Priest Nikolai Kolchev — the life and fate of an emigrant

The article examines the history of the Kolchevs dynasty of Orthodox priests who served in the Tambov province of Russia in the 19th century. Three children of Archpriest Ioann Kolchev were also priests, two of them — Leonid and Nicholas after the 1917 revolution were forced to emigrate. Leonid Kolchev emigrated in 1920 and in Denmark was the confessor of the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna. Nikolai Kolchev was forced to leave Russia in 1924 and emigrated to China with his wife and 5 children. He served there for 25 years in Harbin and Shanghai, and was elevated to the rank of archpriest by Archbishop John of Shanghai. With the blessing of John of Shanghai, he continued his pastoral duty, being with the refugees — with his flock — at the place of her temporary settlement on the island of Tubabao (Philippines). Since 1950, his priestly activity continued in Argentina, then in the USA, where he was elevated to the rank of mitred archpriest by John of Shanghai. He was buried in the Serbian cemetery in San Francisco in 1972. The work examines in detail the activities of Nikolai Kolchev and his children in the service of the Orthodox Church. This research became possible only because it is based on a unique collection of artifacts collected in the family of Nikolai Kolchev over 50 years of his emigration. They include documents, photographs, service records, letters from relatives, newspaper clippings, periodicals, magazines, books, records and memoirs of Nikolai Kolchev’s children. A great contribution was made by the comments of his living grandson, Nikolai Khidchenko, who was born in Harbin in 1931, who preserved and transferred the entire archive of the Kolchev family to the Museum-Archive of Russian Culture in San Francisco.