Demetrius Plyshevsky

Holy Hieromartyr Demetrius Plyshevsky, a priest of the Minsk diocese, received the crown of martyrdom by shooting on 19 January 1938, at Minsk. He was born on 26 October 1883 (according to other data 1880) in the village of Dubinets, in the Pinsk district, in the family of the priest John Plyshevsky. He was glorified for local veneration by decision of the Synod of the Belarusian Orthodox Church on 28 October 1999, and the Jubilee Council of Bishops of 2000 entered his name in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia. He is commemorated on 21 January, on 7 February, in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, and on 11 July, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Belarus.

After graduating in 1905 from the Minsk seminary he was ordained priest and served at the church of the Protection of the Mother of God in the village of Ostrozhanka, in the Mozyr district. In 1908 he was moved to the church of Saint George in the village of Lyadets, in the same district, and in 1915 to the church of the Nativity of the Mother of God in the village of Omgovichi, in the Bobruisk district. In 1917 he received the epigonation. After the revolution he served at the church in the village of Uzlyany, in the Igumen district. His first arrest took place at Uzlyany, in 1930, because of non-⁠payment of an increased church tax. After holding him a few weeks in prison, they released him, perhaps because his wife, Alexandra Pavlovna, went to all the parishioners and collected signatures in defence of the arrested pastor. Father Demetrius came out of prison with a single tooth in his mouth: he had been beaten several times to make him take off his priestly cross, but this did not happen. After the church in Uzlyany was closed, he moved to serve at the church of Saint Nicholas in the village of Smolevichi, in the Borisov district, as second priest. According to witnesses, he fulfilled his pastoral duties with rare self-⁠giving, never took off his cassock even outside the church and said in the family circle that no pressure from the authorities would make him renounce the Church.

He was arrested again on 26 September 1937, formally on a charge of taking part in a counter-⁠revolutionary organisation of insurgents and spies. The true reason was that he gave acquaintances lives of saints to read, which at that time were equated with literature of anti-⁠Soviet content. Another ground was his close acquaintance with Bishop Philaret Ramensky, then in the NKVD prison. At the interrogations, only two, Father Demetrius Plyshevsky conducted himself with dignity. He said that he did not admit guilt and that he had not been recruited into any counter-⁠revolutionary organisation. Arrested with him were also parishioners of the church in Smolevichi: Adam Semyonovich Popkovich, Grigory Frantsevich Rozum and Rodion Vasilievich Yakubitsky, all members of the parish council, each sentenced to ten years in a camp. On 19 November 1937 the special troika of the NKVD of Belarus sentenced him to death. He was killed in Minsk on 19 January 1938 and buried in an unknown common grave.