Nikon Optinsky

Nikon of Optina, in the world Nikolai Mitrofanovich Belyaev, was a Russian Orthodox hieromonk and confessor and one of the last elders associated with Optina Pustyn. He was born in 1888 in Moscow into a devout merchant-class family in which Church life was taken seriously. From youth he was drawn to monasticism. In 1907 he went to Optina Monastery in Kaluga province, then still a major center of Russian spiritual life through its succession of startsy (elders). He was received by Elder Barsanuphius of Optina and became his cell attendant and close disciple, entering the community as a novice in that period.

In the years that followed he passed through the customary stages of Orthodox monastic formation at Optina. He was tonsured with the name Nikon and, in the 1910s, ordained deacon and then priest. The First World War and the revolutions of 1917 overtook the monastery. Optina was closed as a monastic house in stages after 1918; some brethren remained for a time under other institutional arrangements, but by the early 1920s the community had been dispersed. Hieromonk Nikon continued to serve in the Kozelsk area, hearing confessions and offering spiritual direction in the Optina tradition. In the eyes of the faithful he became one of the last living links to the pre-revolutionary elders.

Soviet authorities arrested him on more than one occasion. After a final arrest in the later 1920s he was sentenced to exile in the north and sent to the Pinega country in the Northern Krai, a remote region of what is now Arkhangelsk Oblast. Harsh conditions of exile, poor food, and climate aggravated tuberculosis. He died in 1931 in the village of Valdokurye and was buried in the village cemetery.

The Russian Orthodox Church glorified him as a venerable confessor among the Optina Elders. Local veneration of the Optina fathers was established in the 1990s, and church-wide canonization followed at the Jubilee Council of Bishops in 2000. He is commemorated on 8 July, the anniversary of his death, and on the synaxis of the Optina Elders. He held no episcopal, patriarchal, or papal office; he lived as a celibate monk without spouse or children. His life is remembered in Orthodox writing as an example of fidelity to the elder tradition under persecution.