Q4069065

Andronik (in the world Vladimir Aleksandrovich Nikolsky) was born in 1870 in the village of Povodnevo in the Tver Governorate of the Russian Empire to a family of church servers; his father served as a psalm-reader. He received his theological education at the Tver Theological Seminary and subsequently at the Moscow Theological Academy, from which he graduated in 1895. During his student years he was tonsured a monk with the name Andronik and ordained to the holy orders. After a short time teaching in a seminary he was assigned in 1897 to the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Japan.

Serving under Saint Nicholas of Japan, Andronik learned the Japanese language and engaged in missionary, pastoral, and educational labors among the Japanese Orthodox flock. He worked in Tokyo and later in the Kyoto region. In 1906 he was consecrated Bishop of Kyoto, vicar of the Japanese mission. Health and the needs of the Russian Church led to his return to Russia the following year.

In Russia he served as Bishop of Tikhvin, a vicar of the Novgorod diocese, and later as Bishop of Omsk and Pavlodar. In 1914 he was named Archbishop of Perm and Solikamsk. In the Perm diocese he sought to improve the spiritual and moral condition of the clergy and laity, established educational programs, and spoke against the revolutionary unrest. He was a participant in the Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church in 1917-1918 and supported the restoration of the patriarchate. As Bolshevik power consolidated, he publicly criticized the new regime's attacks on the Church.

Arrested by the Perm Cheka in early June 1918, Archbishop Andronik was soon taken outside the city and killed. Traditional accounts of his martyrdom relate that he was tortured, compelled to dig a pit, and buried alive in a forest near Perm; other testimonies indicate he was shot. The Russian Orthodox Church officially glorified him as Hieromartyr Andronik of Perm in 2000 together with a great host of New Martyrs and Confessors who suffered in the twentieth century. His memory is kept on 7 June according to the Julian calendar as well as on the feast of the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Russia.