The two previous materials, vividly reflecting the biographies of different people who got into the Penza "Martyrolog", caused an ambiguous reaction from visitors to the VO website, and this is understandable. The spirit of the old totalitarian past is too strong in people, longing for a strong hand, whips, felling, and, of course, for others, but not for oneself. No wonder it was once said that there is no worse master than a former slave who became him. After all, if we count the generations that have lived in Russia since 1861, it turns out that a complete change in the psychology of its population could have occurred only by 1961, since sociologists consider one century as the life of three generations. What did we have? The same revolution was made by the children and grandchildren of yesterday's slaves, people with a patriarchal level of culture and paternalistic psychology. Then a new culture began to be created in the society that they created, but it did not stay in Russia even for 100 years. Hence all this throwing and hatred towards everyone who thinks differently from you, envy of the successful, and many other features of our Russian mentality. Nevertheless, there is a "Martyrolog" of the Penza region, you can get acquainted with it, but here from it are presented the most interesting and significant, in my opinion, materials concerning the persecution of the church in it and the persecution of believers in Soviet times.
So, we turn to the content of the Martyrology.
To begin with, in October-November 1918, a case was initiated in connection with the uprising of residents of the villages of Khomutovka and Ustye of the Spassky District against the closure of the church in the village. Clamp. The population was outraged by the fact of the inventory of church property, the arrest of the priest P. M. Kedrin and systematic actions to confiscate bread and money. On October 29, having struck the alarm, residents did not allow an armed detachment of 24 people into the village. The uprising was suppressed by machine-gun fire, after which about 100 people were imprisoned; 40 of them, including priest Kedrin, were shot on November 20 on Cathedral Square in Spassk, and the rest were subjected to various punishments.
"Don't spare explosives!"
During the liquidation of the "bourgeois elements" in the city of Kuznetsk and the Kuznetsk district in January-July 1919, about 200 landowners, former landowners and servants of the Church were arrested. On July 23, 1919, near Kuznetsk, in the town of Duvanny ravine, among others “as monarchists and outstanding counter-revolutionaries,” priests N. Protasov, I. Klimov, P. Remizov were shot.
In April-May 1922, a protest against the seizure of church valuables took place in the villages of Vysheley and Pazelki, Gorodishchensky district, then the chairman of the Vysheley Volost Executive Committee was killed by the rebels. The events led to a series of arrests of local clergy and believers.
Explosion of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow.
In May 1922, for the same reasons, the clergyman of the church in the village of Sheino, Pachelmsky district, performed. About 10 people who took part in the case were parishioners headed by priest A. N. Koronatov - were imprisoned in the Penza prison.
From June 8, 1927 to June 27, 1928, the OGPU conducted a case against a large group of clergy of the Penza diocese, headed by Bishop Philip (Perov). It was initiated in connection with the holding in September 1925 in Narovchat without the permission of the authorities of the district congress of the clergy. Several pressing issues of diocesan life were on the agenda of the meeting: conducting a census of believers in parishes, issues of church marriage and its dissolution in Soviet society, diocesan fees, providing the clergy with housing, etc.; in addition, a decisive refusal to unite and cooperate with the Renovationist group headed by Archbishop Aristarchus (Nikolaevsky) was voiced at the congress. The congress was regarded by the authorities as illegal, and its resolutions were counter-revolutionary in nature. Several dozen people, both clergy and parishioners, were interrogated in the case as accused and witnesses. The main defendants - Bishop Philip, priests Arefa Nasonov (later a holy martyr), Vasily Rasskazov, Evgeny Pospelov, Vasily Palatkin, Alexander Chukalovsky, Ioann Prozorov - were imprisoned in Penza prison during the investigation. On September 27, 1927, Bishop Philip was sent to Moscow at the disposal of the head of the 6th department of the OGPU E. A. Tuchkov; during the investigation, Vladyka was kept in the Butyrka prison. On June 27, 1928, at the end of a lengthy investigation, the OGPU collegium ruled to terminate the case for lack of evidence of a crime. All those under investigation, including Bishop Philip, were released. The materials of the investigation show the disastrous financial situation of the Penza clergy, the disorder of parish life on the basis of administrative oppression of the clergy in the 1920s.
A bike ride against the backdrop of church ruins …
In December 1928, in the process of liquidation of the community of "white-garment sisters" of the Mitrofanovskaya church in Penza, the head of the community, priest N. M. Pulkhritudov, archpriests M. M. D. Mayorova; a number of persons passed as witnesses.
