Auxentius Kalashnikov

Holy Martyr Auxentius Kalashnikov was a layman and received a martyr's death on 15 March 1922, in Shuya, in the Vladimir province, when Soviet troops fired into the crowd gathered before the Resurrection Cathedral to protect the church from the seizure of its treasures. Apart from his name and his death, the sources say nothing of him. He is commemorated on 10 May, the day on which the others were shot, on 7 February, in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, and on 20 June, in the Synaxis of the Saints of the Ivanovo Metropolis. The company to which he belongs consists of the hieromartyrs Paul Svetozarov and John Rozhdestvensky, the martyrs Peter Yazykov, Nicholas Malkov, Auxentius Kalashnikov and Sergius Mefodiev, and the martyr Anastasia.

The famine and the decree

In 1922, after the civil war, famine struck many regions. Patriarch Tikhon set up a church committee for relief, and the Church began to collect money. The atheist authorities did not want the Church to stand at the head of this work and, on 26 February 1922, issued a decree by which all precious objects of gold, silver and gems, including consecrated ones, were to be taken from the churches. The Patriarch allowed the giving of unconsecrated objects with no use in the services, but could not approve the removal of consecrated ones, which the canons count as sacrilege. Trotsky led a secret commission that wished to divide the clergy over this question.

Shuya

On 7 March 1922 the commission for the inventory of the treasures first came to the Resurrection Cathedral in Shuya. On 12 March Archpriest Paul Svetozarov, the rector, said that he would not hand over the consecrated objects himself, but that he would not resist the commission. On Monday, 13 March, the commission returned; the church was full of the faithful, who did not leave. The chairman of the commission, Vitsyn, had come into the altar drunk and armed, according to Peter Yazykov. On 15 March, from early morning, people gathered in the square, mostly women. The mounted militia tried to disperse them with whips, then soldiers arrived. The people did not leave. Some said that they would die anyway, and so would die for the Mother of God. Boys climbed the bell tower and rang the bells.

Cars with machine guns came and the firing began, first over the heads, then into the crowd. First to be killed was Nicholas Malkov, who cried out to the Orthodox to stand for the faith and took a bullet in the temple. Second to be killed was the maiden Anastasia, who was on her way to the factory and had stopped on the steps of the cathedral. Auxentius Kalashnikov and Sergius Mefodiev were also killed. The crowd dispersed. Of the faithful twenty-⁠two people suffered, four of them killed; of the soldiers none was killed or gravely wounded.

Afterwards

On 19 March Lenin wrote to the Politburo, using the events at Shuya, demanding that the seizure of the churches be carried out without mercy and that the trial of the people of Shuya end in many executions. The trial took place at Ivanovo-⁠Voznesensk, from 21 to 25 April 1922. Archpriest Paul Svetozarov (born in 1867, a graduate of the Moscow Theological Academy, a teacher of religion at the Shuya gymnasium, a priest of the cathedral from 1892, the father of eight children), the priest John Rozhdestvensky (born on 16 March 1872, a priest in Palekh, founder of a library and schools, without children, who had read the Patriarch's message on 19 March) and the layman Peter Yazykov (born in 1881 in Shuya, a foundry worker) were condemned to death and shot on 10 May 1922, at two in the morning. It is told that the priests performed the funeral service for themselves and bore themselves bravely.