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New Martyrs and Confessors Russian Foundation. Opening up the sky

On February 10, 2019, the Russian Orthodox Church celebrates the Council of New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church (traditionally, since 2000, this holiday has been celebrated on the first Sunday after February 7). To date, the Cathedral includes more than 1700 names. Here are just a few of them.

, archpriest, first martyr of Petrograd

The first priest in Petrograd who died at the hands of the God-fighting authorities. In 1918, on the threshold of the diocesan administration, he stood up for women insulted by the Red Army and was shot in the head. Father Peter had a wife and seven children.

At the time of his death he was 55 years old.

Metropolitan of Kyiv and Galicia

The first bishop of the Russian Church, who died during the revolutionary turmoil. Killed by armed bandits led by a sailor commissar near the Kiev Pechersk Lavra.

At the time of his death, Metropolitan Vladimir was 70 years old.

, Archbishop of Voronezh

The last Russian emperor and his family were shot in 1918 in Yekaterinburg, in the basement of the Ipatiev House, by order of the Ural Council of Workers', Peasants' and Soldiers' Deputies.

At the time of the execution, Emperor Nicholas was 50 years old, Empress Alexandra 46 years old, Grand Duchess Olga 22 years old, Grand Duchess Tatiana 21 years old, Grand Duchess Maria 19 years old, Grand Duchess Anastasia 17 years old, Tsarevich Alexy 13 years old. Together with them, their close associates were shot: physician Evgeny Botkin, cook Ivan Kharitonov, valet Alexey Trupp, maid Anna Demidova.

And

The sister of the martyr Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, the widow of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, who was killed by revolutionaries, after the death of her husband, Elisaveta Feodorovna became a sister of mercy and abbess of the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent of Mercy in Moscow, which she created. When Elisaveta Feodorovna was arrested by the Bolsheviks, her cell attendant, nun Varvara, despite the offer of freedom, voluntarily followed her.

Together with the Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich and his secretary Fyodor Remez, the Grand Dukes John, Konstantin and Igor Konstantinovich and Prince Vladimir Paley, the Venerable Martyr Elizabeth and the nun Varvara were thrown alive into a mine near the city of Alapaevsk and died in terrible agony.

At the time of her death, Elisaveta Feodorovna was 53 years old, and nun Varvara was 68 years old.

, Metropolitan of Petrograd and Gdov

In 1922 he was arrested for resisting the Bolshevik campaign to confiscate church property. The actual reason for the arrest is the rejection of the renovationist split. Together with the hieromartyr Archimandrite Sergius (Shein) (52 years old), the martyr Ioann Kovsharov (lawyer, 44 years old) and the martyr Yuri Novitsky (professor at St. Petersburg University, 40 years old), he was shot in the vicinity of Petrograd, presumably at the Rzhevsky training ground. Before execution, all the martyrs were shaved and dressed in rags, so that the executioners would not identify the clergy.

At the time of his death, Metropolitan Veniamin was 45 years old.

Hieromartyr John Vostorgov, Archpriest

A well-known Moscow priest, one of the leaders of the monarchist movement. He was arrested in 1918 on charges of intending to sell the Moscow diocesan house (!). He was held in the Internal Prison of the Cheka, then in Butyrki. With the beginning of the "Red Terror", he was executed extrajudicially. Publicly shot on September 5, 1918 in Petrovsky Park, together with Bishop Efrem, as well as former Chairman of the State Council Shcheglovitov, former Ministers of Internal Affairs Maklakov and Khvostov and Senator Beletsky. After the execution, the bodies of all those executed (up to 80 people) were robbed.

At the time of his death, Archpriest John Vostorgov was 54 years old.

, layman

The ailing Theodore, who suffered from paralysis of his legs from the age of 16, was revered during his lifetime as an ascetic by the believers of the Tobolsk diocese. Arrested by the NKVD in 1937 as a “religious fanatic” for “preparing for an armed uprising against Soviet power.” He was taken to Tobolsk prison on a stretcher. In the cell, Theodore was placed facing the wall and forbidden to speak. They didn’t ask him anything, they didn’t carry him during interrogations, and the investigator didn’t enter the cell. Without trial or investigation, according to the verdict of the “troika”, he was shot in the prison yard.

At the time of execution - 41 years old.

, archimandrite

Famous missionary, monk of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, confessor of the Alexander Nevsky Brotherhood, one of the founders of the illegal Theological and Pastoral School in Petrograd. In 1932, together with other members of the brotherhood, he was accused of counter-revolutionary activities and sentenced to 10 years in prison in Siblag. In 1937, he was shot by the NKVD troika for “anti-Soviet propaganda” (that is, for talking about faith and politics) among prisoners.

At the time of execution - 48 years old.

, laywoman

In the 1920s and 30s, Christians throughout Russia knew about it. For many years, OGPU employees tried to “unravel” the phenomenon of Tatyana Grimblit, and, in general, without success. She devoted her entire adult life to helping prisoners. Carried packages, sent parcels. She often helped complete strangers to her, not knowing whether they were believers or not, and under what article they were convicted. She spent almost everything she earned on this, and encouraged other Christians to do the same.

She was arrested and exiled many times, and together with the prisoners she traveled in a convoy across the whole country. In 1937, while a nurse in a hospital in the city of Konstantinov, she was arrested on false charges of anti-Soviet agitation and “deliberate killing of the sick.”

Shot at the Butovo firing range near Moscow at the age of 34.

, Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus'

The first Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church, who ascended the Patriarchal throne after the restoration of the patriarchate in 1918. In 1918, he anathematized the persecutors of the Church and participants in bloody massacres. In 1922–23 he was kept under arrest. Subsequently, he was under constant pressure from the OGPU and the “gray abbot” Yevgeny Tuchkov. Despite the blackmail, he refused to join the Renovationist schism and collude with the godless authorities.

He died at the age of 60 from heart failure.

, Metropolitan of Krutitsky

He took holy orders in 1920, at the age of 58, and was the closest assistant to His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon in matters of church administration. Locum Tenens of the Patriarchal Throne from 1925 (death of Patriarch Tikhon) until the false announcement of his death in 1936. From the end of 1925 he was imprisoned. Despite constant threats to extend his imprisonment, he remained faithful to the canons of the Church and refused to remove himself from the rank of Patriarchal Locum Tenens until the legal Council.

He suffered from scurvy and asthma. After a conversation with Tuchkov in 1931, he was partially paralyzed. The last years of his life he was kept as a "secret prisoner" in solitary confinement in the Verkhneuralsk prison.

In 1937, at the age of 75, by the verdict of the NKVD troika in the Chelyabinsk region, he was shot for “slander of the Soviet system” and accusing the Soviet authorities of persecuting the Church.

, Metropolitan of Yaroslavl

After the death of his wife and newborn son in 1885, he accepted holy orders and monasticism, and from 1889 served as a bishop. One of the candidates for the post of locum tenens of the Patriarchal Throne, according to the will of Patriarch Tikhon. We tried to persuade the OGPU to cooperate, but to no avail. For resistance to the renovationist schism in 1922-23 he was imprisoned, in 1923-25. - in exile in the Narym region.

He died in Yaroslavl at the age of 74.

, archimandrite

Coming from a peasant family, he took holy orders at the height of persecution of his faith in 1921. He spent a total of 17.5 years in prisons and camps. Even before his official canonization, Archimandrite Gabriel was revered as a saint in many dioceses of the Russian Church.

In 1959 he died in Melekesse (now Dmitrovgrad) at the age of 71.

, Metropolitan of Almaty and Kazakhstan

Coming from a poor family with many children, from childhood he dreamed of monasticism. In 1904 he took tonsure, in 1919, at the height of persecution of the faith, he became a bishop. For resistance to renovationism in 1925–27 he was imprisoned. In 1932, he was sentenced to 5 years in concentration camps (according to the investigator, “for popularity”). In 1941, for the same reason, he was exiled to Kazakhstan, almost died of starvation and disease in exile, and was homeless for a long time. In 1945, he was released from exile ahead of schedule at the request of Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky), and headed the Kazakh diocese.