In 1929, a case arose in which the inhabitants of the Lipovsky convent in the Sosnovoborsky district were arrested. Nine people were repressed, led by Abbess Palladia (Puriseva) and the monastery priest Matthew Sokolov, they were given 5 years in prison, the rest were sentenced to a shorter term.
In the Kerensky district in 1930, a case was initiated to liquidate the church-kulak group "Former People". Among those arrested were prominent priests of the city of Kerensk, nuns of the Kerensky monastery, former major merchants - the heads of the Kerensky temples. The defendants were accused of speaking out against the closure of churches and the removal of bells in the monastery, in illegal meetings, where anti-Soviet agitation was allegedly carried out under the guise of reading spiritual literature. They were held in Kerensky prison, where they were asked to confess their guilt with subsequent release, but those arrested took an adamant position, preparing themselves to suffer for their faith. All of them were sent to the construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal. The priest Daniil Trapeznikov, who was involved in the case, was sentenced to 10 years in a concentration camp as the most active churchman of the group, who roused the population of Kerensk to march to the authorities with a request to open the Assumption Cathedral. Freed from prison, Fr. Daniel also served in the post-war years - he was the rector of the Michael-Archangel Church of Mokshan in the rank of archpriest, served as a dean. Priest Nikolai Shilovsky, almost 70 years old, was sentenced to 5 years in prison; he served his sentence in Solovki, where he died.
Cover of one of the cases that formed the basis of "Martyrology".
In the same year, a case arose against a religious community at the "Seven Keys" spring in the Shemyshei region. In 1930, there was a secret monastery here, where a group of peasants and nuns led by priest Alexy Safronov, who had labored in the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra before the revolution, spent their lives in labor and prayer. Many residents of the surrounding villages - Shemysheika, Russkaya and Mordovskaya Norka, Karzhimant and others - kept in touch with the inhabitants of the secret monastery and came here on pilgrimage. deposited in the investigation. Here, on a steep slope near a picturesque spring, a whole complex of dugout-type cells and a small wooden temple were built, and thus the famous spring, still visited by many people today, was then a kind of religious center.
Members of the community were sentenced to rather serious terms of imprisonment - from 3 to 10 years, and the head of the community, Alexy Safronov, was shot.
Preparing the church for closing.
From January to June 1931, in the Penza region, the OGPU carried out a major operation to liquidate the Penza branch of the All-Union Church Monarchist Organization True Orthodox Church. The number of those arrested in the course of this operation, which covered the administrative-territorial division of that time the city of Penza, Teleginsky, Kuchkinsky, Mokshansky and Shemysheisky districts, is unknown; the number of persons prosecuted and repressed amounted to 124 people. The head of the Penza branch of the TOC was Bishop Kirill (Sokolov), with whom a number of prominent priests were arrested: Viktor Tonitrov, Vukol Tsaran, Pyotr Rassudov, Ioann Prozorov, Pavel Preobrazhensky, Pyotr Pospelov, Konstantin Orlov, Pavel Lyubimov, Nikolai Lebedev, Alexander Kulikovsky, Evfimy Kulikov, Vasily Kasatkin, Hieromonk Seraphim (Gusev), John Tsiprovsky, Stefan Vladimirov, Dimitri Benevolensky, Theodore of Arkhangelsky, Archpriest Mikhail Artobolevsky, as well as monks, nuns, parishioners of churches. Among those arrested and repressed were such famous personalities as the exiled to Penza professor of the Moscow Theological Academy Sergei Sergeevich Glagolev and brother of famous art workers Mozzhukhin Alexei Ilyich. All of them were placed in a Penza prison, and then sentenced to different terms of imprisonment, mainly from 3 to 5 years. Bishop Kirill (Sokolov) received 10 years of imprisonment, and served his sentence in the Temnikov camps in Mordovia; where he was shot in 1937. Until the very “martyr's death, Vladyka was visited in the camp by his spiritual children, who delivered transmissions from Penza and ensured Vladyka's secret correspondence. The materials of the case on the liquidation of the "True Orthodox Church" in 1931 amounted to 8 volumes.
In the same year, an investigation was opened in connection with the mass demonstration of citizens of the village. Pavlo-Kurakino Gorodishchensky district in defense of the local church. Events unfolded in January 1931, on the very feast of the Nativity of Christ. As soon as the rumor about the removal of the bells reached the peasants, the mass of the people began to converge to defend the temple. The believers surrounded the church in a dense ring, set up a round-the-clock watch, and at night, so as not to freeze, they burned fires. Soon a group of soldiers arrived from the Gorodishche. Old man Grigory Vasilyevich Belyashov - one of the most active defenders - stood with a club at the entrance to the church. As soon as one of the Red Army men approached the gate of the temple, Vasily knocked him down. In response, a shot rang out - Vasily fell. Still wounded, he was taken to Gorodishche, but on the way Belyashov died - the wound was fatal. About a hundred of the peasants who stood at the temple were surrounded by armed soldiers and arrested. Further, the soldiers began to seize everyone who got in the way, broke into houses, making arrests of people not involved in the performance.
According to the old residents of the village, as a result of the action, up to 400 people were arrested, who were sent under escort to the gorodishche prison. The prison room, not designed for such a number of prisoners, was filled to capacity with people: men and women sent their natural needs in front of each other, there was nothing to breathe. One of those arrested turned out to be pregnant, she had to give birth right here, in the cell. 26 people were subjected to repression, of which the priest Alexy Listov, the peasants Nestor Bogomolov and Fyodor Kiryukhin were shot, the rest received various terms of imprisonment - from 1 to 10 years in prison.
Inside the church turned into a grain warehouse.
In the case of the liquidation of the "circle of just believers" in the Nikolsky district, more than 40 people were brought in as accused and witnesses, were kept in the Nikolsk prison, but were eventually released the same year.
In January 1931, a large church-kulak case was started in the Chembarsky (now Tamalinsky) region, as a result of which 31 people were arrested - the clergy of the local church and disenfranchised peasants, who were accused of underground activities against the measures of the Soviet government in the village, and in particular, spoke out against collectivization. All were sentenced to exile in the Northern Territory for a term of 3 to 5 years. 68-year-old priest Vasily Rasskazov was sentenced to 5 years of exile; the sentence was served in the village. Nizhnyaya Voch, Ust-Kulomsky district of the Komi Republic, where he died in 1933. In connection with the preparation of materials for his canonization, a research expedition was made to the place of his death. Some information was also collected at the place of his service, in the village of Ulyanovka, Tamalinsky District, where the events unfolded.
From the fall of 1931 to May 1932, a major case was carried out to clean up the remains of the Penza branch of the CPC in rural areas, namely in the villages of the Penza, Telegin and Serdobsky districts. In the general part of the case, it was said that “… despite the liquidation in the city of Penza of the organization of churchmen called“True Orthodox”, headed by Bishop Kirill of Penza, nevertheless the tails of the latter continued to remain, especially in the Telegin district of the SVK, which saturated with religious fanatics, all sorts of holy fools, elders, elders, nuns and other rogues … Individual members of the above-named organization of the True Ones remained in the area and, after a certain lull in their activities, again began to group around individual members of the True Ones, establishing communication through the wandering monks with the remaining secondary leaders, such as: Archimandrite Ioannikiy Zharkov, priest. Pulkhritudov, now arrested, Elder Andrey from Serdobsk, and others. " In this case, 12 people were arrested - deacon Ivan Vasilyevich Kalinin (Olenevsky), his confessor, archimandrite of the Penza Spaso-Preobrazhensky monastery, Fr. Ioanniky (Zharkov), priest Alexander Derzhavin, priest of the village of Kuchki, Fr. Alexander Kireev, a wandering monk from the village of Davydovka, Kolyshleysky district, Aleksey Lifanov, a resident of the village. Razoryonovka of the Telegin district Natalya Tsyganova (ailing Natasha), a peasant from the village of Golodyaevka, Kamensk district, Ilya Kuzmin, a peasant from the village of Telegino Anna Kozharina, a peasant from the village of Telegino Stepan Polyakov, a resident of the village of Telegino Pelageya Dmitrievna Polikarpova and a leading figure life Grigory Pronin. In addition to the named persons, a large number of people were involved in the course of the investigation as witnesses. The brothers of the priest Alexander Derzhavin, the famous Penza doctors - Gamalil Ivanovich and Leonid Ivanovich Derzhavin, the personal doctors of Vladyka Kirill, were interrogated. The case also mentions many names and surnames, one way or another connected with the CPI. This connection extended to the Penza region, where its centers are Penza and the villages of Krivozerye and Telegino; Shemysheisky district, where the village of Russkaya Norka and the Orthodox community at the source "Seven Keys" are mentioned; Serdobsk, where the elder Andrei Gruzintsev is called the pillar of "true Christians". Those involved in the case received from 1 to 5 years in prison.
"Only the one who is a friend of the priests is ready to celebrate the Christmas tree!"
