Danact Kalashnikov

Holy Venerable Martyr Danact (in the world Dometian Ianuarievich Kalashnikov) was a hieromonk of the Russian Church. He was born in 1881 in the village of Samgorodok, Cherkasy district, Kyiv province, and was shot on 15 December 1937 at the Butovo firing range. He was canonized by the Council of Bishops in 2000. He is commemorated on 2 December by the old calendar (15 December by the new) and in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo.

He was born into a peasant family. In 1903 he entered the brotherhood of the Russian monastery of Saint Panteleimon on Athos, where on 6 April 1905 he was tonsured rassophore with the name Dometian, and on 21 March 1908 to the mantle, with the name Danact. In 1914 he was sent on an obedience to the Athonite dependency in Moscow and could not return, because of the outbreak of war. From 1923 he lived at the Protection Monastery in Moscow. In 1928 he was ordained hierodeacon at the Athonite dependency.

On 14 August 1929 Father Danact was detained at a police station on a charge of agitation against Soviet power and gave his first statements the next day. On 16 August he was moved to the prison of the political police. On 14 October the Special Council sentenced him to three years in a concentration camp in the town of Kem, but soon he was sent into exile in the Komi (Zyryan) region for the same term. Returning from exile in 1933, he settled at Vladimir, where he was ordained hieromonk at the church of the Nativity. In 1935 he was sent to serve at the church of the Archangel Michael in the village of Arkhangelskoye.

In November 1937 the chairman of the village soviet, at the request of officers of the political police, drew up a character reference on the hierodeacon Danact, in which he wrote that he was hostile and carried on active agitation for faith in God among both adults and children. On 28 November Father Danact was arrested on a charge of counter-⁠revolutionary agitation against the tax policy of Soviet power toward the Church and sent to the prison at Volokolamsk. At the interrogations he did not admit guilt. On 3 December the three-⁠man tribunal of the Moscow region sentenced him to death. He was shot on 15 December and buried in an unknown grave at the Butovo range. He was rehabilitated in 1989, for lack of a crime.