He died in Almaty at the age of 88. The veneration of Metropolitan Nicholas among the people was enormous. Vladyka's funeral in 1955, despite the threat of persecution, was attended by 40,000 people.

, archpriest

Hereditary village priest, missionary, unmercenary. In 1918, he supported the anti-Soviet peasant uprising in the Ryazan province, blessed the people "to go to the fight against the persecutors of the Church of Christ." Together with Hieromartyr Nicholas, the Church commemorates with him the martyrs Cosmas, Victor (Krasnov), Naum, Philip, John, Paul, Andrew, Paul, Basil, Alexy, John, and Martyr Agathia. All of them were brutally killed by the Red Army on the banks of the Tsna River near Ryazan.

At the time of his death, Father Nikolai was 44 years old.

Saint Kirill (Smirnov), Metropolitan of Kazan and Sviyazhsk

One of the leaders of the Josephite movement, a staunch monarchist and opponent of Bolshevism. He was arrested and exiled many times. In the will of His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon was indicated as the first candidate for the post of locum tenens of the Patriarchal Throne. In 1926, when a secret gathering of opinions took place among the episcopate on a candidacy for the post of Patriarch, the largest number of votes was given to Metropolitan Kirill.

To Tuchkov’s proposal to lead the Church without waiting for the Council, the bishop replied: “Evgeniy Alexandrovich, you are not a cannon, and I am not a bomb with which you want to blow up the Russian Church from within,” for which he received another three years of exile.

, archpriest

The rector of the Resurrection Cathedral in Ufa, a famous missionary, church historian and public figure, he was accused of “campaigning in favor of Kolchak” and shot by security officers in 1919.

The 62-year-old priest was beaten, spat in his face, and dragged by his beard. He was led to execution in only his underwear, barefoot in the snow.

, metropolitan

An officer of the tsarist army, an outstanding artilleryman, as well as a doctor, composer, artist... He left worldly glory for the sake of serving Christ and took holy orders in obedience to his spiritual father - St. John of Kronstadt.

On December 11, 1937, at the age of 82, he was shot at the Butovo training ground near Moscow. He was taken to prison in an ambulance, and to execution - he was carried out on a stretcher.

, Archbishop of Verei

Outstanding Orthodox theologian, writer, missionary. During the Local Council of 1917–18, then-Archimandrite Hilarion was the only non-bishop who was named in behind-the-scenes conversations among the desirable candidates for the patriarchate. He accepted the episcopate at the height of persecution of the faith - in 1920, and soon became the closest assistant to the holy Patriarch Tikhon.

He spent a total of two three-year terms in the Solovki concentration camp (1923–26 and 1926–29). “He stayed for a repeat course,” as the bishop himself joked... Even in prison, he continued to rejoice, joke and thank the Lord. In 1929, during the next step along the stage, he fell ill with typhus and died.

He was 43 years old.

Martyr Princess Kira Obolenskaya, laywoman

Kira Ivanovna Obolenskaya was a hereditary noblewoman, belonged to the ancient Obolensky family, which traced its lineage from the legendary Prince Rurik. She studied at the Smolny Institute for Noble Maidens, worked as a teacher at a school for the poor. Under the Soviet regime, as a representative of "class alien elements", she was transferred to the position of a librarian. She took an active part in the life of the Alexander Nevsky Brotherhood in Petrograd.

In 1930-34 she was imprisoned in concentration camps for counter-revolutionary views (Belbaltlag, Svirlag). Upon her release from prison, she lived at the 101st kilometer from Leningradral, in the town of Borovichi. In 1937, she was arrested along with the clergy of the Borovichi and shot on false charges of creating a "counter-revolutionary organization."

At the time of the execution, the martyr Kira was 48 years old.

Martyr Catherine of Arskaya, laywoman

Merchant's daughter, born in St. Petersburg. In 1920, she experienced a tragedy: her husband, an officer in the Tsarist army and headman of the Smolny Cathedral, died of cholera, then five of their children. Seeking help from the Lord, Ekaterina Andreevna joined the life of the Alexander Nevsky Brotherhood at the Feodorovsky Cathedral in Petrograd, became the spiritual daughter of the Hieromartyr Leo (Yegorov).

In 1932, along with other members of the brotherhood (a total of 90 people), Catherine was also arrested. She received three years in concentration camps for participating in the activities of a "counter-revolutionary organization." Upon returning from exile, like the martyr Kira Obolenskaya, she settled in the city of Borovichi. In 1937 she was arrested in connection with the Borovichi clergy case. She refused to admit her guilt in "counter-revolutionary activities" even under torture. She was shot on the same day as the martyr Kira Obolenskaya.

She was 62 years old at the time of the shooting.

, layman

Historian, publicist, honorary member of the Moscow Theological Academy. The grandson of a priest, in his youth he tried to create his own community, living according to the teachings of Count Tolstoy. Then he returned to the Church and became an Orthodox missionary. With the coming to power of the Bolsheviks, Mikhail Alexandrovich entered the Provisional Council of the United Parishes of the city of Moscow, which at its very first meeting called on the faithful to stand up for the defense of churches, to protect them from the encroachments of the atheists.

Since 1923, he went into hiding, hiding with friends, writing missionary pamphlets ("Letters to Friends"). When he was in Moscow, he went to pray at the Vozdvizhensky Church on Vozdvizhenka. On March 22, 1929, not far from the temple, he was arrested. Mikhail Alexandrovich spent almost ten years in prison, he led many of his cellmates to the faith.

On January 20, 1938, he was shot in a Vologda prison at the age of 73 for anti-Soviet statements.

, priest

At the time of the revolution, he was a layman, assistant professor of dogmatic theology at the Moscow Theological Academy. In 1919, the academic career came to an end: the Moscow Academy was closed by the Bolsheviks, and the professorship was dispersed. Then Tuberovsky decided to return to his native Ryazan region. In the early 1920s, in the midst of anti-church persecution, he took holy orders and, together with his father, served in the Church of the Intercession of the Virgin in his native village.

In 1937 he was arrested. Other priests were also arrested along with Father Alexander: Anatoly Pravdolyubov, Nikolay Karasev, Konstantin Bazhanov and Evgeny Kharkov, as well as the laity. All of them were deliberately falsely accused of "participation in a rebel-terrorist organization and counter-revolutionary activities." Archpriest Anatoly Pravdolyubov, the 75-year-old rector of the Church of the Annunciation in the city of Kasimov, was declared the “head of the conspiracy” ... According to legend, before execution, the convicts were forced to dig a trench with their own hands and immediately, putting their faces to the moat, were shot.

Father Alexander Tuberovsky was 56 years old at the time of the execution.

Venerable Martyr Augusta (Zashchuk), schema-nun

The founder and first head of the Optina Pustyn Museum, Lydia Vasilievna Zashchuk, was of noble origin. She spoke six foreign languages, had literary talent, and before the revolution she was a well-known journalist in St. Petersburg. In 1922, she took monastic vows in Optina Hermitage. After the closure of the monastery by the Bolsheviks in 1924, she managed to preserve Optina as a museum. Many of the inhabitants of the monastery were thus able to remain in their places as museum workers.

In 1927–34 schema-nun Augusta was imprisoned (she was involved in the same case with hieromonk Nikon (Belyaev) and other “optintsy”). From 1934 she lived in the city of Tula, then in the city of Belev, where the last rector of the Optina Hermitage, Hieromonk Issakiy (Bobrikov), settled. She headed a secret women's community in the city of Belev. She was shot in 1938 in the case at 162 km of the Simferopol highway in the Tesnitsky forest near Tula.

At the time of the execution, Schema nun Augusta was 67 years old.