One of the largest cases of liquidation of the church group "Union of Christ's Warriors" arose in December 1932 and covered several districts at once: Issinsky, Nikolo-Pestrovsky (Nikolsky), Kuznetsky, as well as the Inzensky district of the Ulyanovsk region. The arrests began at the end of December 1932 and continued until March 1933.
Six people were sentenced to 3 years in prison, among them Hieromonk Antonin (Troshin), priests Nikolai Kamentsev, Stefan Blagov, Renovationist priest Kosma Vershinin; 19 people were sentenced to 2 years, including hieromonk Leonid Bychkov, priest Nikolai Pokrovsky; At the end of the investigation, 14 people were released: Hieromonk Zinovy (Yezhonkov), priests Pyotr Grafov, Eustathius Toporkov, Vasily Kozlov, Ioann Nebosklonov, and others. In addition to the priesthood, there were many nuns of the nearest closed monasteries, psalmists, parishioners of churches.
In 1933, a large-scale operation was carried out against the clergy, monastics and laity of the Luninsky region (Ivanyrs, Trubetchina, Sanderki, Lomovka, Staraya and Novaya Kutlya, Bolshoy Vyas). Several dozen people were involved in the case as defendants and suspects, who were kept in the Lunin department of the NKVD or sent to the Penza prison. Some of them died during the investigation. The authoritative priests Grigory Shakhov, Alexander Nevzorov, Ioann Terekhov, Georgy Fedoskin, Afanasy Ugarov, on whom the entire church life of the Luninsky district was kept, received from 3 to 5 years in prison.
There was even such a newspaper in Penza!
At the same time, the Penza GPU began an investigation into a newly fabricated case on "liquidation of a counter-revolutionary monarchist group in Penza, Penza, Luninsky, Teleginsky, Nizhnelomovsky, Kamensky, Issinsky districts, where the priests and churchmen of Penza were the leading nucleus." The investigation lasted during 1933-1934, and when it ended, the case materials amounted to two voluminous volumes. In these areas, 31 people were arrested, among them are the famous and oldest priests of the diocese Nikolai Andreevich Kasatkin, Ivan Vasilyevich Lukyanov, Anatoly Pavlovich Fiseisky, hieromonk Nifont (Bezzubov-Purilkin), many monks and laymen. An even larger number of persons in this case were interrogated, these are Bishop of Kuznetsk Seraphim (Yushkov), the famous priest Nikolai Vasilyevich Lebedev, who was early released from the concentration camp, secret nuns, believers, collective farmers. The number of participants in the fictitious group, as it was said in the case, was 200 people.
In June 1935, a case was initiated against a religious community in the Narovchatsky District, headed by the hieromonk of the closed Scanov Monastery, Fr. Pakhomiy (Ionov), who, hiding from arrest, switched to an illegal position, settling in Novye Pichura in a cell of the church head Tsybirkina Fevronia Ivanovna specially adapted for the "catacomb" church. Around about. Pachomia began to gather believers who settled in the house ("cell") of Fevronia Ivanovna, forming a kind of monastery. They were joined by Archimandrite Filaret (Ignashkin), who had returned from the concentration camp, and priest Efrem Kurdyukov. In addition to the standard accusations of anti-Soviet and anti-collective farm propaganda, the participants in the "illegal monastery" were also accused of anti-Semitic propaganda and reading the book "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion." From the naive testimony of the illiterate peasants it was clear that they were going to prayers and they did not want to join collective farms. 14 of those who were involved in the case were sentenced to different terms of imprisonment - from 1 to 5 years. Elder Pakhomiy was sentenced to 5 years in a concentration camp, later he was shot and canonized as a holy martyr from the Alma-Ata diocese, Archimandrite Filaret (Ignashkin) received 3 years of imprisonment, died in 1939 in places of confinement in the Komi Republic, besides Hieromonk Makariy (Kamnev) was sentenced to a term.
Young scammers at work.
At the same time, in June 1935, a group case was initiated to liquidate the church group of the Kuznetsk region, headed by Bishop Seraphim of Kuznetsk (Yushkov). Apart from the many persons under investigation who were held in prisons during the office work, 15 people were subjected to reprisals at the end of the case. Bishop Seraphim, priests Alexander Nikolsky, Alexy Pavlovsky, John Nikolsky, the chairman of the church council Matrona Meshcheryakova and Ivan Nikitin received 10 years in prison; Archimandrite Mikhail (Zaitsev), priests Grigory Buslavsky, John Loginov, Vasily Sergievsky and chairman of the church council Pyotr Vasyukhin - 6 years each; the rest - 2-3 years in prison. Vladyka Seraphim was released ahead of schedule at the request of his son, Academician S. V. Yushkov.
