Demetrius Vlasenkov

Holy Martyr Demetrius Vlasenkov was a layman and a peasant, and died in the Karlag camp, in Kazakhstan, on 5 May 1942. He was born on 15 May 1880 in the settlement of Rossasna, in the Gorki district of the Mogilev province, in the family of the peasant Emelyan Vlasenkov, who held in the village the post of volost elder. He is commemorated on 5 May, 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 the parish school he occupied himself with working the land, like his father and brothers. In 1901 he was called into the army and served until 1905 in the Finland Life Guards regiment, first as a private, then as a non-⁠commissioned officer. He married Daria and the Lord gave them a large family. Raised in faith and piety, he was a zealous parishioner of the church in his native village, sang in the choir from childhood, was for a time a psalm-⁠reader, and in 1931 was elected to the parish council, where he remained until 1934, when the church was closed and the priest arrested. Dmitry Emelyanovich, with the parishioners, began to labour for the return of the church, but without success. In 1934 the authorities arrested his brother and sentenced him to ten years in prison; he escaped from detention, hid, but in 1937 was arrested again. Life grew harder and harder, and Dmitry Emelyanovich agreed with his wife to divide the work: Daria Gavrilovna went to work on the collective farm, and he, to feed the family, worked the land on his plot. The peasants, suffering without services, began to ask him that at least he, as a man taught in church matters and a former psalm-⁠reader, come round to their homes to read the Psalter for the departed. At the invitation of the parishioners he began to go from house to house to read the Psalter for the fallen asleep, and at Radonitsa he went with the peasants to the cemetery, where up to two hundred people gathered to pray. There were also singers, who, under his direction, sang the panikhida. The authorities were displeased that church life in the village had not ceased, despite the closing of the church and the arrest of the priest, and in the end resolved to arrest him. Several witnesses, under the threat that they would be called to account for taking part in panikhidas and wakes, signed protocols with false testimony about the psalm-⁠reader, who was said to have carried on anti-⁠Soviet agitation at the wakes.

Arrest and trial

On 16 May 1940 agents of the NKVD arrested Dmitry Emelyanovich and imprisoned him at Orsha, where he was questioned at once. In the search lists of the people in the community, a cross, a small icon and Bibles were found. The investigator asked what he kept them for. He answered that the lists had been drawn up in 1932 to collect money for the church taxes, and the lists, the cross, the icon and the Bibles he kept because he was a believer and read them. He denied any anti-⁠Soviet work, but admitted that he had performed religious rites. False witnesses were called, who confirmed their testimony at the confrontation; then the investigator questioned him again. He said that he did not confirm the testimony of the witnesses, that he had indeed performed religious rites for those who asked him and that he did not know why the witnesses said such things about him. On 17 July 1940 the session of the Collegium for Criminal Cases of the Vitebsk court took place. Dmitry Emelyanovich said: I do not admit guilt, I did not engage in any anti-⁠Soviet activity; at the search they took from me the Psalter, the Gospel, two prayer books and a cross; I was a singer at Rossasna from childhood, I was on the parish council until the church was taken; I collected the money to pay the church tax; in 1939, at the cemetery, at Radonitsa, I performed a religious rite, about a hundred and fifty or two hundred people, and I carried on no anti-⁠Soviet agitation. The woman prosecutor asked that the case be sent for further investigation, because all the witnesses for the prosecution were relatives, no other witnesses had been questioned, and the investigation had not made clear whether taking part in rites had any connection with counter-⁠revolutionary activity. The prosecutor of the Vitebsk region contested the decision and ordered the case sent to court again, with a different bench. On 19 November 1940 a new session took place. Answering the charges, Dmitry Emelyanovich said again that he did not admit guilt: it is all the same to me what power there is, I am bound to submit to it; when there were wakes, I said nothing bad about the authorities; at the rites I read in Slavonic, but I carried on no agitation against Soviet power; I never baptised children, but when they asked me, I only made the sign of the cross with my fingers; I performed rites only at funerals and did not ask money, only if they gave it themselves. The false witnesses repeated their testimony, and he rejected it all. On the same day the court sentenced him to five years in a camp. He appealed to the Supreme Court, in which he proved his innocence, and asked that other witnesses from Rossasna be called, but the court refused him.

The camp

He was sent by transport from the prison in Orsha to Kazakhstan and arrived on 11 May 1941 at the station Karabas of the Karaganda camp, from where he was assigned to the fifth Espinsk section of Karlag. There he fell gravely ill and on 5 May 1942 was taken to the camp hospital, where he died on that same day. Dmitry Emelyanovich Vlasenkov was buried in an unknown grave in the camp cemetery of the Espinsk section of Karlag.