, priest

Hieromartyr Sergius, son of the holy righteous Alexis, Presbyter of Moscow, graduated from the Faculty of History and Philology of Moscow University. During the First World War, he voluntarily went to the front as an orderly. At the height of persecution in 1919, he took holy orders. After the death of his father in 1923, Hieromartyr Sergius became rector of the Church of St. Nicholas in Klenniki and served in this temple until his arrest in 1929, when he and his parishioners were accused of creating an “anti-Soviet group.”

The holy righteous Alexy himself, already known during his lifetime as an elder in the world, said: “My son will be taller than me.” Father Sergius managed to rally around himself the spiritual children of the late Father Alexy and his own children. Members of the community of Father Sergius carried the memory of their spiritual father through all the persecution. Since 1937, upon leaving the camp, Father Sergius served the liturgy in his home, secretly from the authorities.

In the fall of 1941, following a denunciation from neighbors, he was arrested and accused of “working to create underground so-called. “Catacomb churches”, implants secret monasticism similar to the Jesuit orders and on this basis organizes anti-Soviet elements for an active struggle against Soviet power.” On Christmas Eve 1942, Hieromartyr Sergius was shot and buried in an unknown common grave.

At the time of the shooting he was 49 years old.

Have you read the article New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia. Read also:

In the 1970s, he began collecting information about the new martyrs of the Russian Orthodox Church who suffered in the persecution against the Church in the 20th century. In 1988, he became a monk and was ordained a hieromonk. Since 1991 - member of the Synodal Commission for the study of materials concerning the rehabilitation of the clergy and laity of the Russian Orthodox Church who suffered during the Soviet period. Since 1996 - member of the Synodal Commission for the Canonization of Saints of the Russian Orthodox Church. In 2000 he was elevated to the rank of abbot. Cleric of the Church of the Intercession of the Mother of God on Lyshchikova Hill in Moscow.

Member of the Writers' Union of Russia, head of the "Memory of the Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Orthodox Church" fund (www.fond.ru), member of the scientific and editorial board for the publication of the Orthodox Encyclopedia. Author of seven books "Martyrs, Confessors and Devotees of Piety of the Russian Orthodox Church of the 20th Century" (1992-2002), compiler of the complete set of lives of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian 20th Century (at the moment, the lives of January, February, March, April, May, and also the lives of those saints whose memory is celebrated only in the Council of New Martyrs).

– Why, how and when did you start studying the history of the new martyrs?

– I started collecting information about the new martyrs because I considered it my duty. Duty to the Russian Church, to his people, among whom God gave happiness to be born. We all take a lot from God, but give little, we receive blessings for granted and do not have time to give thanks. But sometimes you have to give. How a self-sufficient sense of duty and the immutability of the holy obligation to give is born in the soul - and to give, working in a certain field - only the Lord knows. He leads along this path. All external circumstances in relation to this basic fact are transient and insignificant.

Cathedral of Russian New Martyrs

When the field, or in church terms, the obedience that you must undergo, has been determined, then all that remains is to figure out how to carry it out, acting as dispassionately as possible. And when you do not your own, but God’s, then the Lord will give you a plan on how to do it. The primary task at the beginning of this career was for me the collection of oral tradition - interrogations, recording and studying the testimonies of eyewitnesses.

The 1970s-1980s were the last period of time when elderly witnesses were still alive, the fear that paralyzed the people after the terror that took place in the country weakened somewhat, but was still strong enough to keep witnesses from telling “beautiful” stories, and removed many people who, due to irresponsibility and impunity, could pose as witnesses to the historical events being studied; Thus, in those years, those who did not know did not pretend to know, and those who knew were well aware of the significance of their testimony - that it was not just an everyday story, but a testimony to the martyrdom of a Christian and, ultimately, a testimony about Christ and His Church, and approached this responsibly and with the fear of God. All church witnesses of that time understood this well and therefore scrupulously tried to preserve and convey grains of these treasures, without embellishing them with human fiction. In a way, they testified to eternity; through their testimony came the refreshing wind of tradition, inextricably linked with the history of the Church, with the persecution of the first Christians and the apostolic time. This atmosphere is filled with the Spirit of Christ, which makes a person’s life truly valuable and meaningful. But there was little time left for questioning; every year more and more witnesses were carried away to another world, so that if at the first stage the task of collecting church tradition was still feasible, then in the 1990s it became almost impossible. But even at the initial stage, the collection of tradition had results only because there was God’s help for this work, which was nurtured and created by Him. Is it easy in an unfamiliar city where ten thousand people live, to find two dozen witnesses of the past, carefully preserving it in their memory as the greatest shrine? But the Lord pointed them out, and the Lord told them how and what to tell.

When I began to study church tradition, which in our era consists of a confessional feat and the martyrdom of members of the Church, then the country was at that time material and moral collapse, it was a battlefield after the war, where after physical death it went to harvest spiritual death - from godlessness that burns out all aspects of life. The internal disintegration in the country as a consequence of the war against the people exceeds all human expectations, and only out of habit for trouble do we stop feeling it acutely and get used to it. Thanks to the study of the religious life of the inhabitants of cities and villages, the picture at that time was more or less clear. By that time, a small group of elderly people remained throughout the country, a small flock of Christ's church people who remembered our church past well and, living it, were the successors of its traditions. They organically connected their personal lives with him, they themselves were ascetics and confessors, and due to the affinity of experience they could adequately convey the testimonies of the martyrs and confessors and how to depict contemporary persecutions in the ancient prologue. An abyss formed between them and the rest of the people, the gap was such that the next generation no longer knew anything about the previous history of their country and the places where they live. Some kind of mystical horror fettered the people of a vast country after revolutions, persecutions, wars and persecutions again.

In addition to the oral part of the church tradition, there was also a written one, that is, memoirs that the witnesses themselves wrote down, and many of which were published at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st century.

About fifteen years had passed, devoted to collecting oral tradition, when in 1991 it became possible to study archival materials, and in particular the archive and investigation files of the KGB. Now it was possible to conduct a comparative analysis of the facts of oral church tradition and archive documents, and since 1991 the Church began a systematic study of archival and investigative cases in order to solve the subsequent task of glorifying the new martyrs on the basis of studying all the materials.

– How was the Foundation "Memory of the Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Orthodox Church" formed? What is he currently doing? What are the challenges ahead of him? Plans for the near future?

– The Foundation "Memory of the Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Orthodox Church" was formed in the 1990s and in 1997 received official registration. His goal is to study all the problems relating to the new martyrs, the study of archival documents that are of a general historical nature and concerning the relationship between the Church and the state in the Soviet period, archival and investigative cases that are directly related to the martyrs. Over the past eight years, a fund has been studied, consisting of ninety-six thousand archival and investigative files, which served as the basis for preparing for inclusion in the Cathedral of the New Martyrs of Russia - the New Martyrs of the Moscow Diocese, that is, those arrested in Moscow and the Moscow Region. Of these ninety-six thousand, cases relating to the Russian Orthodox Church were selected. The study of the complete fund is essential in preparation for canonization.

In real life, everything happens much more complicated than an individual can imagine. For example, a priest is arrested in 1937, according to the protocols of interrogations, we see that he behaves courageously, does not compromise, does not bear false witness in order to alleviate his lot, does not yield to the pressure of the investigators. If we stop studying here, then we will have no doubts about his exclusively confessional life - but in reality, if we get acquainted with the entire archival fund, everything may turn out differently. Two years before the last arrest, the NKVD called this priest as a witness and demanded that he slander his brother, otherwise he could turn from a witness into an accused - and he agreed to testify against his brother, contributing to the legal formalization of his sentence to condemnation. Since the card file is kept by the names of the accused, and not the witnesses, it is possible to find the accused who also acted as a witness only by studying the entire fund of archival and investigative files.

