Q4065849

Andronik (born Vladimir Aleksandrovich Nikolsky) was born on 1 August 1870 in the village of Povodnevo, Myshkinsky Uyezd, Yaroslavl Governorate, in the Russian Empire, into the family of a church psalm-reader. Raised in a devout Orthodox setting, he received his education at the Yaroslavl Theological Seminary and then at the Moscow Theological Academy. While still a student at the academy he was tonsured a monk with the name Andronik in 1893 and ordained successively hierodeacon and hieromonk. He completed his theological degree in 1895.

After graduation he served as a teacher and seminary inspector. In 1897 he was sent to the Russian Orthodox mission in Japan, where he worked for a number of years under Archbishop Nicholas (Kasatkin), later glorified as Equal-to-the-Apostles. He studied Japanese and took part in missionary labors. In 1906 he was consecrated Bishop of Kyoto, a vicar of the Japanese mission, but soon returned to Russia. He subsequently served as Bishop of Tikhvin (vicar of the Novgorod diocese) and as Bishop of Omsk before being appointed Bishop of Perm and Solikamsk in 1914; he was later raised to the rank of archbishop.

As ruling hierarch of Perm during the First World War and the revolutions of 1917, Archbishop Andronik was known for active pastoral work, efforts to sustain church life, and charitable activity. He took part in the All-Russian Local Council of 1917–1918 that restored the Moscow patriarchate. After the Bolshevik seizure of power he publicly opposed the new regime’s confiscation of church property and its violence against clergy and believers.

In June 1918, following the Bolshevik consolidation of control in the Urals, he was arrested by the Cheka in Perm, imprisoned, and interrogated. He was then taken from the city and killed; contemporary and later accounts describe a martyr’s death, including reports that he was buried alive in a forest near Perm. He was among the earliest Orthodox hierarchs slain in the Red Terror. In August 2000 the Jubilee Bishops’ Council of the Russian Orthodox Church glorified him as a hieromartyr in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia.