From soldier to monk
Nicephorus was born Nikolai Ivanovich Kuchin around 1881 in the Solvychegodsk District of Vologda Province. Before embracing monastic life he served in the Imperial Russian Army, retiring with the rank of non-commissioned officer.
In 1909 he entered the Solovki Spaso-Transfiguration Monastery, one of the great monastic centers of the Russian North. Archimandrite Ioanniky tonsured him a monk with the name Nicephorus in 1913. Within the community he completed five classes of the brotherhood school and held the obedience of keeper of the ruhliyadnaya palata, the storehouse of vestments and sacred articles, before being ordained hieromonk.
Persecution and exile
As the Soviet persecution of the Church intensified, Hieromonk Nicephorus became the closest assistant of Archimandrite Benjamin (Kononov), the monastery's abbot. Together the two worked to conceal the reliquaries of Saints Zosima and Savvaty of Solovki and other sacred objects in hidden vaults within the monastery walls.
At the end of 1920 both were arrested by the Cheka, charged with concealing monastery valuables and storing weapons for counterrevolutionaries, and sent to forced labor at logging camps in Kholmogory. Released in 1922, they settled at the Solovki metochion in Arkhangelsk; after the authorities closed it, they were taken in as homeless monks by a local Orthodox pharmacist, Dr. Alexander Alexeyevich Levichev.
The forest hermitage and martyrdom
In the summer of 1926, on the advice of the former novice Stepan Antonov, the two monks built a forest cell about 40 kilometers from Korovkinskaya village, near the Lodma River in the Volkozero ("Lake of Wolves") area. They lived on fish, mushrooms, and berries, with Antonov visiting twice yearly to bring provisions.
On the evening of April 17, 1928 (Old Style April 4) — Tuesday of Bright Week — local residents came to the hermitage seeking rumored hidden monastery treasure. Shots were fired through the window, and after hearing the monks' groans the intruders entered and took items, then doused the hut with kerosene, blocked the door, and set it ablaze. Both Nicephorus and Benjamin perished in the fire. On June 9, 1928, Stepan Antonov discovered the burned hut with two skeletons, and the ensuing investigation confirmed that murder and arson had occurred.
Glorification
Hieromonk Nicephorus and Archimandrite Benjamin were canonized as venerable martyrs (prepodobnomucheniki) at the Jubilee Bishops' Council of the Russian Orthodox Church, held August 13–16, 2000. Their shared feast is kept on April 4 Old Style / April 17 New Style. Both are also numbered among the Synaxis of New Martyrs and Confessors of Solovki, commemorated on August 10/23, established by edict of Patriarch Alexy II on March 25, 2000.
Relics & Shrines
On January 15, 2004, a wooden church dedicated to the two martyrs was consecrated in Severodvinsk. In 2019 the "Potayennye Solovki" (Hidden Solovki) project installed commemorative markers at the Volkozero site, and on August 26, 2019, relics gathered from the place of their death were transferred to the Antonievo-Siysky Monastery. That same year a priest and parishioners from Arkhangelsk made a three-day trek of some 37 miles through the forest to the remote hermitage site to celebrate the Divine Liturgy there for the first time in roughly ninety years since the martyrdom.