Regarding the Foundation's plans for the future, it should be said that the scientific study of archival materials, concerning only the famous martyrs, is a boundless sea. In the glorification of the martyrs, the main thing that was studied was the martyr's or confessional feat itself. But the biographies of many martyrs go back to the pre-revolutionary past. Due to the fact that we do not have the study of church history due to objective circumstances (before the Bolshevik revolution - they did not have time to study it, after - they did not allow it to be studied), therefore, anyone who studies the biography of this or that church leader is forced to investigate church history much broader than the one set before him a specific task, to study the circumstances in which this or that figure lived, as well as the work of those church institutions in which the future martyr worked, such as the holy martyrs Archbishop Andronik (Nikolsky) of Perm, Archbishop Mitrofan (Krasnopolsky) of Astrakhan, or Bishop Germogen (Dolganev) of Tobolsk ). Their life under Soviet rule was only about a year, and the main part of their life and church activity falls on the pre-revolutionary period, which means that it is necessary to refer to pre-revolutionary archival complexes of documents. Russian church history in its pre-revolutionary course was interrupted too suddenly, and yet, for almost a century, it can be considered almost unexplored. This kind of study, associated with access to archives, is always a laborious and long process.

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Orthodox Church and sectarians. Heavenly Church: veneration of saints, prayerful invocation of saints, veneration of the Mother of God, veneration of holy angels- Archpriest Dmitry Vladykov
Symphony on the Lives of the Saints- Ignatius Lapkin
What are the saints- Foma
Aura or halo? Can the radiance of saints be measured?- Foma
Witnesses of Christ- Andrey Vinogradov
Why does the Church honor saints?- hegumen Ignatius Dushein
On issues of canonization- Priest Maxim Maximov
Church veneration of saints and unauthorized canonizations- Alexey Zaitsev
Prayer fellowship with saints- Archpriest Mikhail Pomazansky
What is the difference between a saint and a "miracle worker"-occultist- Valery Dukhanin
holy fools- Dmitry Rebrov
Holiness in Orthodoxy- Deacon Maxim Plyatkin
Opening the sky(On the significance of the feat of the Russian New Martyrs and on the work of canonization of the newly glorified saints) - Abbot Damaskin Orlovsky
Were the saints wrong?- Priest Dimitry Moiseev
The first words of praise to the holy Protomartyr Stephen- Saint Gregory of Nyssa
Second eulogy to Saint Stephen the First Martyr- Saint Gregory of Nyssa

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—What, as a rule, does the life of a new saint consist of? If we talk about the 20th century, then what is it - the materials of the criminal case from the archive, the stories of eyewitnesses and people who knew the person, various testimonies? What is important to reflect in life?

- The basis of most lives is archival and investigative files - martyr acts of the new time, which display the biographical facts of the martyr, the fact of his belonging to the Orthodox Church, the time and reasons for the arrest, as well as how the person behaved when they tried to persuade him to perjury against himself or others, his moral and religious position as an Orthodox person. Service records, documents relating to the closure of churches, and, of course, the memoirs of contemporaries, if any, are used to compile the life. For life, it is important to reflect the real side of reality, hagiographically outlining, based on the actual data, the image of the saint, his confession; at the same time, each life is a small scientific study, where behind each named event and fact there are certain documents analyzed from the point of view of reliability; saints do not need lies, they need the Lord to be glorified through their real life.

– What accusations were most often made against believers? Under what articles were they repressed?

- The accusations that were made against believers were almost always based on political articles - article 58, paragraph 10 and paragraph 11, that is, anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda, committed alone or as part of other persons. Agitation was already considered if a person, for example, said that in the Soviet Union there were persecutions of believers. Since official propaganda claimed that they did not exist, it means that if you say that there are persecutions, you are engaged in anti-Soviet propaganda. When the cell-attendant of the Hieromartyr Hermogenes (Dolganev) pointed out to the Red Guard the theft of the bishop's panagia, the Red Guard declared that if the cell-attendant told about this, it would be regarded as slander and counter-revolutionary propaganda. Any reproach to the regime for its unlawful and inhuman actions or denunciation of it and its leaders by the authorities was interpreted as slander and agitation against the regime. The church, in all its activities, was perceived by the state as an anti-Soviet and anti-communist organization; formally, however, its existence was recognized by Soviet law, and belonging to the Church could not be interpreted as membership in an anti-government organization, so the NKVD officers accused the arrested clergy and laity of political crimes, of agitation and propaganda against the authorities. In some cases, following the example of creating political oppositions, the state security services, using various provocative methods, created church oppositions, which, by definition, being organizationally formalized as a group of like-minded people, were considered anti-Soviet, and therefore their participants were arrested because they belonged to them. As for the observance of the legality of the conduct of the investigation, it, as far as this concept is generally used in a totalitarian state, was observed. After the introduction in Russia of the principles of Western European jurisprudence, which rests on the procedure, they nevertheless tried to adhere to the order of such procedures. That is, if a person, under the onslaught of physical or psychological violence, admitted his guilt or two or more witnesses testified against him, confirming what the investigation accused him of, then formally such a case could be considered legally correct - there is a confession of the accused and the testimony of witnesses confirming the accusation, or at least the testimony of two or three witnesses, if the accused did not plead guilty. In essence - a lie, but the form is respected.

– How did the holy people behave in the face of an unjust accusation and a probable execution? How did they understand and evaluate what was happening to them and their time?

– For believers, for our martyrs and confessors, the fact that they ended up in prison, and the accusations brought against them, had a completely different meaning. They were well aware of the real value of the accusations, but they did not say that their going to jail, the charges brought against them and, perhaps, their imminent death were some kind of accident. This would be an absurd idea for a believer about the world and its Creator. The holy martyrs experienced the trials that happened to them and the very approach of death in much the same way as their holy martyr Vasily (Sokolov) experienced, who was shot in 1922 after a process in which those arrested were accused of resisting the seizure of church valuables, and who left us letters written by him on death row .

“The Apostle Paul says from his own experience that it is impossible to convey the beauties of the heavenly world, that it is impossible to express the delight that embraces the soul of those who enter this world,” wrote the Hieromartyr Basil. but, in fact, to regret this local world, which is beautiful only occasionally, and even in this temporary beauty it always conceals in itself a lot of all kinds of suffering and all kinds of physical and moral disgrace. That is why Christ says in the Holy Gospel: "Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but they are not able to kill the souls" (Matthew 10:28). It means that only our cowardice makes the heart tremble in sight of this bodily death. And only this moment, this moment of the departure of the soul from the body, only it is both difficult and terrible - and there and now peace, eternal peace, eternal joy, eternal light, rendezvous with those dear to the heart, seeing those who were already loved here, whom they prayed to, with whom they lived in communion ... And the question is which end is better in the sense of difficulty: is it , violent, or slow, natural. In the first case, there is even some advantage - this is violence, this shed blood can serve to cleanse many sins, to justify many evils before Him Who Himself suffered violence and shed His blood for the cleansing of our sins. My conscience tells me that, of course, I deserved my evil share, but it also testifies that I honestly performed my duty, not wanting to deceive, mislead people, that I wanted not to obscure the truth of Christ, but to clarify it in the minds people, that I strove to bring every benefit, and not in any way harm to the Church of God, that I did not even think of harming the cause of helping the starving, for whom I always and willingly made all sorts of collections and donations.

In a word, before the court of my conscience, I consider myself innocent of those political crimes that are imputed to me and for which I am executed. And therefore, Lord, accept this my blood for the cleansing of my sins, which I personally have, and especially as a shepherd, have a lot ... With my rebellious mind, I still hesitate, is it not better to live still, work some more, pray some more and prepare for eternal life. Give me, God, this firm thought, this unshakable confidence that You will look at me with a merciful eye, forgive me my numerous voluntary and involuntary sins, that You will consider me not as a criminal, not as an executed villain, but as a suffering sinner, hoping to be cleansed by Your Precious Blood and be worthy of eternal life in Your Kingdom! Let me endure and fearlessly meet my death hour and breathe my last breath with peace and blessing. I don’t have any evil against anyone in my soul, I have forgiven everyone and everything from the bottom of my heart, I wish peace to everyone, I myself bow down to everyone on earth and ask for forgiveness ... "

On the activities of the Regional Public Fund "Memory of the Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Orthodox Church"

Let us take a closer look at the icon of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, whose number now numbers about 2,000 names. In the very center is the Royal Week of Passion-Bearers - the last Russian Emperor Nicholas II with his wife, daughters and heir. And around them is a host of new martyrs and confessors who suffered for Christ in the 20th century. Most of them were brought out of oblivion by the staff of the Regional Public Fund "Memory of the Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Orthodox Church", established in 1997 with the blessing of His Holiness Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Rus'.

