Dionysius Shchegolev

Holy Hieromartyr Dionysius Shchegolev, a priest, was born in 1870 in the village of Raskazn in the Rodnichkovo district of the Saratov region. He received the crown of martyrdom by shooting on 23 November 1937 in Balashov. The Russian Church honours him among the New Martyrs and Confessors of the twentieth century.

Father Dionysius Efimovich Shchegolev served in the village of Chiganak in the Arkadak district of the Saratov region. In 1931 he was declared a kulak, that is, a well-⁠off peasant, and deported to a special settlement in Kazakhstan, the labour settlement no. 21 in the Karaganda region.

He was arrested in August 1932 on the grounds that there he had performed services and religious rites and had spoken with hostility about the authorities. At the inquiry he did not admit guilt, but he did not deny that he had served. He said that, as a priest, he had celebrated services in the settlement of Maikuduk and had given one sermon before some twenty deportees gathered together, a sermon of his own composition based on Holy Scripture. On 13 January 1933 the OGPU troika in Kazakhstan sentenced him to three years of exile in Siberia.

After his return he lived in the Saratov region, where he was arrested again on 26 October 1937. On 14 November 1937 the troika of the regional administration sentenced him to death for alleged anti-⁠Soviet agitation. The sentence was carried out on 23 November 1937 in the town of Balashov. The place of his burial is unknown.

He is commemorated on 23 November, the day of his confession, on 7 February in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church (new style), and in the Synaxis of the Saints of Saratov on 12 September.