Benjamin Kononov

Saint Benjamin (in the world Vasily Vasilievich Kononov, 1870-1928), venerable martyr, was an archimandrite, abbot of the Holy Trinity Antoniev-⁠Siysky Monastery, formerly a monk at Solovki. He saved the holy relics and treasures of the monastery and was killed with his disciple Nikephoros Kuchin by robbers in a forest cell, on the evening of 17 April 1928, the eve of Pascha. He was canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church in August 2000, together with Hieromonk Nikephoros. He is commemorated on 17 April, the day of his martyrdom (4 April by the old calendar).

Youth and monastic life

He was born in the village of Evsevievskaya in the Shenkursk district of Arkhangelsk province, to a peasant family, and finished six classes at the Solovki school. In 1893 he was received as a labourer at the Solovki Monastery and in 1897 as a novice. He proved diligent and obedient, directed the work at the monastery bakery and was in charge of the supply store. In 1903 he was tonsured a monk by Archimandrite Ioannicius with the name Benjamin, in honour of the Holy Martyr Benjamin of Sinai. A man of few words and zeal at the services, he was ordained hierodeacon and in 1908 hieromonk, served at the relics of Venerable Zosima and Sabbatius of Solovki and was teacher of religion at the brotherhood school. After the death of Hieromonk Damascene, he was elected confessor of the monastery in December 1909. In 1912 Bishop Nathanael of Arkhangelsk raised him archimandrite and appointed him abbot of the Antoniev-⁠Siysky Monastery. He received a pectoral cross (1913) and the Order of Saint Anna (1916). In 1917 he was elected a member of the Local Council but did not reach Moscow.

Because of unrest against Abbot Ioannicius, the Holy Synod removed him in 1917, and the brethren elected Benjamin abbot. The civil war was raging, but as long as the White movement held the front, there was calm at the monastery. When the Bolsheviks began to prevail, things changed. With the brethren, Archimandrite Benjamin did all he could to protect the holy things of Solovki from plunder. The relics of Venerable Zosima and Sabbatius, the founders, were hidden in a secret place in the monastery walls, and other treasures were hidden in the wall of the Transfiguration Cathedral and above the altar of the church of Saint Nicholas. Hieromonk Nikephoros (in the world Nikolai Ivanovich Kuchin) was his trusted man in preserving the holy treasures.

Arrest and life as a hermit

In the spring of 1920 the monastery had 400 monks and 200 novices. Soviet power sent a special commission, led by M. S. Kedrov, which aimed to find the stores of weapons and food of the bourgeoisie. That summer the monastery was closed and the monks driven from Solovki Island. Archimandrite Benjamin asked the supply committee to leave the monks a minimum of food, saying that without bread for fifteen days they would die of hunger on a wild island, but the plundering continued even more fiercely. The Bolsheviks searched for the monastery's treasures, of which they had learned perhaps by denunciation or by blackmail, and fabricated a denunciation against the archimandrite, signed by several monks. Benjamin and Nikephoros were arrested by the Cheka, accused of hiding treasures and keeping weapons, and sentenced to five years of forced labour at logging in Kholmogory, but were released early by the amnesty of the summer of 1922.

They went first to the Solovki metochion in Arkhangelsk, then, after its destruction, the doctor Alexander Levichev sheltered them. In the summer of 1926, on the advice of a former Solovki novice, Stepan Antonov, they moved to the village of Chasovenskoe and made a forest cell forty kilometres from the nearest settlement, by the river Lodma, at Volkozero. Stepan Antonov came twice a year, in winter, the time of greatest hunger, and brought some food. For the rest they fed on fish, mushrooms and berries, and all their free time was for prayer.

Martyrdom

On 17 April 1928, in the evening before Pascha, two men from the village of Korovkinskaya, a Komsomol member V. Ivanov and the three-⁠time convict S. Yarygin, hearing of the monastery's hidden treasures, came to Volkozero to rob them. They waited for the light to go out, then Ivanov fired four times through the window. Groans were heard in the house, but the criminals were afraid to enter, seized, as they said at the investigation, by an incomprehensible terror. They climbed to the loft and took what they found, soaked the hut with kerosene and propped the door shut, which shows they knew there were living people inside. On 9 June Stepan Antonov found the burned hut and between the charred beams two skeletons, notified the authorities, and the investigation established what had happened.

Archimandrite Benjamin and Hieromonk Nikephoros were canonized as venerable martyrs at the Council of Bishops of 13-16 August 2000. On 15 January 2004, at Severodvinsk, a wooden church dedicated to them was consecrated.