Demetrius Kiranov

Holy Hieromartyr Demetrius Kiranov, archpriest at Yalta, was born in 1879 in the Tauride province, in a family of Bulgarian priests. He received the crown of martyrdom by shooting on 4 January 1938, in the prison at Simferopol. He is commemorated on 4 January, on 7 February, in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, on 2 December, in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Crimean Metropolis, and on 28 December, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Crimea.

The family of Bulgarian priests Kiranov then numbered over three hundred years. After the Russo-⁠Turkish war, his father, the priest Michael Stefanovich Kiranov, organised the resettlement of eight hundred families to the south of Russia; a hundred and sixty-⁠seven went to Bessarabia and founded the village of Glavan, in the Akkerman district. Demetrius had two brothers, Victor, an archpriest, later glorified among the saints, and Vladimir, a physician, who went to Bulgaria, and a sister, Olimpiada. He graduated from the Tauride seminary, served four years as psalm-⁠reader and in 1904 was ordained priest. He served in the village of Ivanovka, in the Melitopol district, at the church of Saint John the Theologian, then at the church of the Ascension, and from 1913 at the cathedral of Saint John Chrysostom in Yalta. Everywhere he combined priestly service with teaching in church schools. He was not only a very active pastor but also a gifted preacher, at whose sermons many people always gathered.

The persecution

In 1923 the Renovationists arrived in Yalta, accompanied by an agent of the GPU: Archpriest Sergei Bazhenov and the so-⁠called archbishop Alexander Vvedensky. They demanded that the cathedral of Alexander Nevsky be given to them, and in case of refusal threatened all the clergy of the city. The rector firmly refused. They took him and five other priests to the GPU, among them Father Demetrius, accused of commemorating the Patriarch at services and of sending him a greeting on his taking the leadership of the Church. All were taken to the prison at Simferopol. After the interrogations they were ordered to leave Crimea and the Ekaterinoslav province for a year. After a year Father Demetrius was raised to the rank of archpriest and returned to the cathedral of Saint John Chrysostom. The authorities constantly troubled him, trying to make him give up his zealous service. In 1929 his only son, Lev Kiranov, nineteen years old, was arrested and sent into exile, and the father was fined two thousand roubles. In 1930 he was sentenced to five months of forced labour and fined by the militia for letting a priest from outside the Yalta cathedral take part in the service.

Arrest and death

The authorities tried to close the chapel of Saint Nicholas of the cathedral, to seize its property and then to abolish it, but Father Demetrius locked the chapel. Seeing the chapel locked, the Bolsheviks issued a decree that Father Demetrius must pay eleven hundred and thirteen roubles, the sum at which the furnishings of the chapel were valued. His parishioners quickly collected the sum, but the authorities were not appeased, and soon the priest was arrested by the OGPU, accused of anti-⁠Soviet agitation and of illegal collection of money among the believers. He was sentenced to three years of exile in Kazakhstan. He returned from exile in 1935, already very ill, and continued his service. As rector of the Alexander Nevsky cathedral in Yalta, he set up a fund of material help for arrested clergy, for members of the community and for their relatives. Soon he was arrested again, in 1937, when arrests were made en masse, accused as the leader of a counter-⁠revolutionary grouping of churchmen; the chief charge was giving help to imprisoned churchmen. He was sentenced to death with confiscation of property and shot in the prison at Simferopol on 4 January 1938.