Demetrius Spassky

Holy Hieromartyr Demetrius Spassky, a priest (1877-1918), served in the village of Ust-⁠Nem in the Komi land and preached in the Zyryan language. He received the crown of martyrdom by shooting on 19 September 1918, near the village of Pomozdino, and was buried by the local people. He is commemorated on 19 September, on 7 February, in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, and on 11 February, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Komi.

He was born in 1877 in the village of Koygorodok, in the Ust-⁠Sysolsk district of the Vologda province, in the family of the priest Vassian Dmitrievich Spassky. After the seminary he worked as a teacher of religion at the zemstvo school, a singing teacher at the church school and a psalm-⁠reader at the Holy Trinity cathedral in Ust-⁠Sysolsk. He married Anna Ivanovna Pokrovskaya, a priest's daughter, was ordained priest and they had four children. He served at the church of the Savior in the village of Ust-⁠Nem. His parishioners were Komi, who understood little of the Slavonic language of the services. Father Demetrius preached daily in the Zyryan language and for this was greatly loved. He continued to teach at several schools and was a district deputy for investigative and economic matters.

His suffering

In 1918, by order of the Cheka, a punitive detachment of Red soldiers was sent from Ust-⁠Sysolsk to Troitsko-⁠Pechorsk. It went up the Vychegda river on a steamer called the Well-⁠wisher. The detachment stopped at Ust-⁠Nem on 15 September. Pillage began: drunk soldiers broke into houses, plundered, and shots rang out everywhere. Father Demetrius went as usual to the church to serve the evening service. After the service he gave a sermon to the Zyryans, who always filled his church to hear the priest's instruction. That day he said that these outrages would soon come to an end and that God would repay each according to his deeds. During the sermon soldiers entered the church, who did not know Zyryan, approached Father Demetrius and ordered him to announce to the people that Soviet power had come and that if they did not submit to it, it would go badly for them. The priest answered them nothing; he silently gathered his things and left the church.

Late that evening several soldiers burst into his house. The chief of them ordered in a loud voice: get dressed, priest. The others began to turn everything over. The priest's wife Anna ran to Father Demetrius with the words: whom are you leaving us to? His last words were: God will not leave you. The next day the Red soldiers came again to the family left without a priest and ordered it to leave the house, leaving all its property there. Anna Ivanovna took the four children, in what she was wearing, and they went out into the street. The priest was taken to the steamer and tied to the stern. The Red detachment went on up the river. On the way the priest was tortured and interrogated. On the way too the charge was drawn up: he gives sermons against Soviet power, calling it a plundering power. The commander of the detachment, Mandelbaum, later sent a report to Kotlas that the session of the Ust-⁠Sysolsk Cheka, held on the steamer itself, had decided to sentence the priest Spassky to death, which was done at once. Father Demetrius Spassky was shot on the fourth day after the arrest, near the village of Pomozdino.

Local peasants told the priest's daughter of his last days: the Red soldiers beat him all the time with whips, because he did not renounce faith in Christ, and he called them servants of Satan. The steamer was stopped toward morning in a deserted place. At the edge of the forest they ordered the priest to dig his own grave; it seems he did not manage to dig it deep. After they shot him and threw sand over the pit, the rain, which fell all day, washed away the sand, and his hand stuck out of the grave. Three days after the shooting, the priest's wife Anna, together with the inhabitants of the neighbouring villages, carried her husband's body to the village of Pomozdino, where Father Demetrius was buried in the local cemetery. The funeral service was performed by Father Alexis Tyurnin, rector of the church of the Nativity of the Mother of God in Pomozdino, who was himself shot later. On the grave of the new martyr they put a cross, but feared to write his name on it. Later, on the site of the old cemetery, in the centre of the village, the building of the district executive committee was raised.