Demetrius Sozinov of Belogorsk

Holy Venerable Martyr Demetrius Sozinov of Belogorsk was a brother of the Belogorsk Monastery, in the Urals, in the Perm region, called a novice in the title, and received a martyr's death in August 1918, when the community was destroyed by the Bolsheviks. He is commemorated on 7 February, in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, on 14 February, in the Synaxis of the Saints of the Perm Metropolis, and on 25 August, together with Archimandrite Varlaam and his brethren. No details of his life have been preserved; his name, Demetrius, is found in the list of the brothers who were killed.

In the year 1893 Vasily Efimovich Konoplev, born in 1858 in a family of Old Believers, was tonsured a rasophore and settled on the White Mountain, where those wishing for monastic life gradually gathered. On 1 February 1894 he received tonsure with the name Varlaam, the next day was ordained hierodeacon, and on 22 February hieromonk. He was appointed head of the missionary monastery on the White Mountain, later called the Athos of the Urals, restored the services according to the typikon and gave preaching a place of honour, morning and evening. In June 1917, at the consecration of the cathedral, the last great feast of the community was held, at which the Holy Hieromartyr Andronik, bishop of Perm, was also present.

In August 1918 the Bolsheviks took possession of the monastery, defiled the altar of the cathedral, made a theatre of the icon-⁠painting workshop and set the monastery's boy singers to sing secular songs. Many monks were killed after cruel torments. On 12 (25) August soldiers of the Red Army arrested the abbot Varlaam and shot him on the road to Osa. Many of the monks also received a martyr's death: the hieromonks Sergius, Elijah, Vyacheslav, Joasaph, John and Anthony; the hierodeacons Michea, Vissarion, Matthew and Euthymius; the monks Barnabas, Demetrius, Sava, Hermogenes, Arcadius, Euthymius and Marcellus; and the novices John, Jacob, Peter, Jacob, Alexander, Theodore, Peter, Sergius and Alexis. Their graves were hidden and are unknown. They were glorified in 1998 as locally venerated saints, and in August 2000 were numbered among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, for veneration in the whole Church.