Demetrius Morozov

Holy Martyr Demetrius Morozov (1875-1937) was a peasant of the Vyatka province and received the crown of martyrdom by shooting on 3 September 1937, in a camp in Kazakhstan, together with Peter Bordan. He was born in 1875 in the village of Melnikovo, in the Yaransk district. From 1911 to 1914 he was in the army. On 27 November 1936 he was arrested, accused of taking part in a counter-⁠revolutionary group of churchmen, and on 27 March 1937 the special council of the NKVD of the USSR sentenced him to five years in a camp. He was held in the prisons of Yaransk, Kirov and then Petropavlovsk, and on 16 May 1937 was moved to the Ortau section of the Karaganda camp. He is commemorated on 7 February, in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, on 8 September and on 21 October, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Vyatka. He was numbered among the saints at the Jubilee Council of Bishops of 2000.

On 7 August 1937 a report about Demetrius Morozov and Peter Bordan was received at Karlag: they do no work, but systematically carry on anti-⁠Soviet agitation; they consider Soviet power to be that of the antichrist, built on violence, and believe that only God should be served; they sang God Save the Tsar and Save, O Lord, Thy People and other prayers; they do not work in the camp, saying that they will not work for the antichrist; Bordan is more careful in his words, but was brought, by a psychological method, to say that he would not work in Soviet institutions out of religious conviction; from morning to evening they demonstratively hold church services before other prisoners. They were said to claim that this power was sent by God as a punishment for our sins, that it is the last time, that aeroplanes, radio and cars are inventions of the devil and of the antichrist, and that because of them six or seven people do not go out to work. On 22 August 1937 Peter Vasilievich Bordan and Dmitry Mikhailovich Morozov were arrested. On 31 August the special troika of the NKVD of the Karaganda region sentenced them to death, and on 3 September they were shot.