Demetrius Volkov

Holy Martyr Demetrius Volkov was a layman, warden of the church of the Nativity of the Mother of God in Orekhovo-⁠Zuevo, and died in the prison in Omsk on 4 March 1942, together with Nikita Sukharev. He was born in 1871 in the village of Ostrovishchi, in the Pokrov district of the Vladimir province, in a peasant family. He is commemorated on 4 March, on 7 February, in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, on 26 February, in the Synaxis of the Saints of the Omsk Metropolis, and on 5 September, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow.

The struggle for the church

In 1939 in the town of Orekhovo-⁠Zuevo in the Moscow region the last of the churches still remaining in the district was closed, the church of the Nativity of the Mother of God, whose building and adornment had taken almost thirty years, from 1872 to 1901. But the believers did not agree. According to Soviet laws, only a group of twenty registered by the authorities could ask for the church to be opened. Some of the people had left the group, others had shown indifference to the fate of the church, and some proved faint-⁠hearted. Taking this into account, in May 1940 the parishioners elected the members of the twenty again and chose as warden Dmitry Ivanovich Volkov. The martyr Demetrius had been taught letters and the Christian faith by his parents, by pastors and by the services in the church; moved to Orekhovo-⁠Zuevo, he worked as a carpenter. In 1940, at sixty-⁠nine, he was already retired and gave all his time to church matters. To discuss measures for opening the church, the twenty gathered every Saturday about two o'clock in the church, where parishioners could also come to pray.

At one of the meetings the twenty resolved to ask the chairman of the town soviet of Orekhovo-⁠Zuevo to permit the registration of a priest. The warden and representatives went to Moscow to Metropolitan Sergius, the locum tenens of the patriarchal throne, with a petition that he send a priest to their church; the metropolitan, having no others, assigned an archpriest from Zagorsk, Fyodor Kazansky. Arriving at the new place of service, Archpriest Fyodor asked the parish to pay him five hundred roubles and, receiving the money, returned to Zagorsk and did not come back. While the believers sought another priest, the authorities began to refuse them, under various pretexts, permission to open the church, saying that first repairs must be made and only then a priest registered. The parishioners collected three thousand roubles, paid all the taxes on the unused church and made the repairs; after that the warden Dmitry Volkov and Nikita Sukharev went to see the chairman of the town soviet with the request to open it, but he answered that he could do nothing, because at rallies the workers of the local factories demanded the closing of the church. Learning this, the believers carried on a campaign among the inhabitants. At the next meeting the twenty unanimously resolved to seek the opening of the church from a higher instance, the regional executive committee. A lawyer was hired in Moscow, who drew up the petition. Dmitry Ivanovich and Nikita Andreevich went for two days to the officials of the committee for an answer and in the end received it: since the workers of Orekhovo-⁠Zuevo protested at meetings against the opening of the church, they too could not give permission; the question could be decided only by a higher instance, the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR.

On 15 May 1941 Dmitry Ivanovich and Nikita Andreevich took to the reception of the Supreme Soviet a complaint against the actions of the local authorities, with the request to open the church. They wrote that, to secure for citizens freedom of conscience, the Church in the USSR is separated from the state and the school from the Church, and freedom of exercise of religious cults is recognised for all citizens; that their community had asked the town soviet several times for the registration of a priest; that all the obligations undertaken had been fulfilled and the taxes paid; and they asked: what then is the matter. The believers received no answer. To stop the activity of the twenty, the local section of the NKVD recruited one of them as an informer, thinking that by provocations and false testimony it would prevent the opening of the church. The informer reported that the leading role in the efforts was played by Nikita Andreevich Sukharev, who sought the opening from deep religious conviction, and that he considered the present persecutions similar to those of Roman times and that the teaching of Marx and Engels had led the people astray. About the warden they collected information that he waged an active struggle to form a church activist body and open the church, that he went about with petitions to the leaders of the party and government, that he urged the believers to mass action and that he intended to make contact with foreign embassies.

Arrest and death

On 22 June 1941 the Great Patriotic War began. On that day the leadership of the Moscow NKVD resolved to arrest the two petitioners, and the next day the church warden Dmitry Ivanovich Volkov and the member of the twenty Nikita Andreevich Sukharev were arrested. Dmitry Ivanovich, asked about the reason for his arrest, said that perhaps he had been arrested for taking part in the parish council and for the petition to open the church. He denied any counter-⁠revolutionary action and, on 7 July, when the charge was presented, did not admit guilt. Nikita Andreevich Sukharev was born in 1876 in the village of Pochinki, in the Yegoryevsk district of the Ryazan province, in the family of the peasants Andrei Kuzmich and Anisia Alexeevna Sukharev, finished the village school and worked as a weaver at a factory in Orekhovo-⁠Zuevo, and at the time of his arrest, because of his age, was a pensioner. He said at the investigation that perhaps he was arrested for keeping church literature, for being in the church community and for taking an active part in opening the church. He denied any counter-⁠revolutionary action.

In July 1941 German troops were advancing rapidly on Moscow, and the city was declared under martial law. The investigators left for far-⁠off Omsk, and after them, by transport, those under investigation were sent too. Busy with the evacuation, they did not manage to question the secret informers as witnesses, and the case was left without witness testimony. Dmitry Ivanovich and Nikita Andreevich were imprisoned in Omsk and from 3 September 1941 the exhausting interrogations, day and night, began again. They admitted that they had been members of a group of churchmen, but denied that it had carried on anti-⁠Soviet activity. Nikita Andreevich said that in a conversation with Anna Kuleshova she had told him that they would not be allowed to open the church, and he had answered that even in the time of the Roman Empire there were persecutions of Christians and that Christians now suffered the same persecution; but just as the Roman Empire ended and Christianity triumphed, so the present persecution would end. On 4 September 1941 the investigation was completed, and the investigator wrote in the indictment that, considering that in counter-⁠revolutionary activity Sukharev and Volkov were exposed by operative materials that could not be used in court, it was advisable that the case be sent for examination to the Special Council of the NKVD. On 27 December 1941 the Special Council sentenced Dmitry Ivanovich Volkov and Nikita Andreevich Sukharev to five years of exile in the Omsk region. Despite the sentence of exile, they were not released from prison. Advanced age, the hardly bearable conditions of the transport, exhausting interrogations, being held in prison on a starvation ration, in the midst of war, when even the soldiers did not receive enough food, quickly brought their death near. The warden Dmitry Ivanovich Volkov died on 4 March 1942 in prison No. 1 in Omsk and was buried in an unknown grave. Nikita Andreevich Sukharev, a member of the twenty, died four months later, in the same prison, on 4 July 1942, and was likewise buried in an unknown grave.