Athanasius Dokukin

Saint Hieromartyr Athanasius Dokukin (1899 to 1937) was a priest in a village of the Moscow region and was shot on 9 October 1937 at Butovo. He is commemorated on 9 October and, in synaxes, on 29 May with the New Martyrs of Butovo, on 1 August with the saints of Kursk, on 5 September with the saints of Moscow, and on 10 December with the new martyrs and confessors of Radonezh.

He was born on 18 January 1899 in the village of Verkhny Lyubazh, in the Fatezh district of the Kursk province, into the peasant family of Basil Dokukin. When he turned fifteen he lost both his father and his mother and went to live with his aunt. After finishing a two-⁠class school he served from 1914 as a psalm-⁠reader in a church of the Fatezh district. In 1923 Metropolitan Nazarius of Kursk and Oboyan ordained him deacon at the church of the Archangel Michael in the village of Lintsy, and in 1925 priest at the church of the Entry of the Mother of God into the Temple in the village of Kochetno, Lgov district.

In 1933 the authorities arrested him for not paying taxes and sentenced him to three years in a labour camp. Released in 1935, he was sent to serve at the church in the village of Starikovo, Taldom district, Moscow region. In August 1936 he was moved to the church of Saint Nicholas in the village of Nikulskoe, where he served until the day of his arrest.

On 3 September 1937 an NKVD officer questioned a false witness, a shepherd of the local collective farm, who agreed to sign the testimony the NKVD needed. On 4 September Father Athanasius was called to the local militia office for questioning, but since all the NKVD staff were busy, a passport clerk questioned him, asking only about his life. On 11 September he was arrested nonetheless and was first held in the prison of the town of Zagorsk. On 14 September the investigator asked whether he admitted guilt in spreading rumours about war against the authorities and in anti-⁠Soviet agitation. The priest answered that he did not admit guilt, since he had done no such thing.

On 15 September the investigation was closed and he was moved to a prison in Moscow, where he was questioned again on 22 September. He said that he had been given a fixed grain quota in 1932, that since 1919 he had been deprived of the vote, and that in 1933 his household had been seized as that of a "kulak". Asked whether he admitted guilt in counter-⁠revolutionary activity, he answered: "No." On 26 September the NKVD troika sentenced him to death. He was shot on 9 October 1937 and buried in an unmarked common grave on the Butovo firing range near Moscow.