Demetrius Blagoveshchensky

Holy Hieromartyr Demetrius Blagoveshchensky, a priest, was born on 22 October 1879 in the village of Timonino, in the Bogorodsk district of the Moscow province, in the family of the deacon Fyodor Blagoveshchensky, and died in the camp at Kem, in Karelia, on 15 December 1932. He is commemorated on 15 December, on 7 February, in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, on 3 June, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Karelia, on 5 September, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow, and on 1 November, in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Land of Karelia.

After the clerical school he entered the Moscow seminary, where he stayed one year. On 22 May 1900 Bishop Nestor of Dmitrov appointed him psalm-⁠reader at the church of the Sign in the village of Ilinskoe, in the Kolomna district, and a year later granted him the sticharion. In 1904-1906 he served, without pay, as an assistant teacher at the church school in Ilinskoe. On 20 September 1906 he was transferred to the church of the Resurrection in the village of Ivoilovo, to a deacon's post, and on 20 October he was ordained deacon. At the same church he was ordained priest on 1 January 1931. Before ordination he married Pavla Vasilievna. They had no children, but took into their care an orphan girl, Katya, born in 1910, who was to them like a daughter.

After the revolution the authorities arrested him several times: in 1918 and 1919, in 1928 and three times in 1931, because he was unable to pay the huge taxes. In 1929, in the campaign against the kulaks, the Blagoveshchensky family had their allotment of land, their cow and horse taken away and their tax was doubled, from fifty to a hundred and six roubles. Then, for non-⁠payment of this tax and for failing to meet the fixed quota of firewood, the rest of the family's property was confiscated. In October 1931 he was sentenced to exile from the Moscow region, again for failing to meet the fixed quota. The church might be left without a priest. On a Sunday in November Father Demetrius, after the Liturgy, read the court's sentence, wept and asked the parishioners for help. The people in the church wept too, then collected money and provisions for him, and the closing of the church was postponed for a time.

On 10 April 1932 he was arrested again, this time on a charge of anti-⁠Soviet agitation, and sent to the Volokolamsk jail. At the first interrogation he said that he had never objected to the central Soviet power, but that he had shown and still showed discontent toward the local representatives of the authorities, because in the villages the working people and the ministers of religion were treated unjustly, which he had experienced himself, having been called to account several times in the last two or three years. He said that some prayer services in the homes of the faithful had not been allowed him, but that the people had always helped him. The next day he added that he could not reconcile himself with Soviet power and its ways: religion was driven out, the ministers of religion were thrown overboard, collectivisation was done by force, the peasants were starving. He admitted that he had carried out anti-⁠Soviet agitation among some parishioners. The investigation, begun on 11 April, reached the charge on 13 April, and on 27 April 1932 the OGPU troika sentenced him to three years in a camp.

He was sent to an OGPU camp in the Murmansk region. On 15 December 1932 the priest Demetrius Blagoveshchensky died at camp point No. 4 in the city of Kem, in the Karelian Autonomous Republic, and was buried in an unknown grave.