Archimandrite Damaskin (Orlovsky), who began collecting information about the repressed clergy and laity from the mid-1970s, when their spiritual children, relatives, and fellow villagers were still alive, is scientifically supervising all the work of the fund. With a small group of assistants, he managed to visit 36 regions of Russia, identify the names of the victims, record eyewitness accounts of what happened when churches were destroyed, priests were arrested. The collected oral testimonies provided invaluable assistance in the preparation of the canonization by the Russian Orthodox Church of the saints of the twentieth century.

After opening in the 1990s. In the archives, Father Damaskin was one of the first to receive, in a direction from the Patriarchate, the opportunity to examine previously classified documents in the archives of the President of the Russian Federation, federal and regional archives, checking the authenticity of the oral testimonies he had previously collected. In these archives, documents from the funds of the Local Council, the Office of the Patriarch, the Permanent Central Commission on Cult Issues under the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR (1921–1938), the Cheka, the OGPU, the Council for Religious Affairs under the Council of Ministers of the USSR (1943–1974), People's Commissariat of Justice of the RSFSR, Politburo (Presidium) of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) - VKP (b), Anti-Religious Commission under the Central Committee of the RCP (b) - VKP (b), archival funds and documents formed in the activities of the regime bodies of the Cheka - GPU - NKVD - KGB –FSB. In the fund of the Directorate of the State Security Committee of the USSR for Moscow and the Moscow Region, transferred to the State Archives of the Russian Federation, the entire complex of judicial and investigative cases in the amount of about 100 thousand cases for 1918–1988 was reviewed. with the identification and analysis of the cases of the repressed clergy and laity. These materials revealed the true goals, forms and methods of destroying the Church and the Orthodox foundations of life in Russia. Created on the basis of a comprehensive study of hundreds of thousands of identified sources, the works of the fund formed a reliable basis for the adoption by the Consecrated Council of Bishops in the year of the 2000th anniversary of the Nativity of Christ, decisions on the canonization of more than a thousand new martyrs and confessors of the Russian Orthodox Church. Never before has the Russian Church experienced such religious persecution, and in its entire 1000-year history it has not canonized so many saints.

Answering our questions, Zinaida Petrovna Inozemtseva, scientific consultant of the foundation, candidate of historical sciences, honored worker of culture of the Russian Federation, said that “the realization of the scale of the national tragedy came to Father Damaskin, according to him, quite early. The future archimandrite, not without the help of God, clearly understood that the history of Russia in general, and of the 20th century in particular, is largely mythologized, that with the death of the last eyewitnesses of the events of the first half of the century, the living connection of times breaks, dooming the people to distortion or loss of memory about his past, thus depriving him of his future. The need to capture in the memory of the fatherland the real facts and spiritual meanings of the anti-religious age, the height of the spiritual feat of those who suffered for Christ stood before him as a practical task of collecting, studying, reporting in word and image the memory of the saints of the Russian land.

Zinaida Petrovna also explained that the Constitution of 1918 deprived the clergy of their civil rights. “He who does not work shall not eat,” and priestly work was not recognized as work. The priests turned out to be parasites, their property was taken away from them, they were falsely accused of counter-revolutionary activities. Unlike the first centuries, when Christians were killed in public for their faith in Christ, in Soviet times, nothing was known about a person as soon as the prison doors were closed behind him. To prepare materials for canonization, deep and comprehensive research was required, whether a person belonged to schismatic jurisdictions (Renovationists, Gregorians), whether he testified perjury and slandered himself and others during the investigation, whether he collaborated with the NKVD, whether he led an immoral lifestyle. This was an enormous difficulty.

“A person is manifested primarily in an act,” says Zinaida Inozemtseva. – Indeed, we see how people endured pressure from the authorities in different ways. And we can, although scary, but visibly imagine, since those times are not far behind us, how this or that person acted in extreme life circumstances. As an example of the true confession of Christian life, when even during persecution people went to church, Zinaida Petrovna cites St. Luke (Voyno-Yasenetsky). In his memoirs, he wrote: “Nothing could compare in terms of the tremendous power of impression with that passage in the Gospel in which Jesus, pointing to the disciples in the fields of ripened wheat, said to them: “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; Therefore pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest” (Matthew 9:37-38). My heart literally trembled… “Oh my God! Do you have few laborers?!” Later, many years later, when the Lord called me to be a worker in His field, I was sure that this gospel text was the first call of God to serve Him.”

The work to identify and study materials about the repressed clergy and laity did not unfold in all dioceses due to the lack of professionally trained specialists in the search and study of archival documents. Unfortunately, in 2006, after the publication of regulations restricting researchers' access to personal information, work on identifying new names for canonization was practically hampered.

At present, the Regional Public Fund "Memory of the Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Orthodox Church" is doing a lot of work together with interested organizations, guided by the decisions of the Bishops' Council of February 2, 2011 "On measures to preserve the memory of the New Martyrs, Confessors and all innocents from the theomachists during the years of persecution victims”, sharing the confidence that the joint actions of the Church, state and society aimed at perpetuating the memory of the victims of persecution for the faith will help to change the moral state of the people for the better. Helping in every possible way to ensure that the spiritual fruits of the feat of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the 20th century were assimilated by our contemporaries, the fund’s employees, under the scientific guidance of Archimandrite Damaskin (Orlovsky), direct their efforts to popularize and master the hagiographic literature and the spiritual heritage of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia. So, they make presentations at scientific and practical conferences, continue to work in the archives to study and clarify information about the spiritual feat for Christ who suffered during the years of anti-religious persecution, helping Archimandrite Damaskinus in the search for documented data to complete the work on compiling the calendar of the lives of the new martyrs and confessors XX century.

The lives of the saints of the 20th century, unlike the lives compiled by St. Demetrius of Rostov, based on folk tradition, explains Zinaida Inozemtseva, reveal the historically reliable events of the era, drawn into the biography of a person. The lives of the new martyrs also include the history of the relationship between the Church and society, the Church and the state. They create a fundamental basis for comprehending and comprehending the history of Russia in the 20th century.

The Foundation published the series “The Spiritual Heritage of the Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Orthodox Church”, within the framework of which the creations of the Hieromartyrs Thaddeus (Uspensky), Archbishop of Tver, were published; Andronik (Nikolsky), Archbishop of Perm, Onufry Gagalyuk, Archbishop of Kursk; Peter (Zverev), Archbishop of Voronezh, and many others.

At the annual Christmas Readings (Moscow), Glinsky Readings in Sergiev Posad, Domianovsky Readings (Kursk), the Foundation employees take part as section leaders and experts, meet with school teachers, study the experience of working with hagiographic literature, explain the methodology for conveying spiritual achievement to students New Martyrs and Confessors of the 20th century. At the same time, the main attention is paid to the fact that the children should try to understand the motivation of the actions of the new martyrs who did not depart from Christ, so that the fate of the new martyrs - heroes of the spirit, touches the hearts of modern teenagers, teaching them loyalty to their people and their fatherland. And how can this be done? Zinaida Petrovna believes that modern teenagers are in great need of clarification, what is conscience, human virtues, what is a person as the image and likeness of God. Experience shows that one should not confine oneself to stories of persecution and martyrdom. Good results are obtained by turning to the spiritual heritage of our saints. For example, to the letters of Confessor Chionia (Arkhangelskaya), mother of 18 children, imbued with love and care for them. She consoled and edified them, writing to them from prison that she had no despondency, that there was nothing to pity her, that she got all the trials because of her sins.

