgsin”. One could buy groceries only for gold and silver there. We handed in my mother’s wedding ring, took some millet, I don’t know how many pounds, but the bag was not heavy. We cooked watery millet soup and were pretty much happy. And the shopwindow, as if to mock at people, displayed ham, sausages, cheeses, and most importantly – white bread, rolls. Some people tried to run past it faster and not to look at it, while others stood for a long time, staring, choking with hunger saliva. I was there several times, but somehow it was bread that I used to look at more often, I wanted to stuff my mouth full with it. And one more horrible thing: once a swollen man was standing next to me, he would look and look and suddenly fell dead.
And once such a case happened to me: a female acquaintance saw me on the street and invited to her house. She told me that she had got a parcel from her son. She cut off rather a large piece of rye bread and spread it with butter for me. The aroma intoxicated me. She insisted that I should eat it at once, but I was determined to take it home. On the way home I bit off a small piece. Oh, how delicious it was! And beside myself, I gorged myself on it at incredible speed and ate all the bread. When I came to my senses, I was overwhelmed with shame: how could I have eaten everything alone and not bring even a tiny piece for my little sister. Despicable. I cried all the way and came home crying and kept saying, “I’m so sorry, please, forgive me” …Now I’m writing about it and crying again.
We had a hard time, a really hard time. Children of the clergy were not accepted in the fifth grade, then they were admitted to the seventh grade. In the spring girls from our neighbourhood went to work in a suburban state farm. They said they were given 300 grams of bread, soup and even money. So I went with them. How much energy would I apply to weed the beds! I ate there the soup and brought home the bread for three days. On the fourth day a foreman and another man came up to me with the words: “Is your father a priest? Never come here again”. It was my first slap due to my social origin. For the same reason I was not admitted to the eighth grade. My despair knew no bounds. It was even worse later on. I was given a passport where it was written: “a dependant of a Minister of religion”. Well, where could I turn up with such a passport (a blacklisting)? All paths were banned. I wanted to die. Two young people whom I knew perfectly well committed suicide out of despair – how long could one hang around and scrounge off one’s poor parents? How many tears would I shed!
Once, in 1937, in the night some men in leather jackets barged into our house, put us all to the wall, turned everything upside down. They found nothing, took my Dad, and I didn’t see him anymore. In the same night Fr. Vasily, Fr. Nicholas and Fr. Paul were arrested. Father died on the tenth day after his arrest. They didn’t give us his body. And we were left indigent…
The walls of this church witnessed the service of these priests, none of them returned. And they are somewhere in Siberia’s ground without a funeral service performed over them. I would ask all priests serving at Mitrophan Church now to mention Fr. John, Fr. Vasily, Fr. Nicholas, Fr. Paul in the prayer for the piece of the soul. Eternal memory!”
Источники: Дело № 7885-п, 10518-п; ГАПО, ф. 21, оп. 1, д. 1127; Лебедев М. А., протоиерей. Очерки истории Пензенского края. / Редактор-составитель А. И. Дворжанский. – Пенза, 2007. С. 89–91, 238. Фотоматериалы из семейного архива Таршилова Дмитрия Георгиевича.
