Here it is, this Penza "Mortyrologist".
Another blow was struck in the area of the spiritual realm. It will not be an exaggeration to say that the 20th century, which brought global social catastrophes to mankind, went down in the history of the Russian Orthodox Church also as an era that gave the Ecumenical Church an innumerable multitude of sufferers for the faith of Christ and holy martyrs. The godless ideology that triumphed in Russia in 1917 with fury attacked the Russian Church with persecutions comparable only to the persecution of the first Christians. These blows, which destroyed the Holy Church in our Fatherland - in 1917-1919 and 1922, then merged into the constant persecution of the Church and reached their apogee in 1937-1938, and then continued in different forms until the 1000th anniversary of the Baptism of Rus … During this long, more than 70-year period, many thousands and thousands of Orthodox Christians - from church hierarchs to ordinary peasants living in the old religious order - were subjected to the most severe repression - they were killed and ended up in prisons and camps for the name of Christ alone, for freedom of conscience, proclaimed in words by the Soviet government.
And so three people were found in Penza: Alexander Dvorzhansky, Sergei Zelev and Archpriest Vladimir Klyuev, who reviewed thousands of cases convicted for their faith, recruited officers from the FSB Directorate for the Penza region to this work, who took on the hard work of working with the investigative files kept in the archive of the administration, and as a result of all these works, they prepared the "Penza martyrology of those who suffered for the faith of Christ" - "The righteous will live by faith" in 583 pages. Work on "Mortyrologist" lasted for 17 years. It contains more than 2,200 names of people who suffered for the faith. The victims in different ways: some were imprisoned for three years, and some received the highest measure. Surprisingly, there are many female nuns among the latter. Did they blow up trains, steal grain from collective farms or sprinkle sand into rubbing parts. Judging by their deeds, they were shot simply because they were … nuns. They shot women, not men, who could take up arms. Or was the Soviet government so afraid of their courage and the words that they could say? The fact that such a "punishment" is already unjust, no doubt, but in essence and simply criminal.
Page from "Mortyrologist"
However, the Church herself considered and considers their death as a feat of martyrdom for the confession of the Orthodox faith, and is revered as one of the Christian virtues, as a gift of God, as the most worthy crown of earthly life. The meaning of martyrdom consists in complete and final rejection of oneself for the love of Christ, following the Savior to the suffering of the Cross, in co-crucifixion with Him and eternal union with God. The Lord Jesus Christ Himself, through the holy Apostles, repeatedly spoke about this in the Scriptures: “If anyone wants to go after Me, let him reject himself, and take up his cross, and come after Me” (Matthew 16:24).
And among the people this feat of martyrdom was always revered. The ancient Christians with great reverence preserved the memory of the martyrs crucified on crosses, torn apart by lions in the arenas of ancient circuses. Their honest remains were removed from the crosses, buried with honors, and their righteous blood, like a shrine, was scraped by the hands of believers from the arenas of circuses. Legends about their lives and deeds were carefully passed from mouth to mouth, from generation to generation. You can not accept all this, you can laugh at it aloud, and to yourself, but it is impossible to cross it out, because in all this, as well as in many other things, our culture, our civilization is manifested, which cannot be crossed out.
Information about the new martyrs began to be collected in Russia from the very beginning of the persecution of the Church. Thus, one of the points of the resolution of the Holy Council of the Orthodox Russian Church of April 18, 1918 says: "To instruct the Supreme Church Administration to collect information and notify the Orthodox population through printed publications and a living word about all cases of persecution of the Church and violence against confessors of the Orthodox faith."
So the authors of "Mortyrolog" did everything to extract from oblivion the names of those undeservedly suffered during the years of repression for their religious beliefs. And now Penza residents can find out who they are, tortured for their faith, whose destinies are revealed in this book before their eyes. These were people of different origins, education and their occupations, but one way or another connected with the Orthodox faith, which for millennia was the basis of all Russian spirituality, culture and statehood. Whether this is good or bad - again, nothing can be changed here. It was! Orthodoxy, as the dominant religion of old Russia, was studied in all educational institutions. Fathers and grandfathers taught children to read the Psalter, the word of God was pronounced from the pulpits of temples; church celebrations, processions of the cross, glorification of saints - all these events formed the basis of not only the spiritual, but also the secular life of the Russian people, since people did not work on church holidays. Faith in God permeated and sanctified the entire life of a Russian person, all his life, all his aspirations and undertakings. The spirit of faith and the fear of God have always lived in the Russian people, and with the onset of the atheist time, many people could not just take and change their Christian ideals, reject the past, and lose their spiritual support.
And one more - someone's fate …
Modern research shows that a significant part of modern Russian society was unable to fully adapt to the destruction of the Soviet system and the new market economy. They experience stress and psychological discomfort. Many are taking antidepressants, which are growing steadily. But after all, the same thing took place after 1917 and even almost to a greater extent, only then no one had heard of psychotherapists, and alcohol was the main antidepressant.
Moreover, the Russian Church immediately after 1917 felt a hostile attitude from the Soviet government, and it was then that the first blows were inflicted on its clergy. It is not surprising that in the Martyrology representatives of the clergy make up more than half of its personalities. Many of the priests were well-known and respected people in the Penza province. Educated and cultured people. People of high moral character. Faithfully they served God and their people sometimes for several decades in one parish: they built churches, almshouses and schools, fought against social vices, studied local lore, and published spiritual literature. As a result, they became the objects of monstrous attacks from the new Soviet society, which needed not only external enemies, but also internal ones for its existence. And who, by the way, were those who replaced them, was their spiritual culture and their moral duty to society so high?