The Foundation initiated the preparation of Z.D. Ilina and O.V. Pigoreva manual "Studying the life and exploits of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia of the 20th century in the educational space of the regions of Central Russia" (Kursk, 2015. 165 pp.), approved by the Expert Council of the Synodal Department for Religious Education and Catechization of the Russian Orthodox Church and recommended for publication by the Publishing Council of the Russian Orthodox Church Churches (IS R15-501-0001). The Foundation is a co-founder of the All-Russian Competition for Youth Research and Design Works in Local History and Church Studies. Its employees participate in the All-Russian competition of youth educational and research works "Young Archivist".

The lives of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Orthodox Church, concludes our interlocutor Zinaida Petrovna, will help modern people to better understand what happened in those damned days, to realize the true values and meaning of human life. The ancient saints are far from us in time and therefore less understandable than the new martyrs, who, in essence, are our contemporaries. The environment of their existence is still present around us and in ourselves, we can look into it. And turn with a prayer to these saints not as to the inhabitants of heaven, but as to their own people.

REGIONAL PUBLIC FUND "MEMORY OF MARTYRS AND Confessors of the RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH": 1992 - 2014

Dmitry Borisovich Sinyagovsky
Chairman of the Regional Public Fund "Memory of the Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Orthodox Church" (Moscow)

Many people know the lives and other publications published with the support of the Regional Public Fund "Memory of the Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Orthodox Church." For those who read them, who have these books, they have become a very important meeting on the path of life, they have brought and continue to bring great benefits - I say this not unfounded, but based on real knowledge of people's experience. Also, many people know about the grandiose canonization carried out by our church in 2000, when more than 1,000 Russian priests, bishops, monks and laity who suffered during the years of persecution in the first half of the 20th century, and today in our The Cathedral of the New Martyrs includes more than 1,500 saints by name.

The writing and publication of these books, and to a large extent this canonization, was the result of a great deal of work. This is, as it were, the tip of the iceberg, which, it should be noted, for all its immensity and brightness, is still insufficiently noticed and perceived by our society. But there is an invisible part on which this peak rises - this is the work of a researcher-author of books, unprecedented in its spiritual and physical intensity, extension in time and space, diversity, resource intensity. In this work, the author was assisted by Foundation "Memory of the Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Orthodox Church". This article is devoted to this great and long-term work. But I wish it didn't end there. It seems to me that when the topic of the New Martyrs is touched upon, and, moreover, the works devoted to the study of their feat, the dissemination of knowledge about them - in our age of efficiency, rationality, each of us has the right and must understand for himself why such attention is paid to this topic, is it worth spending your precious time on it. Therefore, I consider it my duty to also draw your attention and give answers to such questions that are important for everyone: What role can the new martyrs play in my personal life and in the life of society, the people to which I belong? How expedient, justified are the time, material and other expenses for research, writing lives, publishing publications, reading the lives of the New Martyrs? Can’t I, a modern Christian living in Russia, be content in my spiritual life with the knowledge and veneration of the “classical” saints, those saints of the Russian and Ecumenical Churches who until the 20th century were venerated in Rus' from time immemorial?

The Russian Church has preserved intact the purity of Christianity and presents it to us in the form of Church Tradition. It turns out that this church tradition contains an indication of how a Christian is obliged to treat the new martyrs. The seriousness of this instruction for us lies in the fact that it transfers the question of veneration or non-veneration of the New Martyrs from the sphere of a Christian's personal wills and preferences to the status of a necessary condition for the undamagedness of his spiritual life. We are talking about a macro-level spiritual law that describes the norm of relations between a member of the Church Militant, that is, each of us, with the Church Triumphant in the person of Her saints. It was formulated by St. Simeon the New Theologian; this statement can be found in his work “One Hundred Theological and Active Chapters”, included in Volume 5 of the “Philokalia”, as well as in separate editions of the works of St. Simeon, which have recently been released by a number of publishers.

Saint Simeon is a most authoritative theologian, whose writings have had a tremendous influence on the life of the Christian Church. Among all the Christian saints of the Ecumenical Church, in addition to the holy apostle and evangelist John the Theologian, only St. Gregory the Theologian and St. Simeon, and this is a relationship to St. Simeon turned out to be thrown across as many as 7 centuries - the second of the early theologians - St. Gregory lived in the 4th century, and St. Simeon - in XI. Here is his thesis: “... The saints who appear from generation to generation, from time to time, after the saints who preceded them, - through the fulfillment of the commandments of God, cling to them, to those former ones, and, receiving the grace of God, shine like them, - yet successively they thus constitute a kind of golden chain, each being a special link of this chain, uniting with the previous one through faith, good deeds and love, a chain that, being affirmed in God, is indestructible. Whoever does not deign with all love and desire in humility to unite with the last (in time) of all saints, having some unbelief towards him, he will never unite with the former ones, and will not be included in the row of previous saints, even if it seemed to him that he has all faith and all love for God and for all the saints. He will be expelled from their midst, as he did not deign to stand in humility in the place that God had previously determined for him, and unite with that last (in time) saint, as God predestined for him.

This postulate says that the saints, abiding in the ineffable glory of God, appear to us from there not in disorderly confusion among themselves, but in the form of a kind of spatially extended chain, in which saints of a later time are located in front of the ancient saints, and in front of them are even closer ones. to us in time saints and so on. The closest to us in time and place in this chain are the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia of the 20th century. God built the saints this way for a reason, but for our convenience of communion with holiness. Here is the Church Tradition through the mouth of Simeon the New Theologian and teaches that one who, in an effort to grab hold of the Church’s distant wealth, does not notice the nearest and most accessible wealth, even trying to step over it, acts very strangely, violates God’s predestination. This is logical.

The Lord was pleased to grant us a host of new martyrs who are our compatriots, often relatives, they actually lived in the same historical era as we do, in the same state. Among the glorified new saints there are representatives of the entire spectrum of estates, ages, professions, characters, temperaments, interests, talents and gifts, all spheres of church and social activity. In addition, by God's providence and the labors of church people together with these saints, we have been given a huge array of the most multifaceted information about them These are both oral and written memoirs of relatives, eyewitnesses, personal diaries of the new martyrs themselves, their correspondence, periodicals, extensive martyrdom, which are judicial investigation cases, photographs, personal diaries, personal belongings, spiritual and scientific written heritage. We have no such heritage from the ancient saints. Also preserved are the temples in which they served, the casemates, in the dungeons of which they spent the last days and hours of their lives before being shot, and death notes on the margins of books. And some holy new martyrs and confessors have left their bodies to us in the form of honest relics. True love implies an unclouded vision of the object of one's love, possession of the fullness of knowledge about it, when no trifle and detail is insignificant and neglected. A person who does not need saints who so completely, comprehensively present themselves to us for understanding, and therefore for love, does he not deceive himself in relation to his love for the ancient saints?

That is why the knowledge and veneration of the new martyrs and confessors of the Russian twentieth century by the children of the Russian Orthodox Church, in all its parishes, throughout its canonical territory, is veneration at least no less than the veneration of ancient saints, such as, for example, St. Anthony the Great, Sergius Radonezhsky, St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, Great Martyr Panteleimon, Martyr Boniface - must necessarily and without delay become the norm of our life. Otherwise, according to Simeon the New Theologian, we run the risk of being among those who just seems that they have love for God and all the saints.

The Russian people are today in the most favorable conditions for knowing the New Martyrs, their lives, and praying to them. A very significant role in creating these conditions is played by the Regional Public Foundation "Memory of the Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Orthodox Church".

This is the history of the Foundation.

