Boris Dernov

Holy Martyr Boris Dernov was born on 17 May 1897 in Elabuga, in the Vyatka province, in the family of Archpriest Pavel Dernov, and received the crown of martyrdom by shooting on 14 (27) February 1918, together with his brothers Grigory and Semyon, a day after their father's killing. He is commemorated on 27 February, the day of his witness, on 7 February, in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, and on 17 October, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Kazan.

The father

Pavel Alexandrovich Dernov was born on 12 January 1870 in the village of Pishtan, in the Yaransk district of the Vyatka province, in a priest's family. He graduated from the Kazan Theological Academy in 1894, at twenty-⁠four, with the degree of candidate of theology. His essay, on the creation of the world from nothing, ran to nearly five hundred pages. On 26 September 1894 he married Anna Arkadyevna Lazhenitsyna, the daughter of the protodeacon of the Savior Cathedral in Elabuga, and on 2 October he was ordained priest. He was a teacher of religion at the real school and at the girls' progymnasium and rector of the church of the Nativity of the Mother of God at the gymnasium, where he served all his life. In 1916 he opened a temperance circle at the real school, which seventy-⁠five pupils joined.

The sons

The three sons were born in Elabuga. Boris finished six classes of the city's real school and the additional class and entered the Institute of Railway Engineers in Petersburg. Grigory, born on 23 January 1899, entered the Technological Institute in Petrograd. Semyon, born on 1 February 1901, managed to study only at the real school in Elabuga.

Martyrdom

In 1918, when Elabuga was seized by the punitive detachment of Kolchin, terror began. Father Pavel Dernov, who on 10 February had read in the cathedral the message of Patriarch Tikhon and had given fiery sermons, was presented by the punishers as the organiser of the uprising. On 12 February a search was made at his house, in which an old empty machine-⁠gun belt was found, and he was arrested. Drunk soldiers led him onto the ice of the Toima river and stabbed him with bayonets, after refusing his wish to make confession, and shot him in the face, in the night of 12 to 13 February.

The next morning, before the news reached the family, the three sons set out to look for their father and were arrested by soldiers. Witnesses say that on the way to the place of execution they confessed the Orthodox faith aloud. The Dernov brothers were taken out under the city dam and shot with explosive bullets. The punishers, drunk with spirits and blood, fired at random at the young men and then finished them with bayonets. The wife of Father Pavel, Anna Arkadyevna, sitting beside her husband's coffin, said: thy will be done. A great many people came to the funeral, and the punishers did not hinder the burial. They were buried at the Trinity cemetery. The name of Archpriest Pavel was remembered by Patriarch Tikhon at the Liturgy of 31 March (13 April) 1918, among those killed for the faith. In Soviet times the grave was lost, and on 30 September 2010, at the probable place of burial, a monument was restored, through the effort of the granddaughter, Anna Sergeevna Filippova.