Another large group is, as has already been written, the peasantry. The peasants, being church parishioners, were often very pious, served as chairmen of church councils, sang in church choirs, and actively helped the priesthood. It will not be an exaggeration to believe that it was the peasantry in Russia that was the main social group in which Orthodox traditions have been accumulating and retaining for centuries. Therefore, those who were dispossessed and exiled during the years of collectivization could well be attributed to the number of those who suffered for the faith. In addition to the clergy and laity, who were repressed during the years of Soviet power for their belonging to the Russian Orthodox Church, the book also mentions some landowners and merchants who, although they did not go directly to church affairs, nevertheless suffered, being teachers, builders of churches and church benefactors.
A special group of repressed clergymen, brought to a special section at the end of the book, is made up of representatives of the Renovationist and Gregorian trends, who evaded the canonical Patriarchal Church and, until their death, did not reconcile with it. Nevertheless, they too suffered for their faith, although they deviated in it from the accepted canonical path.
The vast majority of people mentioned in the martyrology were prosecuted under Article 58 of the RSFSR Criminal Code, that is, for anti-Soviet activities. The latter was interpreted very broadly, which made it possible to fight the enemies of the regime, proceeding not so much from the criminal component of the case as from its political basis. And since religious activity was viewed as one of the types of anti-Soviet agitation, it is clear that it was the clergy who fell under Article 58 in the first place.
And this is also a nun and also shot …
The book omits the fact that there was also such a measure as deprivation of civil rights, and it applied to all clergy and staff of churches without exception. The beginning of this repressive measure dates back to the 1920s. The "deprived", in fact, were expelled from society. They were banned from the right to work in state institutions; they could not study in Soviet schools and other educational institutions, or join collective farms. They became outcasts of Soviet society, people who, in fact, were doomed to starvation and death. But many families of people associated with religion were large, where there were 10 or more children. And the arrest of parents became a deep nervous shock for young children's souls. They already knew that their parents - both father and mother, did nothing wrong, did not plan anything wrong against the authorities, for “slaves obey not only good masters, but also severe ones” - and they remembered that. And nevertheless, the authorities doomed such children to orphanhood, and they dragged out a miserable existence in orphanages, orphanages, were subjected to ridicule and insults in the "correct" Soviet collectives. None of the Soviet leaders were interested in what they had in their souls.
There are a lot of different sources in "Martyrology". The authors cite documents, provide excerpts from surviving letters, copies of interrogation protocols and memories of individuals, which makes it possible to better understand the life of the people described in it. There are also many photographs, both pre-revolutionary, and investigative photos from the files of the victims, their relatives, houses where they lived, churches where their ministry took place, various documents. The shortest biographies are “born, served, shot” or such: “Sentenced to 10 years in a labor camp”. Now think about what is behind this short line: night searches and arrests, crying children, parting with his beloved wife, long night interrogations, beatings, seeing off on the platform, passing through guards, months of transportation in dirty wagons and holds, and then - deep snow, dank barracks, ice slaughter, felling, diseases, frostbite, death, rare letters to relatives on scraps of wrapping paper, chilling longing and only one thought - "Why, Lord?" and the thought behind it is the following - "Forgive them, Lord, for they do not know what they are doing!"
But again, it is important to emphasize that these people endured all their torment not for "politics" and not because they "wavered along with the party's course", they endured them for their faith in the ideal of Christ, for the Orthodox Church. And in the exploit of these sufferings, as in the first centuries, the greatness of the Christian spirit manifested itself in its entirety. Of the total number of those repressed for their faith and the Church associated with the Penza land, more than 30 people have already been glorified by the Russian Church in the face of saints, numbered among the Council of New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia. Among them are Hieromartyrs John (Pommer), Archbishop of Riga; Tikhon (Nikanorov), Archbishop of Voronezh; Augustine (Belyaev), Archbishop of Kaluga; Peacock (Kroshechkin), Archbishop of Mogilev; Thaddeus (Uspensky), Archbishop of Tver; Hermogenes (Dolganev), Bishop of Tobolsk; Theodore (Smirnov), Bishop of Penza; Archpriests John Artobolevsky, Evfimiy Goryachev, Vasily Yagodin; priests Filaret Velikanov, Mikhail Pyataev, Vasily Smirnov, Gabriel Arkhangelsky, Arefa Nasonov, Vasily Gorbachev, Afanasy Milov, Ioann Dneprovsky, Victor Evropytsev, Pyotr Pokrovsky; deacons Mikhail Isaev, Grigory Samarin; the Monk Martyrs Abbot Methodius (Ivanov), Hieromonk Pachomius Scanovsky (Ionov), Hieromonk Gerasim (Sukhov); Monastic Confessors Archimandrite Gabriel Melekessky (Igoshkin) and Archimandrite Alexander Sanaksarsky (Urodov); priest John Olenevsky (Kalinin); the Monk Martyr Abbess Eva of Chimkent (Pavlova) and the nun Elena (Astashkina); Martyr Agrippina Kiseleva Karagandinskaya. Priest Nikolai Prozorov was canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad in 1981.
This "Mortyrologist" is also interesting because it contains a lot of truly unique photographs.
The Penza diocese nominated four candidates for canonization: Elder Priest John Olenevsky, Bishop Theodore (Smirnov) and the priests Gabriel of Arkhangelsky and Vasily Smirnov who suffered with him. The rest were nominated by other dioceses. September 4 was established as the Day of Remembrance of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Penza, which is the day of the death of Vladyka Theodore (Smirnov) and those killed with him.
Of course, today almost all people named in the martyrology have been rehabilitated. But what does this fact mean? This is nothing more than a natural result of the democratization of our society, but he adds nothing significant to the biography of these people, who have already accomplished their martyrdom.