In our country, Abbot Damaskin stands at the origins of systematically organized activities to collect information about the heroic deeds of priests and laity who suffered from persecution that began after the 1917 revolution. He began this activity, while still a layman, in the late 1970s - then we lived in a state called the Soviet Union. Firstly, it is quite obvious that in those years it was not necessary to count on a loyal attitude on the part of the state to the case being started - after all, the matter consisted, in fact, in collecting evidence of a gigantic crime committed by this same state against its own people. Secondly, it was immediately clear that embarking on this path would be irrevocable and would require the dedication of all the time and all the vital forces without a trace, including at the expense of personal life.

The main content of the first line of work and the first stage in terms of chronology, which lasted from the end of the 1970s until 1991, was record of oral tradition, in search of the bearers of which - eyewitnesses to the events of the period under study, relatives of the victims - the researcher made trips to all those regions of Russia where they could live. During this period, studies were carried out on the territory of Nizhny Novgorod, Ivanovo, Vladimir, Kemerovo, Voronezh, Yaroslavl, Tver, Kostroma regions, Krasnodar, Altai territories, Crimea, in the cities of Zhitomir, Kiev, Chernigov, Kharkov. The first expedition was in 1978 to the Voronezh region. It is no coincidence that the Kursk region is absent from the list of regions in which research has been carried out. The experience of trial surveys in the Voronezh region showed the low effectiveness of searches in the territories that during the years of the Great Patriotic War turned out to be the scene of large-scale military operations. The fact is that such global social events as the Patriotic War led to the displacement of the indigenous population of the affected areas to other places of residence, and non-indigenous residents who again settled in such territories simply were not the carriers of the required information. Information about the ascetics of the Kursk region was obtained as a result of research carried out in other areas.

The researcher was clearly aware that the 70-80s were the period when the last opportunity was provided for collecting oral tradition in a volume sufficient to recreate an integral historical picture of the past. Undoubtedly, materials about each individual ascetic are of great value. But it is important to understand that in addition to the directly hagiographic task solved by this study - compiling the biographies of priests and laity, in order to glorify them, the task of preserving the civilizational code of Russia after 50 years of systematic work of the state on its complete replacement was also solved. If these church-historical studies had begun 10 or even 5 years later, who knows whether such a critical mass of biographies and factual material would have been collected that could be melted into the knowledge necessary for our people to preserve the historical memory of themselves. And a people with an erased memory of its past, of its core values, of its folk and religious principles, inevitably turns into ethnographic material, the whole meaning of the further existence of which comes down to the role of humus, which other civilizations can use to fuel their growth. Thank God this didn't happen.

We consider it legitimate to talk about the activities of Fr. Damaskin during this period as a certain, let's call it the initial, stage of the Fund's activity. Although the Foundation as an official structure did not yet exist - the Foundation was registered in 1997 - then around Fr. Damaskin, in the process of work, a small group of voluntary assistants began to take shape, which later formed the initial contingent of voluntary participants in the Foundation.

The second area of activity is archival research, collection of written documentary evidence of the feat of the new martyrs. By the time it was the second stage. In 1990, Fr. Damaskin began to work in the Synodal Commission for the study of materials relating to the rehabilitation of the clergy and laity of the Russian Orthodox Church who suffered during the Soviet period, and since 1991, due to the changed general political situation in the country, access was obtained to the archives of state bodies, and from this year, Fr. Damaskin began to study archival and investigative files in the CA of the KGB under the Council of Ministers of the USSR (now the FSB of the Russian Federation). In the future, the materials of the Archive of the President of the Russian Federation, GARF (State Archive of the Russian Federation), RGIA (Russian State Historical Archive), archives of the Federal Security Service for Moscow and the Moscow Region and the prosecutor's office of the Tver Region were also studied. As a result, more than 100 thousand complex of judicial and investigative cases for the period from 1917 to the 1950s was studied. Here's how Fr. Damaskin evaluates the archival component of the study:

“Since the 20th century was a time of martyrdom and confession for the Russian Orthodox Church, the materials about martyrs and confessors are kept in the archives of former repressive organizations. No matter how tendentious the records of the protocols of interrogations that were kept in the NKVD, they basically represent about the same as the martyrdom of antiquity. This is one and the same historical prototype, the same actors: Christians and representatives of a godless, anti-Christian state. The new acts of martyrdom reflect the reasons, time and place of arrest, as well as the investigative process, when the investigator tried to get the martyr to incriminate himself and others and recognize the Russian Orthodox Church as a counter-revolutionary organization hostile to the state by its nature. The archives brought us information about the verdict and the time of martyrdom. In this sense, they are the most valuable historical source, without which it would hardly be possible to compile complete biographies of the martyrs. Describing, on the basis of eyewitness accounts, the life of an Orthodox ascetic before his arrest, we, if there were no archives, would not know whether he revealed himself as a martyr or, for one reason or another, agreed with the proposals of his persecutors and tormentors.

Archival documents, in particular archival and investigative cases, contain a fixation of that part of the biography of the injured Christian, which was hidden from his relatives and contemporaries by the walls of the investigation rooms and could not be obtained through oral questioning. In this case, we are dealing with the action of the omnipotent providence of God, which is capable of turning any evil into good consequences. Through the efforts of the persecutors of the tormentors themselves, the very body of documents was compiled and carefully preserved for us, which, several decades later, as an important addition to the collected oral testimonies, the Church needed to canonize her ascetics. In addition, the archives contain the whole range of secret directives of the authorities and leaders who determined the relationship of state power to the Church, namely, directives on destruction Russian Church.

Acquaintance with an array of archival documents, along with eyewitness accounts collected on trips, made it possible to get a comprehensive picture of both the persecution in general and the personality of each victim. Now it was possible to compile reliable and complete biographies of the martyrs. Writing lives and publishing them as a series of books is the third direction of the research and educational activities of the Foundation. In terms of time, this direction of work extends from 1992 to the present.

Role first edition- a seven-volume series of books entitled “Martyrs, Confessors and Ascetics of Piety of the Russian Orthodox Church of the 20th Century. Biographies and materials for them "is difficult to overestimate.

Four aspects should be highlighted.

1. Unlike most other local Churches, the period of mass persecution and martyrdom in the Russian Church falls not in the first centuries of Her existence, but at the time of Her maturity, at the end of the 1000-year period of Her existence. Thus, this collection of lives can rightly be called the first martyrology of the Russian Orthodox Church. The two-volume book of Archpriest Mikhail Polsky, while recognizing its great importance, still cannot be called a monument of modern church history in the full sense, since both the time of compiling his books and the author’s residence abroad excluded the possibility of using the necessary array of reliable sources in their entirety.

2. It should be especially noted that the principled and fundamental position of the author at all stages of work on books was the prologue-annalistic principle of reflecting reality, which requires the researcher to have no personal bias and completely deprives the author of the right to fiction. The inclusion in the text of fictional, unconfirmed by reliable sources of facts, characters, events, actions, details, nuances, words, thoughts is unacceptable, no matter how plausible, probable, relevant and useful for the purposes of the narrative they may seem. This objectivity of presentation, multiplied by the number of lives of real people captured in detail and included in the monograph, combined with the scale, versatility of coverage of the historical panorama inside almost every life, allows us to position the series of books in question as an outstanding and the first historical source in the 20th century, which recreated absolutely uncomplicated and a complete picture of the life of Russia in the pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary era.

3. The first four volumes, published before the Council of 2000, became a factor that initiated the process of acquaintance with the new martyrs and confessors of the Russian Church in the entire Russian church society of the 90s, as well as awareness, both by the church hierarchy and by the broad masses of the laity, the need for their canonization and veneration - firstly, as a tribute to them in memory and reverence for their feat, and secondly - to receive from them prayerful intercession for Russia. Dissemination in society of information about the martyrs of the twentieth century, collected by Fr. Damaskin, served the cause of the canonization of the ascetics by several councils of the Russian Church. In 1992, the First Martyr Metropolitan of Kiev Vladimir Bogoyavlensky was canonized, in 1997 the Hieromartyrs Locum Tenens of the Patriarchal Throne Metropolitan Peter (Polyansky) of Krutitsy, Metropolitan Seraphim (Chichagov) and Archbishop Thaddeus (Assumption) were canonized. Leno based on the results of the research activities of the group of Fr. Damascus.

