Dmitry Pavsky

Holy Hieromartyr Dmitry Pavsky was an archpriest, born on 16 January 1874 in the village of Maksatikha, Tver province, and shot in 1937 in the Tver region. In 1999 the Synod of the Belarusian Orthodox Church numbered him among the new martyrs. Our sources do not show a glorification for the whole Russian Church. Our calendar gives his commemoration on 1 August.

He was the son of the priest Alexander Pavsky and the brother of Grigory Pavsky. He finished the Tver seminary and in 1899 the Kazan Theological Academy, with the degree of candidate in theology. He taught arithmetic, geometry and Russian at the diocesan girls' school in Rzhev and at folk schools in Novgorod province. He was ordained protodeacon, then priest (20 November 1903) and sent to Minsk. He was observer of the parish schools of the city. From 1904 to 1908 he was president of the Minsk diocesan school council. From 1910 he was rector of the cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul in Minsk and observer of the parish schools attached to the cathedral. At the same time he taught dogmatic and fundamental theology, history and other subjects at the Minsk theological seminary and at the Minsk girls' gymnasium. From 1912 he was a deputy for the church section in the provincial zemstvo society and a member of the Minsk spiritual consistory. From 1917 he served at the church of the Holy Spirit in Ostroshitsky Gorodok, Minsk district. He received the skufia in 1905, the kamilavka in 1908 and the pectoral cross in 1909. He was an active member and secretary of the Minsk branch of the All-⁠Russian National Union, a known national-⁠monarchist organization.

From 1920 to 1923 he was deprived of the vote. In the mid-1920s he was rector of the Dormition church at Krestovye Gory, in the Minsk district. He was a supporter of the founding of a Belarusian Autocephalous Orthodox Church and took part in the congress of the clergy and faithful of the Minsk diocese of 9 and 10 July 1927.

In 1931 he was arrested for the first time, accused of "agitation against the collective farms" and of an "unwillingness to give up his dignity". He was sentenced to five years of hard labour. After early release, in 1933, he served at the church of the village of Ulyanovskoe, in the Pogorelo district, Tver region. He was arrested again on 23 July 1937 and held under investigation in the Zubtsov prison. He was accused of "counter-⁠revolutionary espionage" and "anti-⁠Soviet agitation". On 10 August 1937 the NKVD troika sentenced him to death by shooting. He was rehabilitated on 27 April 1989 by the Tver regional prosecutor's office.

His son Alexander Pavsky (born in 1908 in Minsk) was arrested on 29 February 1932 at Minsk and sentenced on 14 July 1932, for "forging the documents of a prisoner escaped from a camp", to three years of exile in Kazakhstan. His further fate is unknown. He was rehabilitated on 28 February 1992 by the prosecutor's office of Belarus.