Saint Hieromartyr Platon
of Tallinn.

Paul Kulbusch was born on July 13, 1869 in Pootsi, Pärnu County, Estonia, where his father was the cantor of the local Orthodox parish. He studied at the Arusaare Orthodox parish school, and then at the Theological School and Seminary at Riga. Every year the two best graduates were granted places to study, free of charge, at the Theological Academy in Saint Petersburg, and one of those chosen to receive such a scholarship was Bishop Platon. He graduated from the Academy in 1894.

During his years of theological study and early ministry, Kulbusch became deeply involved in pastoral work among Estonian Orthodox. While studying at the academy in 1890-94, Kulbusch actively engaged in missionary work among the Orthodox Estonians, preaching in the parish of St Michael the Archangel in the Malaia Kolomna district of St Petersburg to workers who lived nearby. However, Metropolitan Palladii (Raevskii) chose the industrious Kulbusch, who then married Nadezhda Losskaia, the daughter of the influential secretary of the Riga consistory and the sister of a fellow student at the Riga seminary.

Archpriest Paul Kulbusch worked in Saint Petersburg for 23 years (1894-1917), and he founded there the Brotherhood of the Martyr Isidore. From 1912 he was an active member in the St Petersburg society which tried to bring closer the Anglican and Orthodox churches, and as such he was often despatched to England by the Synod. He had in fact already been offered an Episcopal see in Russia but had refused, because he felt that his vocation was, first of all, to serve his own people - the Estonian Orthodox.

In July 1917 the delegates of the Orthodox parishes in Estonia traveled to Saint Petersburg in order to approach Archpriest Paul Kulbusch and to ask for his consent to be consecrated as Bishop of Estonia. Benjamin, Metropolitan of Saint Petersburg, and Artemi, Bishop of Luuga, performed his consecration as Bishop in the Alexander Cathedral in Tallinn on December 31, 1917. Bishop Platon celebrated his first Pontifical Liturgy on the night of the New Year, January 1, 1918, at the Cathedral of the Transfiguration.

Platon had become the de-facto bishop of Riga, administering Latvian, Estonian (including Seto), and Russian parishes from his residence in Tartu. On 12 November 1918, the day of the German surrender, Platon composed an appeal to Orthodox Estonians in which he called them to help to create a democratic and prosperous Estonian homeland. He believed that the Orthodox Church had to rebuild itself as a people's church.

At the time of the Bolshevik invasion, Platon was in Tartu (Dorpat), having fallen ill with pneumonia. The Bolsheviks took Tartu on 24 December, and on 2 January Platon was arrested and imprisoned in a cellar. On 3 January, two other Orthodox priests (Nikolai Bezhanitskii and Mikhail Bleive) and the Lutheran pastor Traugott Hahn were arrested.

In the prison Bishop Platon was forced to clean the toilet of the prisoners with his bare hands. This was on Sunday January 12. On the same evening the Bishop felt sure that he would be put to death. He told his fellow prisoners that, if this happened, they should transmit his last blessing to all his Orthodox flock and parishes: he urged them to flee if possible from the Communist terror, but at the first opportunity to return.

On January 14, 1919, at about 10 o'clock in the morning a commissar with two Red Guards summoned Bishop Platon to come out. During a previous examination at night the commissar had insisted that the Bishop should cease to preach the Gospel. Bishop Platon had been stabbed seven times in the chest, and four bullet wounds were found on his body: two bullets had pierced his chest, one bullet had pierced his left shoulder, and one bullet had passed through his right eye. There were also signs of beatings on his body, including a punch to his right temple.

The Estonian Government ordered that the body of Bishop Platon should be transported to the capital city of Tallinn where a state funeral took place. On the way from the railway station to the Cathedral of the Transfiguration, where the Bishop had celebrated his first and his last Pontifical Liturgy, soldiers stood as a guard of honor on both sides of the streets. Three orchestras followed the funeral procession.

Saint Platon's relics rest in the Cathedral of the Transfiguration in Tallinn. On January 18, 1931 a sarcophagus was unveiled over the tomb of Bishop Platon in the Cathedral of the Transfiguration. It is in the baroque style of the seventeenth century, and is made of Estonian marble. On the sarcophagus the Bishop's vestment is molded in cast bronze, together with his pastoral staff, his miter, and a crown of seven thorns, symbolizing the seven wounds that he received from the bayonet.

Bishop Platon (Kulbusch), the first Estonian to become an Orthodox prelate, became a figure of symbolic importance in Estonia and beyond. Bishop Platon, Archpriests Nicholas Bezhanitsky and Michael Bleive were glorified as martyrs by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia in 1982, and by the Patriarchate of Constantinople in 2000.

The martyrdom of Bishop Platon and his companion priests continues to be commemorated as a witness to the Church's endurance through persecution. A Church Service in honor of Saint Platon was composed by Metropolitan Joel of Edessa. The Church also commemorates all the New Martyrs of Estonia: Priests, Deacons and laymen.

Hieromartyr Platon of Tallinn was an Estonian bishop and the first Orthodox saint of Estonian ethnicity. He was born on July 13, 1869 in Pootsi, Pärnumaa, in the southwest of present-day Estonia (then part of Imperial Russia).

Kulbusch graduated in 1894 from the St. Petersburg Theological Academy with a master's degree and soon became a priest at the Estonian Orthodox Church of Saint Isidore in St. Petersburg, where he oversaw the expansion of church institutions and buildings and actively reached out to the Anglican church. He founded there the Brotherhood of the Martyr Isidore, establishing himself as a dedicated shepherd of Estonian Orthodox communities in diaspora.

In 1917 a plenary council in Riga elected Kulbusch to be bishop of Reval (modern Tallinn, then a vicariate of the Riga diocese). He was consecrated as Bishop Platon on 31 December 1917. The ladies of Tallinn had presented to the Bishop a vestment in the Estonian national colors: the vestment itself was white, and it was decorated with blue and black crosses.

Bishop Platon's episcopate was marked by extraordinary pastoral zeal and political turmoil. It was a tumultuous time. World War I was raging on, Russia's emperor Nicholas II had been overthrown, and Estonia yearned for independence, which Platon staunchly supported. At that time it was very difficult to travel, but that did not stop the Bishop from visiting almost all of the Orthodox parishes in Estonia during that summer. He managed to visit over 70 parishes in less than a year in 1918.

Following the German withdrawal and Bolshevik invasion of Estonia, Platon was in Tartu (Dorpat), having fallen ill with pneumonia. The Bolsheviks took Tartu on 24 December, and on 2 January Platon was arrested and imprisoned in a cellar. Fellow prisoners remembered that Bishop Platon and Pastor Hann fulfilled their pastoral duties in prison, reading the Gospels and counselling those faint at heart. These eyewitnesses characterized both Hahn and Platon as saintly figures, who washed the toilet with their bare hands and turned the heavy wheel of the water pump.

On 14 January 1919, during the Tartu Credit Center Massacre, Platon was executed along with two other priests, Michael Bleive and Nikolai Bezhanitsky, just before the city was retaken by the Estonian Army. Bishop Platon had been stabbed seven times in the chest, and four bullet wounds were found on his body: two bullets had pierced his chest, one bullet had pierced his left shoulder, and one bullet had passed through his right eye.

Bishop Platon, Archpriests Nicholas Bezhanitsky and Michael Bleive were glorified as martyrs by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia in 1982, and by the Patriarchate of Constantinople in 2000.