Constantine Aksyonov

Holy Hieromartyr Constantine Aksyonov, a priest, was born in 1888 in Tashkent and was shot on 22 October 1937 at Mirzoyan in South Kazakhstan. He was glorified among the saints at the Jubilee Council of Bishops in 2000. His full name was Constantine Vasilievich Aksyonov.

He studied at the theological seminary and at the theological academy. His wife was Natalia Stepanovna, and the family also included his mother Maria Nikolaevna, his sister Lydia Vasilievna and his daughter Maria. In 1911 he was ordained priest and served in the village of Alexandrovskoe in the Aulie-⁠Ata district of the Syr-⁠Darya region. On 29 July 1914 he became priest in the village of Belye Vody in the Chimkent district of the same region. The events of the revolution brought him to the village of Karacharovo in the diocese of Moscow, where he served for a time as priest and was in communion with Patriarch Tikhon.

He was first persecuted by the godless authorities in 1923: on 3 October he was sentenced by the Collegium of the GPU to three years in a camp. He served his term in the Solovki special-⁠purpose forced labour camp (SLON), and at the end of 1924 was held in its first section, "Kremlin". After his release he returned to Karacharovo and went on serving there. On 23 November 1929 he was sentenced again: the Special Council of the OGPU Collegium banished him to Shenkursk in the Northern Region for three years under article 58-10. A note on the exile Aksyonov says that in exile he worked at various kinds of labour and did only physical work. In 1934 he was sent into exile again, this time to the village of Mynaral in the Dzhambul region of Kazakhstan. Returning to Russia in the spring of 1936, he served briefly as priest at the Protection of the Mother of God church in the village of Borovoe, Usman district of the Voronezh region (now Lipetsk). After the unbelievers closed the church he had to leave his parish and returned to Dzhambul, where he worked as a controller at a radio exchange, was in communion with Metropolitan Joseph (Petrovykh), served secretly, travelled much by rail and often visited his mother at Tokmak. After the arrest of Metropolitan Joseph he moved into his house, at 43 Ruvimovskaya Street, where he lived with the nun Maria (Koronatova), the metropolitan's cell attendant.

On 3 October 1937 Father Constantine was arrested by the Dzhambul NKVD, accused of membership of the "counter-⁠revolutionary organisation of Metropolitan Joseph (Petrovykh)", held in the city prison and questioned the same day. At the interrogation he denied guilt and gave no testimony against others. On 11 October, probably under pressure, he gave statements admitting counter-⁠revolutionary activity and wrote with his own hand statements in which he admitted anti-⁠Soviet activity, his own and that of Metropolitan Joseph. On 20 October the troika of the UNKVD of the South Kazakhstan region sentenced him to death, and on 22 October he was shot. According to Hieromonk Jacob (Vorontsov), chairman of the canonization commission of the dioceses of Astana and Almaty, he was shot and buried at Lisya Balka on the outskirts of Chimkent.

Saint Constantine was glorified among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia at the Council of Bishops of 13-16 August 2000. On a column of the Dormition cathedral in Taraz (formerly Dzhambul) a full-⁠length icon of him is painted, as priest of Dzhambul. He is commemorated on 22 October, the day of his death, and on 7 February with the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, in the new style.