4. The period of the 90s was the period of the second baptism of Rus'. A huge number of people awakening in the spiritual, ecclesiastical and national plans, managed to use these books during this important period of their formation as a spiritual ladder, an aid for entering into the experience of the Church and the people.
The books “Martyrs, Confessors and Ascetics of Piety of the Russian Orthodox Church of the 20th Century” were awarded the Metropolitan Macarius Prize in 1997, and in 2003 the Prize of the Union of Writers of Russia. In 2011, ig. Damaskin for the monograph "Bishop Germogen (Dolganev)" was awarded the All-Russian Historical and Literary Prize "Alexander Nevsky". Selected volumes and selected lives in collections were published by foreign publishers abroad in Serbian, Greek, English, Romanian and German.

The second fundamental publication on the New Martyrs, which is of great educational significance, is the series "Lives of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian XX century of the Moscow Diocese".

Lives are arranged according to the calendar principle, 9 volumes have been published. In preparing this edition, unprecedented work in terms of volume and thoroughness was carried out in the GARF and in other archives that could have information

New Martyr- a Christian who accepted death for a confession of faith in relatively recent times. So he calls all those who suffered for their faith in the period of post-revolutionary persecution.

The all-church celebration of the memory of the Synod of New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia takes place on February 7 in a new style, if this day coincides with Sunday, and if it does not coincide, then on the next Sunday after February 7.

The reckoning of the new martyrs does not mean the canonization of their literary, epistolary or other heritage. The canonization of a new martyr does not mean that everything that a person has written in his life is the work of the holy father. This canonization is not for a life feat, but for a feat in death, a feat that crowned a person's life.

Of course, we will always resort to St. Sergius and Seraphim and other saints of God and receive what we ask from them. But after all, none of us can accomplish such feats as St. Seraphim. And no matter how we pray and try to stand on a stone for a thousand nights, at best we end up in a lunatic asylum - if someone does not stop us in time. Because we don't have those gifts.
But the new martyrs were people just like us!
They sometimes say to me: “Well, what’s wrong, well, dad served in his parish, well, he performed some services there, with a censer, you know, waved to himself, well, he had some kind of children, raised them, it’s still unknown how well he brought them up or not! What did he do that?! Why is he suddenly a saint, and we have to pray and worship him?! He shoots everyone - and they shot him! Where is the holiness here? Yes, the whole point is that he was like everyone else. But many took it and ran, or, on the contrary, participated in all this lawlessness. And this priest from a seedy village understood that it was his duty to go to church and pray, although he knew what would happen to him. And he served, realizing that at any moment they would come for him.

Priest Cyril Kaleda

About the New Martyrs

According to the words of the saints, it stands on the blood of the martyrs, and this is not only in a figurative sense, but also in a direct, literal sense. The Divine Liturgy is celebrated on the antimension, into which, according to the established ancient tradition, the relics of the martyrs are sewn up. The Russian Orthodox Church, despite the fact that it occupies more space and the number of members than all the other Local Churches combined, although relatively young, throughout its history has borrowed relics for antimensions.

But after the canonization of 2000, we had so many relics of the martyrs for the celebration of the Liturgy that it would be enough for all the thrones until the Second Coming of Christ. In the 20th century, several times more saints shone in Russia than in the previous 900 years of the existence of the Russian Church.

However, the expected veneration of the New Martyrs in our Church did not happen. We live in a different era, which, although not far from that one in time, is infinitely far away in terms of the content of the life around us. And therefore, the veneration of the New Martyrs can take place, like the veneration of saints in general, only through deliberate study of their deeds. We are poorly aware of the significance of the feat of the martyrs, and thus we do not show in ourselves such a Christian virtue as gratitude. We are blind in the sense that we do not see the danger of our existence in the present.

According to the words, “whoever does not want to achieve unity with the last of the saints through humility of wisdom will never unite with the former and previous saints.” After all, if a person does not recognize and accept holiness that is so close to him, how can he comprehend holiness that is far from him. Our New Martyrs, perhaps, are our only unconditional creative heritage, perhaps our only last time prayer books and trustees. Consigning to oblivion their feat, we arbitrarily lose their help and support.

Martyr in the concept of the Church and in translation means “witness”, that is, a person who, with his life, shed blood, testifies to the truth of the Christian faith. Towards the end of not arithmetical, but extended, of course, times, in the Russian Orthodox Church, in Russia, a period began just as bloody, just as cruel, just as frankly demonic as at the beginning of Christianity and the preaching of the apostles, and which lasted several decades and revealed - The heavenly Church first - there may be thousands of martyrs who are coming to the Throne of God and revealed in the earthly Church, militant, after the New Martyrs were glorified by the Council of 2000. New martyrs - not in the sense that their feat qualitatively or in some other way differs from the feat of the martyrs of the first times of Christianity, but new in the sense that they are new for us, they are our contemporaries, they are ours, in some way I mean, even relatives - because many of them were grandfathers - if anyone had priests or laity who suffered.

The time of the trial that came in the 20th century - for Russia, at least - in some form - is the time of the preliminary trial for those specific people who lived then - the Supreme Court. The Lord allowed what happened - evil to invade - so that these extreme circumstances would push people to the final choice, which, perhaps, would have been different under more favorable conditions. But then - during the persecution - it was already necessary to choose exactly between Christ and unbelief, in any case, between absolute good and also absolute evil.

Looking at the history of Russia, especially this last time of persecution, and comparing it with modern weakness and some modern cowardice and relaxation of our time, we can say that the history of Russia in the 20th century is the result of its thousand-year existence. And at the Council - to use the words of Pushkin's fairy tale, these saints - like thirty-three heroes - came out, for many it was unexpected that they came out, that they even exist, that there is such a huge number of saints in Russia.

Here the feat of the martyr is inspired only by eternity, only by the most perfect ideals. After all, in fact, nothing supports him. Martyrs in the 20th century - it's amazing that their death was not "in the world" and not in some kind of triumphant atmosphere, as they were deaths at the beginning of the Christian era - in a circus somewhere, when there were dozens Christians and a huge crowd of spectators. There were no spectators here, there were enormous opportunities for craftiness, deceit, for concealment, for the curvature of the soul, cowardice. And the fact that this did not take place, that we had so few apostates in the Russian Orthodox Church, that we had so few traitors, there were so few faint-hearted people who could simply prevaricate - after all, no one would have read that there was a person grimaced, wanting to somehow alleviate his fate - there were few such people. And it must be said that during this 20th century we really succeeded in what is called Holy Rus'.

The historical experience of the New Martyrs is much greater than the experience of a private individual. No man can invent historical situations and experiences that transcend reality. In this sense, the fate of the New Martyrs is in itself a perfect work of art. A deeper spiritual experience is hard to imagine. This is the greatest experience in the entire millennium: here are the experiences of a person, and his fall, and at the same time the most exalted and heroic examples. This, one might say, is the most perfect and ideal thing that a Russian person has come to.

Now each of us can see the incorruptible glory of the holy martyrs, partake of their spiritual experience, take advantage of it, turn to the martyrs with prayer, and in case of mournful circumstances, be consoled by their feat. If, of course, we ourselves want to see the glory of the martyrs, we want to learn from the experience of the saints, almost our contemporaries. Now the task of glorifying the holy martyrs is not for the Church, she glorified them, but for church people who are more like children who were sung lamentable songs and they did not cry, they played the flute and they did not dance. Now the martyrs have been glorified, and the biographies of these martyrs have been published to a large extent, but church people just do not know them as they used to, just as they often do not know the life of the saint whose name they bear.

07.07.2023

Theology

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