Demetrius Smirnov

Saint Dimitry Smirnov, Hieromartyr, was a priest of Yaroslavl, archpriest and secretary of Metropolitan Agathangel, arrested four times in the years of Soviet persecution and dead in the prison of Ust-⁠Kamenogorsk in Kazakhstan on 26 June 1940. Born on 26 September 1870 at Norskoe near Yaroslavl, he was numbered by the Russian Church among the New Martyrs and Confessors on 17 July 2001. He is commemorated on 13 (26) June, the day of his death, and on the Sunday of the New Martyrs.

Childhood and learning

He was born into the family of the priest of the Holy Trinity church in the settlement of Norskoe, today in Yaroslavl, where his father served until the end of his life. He studied at the Yaroslavl seminary and, after graduating, did not hurry to receive the priesthood, drawn by the idea of educating the common people. His parents, from a family of servants of the Church, wished to see him a priest; perhaps their worry came from a family omen that the son would be imprisoned, and clergy were not tried by secular courts. His love for people of the lower strata and his effort to enlighten them ran through his whole life and drew many people to him.

In 1891, after graduating from the seminary in the second category, he returned to his parents and became a teacher at the school of the Norskoe weaving mill, where he founded a popular choir. There he met his future wife, the choir singer Elizaveta Yakovlevna Chirkova, a poor girl, a loom worker from the age of twelve, gifted with a beautiful soprano, which she kept into old age. His parents opposed the marriage, for reasons of social standing, but he convinced them, and their love lasted to the end.

The priest

In 1894 he received the priesthood and went to Pestovo, where he worked much for the school there, as warden, teacher and religion teacher; under him the school became one of the model schools of the diocese, with smithing and locksmith workshops. In 1898 he received the bishop's blessing for his unpaid work on the school building. In 1902, at his request, he moved to his father's place at Norskoe, with his wife and two-⁠year-⁠old son Dimitry. Between 1902 and 1915 he joined priestly labour with that of a teacher and was a church investigator and deputy to the clergy congresses. In 1904 he founded a parish brotherhood. In 1907 he received the violet velvet kamilavka, and in 1911 a gold pectoral cross for his work as investigator. After his father's death he finished the building of a church in the village of Kurilovo, with the help of the merchant Sergei Sorokin, consecrated in 1913 in honour of Saint Nicholas. In that year the villagers made a celebration on his name day, as a sign of thanks.

In 1915 he was moved to Yaroslavl, rector of the church of the Exaltation of the Cross, and soon became one of the prominent priests of the town. From 1918 at the latest he was personal secretary to Metropolitan Agathangel and remained so until the latter's death in 1928.

Persecution

He was arrested in all the great anti-⁠church campaigns: in 1922, at the confiscation of church valuables; in 1930, at the arrest of Bishops Eugene Kobranov and Barlaam Ryashentsev; and a fourth time in 1938. In April 1922 the confiscation commission found in the church of the Exaltation of the Cross the gold riza of the icon of the Great Martyr Demetrius, hidden by the warden; the priest's things were taken too, among them the gold cross he had received as a distinction, and he and several others were arrested. On 24 May 1922 he was sentenced by the Cheka to three years' deprivation of liberty; he was in the prison "Korovniki" at Yaroslavl, and in the same year, by an amnesty, his sentence was halved. On 13 June 1927 he was arrested for "spreading, in private talk, at meetings and from the pulpit, provocative rumours about the Chinese revolution and the break of diplomatic relations with England"; at the interrogation he stood with dignity, saying he had acted within the duties of a clerk of the bishop's chancery, and the case was closed "for lack of compromising material".

On 31 January 1930 he was arrested a third time, on the charge of helping exiled priests; he denied it and confirmed only that two church women from Josephite parishes were collecting money for prisoners. In 1930 he received five years of camp, at logging a hundred to two hundred kilometres from Vyatka, then at Kargopol, where conditions were easier. He was released in 1934, without the right to live in large cities. He lived with his wife at the home of their son Dimitry, a doctor at the hospital at Volga station, then at Bragino near Yaroslavl, and finally at Khopylevo on the Volga, where they bought a house with money given by the son; but the authorities forbade him to sleep in it and at night he went to a neighbouring village, where nuns took him in. Like many others released from camp, he led an outwardly very simple, contemplative life, and his spiritual life remained hidden, showing itself at the last trial.

On 10 May 1938 an NKVD agent came to Khopylevo with a warrant for search and arrest, and he was imprisoned at Yaroslavl. His wife wrote to Beria a letter that has remained like a lament of the time: "There lived two old people, he of seventy and I of sixty-⁠five, and now they have been in the way." He was accused of anti-⁠Soviet activity, as a member of a group of priests of the Saint Theodore cathedral of Yaroslavl, called in the file a secret counter-⁠revolutionary organization headed by Metropolitan Paul Borisovsky. From the testimony, of 1958, of Faina Pestrinskaya, widow of Archpriest Vladimir Pestrinsky, one sees how the interrogations were done: they were made to sign blank sheets, sent back to prison, called at night with a revolver at the face, held eight days without sleep, and some were beaten through boards placed on the chest. The accused, exhausted, signed invented testimony; Dimitry Smirnov, at sixty-⁠eight, showed astonishing spiritual strength, the only one who had the courage to state the truth against the flood of lies, saying he knew no anti-⁠Soviet organization and denying the charge.

On 26 September 1938 he was sentenced to five years of exile in Kazakhstan and served it in the village of Shemonaikha, Ust-⁠Kamenogorsk district. His wife and son came to him; a month after his son's visit, in August 1939, he was arrested again and imprisoned at Ust-⁠Kamenogorsk.

Death and veneration

According to data of 1991 from the Ministry of the Interior of Kazakhstan, on 26 February 1940 he was sentenced again, to ten years in prison, and the family was told that he died in prison on 26 June 1940. The place of burial is not known; several mass burial sites of prisoners of Ust-⁠Kamenogorsk are known.

He was taller than average, with a soft, high voice; witnesses say he was kind and sensitive, with a gaze full of joy and love. A niece of his, Maria Petrovykh, became a well-⁠known poet and translator. On 17 July 2001 the Holy Synod, under Patriarch Alexy, numbered him among the saints. He is commemorated on 13 (26) June, the day of death, and on the Sunday of the New Martyrs, 25 January (7 February) or the nearest Sunday. An icon of him is in the Holy Trinity church at Norskoe, and a venerated image is also in the church of Saint Nicholas at Kurilovo; he is especially venerated in the church of Saint John the Russian at Kuntsevo in Moscow, where his great-⁠grandson, Fr Andrei, serves.