In 1936-1938, a series of the bloodiest investigative processes began in Penza and the region, which marked the great terror on the Surskaya land. The arrested were accused of recruiting people into fascist church organizations, espionage against the USSR, activities aimed at opening already closed churches, and so on.
In the case begun in October 1936, the most prominent clerics of that time, headed by Bishop Feodor (Smirnov) of Penza, were arrested in Penza and the region. The investigation was conducted for almost a year, during which the accused were held in the Penza prison, being interrogated with the use of gross violent methods of influence. At the end of the case in 1937, Bishop Theodore, priests Gabriel of Arkhangelsk, Vasily Smirnov, Irinarkh Umov and Andrei Golubev were shot. The first three of them were subsequently assigned to the Council of New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia from the Penza diocese.
In August 1937, a case was opened, during which 35 people were repressed, most of whom (23 people) were sentenced to capital punishment and shot. 12 of them were pastors of the old seminary training: Konstantin Studensky, Vladimir Karsaevsky, Mikhail Pazelsky, etc.; the rest are deacons, novices, nuns of the former Penza Trinity Monastery.
Penza's renovation group in those years was also liquidated "as unnecessary" - the insidious plan of the atheist government to destroy the Church from within failed and the schismatics were no longer needed. In the case of the liquidation of the Renovationist group of the city of Penza in 1937-1938, the entire clergy of the Myrrh-Bearing Church - 8 people - was subjected to repression. Of these, Archbishop Sergiy (Serdobov), Archpriest John Andreev and Priest Nikolai Vinogradov were shot, the rest were sentenced to 8-10 years in prison.
Another victim …
The last attempt to continue the work of the Penza diocese and preserve church administration was the arrival in Penza in January 1938 of the Moscow archpriest Vladimir Artobolevsky, the brother of Archpriest John Artobolevsky (later a holy martyr). In Penza, Vladimir led the community at the only functioning Mitrofanovskaya church, rallied the remaining clergy around him, but in 1939 a criminal case was opened against the community. Together with him were arrested priests Yevgeny Glebov, Andrei Kiparisov, Alexander Rozhkov, Pavel Studensky, as well as prominent parishioners, one of whom was the famous Russian folklorist writer Nikolai Yevgenievich Onchukov. The head of the group, Archpriest Vladimir Artobolevsky, was sentenced to 7 years in prison. He served his punishment in the Akhunsk correctional labor colony, where he died in 1941. In March 1942, N. Ye. Onchukov died in the same place of detention. Priest Alexander Rozhkov was sentenced to 6 years in prison. Pavel Studensky, 69, died during the investigation. Active parishioner Alexander Medvedev was sent for compulsory psychiatric treatment. Archpriest Andrei Kiparisov was sentenced to 2 years in prison, who died a natural death in freedom in 1943. For lack of evidence of guilt, only the priest Yevgeny Glebov was released.
Here they are - women "milkmaids".
Group cases against believers continued in the post-war period. - A number of investigative processes in the 1940s. was aimed at liquidating the secret religious community "Monastic Union" at the Milk source in the Zemetchinsky district. The community initially arose not as a religious one, but as a workers' artel of local peasants within the Yursov forestry enterprise. Subsequently, the main unifying factor among the members of the artel was religious life: reading divine books, prayers, obedience. Anastasia Mishina, a peasant woman from the neighboring village of Rayovo, became the spiritual core of the peculiar monastery. For a long time, members of the community, hidden in a deep forest, managed to combine state work with religious life. The first arrests took place in 1942, the last in 1948. Most of the inhabitants of the Dairy Spring were arrested at the end of 1945 and sent to remote regions of the USSR for various periods. Only Anastasia Kuzminichna Mishina spent 9 years in the isolation ward of the famous Vladimir Central.
This is a short list of the main group cases related to repressions against the clergy and believers of the Penza diocese. However, the repressive machine not only cut off a bountiful harvest in the course of collective arrests, but snatched the ministers of the Church one by one, 2-3 people, as a result of which, by the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, only a few priests and two active cemetery churches remained in the Penza region - Mitrofanovskaya in Penza and Kazanskaya in Kuznetsk. And only the words of the Lord Jesus Christ "I will build My Church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it (Matt. 16:18]" reveal to us the secret of how the Russian Orthodox Church could have survived at that time and revived to its present state.
